Page 1 of Rescuing Brinley

PROLOGUE

Preschool

Brinley sat at the top of the stairs, listening to the adults talking down in the living room. She was supposed to be asleep, but she woke up thirsty. She’d started to head downstairs, but stopped when she heard Mommy talking with her friends. She was never allowed to sit with the adults, always shooed upstairs to read in her room.

And Brinley always did what she was told. She didn’t like the look on her mommy’s face when she disobeyed.

Even at four years old, she knew Mommy didn’t really like her. Not like other mommies liked their children. She yelled a lot. Got a weird look on her face when Brinley came downstairs in the morning. Scolded her for not brushing her hair, for not using the special cream she bought to “tame” it…whatever that meant. But the cream smelled funny. And when Mommy pulled her hair back into a ponytail, it hurt because it was so tight.

As she sat at the top of the stairs, listening to the women talking, Brinley slowly began to understand why adults seemed to whisper to each other when she entered a room. Why they stared at her with odd looks on their faces. Why they treated her differently from other kids.

“When are you due?”

“A month and a half.”

“Are you nervous about the birth?”

“Only that this baby will come out just as ugly as Brinley.”

“She’s not that bad.”

“Yes, she is. I can’t believe something that looks like her came from me. If I hadn’t birthed her, I’d insist she wasn’t mine.”

All the ladies laughed at Mommy’s comment. Brinley didn’t understand all of it, but every muscle in her body tensed because she guessed they were laughing at her, not because her mommy had said something funny. The conversation continued.

“I swear to God if Callista has the same frizzy, crazy, freakish red hair as Brinley, I’m going to send her back.”

Everyone laughed again.

Her mommy went on, as if encouraged by the response.

“When I saw Brinley for the first time in the hospital, she looked like a deflated balloon wrapped in a blanket. Her eyes were too big for her head, her nose was crooked, and she looked like a plucked chicken…wrinkled, red, and screaming her bloody head off. She was ugly as sin. Everyone in the room pretended she wasn’t, but I could see it in their eyes. They felt sorry for me for having such a hideous baby.

“Then everyone said she’d grow out of it, that all babies are weird-looking. But they were wrong. If anything, she’s only getting worse. Her hair is totally out of control, her eyes are still way too big for her face, her ears stick out, her nose is too big…and those freckles! Ugh! They’re multiplying like cockroaches, no matter how much of that special lotion I apply to try to make them fade.”

“Freckles are the worst.”

“They are! She’s such a huge disappointment. An embarrassment. But I’m hopeful that Callista won’t be anything like her sister, especially since they have different fathers. She’ll be the daughter I dreamed of having before Brinley.”

“How’re things going with Gary?”

“Fine. It’s no secret that I married him for his looks. I mean, there was no way I was having another child with my ex. I dumped his ass as soon as I could and chose Gary because he’s tall, good-looking, and he does what I tell him.”

More laughter.

But Brinley barely heard it. She brought a hand up to her face and touched her nose. She didn’t know it was too big. Her mommy had mentioned something about her ears before, but Brinley had no idea they weren’t normal either.

She scrubbed her cheek with the palm of her hand, as if that would somehow remove the spots on her face that her mommy apparently hated.

She’d been so excited to have a baby sister. It would be like having a real-live doll to take care of. But now, knowing how Mommy felt about her made Brinley feel as if she couldn’t breathe.

“What do other children think of Brinley? I know she’s only in preschool, but still…kids can be amazingly blunt.”

“For now, they don’t seem to notice how she looks. But they’ll figure it out soon enough. Brinley’s going to be the butt of everyone’s jokes. She’s definitely going to be bullied. But she’ll have to learn to deal with it. She has a lifetime of being made fun of to look forward to, she might as well learn to cope at a young age.”

“That’s kind of harsh, isn’t it?”

“Probably. But what good will lying to myself do? Short of plastic surgery to fix everything that’s wrong with her, there’s not much that can be done.”