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“Oh. Um. Do you want to talk about it?”
She leaned forward and swiped a cookie off the plate, shoved one corner in her mouth, and ripped a piece off like a piranha. Chewing the delectable cookie seemed to calm her soul. I had been there before. Sometimes you just needed a little sugar. Once she swallowed, she sighed. “That’s good. Really good.”
“Chef Paul is amazing.”
She nodded and took another bite.
I grabbed a cookie too and nibbled on it, hoping Bridgette would open up to me even more. I was rewarded when she said, “Some stupid girls at school today called me apick me girlbecause I told them that I love playing video games with my brother and his friends.”
I lowered my cookie. “What’s a pick me girl?”
“It’s a dumb term other girls call you when they think you’re trying to not be like other girls.”
Such outrage for Bridgette bubbled up inside me. “So, let me get this straight. Girls have just come up with another way to tear each other down when there’s a quality about them they don’t like? Why are women always doing this to each other? Oh, the horrible names we call each other. We should know better. We should be lifting each other up, not demeaning each other,” I ranted.
Bridgette grinned, like really grinned.
“Sorry, I get riled up when I hear about this kind of stuff. It’s hard enough to be a woman without other women tearing you down.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” She sat a little taller. “I wasn’t even saying it in a way like,I’m not like other girls.They just asked me what I liked to do. It was the first time I ever admitted that I liked to play video games,” she said quietly, embarrassed. “In my old school everyone just thought I was little miss perfect ballerina with rich parents. I didn’t want to be that girl here.”
“Who do you want to be?”
“Me,” she cried.
Without thinking, I dropped my cookie, hopped over to her bed, and put an arm around her. At first, she stiffened. I went to apologize, but then she melted into me and began to bawl. I put both arms around her and held on while she shook as if a dam had broken inside her.
While she sobbed, I couldn’t help but think about how natural it felt to comfort her in such a way. Like this was something I was meant to do.
“All my life,” she stammered, “I had to be exactly like my mother wanted me to be. And I hated it. I was never good enough for her, no matter how hard I tried. She wanted to be perfect, so we all had to be. And then she died because of it,” she wailed.
I stilled, not knowing what to say. Maybe I didn’t need to say anything, judging by the way she clung to me, a virtual stranger. So, I continued to stroke her hair and let her cry, wishing so badly I could take the hurt away. Being sixteen is never easy. But this just added so many levels of difficulty. The harder she cried, the angrier I became with Nina. She was better than this. Better than the mother she’d complained about who had done the same to her. Honestly, this was worse. And how had she died trying to be perfect? Was the cause of death in her obituary a lie too? I had so many questions. More than anything, I wished I had all the answers for the girl shuddering in my arms.
I needed to talk to Patrick. I knew he didn’t want to talk about Nina and the past, but I was beginning to see why he was not himself. Is this what he meant when he said his life was stolen from him? Did he know what Nina was doing to her own daughter?
“Bridgette, you are safe now.” I don’t know where those words came from, but I knew they needed to be said.
She lifted her head. Her dad’s aqua eyes, filled with tears, peered at me with hope and trepidation. She was such a beautiful girl. The more I looked at her, the less of Nina I saw in her and the more I saw Patrick. A playful, free-spirited girl was waiting to be unleashed. I made a vow then and there to help break that girl free.
“I want to be safe to be me.” Her voice croaked.
“Where do you want to start? I’ll help you.”
“How can I trust that?” she pleaded to know.
“You can’t at first, but I promise to make a believer out of you.” I wiped a few tears off her gorgeous creamy skin.
She sat up, blinking, not exactly comfortable with how vulnerable she had been in front of me. She reached over for another cookie. I grabbed one too.
Bridgette held up her snowflake cookie and studied it. “Are you Christmas crazy?”
That caught me off guard. “Uh ... what do you mean by that?”
“You’re always decorating, and all your trees areperfect.” She said it as a bad word.
“Well, that’s only because it’s for my sister’s wedding. You should see the tree in the cottage. It’s perfectly imperfect. We let Jameson make most of the decorations.”
“Really?”
