Oh, Nick. How did you get here, cracked and broken like old coats of primer? How did I? I was lost. But I was also warm, and cared for. I bet Nick was, too, when he came here.
Why wasn’t this enough?
Sincerely,
Brynn
Folder:
Drafts
To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
Date:
November 25
Subject:
Homeward Bound
Dear Rachel Maddow,
Did you ever work retail? You did yard work. I read that somewhere. Maybe I should get into yard work.
After Mom sent me another ten texts, I told Erin I should probably go home before the police showed up at her place. She wasn’t a fan of the idea, but she also didn’t offer to adopt me.
I got back to the Castle Fart while Mom and Weasel were still at church. I spotted a pie in the refrigerator that I desperately wanted to down, but the risk was too great.
I heard the front door squeak open.
I walked into the living room. Fart Weasel narrowed his eyes at me, squinting together thoughts of I don’t know what.
“Clean the bathroom,” Mom said.
I didn’t answer. I just got bleach and a sponge and the toilet bowl brush from under the kitchen sink. They watched me go to the bathroom.
I thought about opening the window and letting in a chipmunk or pigeon or animal helper friend like Cinderella. But I was fresh out of magic, and my face still hurt like a motherfucker. I’d probably scare off any woodland creature worth its weight in cleaning products.
Sincerely,
Brynn
Folder:
Drafts
To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
Date:
November 26
Subject:
Are you my mother?
Dear Rachel Maddow,
Mom and Fart Weasel returned to the “ignore Brynn completely unless they want her to do something” brand of parenting. I left the house when Mom left the house as often as I could. I didn’t know if she really offered any measure of protection from the thing she married, but part of me hoped she did.
Eventually I got tired of only having Erin to talk to. I texted Lacey, but she had challenged her grandfather to a chess tournament and it had expanded to include several brackets of family members. So I did something dangerous.
“Hey,” I texted Michaela. “It’s Brynn.”
“Hi! How was your Thanksgiving?”
“Long story.”
“Oh.”
I stared at the phone.
“You asked me out,” she texted.
“I did.”
“Want me to come over?” she said.
“That’s probably not the best plan. I could come over to your place.”
“That’s probably not the best plan, either. How about the mall?”
“God, no.”
“Right! Okay, library?”
“Now you’re talking.”
We met at the big stone lion at the front entrance and found a spot in the back between the kids’ and teens’ sections.
“I brought homework,” I said. I hadn’t meant to, it was already in my backpack. But it seemed like a good icebreaker.
“Oh! Okay. What do you want to work on?”
“I don’t,” I said.
She laughed. She looked at me. “What happened to your face?”
“I…” I couldn’t think of a plausible excuse. Nothing came to mind. “My mom married someone terrible, and I mention that to him from time to time. He…” I stopped for a second. “This was the first time he hit me.”
“Wow. That…” She stopped. I could see her trying to think of the right words. I knew there weren’t really any good ones. “That really sucks. Does it hurt?”
“Kinda.”
She moved her puffy chair closer to mine. “He really doesn’t do that that often?”
“No. I’m hoping it’s not his new thing. Mostly he just quietly loathes me from a separate location.”
“Why does he loathe you?”
I considered that. “I hated him first?”
Michaela shook her head. “Oh, Brynn.”
“He might hate me because he thinks I’m like my brother,” I said. Before Michaela said anything else, I just started telling her Nick’s life story. She looked at all of the stupid pictures I had saved on my phone. Even the shots I’d snapped as copies of the Polaroids of him as a toddler. “He was so smart and funny. You would have liked him,” I finished.
“I bet I would have.”
We sat in silence for a long time. It should have been weird or awkward. But it wasn’t.
“Sorry to unload. If you have any emotional baggage you’d like to dump on me, I think it’s only fair.”
Michaela laughed. “Maybe that should be for a second date. You don’t have to apologize. For talking. About anything. I just…” She paused. “I just like the sound of your voice.”
“Oh. Um.”
“Even if I kind of want to throw things at your family.”
“Yeah. It’s a reasonable response.” I grinned at her in spite of myself. “If you don’t want to tell me your secrets, maybe you should just do my homework for me.”
“Lacey told me if I did that I’d never be allowed in the blue room again. And I need the hours for the community service requirement.”
“Always fucking Lacey,” I said. “Fine, then just check my work.”
“You got it.”
Love and math, Rachel.
Neither make much sense to me at all.
