Page 3 of Rescuing Brinley

Brinley had learned to have very thick skin over the years. But having Callista—the toddler who once came to her for reassurance when she felt sad and crawled into her bed during storms—look at her with so much judgement was as painful as anything Brinley had experienced.

She was standing in the shade by the building, trying to ignore the hurtful words the girls in her class were saying about her, when another girl Brinley had never seen before walked straight toward her. The new girl was pretty. Had long brown hair that curled beautifully at the ends, didn’t have even one freckle on her face, and her nose was perfectly portioned.

Bracing herself for whatever mean things the new girl might say, Brinley was shocked when instead, the girl smiled at her.

“Hi. I’m Cypress. What’s your name?”

“Brinley.”

“Cool. Want to be friends?”

Brinley was shocked. She could only stare at the other girl in confusion.

“You’ve got the coolest hair! I just love it. I tried to talk to some of the other girls, but they were stupid and told me they already had enough friends. As if there’s some limit to the number of people you can be friends with. My dad was in the military and we moved around a lot, but he’s not a soldier anymore so we just moved here for good. I’ve gotten pretty great at figuring out who the nice people are, and who’re the mean ones in new schools. And you look nice. So…want to be my best friend?”

“Um…sure.”

“Awesome! What’s your favorite subject in school? Mine’s science. I’m going to study global warming. Figure out how to stop the glaciers from melting, or at least try to slow it down.”

Brinley was having a hard time wrapping her mind around the fact that this pretty girl wanted to be her friend. But Cypress didn’t seem to expect her to say anything, she talked enough for the both of them.

“I hope those girls aren’t your friends, because they’re talking bad about you. I wasn’t sure if you knew that or not.”

“I know.”

“Well, whatever. Like I said before, they’re stupid. All they want to do is talk about boys. Yuck! Do you like science?”

“Um…not really. I don’t really have a favorite subject.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.” She looked crestfallen. But then she smiled again. “That’s okay. I can help you with our science work. What are you good at?”

Brinley stared at her blankly. She wasn’t sure what she was good at. Not much. She said the first thing that came to mind.

“My sister does pageants. I’m good at making sure her dresses look good before she goes onstage.”

Cypress looked confused, but then she shrugged. “Cool. Do we have assigned seats in the classroom? My mom was late dropping me off today because all our stuff was delivered this morning and she let me unpack my room because she knows I hate having everything in boxes, so I didn’t get to school before recess.”

Brinley nodded at her.

“Is our teacher nice? Would he let me sit next to you? Do you sit in the front or back of the room?”

“Front.”

Cypress wrinkled her nose.

Not wanting to do anything that might make her very first friend reconsider choosing her as a best friend, Brinley said quickly, “But I bet if I offered to help you out, since you’re new and all, he’d let me move to wherever you want to sit.”

Cypress beamed. “Sweet!” She leaned against the wall next to Brinley and stared out at the kids running around the playground. “All right, tell me everything I need to know about everyone. Who the nice kids are and who are the ones to avoid.”

“Um…me. I’m the one you should be avoiding.” The words came out before she could think better of them.

“Why?”

Brinley shrugged. “Because I’m weird. Ugly.”

“What? No, you aren’t.”

The conversation felt unreal. This was the first time in Brinley’s life someone had told her that she wasn’t ugly. She fell in love with this girl right then and there. Not in a hand-holding kind of way, but in the way she felt about Callista…well, how she felt about her before her sister started to realize how different they were.