Watch this space, Rachel.
Sincerely,
Brynn
Folder:
Drafts
To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
Date:
October 20
Subject:
Downtown
Dear Rachel Maddow,
Since Mom and Fart Weasel were both home in the hours before I had to go to work, I decided to walk around near the War Memorial.
The whole place smelled like summer camp—damp and woody, with whiffs of smoke still hanging around the massive tarps half-heartedly covering gaping holes. Strange dark swirls formed a maze in parts of the stubby yard next to the river and spread out into the parking lot.
It’d have been kind of cool in a movie. In real life, it just sucked.
What the fuck had happened here? I remembered Justin had said he’d thought the whole silence around it was odd.
But I couldn’t go down that hole with him until I was sure I wasn’t going to flunk out for good.
Although, aside from who had set the fire or why, how did it burn so quickly? Maybe they used cheap stuff when they redid the front of the building and that helped destroy the place. I should tell Justin to look into that angle. That would be a story, if the contractor ripped off the city and then …
No. Just cut it out, Brynnie. Leave this to the paper people or the police or the city managers. You have underwear to sell.
Though maybe I’d just text Justin my thought.
He was probably bored over the weekend and could use the distraction.
I was doing this for him. Because of my generous nature.
Sincerely,
Brynn
Folder:
Drafts
To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
Date:
October 21
Subject:
34C
Dear Rachel Maddow,
It’s been three days since my last unfortunate attempt at speaking to Michaela. I think I might have freaked her out, because she didn’t try it again. I do seem to catch her looking at me a fair amount, which technically might be construed as her catching me doing the looking.
Potayto, potahto, amiright, Rachel?
Since speaking didn’t go so great, it is probably just as well I only watch her talk to everyone else and help them diagram sentences and solve problems and be wonderful. She watches me watching her like a mirror reflecting a mirror into awkward infinity. It might be nice to have her help me with my work, but that would require words to exit my mouth and reach her ears.
Her glorious, perfect ears.
I was content to let this continue, but several major developments occurred over the last week that have conspired to make life both more awesome and more absurd. First, Mom said I would no longer be getting food until I cleaned out my closet. While digging through piles years’ deep, I found the pair of pants I had worn to Nick’s funeral. They were almost comically small, but I couldn’t bring myself to stuff them into the donation bag. I looked through the pockets and found Erin’s and Leigh’s phone numbers crumpled in the back. I called Erin on a whim, after all this time.
As it turned out, it was still her phone number. And she remembered me.
I met Erin for pizza that evening and she paid, and she said I could come over to the place she shares with Leigh anytime.
Erin then convinced me that I should take a job at Aerie with her. Aerie, if you don’t know, Rachel, is the underwear branch of American Eagle.
A person might argue that this is the absolute last place I would ever want to work.
Particularly if this person was me.
But. Money is money. And it’s not like I had anything to do other than sit in my room at home and miss Nick or Sarah or perhaps my life.
I know little about what undergarments people want to purchase, but I have quickly learned that all you really need to know to work at Aerie is how to fold thongs and how not to beat the crap out of tweeny girls.
I’ve worked two evenings already and intend to save most of my money so that I can move out of la casa de Fart Weasel as soon as humanly possible.
Today I was at Aerie with Erin, wondering again at the serendipitous misfortune that led me to be amidst the bralettes. Erin is actually a pretty good manager, so I try to work hard when she is on.
“Stack the undies those girls messed up, Brynn,” she said as she walked by me. I was already beginning to hate the drawers full of understocked items. They are constantly a mess. Why people don’t just take the hanging ones I don’t understand. I stooped low over some push-up scoops when someone politely coughed behind me. I straightened and rammed my head into the bra rack on the way up.
“Son of a…” I rubbed my forehead, grateful I didn’t take out an eye. “Damn it,” I cursed the several halters knocked to the ground by the force of my head.
“You work here?” said a voice. I remembered the coughing person who had caused my near decapitation in the first place. Whom should I behold standing there, Rachel? Michaela, holding Blakely Lace Trim Lightly Lined in two shades. She was rubbing the edge of the Silver Shadow. Dear All the Stars in the Milky Way.
“Um. Yes. Lingerie enthusiast here,” I said. Oh, Rachel, what the hell? I flushed deep plum. Michaela raised one eyebrow at me.
“Ah. Could you tell me where the dressing room is?”
“Sure,” I said. My legs, still functional somehow, wobbled toward the back of the store. She followed me. I reached the row of blond-wood doors and pointed. She went into one. I watched her. My legs, having given their all, moved no more.
“Are you going to come in?” she said.
Yes. Yes, I am, Michaela. Let me help you with those pesky clasps.