Sincerely,
Brynn
Folder:
Drafts
To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
Date:
November 27
Subject:
The kiss
Dear Rachel Maddow,
I didn’t have to work today, so Michaela and I met at the library again. I told her my synopsis of Grapes of Wrath, which I was assigned to read over break. (It sucked and then the baby died. Fucking dust bowl.)
Afterward we wandered around downtown. There isn’t much left there anymore. The department stores closed before I was born. Even so, the gazebo in the park had recently been painted, and it glistened in the damp November afternoon.
“It’s pretty here, sometimes. When it’s quiet,” I said.
Michaela nodded, lost in thought.
“What’s hiding in your brain, under all the curls?” I asked her.
She looked over at me. Then she leaned over and kissed me under the gazebo arch. I kissed her back, and the world melted into a swirl of cold and hot.
We rode separate buses home. But Michaela texted me later to see how I was doing.
“Asshole stepfather run off with the circus?”
I laughed. “Maybe. I haven’t checked recently.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
I fell asleep, phone on top of my chest, like she was there. I dreamt of her soft skin against mine, and of kissing her under the bare trees.
Sincerely,
Brynn
Folder:
Drafts
To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
Date:
November 28
Subject:
Runoff far, far away
Dear Rachel Maddow,
I kind of wish I actually e-mailed you what is now basically my journal. Because what’s going down is exactly like the stuff you cover, only not, because it’s lame high school, only yes it is, because maybe it never actually changes.
At least I got two extra days off of school for the first days of buck season. But then it was back to the blue room, and my face has this weird yellowish br
uise, and yeah, my mom doesn’t love me and stuff. She picked Fart Weasel over me. That was clear again and again. I realized she basically left when my dad did.
So I was less than polite to Lacey, who came over to me first thing in the morning.
“What … happened?” she said.
“It’s a long story. Not a good one,” I said.
“Okay.” She sat there in silence a few moments. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No.” I sighed. “Maybe help propel me to political achievement.”
“That would involve talking about the superintendent selection committee seat.”
I sighed.
“You’re in this now, Brynn. Did you mean it? Do you really care?”
If I thought about it, if I literally focused on something outside of the nose on my face, I had to admit that I did. I have been listening to too much of you, Rachel. You and your stupid cheerful explanations of the news and shit. Damn it all.
I nodded.
“Then you’ll have to keep acting like it.”
I nodded again, but fortunately class started. At lunch, Lacey tried again.
“So, about getting people to vote for you…”
“Lacey, honest to God, why do you care about this? You could have just done this.”
“Brynn, I do care. But my parents would kill me if they had to drive me to yet another extracurricular activity. Like I need more time in the van listening to them tell me how I could still homeschool even though I’m almost in college. And sitting in selection committee meetings sounds sooooo boring. Not that that should deter you.” She smiled. “Besides, I asked my prof at my Saturday community college class if I could use this as my semester project. She loved the idea. If you could run for something next semester, too, you’d be doing me a real solid for the second section of the class.”
I flipped her off. “Whatever. Just tell me what to do.” I paused. “And I have this friend in journalism who loves this sort of thing. Justin. Good guy. He wants to help. Me. You know. With this.”
Rachel, I really am so damn smooth.
Lacey smiled at me. “Yes. He said as much at the last Academic Bowl practice. I’ll e-mail you both my plan.” She rolled away.
As I walked through the parking lot at the end of the day, I heard a voice call my name. Michaela caught up to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “Brynn, wait.” I stopped. Her dark curls fanned nimbus-like from the wind.
“Hi,” I said, feeling shy for the first time in about a decade.
“Hey.” She grinned. “What’s up?”
“Politics.”
“Ah,” she said. “Are you going home now?”
“I don’t have to.”
“Do you want to tell me about superintendents? Bet it’s sexy. We could get something to eat. Or something.” She shivered a little, her cheeks growing pinker.
“Sexy superintendent. I’ll float that to Lacey as a way to win votes.”
Michaela and I soon settled into a corner booth at Eat’n Park. I have a weakness for their Smiley Cookies.
“You’re so cool, Brynn.”
I half choked on my Smiley Cookie. “What do you mean?”
“Are you kidding? Everyone I’m in class with either worships or fears Adam. And then there’s you. You do neither. You stand up to him. You have conviction and courage and…” She shook her head. “That’s so impressive, Brynn.”
“I guess.” I shrugged. “I’m still not the best student, though.”
“Sarah says you used to be,” Michaela said. She looked like she immediately regretted it.
“You talked to her about me?”
