They hovered a minute longer, and Brie shifted her weight on her toes, wondering why Kennedy was still standing there. Brie finally decided to make the first move and turned to head back to the bleachers. She felt bad about leaving. She wasn’t sure why.
Brie found her seat, which seemed a lot smaller. The bleachers were much more crowded now that the game was about to start. Brie handed Parker her hot cocoa and money. “Kennedy Bishop bought our drinks,” she said.
“She did?” Parker asked, the steam from her cocoa immediately fogging her glasses. “Huh.”
Huh is right.
Parker let out an excited squeal as the referee dropped the puck and the game began. Brie didn’t know how Parker could tell which player was Wallace or which one was Jack—they all just skated around in clumps of colored jerseys—but she figured Parker didn’t really care. Brie herself didn’t care much about hockey—her mom had been right about that—so instead of watching the ice, she looked around the bleachers.
Brie didn’t realize she was looking for Kennedy until she spotted her purple cap. Kennedy was sitting with her parents and younger sister, sipping her hot cocoa, as they cheered on her brother. (Which blurry colored jersey was Kennedy’s brother, she had no idea.)
Brie felt . . . weird about their concession-stand encounter. She found herself forgetting about the boys on the ice and thinking instead about the warmth of Kennedy’s breath and how not gross it was to feel it on her face and how Brie liked Kennedy’s pink cheeks and dark hair. Did Kennedy want to sit with her and Parker? Did Brie wish she had invited her? Brie looked away and focused instead on the warmth of the hot cocoa in her hands, the hot cocoa that Kennedy had bought her.
It was weird to think about this, wasn’t it? Brie hated Kennedy. (Or, at least, she was jealous of Kennedy—which was basically the same thing—because Kennedy was everything Brie’s mom wanted her to be.)
Anyway, at the very least, she didn’t like Kennedy.
Everyone around her suddenly erupted into a commotion of cheers that startled Brie into nearly dropping her cup. Their team had scored, and Parker was standing, jumping up and down as everyone around them whistled and whooped in excitement.
Even through the waving arms—and Parker’s jumping body—Brie could see Kennedy in the crowd, smiling at the excitement on the ice, her hands still wrapped tight around her cocoa and a strand of hair falling into her face. Her little sister was tugging on her mom’s arm, trying to get her attention, and her dad was shouting encouragement at the team.
As she sat there surrounded by her family, Kennedy looked kind of alone. Brie should have invited her to sit with them.
But she didn’t. Because Kennedy always raised her hand. Because Kennedy always did her homework, always got first place in everything, and probably always—without having to try—made her mom super proud.
Brie did not like Kennedy.
Did she?
4.
GENERAL HOSPITAL, January 2009:
After screwing up everything in her life, Sam McCall decides to figure out who she is. She wants to apply for a PI license, even though her then boyfriend, Lucky Spencer, is dead set against it. She does it anyway.
In church on Sunday, when Brie would usually daydream about a whole lot of nothing, she instead spent that time trying to bargain with God.
She said her amens in the right places. She sang the songs aloud. She even knelt without complaining. She did everything her mom expected her to, all the while having a silent conversation with God. Brie tried to convince him she would do something really saintlike if only he would let her be picked to crown Mary.
Her mom, of course, knelt and stood and knelt again as if angels themselves were aiding her movements. She never needed a cue to say an amen in the right place, and she knew all her prayers flawlessly. And after Communion, when Trevor always looked like he was half-asleep, and Brie always knelt against the pew with her thoughts drifting, their mom was always so . . . into it all.
Brie couldn’t help but watch as her mother bowed her head into her clasped hands, eyes shut, having a silent moment with, well, God, Brie supposed. A moment that seemed so . . . intimate, and real, and important, if the creases in her mom’s forehead were any indication. Her mom’s hand reached for the pendant around her neck and held it so tightly, Brie had to look away. It made her blush, because it seemed like such a private moment, and Brie, for the life of her, just didn’t know how to replicate it.
Especially since her mind kept wandering, and every time it did, it mostly made her think about the reason she was in this mess to begin with, which was Kelly Monaco’s pretty hair and pretty face and pretty . . . well, everything.
She doubted her mom or God would appreciate that.
At school on Monday, Brie was resigned to the fact that prayer would not save her and that she would have to achieve her goal the hard way: paying extra-close attention in English class and hoping that Ms. Santos would teach her exactly how to write a winning May Crowning essay.
Her mom always told her she could achieve anything if only she applied herself. It was time to put that theory to the test.
So there Brie sat, next to Wallace as always, listening the best she could as Ms. Santos began her lesson. She had her notebook opened to a blank page and everything. No doodles, even.
“Okay,” Ms. Santos began. “What makes a great speech?”
That sounded like a good note-taking header. Brie went to write it down, but of course her pen barely got through the What before it ran out of ink. She groaned. “I’m already doomed.”
Wallace gave her the side-eye.
“Lend me a pen,” Brie whispered.
He held up his pencil, the metal end of which was chewed flat. “I’ve only got this.”
Brie sighed. So much for taking notes.
She glanced around the classroom. At least all the other students in her class looked equally as clueless or bored. Wallace put his chin down on his desk, his eyes half-droopy. Parker was across the room, carving little figurines out of pencil erasers. Shaun Frankel was tugging on his ripped shoe, making it worse. His Minecraft socks, which Mrs. Dwek would surely have a thing or two to say about, poked out from his pant leg. Javi Martinez had his eyes closed against his clasped hands, elbows resting on his desk, but Brie highly doubted he was deep in prayer. Unless maybe he was asking God to make this class go by more quickly.
Even Kennedy Bishop, who sat in the front row, didn’t have her hand raised to loudly volunteer an answer to Ms. Santos’s question. That made Brie feel a little better.
Kennedy turned around and caught Brie’s gaze. Brie smiled, and Kennedy smiled back, and Brie immediately looked back down at her English textbook, her fingers playing with the corner of the page.
“How about this,” Ms. Santos continued. “Who here can name a famous speech?”
“You can’t handle the truth!” shouted Shaun Frankel from the center of the room. Like Brie, Shaun called out a lot in class, but unlike Brie (at least in her opinion), he was always annoying.
A few students laughed as Ms. Santos smirked at him in the way that always made Brie’s cheeks hot. Ms. Santos was Brie’s youngest teacher, and unlike most of the others, Ms. Santos still had patience for laughter. She wore cute dresses that always had pockets, and her head was covered with short wild curls. “Shouting out aside, Shaun’s not wrong. ‘You can’t handle the truth’ is, actually, a famous movie speech. But who can, after raising their hand, name a non-movie speech?”