“Oh. No. Sorry. I … I’m sorry.” I blushed again and backed away. I willed my legs to move me far from there. Fortunately I had to argue with a customer about returning underwear purchased last winter, so I didn’t see her again. Although when I went to put away items left in the changing room, I noticed she had left behind deep plum. And that she was a 34C.
I felt guilty somehow for knowing that.
Sincerely,
Brynn
Folder:
Drafts
To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
Date:
October 23
Subject:
Workin’ it
Dear Rachel Maddow,
I got an A on my tectonic plates paper today, since Greg and Bianca taught me how to insert charts into a document. I thought charts were cheating, but Ms. Yee was so happy I used any data at all that she complimented my work three times. Note: You might want to tell anyone you know to move away from California. Data suggests that one day an earthquake is going to make it its own island nation state.
Actually, maybe that’s what Californians want.
I happily assembled a sale display and thought about filling three-to-five pages with charts about shrinking rain forests for my next report. Maybe Michaela could proofread the non-chart portion of it for me, since sometimes my speech-to-text program goes rogue and does what it wants. Just then, I caught a glimpse of another natural disaster. Sarah walked past with another girl. My breath caught in my throat, but Sarah didn’t notice me. I thanked my lucky charts and got to the back of the store to lie low as long as possible to avoid detection.
Soon it became obvious that the store was dead slow, so Erin let me leave early. I made it a point to practically run to the nearest exit to avoid anyone I knew. Of course that meant that Sarah was standing just outside the sliding glass doors.
“Oh,” I said, nearly running into her. “Sorry.”
“Oh, hey,” she said brightly. “Did you see that someone put soap in the mall fountain?” She laughed. “You totally said you’d
do that one day. I’m disappointed someone beat you to it!”
This was true. Nick and his friends had done it once. It was a pretty powerful mall fountain. The water shot up about ten feet in the air. The suds produced were pretty epic. I wanted to innovate and add food coloring, or maybe try some sort of scented pink bubble bath. But why did Sarah remember that? Why was she even talking to me?
I could practically see the same questions pop into Sarah’s mind as I thought them. It was as if she had forgotten that we were no longer fun Sarah and Brynn for a moment.
“Guess I’ll have to think of something else,” I said.
“Yeah.” She suddenly looked very uncomfortable.
“Aerie has bikinis on sale. Buy one piece, get the other free. They have your favorite shade of blue. There’s one that’s shimmery, like stars.”
“Oh. Okay. Um. Thanks,” she said.
I turned and walked toward the bus stop. I couldn’t use my employee discount on sale items, so I didn’t tell her I worked there.
Not that I’d buy her a bikini.
Not that I had even remembered that her favorite color was a navy “deep and dark like the night sky” at her favorite summer camp. Not that I remembered that fact because she said it to me as we lay on her Steelers blanket in her backyard, looking up at the stars. Not that I remembered that was the first time in forever that anyone told me they loved me and I knew it was true.
I mean, I barely remember anything about her.
Sincerely,
Brynn
Folder:
Drafts
To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
Date:
October 25
Subject:
Pay day
Dear Rachel Maddow,
I have stacks of sweet, sweet cash dollars. Well, maybe not stacks. Maybe I have like four twenty-dollar bills.
Still.
Since I’m not used to such riches, I splurged and bought a bouquet of yellow and white roses to put on Nick’s grave. White and gold were Westing’s colors, so I was technically trolling a dead guy, but he left me alone so fuck him. Enjoy your school spirit flowers, Nicky.
Maybe I should send some anonymously to Sarah.
I could walk to the cemetery after school and still get home by dark. It was kind of a hike, especially for me, but I hadn’t gone to see him in a long time. The neatly lined rows of cool gray stone fanned out against glassy flat grass. I walked up the path, turned left, turned left again, past three tall trees whose leaves were also yellow.
I hoped the tree was trolling Nick, too.
Nick’s tombstone stood plain next to my grandma’s and grandpa’s more ornate angel statues. It only had his name and dates; it had cost too much to chisel anything else onto it.
“Hey, Nicky,” I said. I set the flowers down and traced my fingers along his name. Along the years of his birth and death and the dash in between.
Dash. That’s all we do in this life. Dash here, dash there, dash our arms with needles, dash our days onto rock after we are gone.
“Miss you,” I said to his grave. I never even met Mom’s mom or dad, but I waved to their angels. They were family, after all.
“You’re such a dick, you know that?” I shook my head and looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” I stomped on him. “Asshole.”
My eyes got a little blurry, so I decided to get out of there. “Sorry for the swears, Grandma and Grandpa,” I said. A yellow leaf fluttered onto my hair.