“No. Not exactly. Just after that day at lunch she agreed with Adam that you had so much promise and let it all go to waste.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I spilled my soda on Adam ‘accidentally’ after that.”
“That’s hot,” I said. I thought for a minute. “I don’t know about potential.” I stalled by licking an eye off of my cookie. “I used to be better. At school.”
“Everybody struggles with something.”
“You don’t,” I said. “You could do math tied up, blindfolded, with a chicken pecking on your neck.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” she said.
“I have to try really, really hard. It’s not easy. It never was. But before I was happy and then everything kind of fell apart. Like, in my life. You know. Nick. Stepfather. And I didn’t have enough energy to try.”
“I hear that.” Michaela leaned across the table. “Things kind of fell apart for me, too. At my old school. I moved here to try to … be different. Turn over a new leaf. So maybe I can help you with math or whatever. And you can help me.”
“Turn over a new leaf? You seem pretty green already.” Maybe Michaela really did have secrets.
Michaela looked at her coffee. “All your caring about making things better. It could rub off on me.”
“Oooh-kay.” I threw her mad side-eye. “Sure thing, peer tutor.”
“I’m serious.” She laughed. “You don’t even know. I’ll tell you sometime after I’m sure you won’t stop talking to me because of it.”
“That would never happen.” I shook my head for emphasis.
Michaela coughed but didn’t say anything.
We finished our coffee in silence.
She followed me when I got up. My side brushed up against hers when we both tried to wedge through the exit first.
“Well. I’ll see you, then,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. She put her face close to mine, so we were practically nose-to-nose.
“Sure,” I whispered. She took the inch between us until her lips met mine.
I’d only ever kissed Sarah, and now Michaela. Really kissed, anyway. At the end, Sarah was arid and prickly like a desert cactus. Michaela, standing here with me there, was waves and sea glass and sunshine, her lips salty and warm and perfect.
Sincerely,
Brynn
Folder:
Drafts
To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
Date:
December 10
Subject:
On the trail
Dear Rachel Maddow,
Team Lacey and Justin apparently had to get together several evenings last week to strategize about how to win the superintendent selection committee seat. Since this was a special runoff, there was no official “start” to our campaign. But Lacey needed something for her college class, so she’d convinced me to get on it.
“So you talked about me,” I asked Lacey.
“Well, not just you. Academic Bowl season is just around the corner.”
“Uh-huh.”
“He’s really funny.”
“Yes.”
“I like freckles.”
“Are you a thing? You and Justin?” I said.
Lacey blushed. “I believe we are. He’s great.”
“Yes, he’s lovely. For a guy.” I snickered. I decided not to harass Lacey about her man friend, lest she decide to grill me about Michaela in retaliation. “So what did yinz all come up with for me? Does assassination come into play at all?”
“No, sadly we can’t kill Adam. Instead, we were thinking you should go after the jocks.”
“Go after the whoseit what now?”
“Adam’s a big-deal wrestler. We all know that. But that doesn’t make him a ‘jock’s jock,’ as Justin says.”
“You lost me at ‘we can’t kill Adam,’ I’m afraid,” I said.
“You need to go out to the people and give them what they want. And what they want is someone like them. Justin and I feel you are more like most of the students here. More than Adam. And we think you can appeal to the voters’ needs and wants.”
“Actually, can we talk more about you and Justin here for a second.…”
“Brynn, Michaela volunteered to help you.”
“Say n
o more,” I said, putting up my hands.
Thus it came to be that Michaela, Bianca, Lance, Greg, Riley, and I took shifts at a table outside of the cafeteria with life-sized Steelers cutouts. I thought about getting a Tom Brady in your honor, Rachel, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. That’d cause a coup in Steeler country for sure. Lance’s dad donated a pair of tickets to raffle off. Bless the blue room season-ticket-holder families. Michaela handed out “Brynn for the Win” stickers to kids who entered the raffle. A freshman rando won them. But that freshman rando voter said he hoped I got to select the next school superintendent.
Look at me, Rachel! I’m part of democracy in action!
Or maybe I’m just a political cog grinding slowly in the campaign machine.
But you have to start somewhere.
Sincerely,
Brynn
Folder:
Drafts
To:
[email protected]
From:
[email protected]
Date:
December 14
Subject:
First lady
Dear Rachel Maddow,
Today I went with Michaela to her friend Jen’s house. Jen is a senior Michaela met through peer tutoring. Lacey thought going to a party was a good idea to try to raise my public profile. She would not have been happy to learn that I mostly just hid in a corner with my lady friend.
Dear Rachel Maddow Page 10
