Her dad sighed, stretched his fingers out over the steering wheel. He said nothing. Brie thought maybe he hadn’t heard her, maybe she should repeat herself.
But then he reached over to pat her leg again. “It’s just been a lot ever since they let me go.”
The company Brie’s dad had worked at for as long as Brie could remember had “downsized,” according to Brie’s mom. Which meant that only a select few got to keep their jobs. Brie’s dad was not one of them. “You have your new job now, though. At the school.”
His smile was tight. “That I do.”
They pulled into the driveway behind Trevor’s car. Brie wasn’t allowed to drive with her brother. Her mom said it was because he was too inexperienced, and Brie figured if he was going to get into an accident, her mom wanted to keep the odds in their favor that they’d still have at least one kid. Honestly, Brie didn’t blame her; she kind of agreed. The grass along the edges of the driveway was flattened and muddy from where Trevor kept driving onto it.
Brie expected her dad to comment on the grass like he always did, especially since Trevor was sitting right there in the living room with their mom when they walked inside. But her dad didn’t say anything. He went right upstairs.
Her mom noticed and followed him without a word of greeting to Brie. Brie watched her ascend the stairs behind him, and she hovered at the door, not really sure if she should go turn on General Hospital like usual or wait to see if her mom came back down.
“He’s depressed,” Trevor said, cutting through Brie’s indecision.
“No he’s not,” she responded. “He was fine yesterday.”
“He’s depressed and Mom’s stressed,” Trevor said. His long, gangly body was draped over the couch, and Brie wanted to push him off, wanted him to go back to hibernating in his bedroom, far away from the sanctuary of where she watched her soaps.
“I heard him talking to Mom,” Trevor continued, oblivious to Brie’s mood. “He knows he embarrasses you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you should stop ruining his grass with your stupid driving,” Brie snapped back. “He’s not a huge fan of that, either, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Whatever, Brie.”
“He’s just tired!”
Brie didn’t want to argue with her brother. She didn’t want to wait for her mom, either, so she ran upstairs. She could watch General Hospital on the streaming app later. She had homework to do. She had to write a list for English and find a monologue for auditions. Which were both important.
But as she sat at her computer, Brie got more and more frustrated. She should have been watching General Hospital with her mom, and her dad should have been telling Trevor to stop driving on his lawn, and she didn’t want to think about that. Because nothing was wrong, and Trevor was just annoying. Her dad was tired. He worked all day, and the students were loud and maintenance work was hard.
Brie almost went back downstairs to tell Trevor everything she was thinking and to take the TV back from him so she could watch her soap.
But then she had an idea.
Soap opera scenes were emotional and powerful and dramatic. They were perfect. Brie pulled up Google and typed soap opera monologues in the search bar. A ton of scenes popped up. Brie pumped a fist in the air. This she could do. This would help her finish her homework and help her wow Ms. Brophy at her audition, which would help her wow her mom with her performance in the play, which might even impress the May Crowning committee. And then, with the approval of everyone in her life, she could move on to wow the judges at the performing arts school auditions.
Most of the scenes that came up in her search were from before Brie started watching soaps, because they were from before Brie was born. A lot of them were from soaps that had been canceled years ago. But Brie was still familiar with a lot of the characters and even sort of familiar with the story lines. Soap operas had long, complicated histories. Brie loved trying to connect all the dots, loved the complicated tangle of relationships.
She watched Robin Scorpio’s emotional speech during General Hospital’s Nurses Ball. She watched in awe as Karen Wolek broke down on the witness stand on One Life to Live. She watched Reva Shayne’s “Slut of Springfield” speech on Guiding Light. She couldn’t look away, getting caught in a YouTube spiral, watching old scenes that had no monologues in them at all just because she wanted to see more. She started a new Google Doc to keep track of the ones that stood out, copying and pasting links and jotting down notes.
Brie was supposed to listen to other speeches—from history, from sports—but she figured she’d get to that eventually. She could at least start her homework with these. What makes a good speech? Brie pulled out her English notebook and jotted down, A good speech should be dramatic.
Well, in soap operas, at least.
And while she had her backpack open and her notebook out, Brie figured she should consider doing her math problems and social studies questions, too. She was newly determined to be on top of her schoolwork, after all. But she decided one more scene before she started the rest of her homework wouldn’t hurt. She pulled up another clip. It was a scene from All My Children. Brie recognized the character Erica Kane immediately—even people who didn’t watch soaps knew Susan Lucci’s iconic role—but she didn’t recognize the other young woman. She hit Play.
“This isn’t me, Mom,” said the young woman on Brie’s computer screen, who was obviously Erica Kane’s daughter. She was pretty and wearing a sparkly dress. “It never was.”
Brie leaned closer to the screen, already picturing herself repeating the lines in her mirror.
“Well, all right, Bianca. Just tell me what look it is you’re going for, and I’ll have the stylists come up with something different.” Bianca’s mother had a voice just like Brie’s mom. “I mean, they’re magicians—”
“No,” Bianca interrupted, and Brie held her breath, waiting to see if Bianca could get her mother to listen. “No, Mom.”
“ ‘No, Mom’ what?”
There was a pause then. A long one.
“I have to tell you something.”
Brie stood up and crossed the room to close her bedroom door, glancing around first to see if anyone was nearby. Her mom and dad had not come out of their room.
“Look at me!” Bianca was yelling as Brie went back to the screen. “I want you to see who I am, Mother. Can you see who I am? Can you? I’m trying to show you.”
Brie lowered the volume a bit so she could hear if her parents came out into the hallway. She leaned in closer so she could also hear the conversation that was still happening on her computer.
“Bianca, what are you doing? What are you trying to say?”
Brie wanted Bianca’s mom to just . . . listen. Was that really so hard? It was, it seemed, for Erica Kane, who had a press conference to get to and tears in her eyes as her daughter begged her to listen.
Brie was listening. She heard every word Bianca said.
Right up to the point where Bianca told her mother she was gay.
Brie stopped the video. Closed the tab. In the silence that followed she looked over at her closed bedroom door, listening to hear if anyone was in the hallway. Her face was hot; her hands sweaty. She tried to ignore those feelings. It was a stupid monologue, anyway. Not even a monologue. It was a conversation and it was useless to Brie, so she tried to forget it existed. She pulled up the transcript for the “Slut of Springfield” speech, pressed Print, and closed her laptop.