That’s all Nick could give me now. And all I could give him were flowers.
“I’ll bring lilies next time,” I said. Nick had always liked those at Easter.
Cemeteries are so orderly. Do they have to be that way? To fit everyone? Or are they like that because life is such a shitshow that at some point an ancient culture figured, “Hey, let’s make death a little more tidy?”
I made a mental note to look that up at the library, even if I knew I didn’t want to spend any more time thinking about cemeteries than I already did.
Sincerely,
Brynn
Folder:
Drafts
To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
Date:
October 26
Subject:
Stairmaster
Dear Rachel Maddow,
Today Mr. Grimm sent me to the guidance counselor to drop off some forms. It’s nice because I can take the back stairs to that office, and there is less risk of running into Sarah or Adam or most any other member of humanity.
However, the downside is that if someone wants to get quickly from their third-period class to the Applied mother ship, they would likely take the back stairwell. I was thus unprepared to note a halo of black curls descending in front of me as I retreated from the main hallway. They turned.
“Hi,” Michaela said brightly.
“Oh,” I said. Oh God. Why does she just suddenly appear in places that make perfect sense for her to be.
“How are you doing?”
Just say you’re fine, Brynn. Just say it. It’s what people do. Be a person, Brynn.
“Same old suck. Different day.” I cringed a little at my words.
“Why?” she asked. She stopped on the last step.
“Um. Life?” I said. I could give exquisite detail. But I like to save sharing that sort of thing for cable news personalities.
Michaela considered me for a second. “Yeah,” she said. “Fair enough.”
I followed her into the hall.
“What do you do about life sucking?” she said.
“Complain to Lacey. Or to my computer. My computer is a great listener.”
“I’ll have to try that.” Michaela laughed. “Have you ever considered talking to someone in addition to Lacey?”
“Like a shrink?” I rolled my eyes. “Yes. My mom took me to one after … uh … well, a while ago. And the lady was pretty judgy. I went to a nicer one, but then she moved to Texas. I just didn’t go back.”
“I actually meant talking to a friend. You could have two friends. Lacey and someone else.”
We stopped in front of the blue room door.
“Oh. You mean someone who talks to me for free?”
“Something like that.”
“Most people find me off-putting.” That was one of Mom’s kinder words for me.
“I don’t,” she said. “You could talk to me.” She opened the blue room door. She stepped inside and turned a little toward me. She gave me a small smile.
I walked straight into the door Michaela held open for me.
I took my seat next to Lacey, ignoring the throbbing in my nose in an attempt to pretend I didn’t constantly injure myself when Michaela came within three feet of me.
“Smooth,” Lacey said.
“Shut up,” I whispered.
I snuck a glance toward the back of the room. Michaela noticed and I swear to God she winked at me.
I decided not to leave my desk for the rest of the day. I’d probably fall in the Stoneycreek and take out some white-water rafters with me if she did that again.
Sincerely,
Brynn
Folder:
Drafts
To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
Date:
October 29
Subject:
Workin’ it
Dear Rachel Maddow,
Erin has talked me into working full weekends, so I’m making pretty good money at Aerie. (Well, okay, it’s shitty money. But it’s more than I’ve ever had to call my own before.) She likes me because I don’t steal stuff and I don’t sell pot like she suspects of the other three associates she just hired.
At school today Lacey and I got into kind of a fight, but it wasn’t the Fart Weasel kind. It was the friend kind
.
“Lacey, can’t you just give me the stupid answer? I know you know it,” I said.
“You have to show the work. Besides, you are supposed to learn this, I am not going to do it for you,” her mechanical voice said for her. She has this actually programmed into her board, she says it in this room so much.
“Oh my God,” I said.
“Just try. Try,” she said.
“I will never use this in real life!”
“No, because we are all going to die here waiting for you to finish your stupid work!” This, also, should probably be a macro programmed into her board. “Brynn”—pause—“you are”—pause—“smart”—pause—“enough to do this”—pause—“on your own.” She nudged the switch on her chair control and edged her wheel into my leg. I glared at her. She gave her most irritating grin.
“You are such a smart-ass,” I said. She just rolled her eyes and then away from me.
“Language, Brynn,” said Ms. Yee. I glared at her, too, but I stared at my paper for a while and solved for x eventually. Stupid x. Exes were hell in a number of areas in my life. I glared at Lacey for being right about me being able to do it on my own. The bell rang. On Fridays our teachers have a lunch meeting in the blue room, and we are forced into an “immersion” lunch. Why we can’t eat in the yellow room or something I don’t know. We met Lacey at the elevator and entered the cafeteria together. There is a dedicated corner for us. Immersion my ass.
Dear Rachel Maddow Page 5
