Seeing You Seeing Me

His Bake Sale

Secretly, I had really enjoyed making cookies with Brent. When he had came to my door, his eyes were red and it looked like he had been crying. I knew that something bad happened but I didn't ask him. I didn't want to make it worse.
He wasn't a very good baker, but his fragile hands were decent at cracking eggs. He also had a lot of fun with it. It was another new side that I had never seen from him. He actually was smiling at one point.

Now, I stood with him handing out lemonade as people paid in cash. At first, no one came up to buy anything. Brent looked embarrassed, but soon enough, people started coming up.
"Wow, this is going amazingly," Brent smiles.
"This was all your idea," I said.
"I can't believe that."
At the end of the lunch break, Brent counted the money. There was 50 dollars in total.
"Thats not good enough," he sighed.
"Don't get frustrated," I said. "It's the first day. We have lots more time."
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Each day, we set up our stand at lunch. People would line up just to get a taste of our chocolate chip cookies. The donation jar would be filled to the rim.
But on one special day,
Someone made a donation of 600 dollars. It was the principal who threw the cash into Brent's hands. He counted it and gasped.
"Woah. Mr. Kenny. We can't take this."
"Yes you can, Brent. You and Alexandra are doing something amazing for a very special little girl. I'm very sorry about your sister, Alexandra. I hope that this helps her."
"It helps her a ton," I smiled. "Thank you so much!"

By the time we collected all our money, we had raised more than enough to buy a wheelchair and a breathing mask for Riley. We both got to go with my mom to pick them out. Riley had insisted that we get her a pink one with sparkles, but Brent and I were both sure that would be hard to find.
"We could try to like... I don't know..." Brent was saying in the car.
"We could put sparkles on it for her?" I suggested.
"Yeah, but I have no idea how to do that."
"We can buy sparkles and glue and put it on there. It's easy Brent."
"Oh sorry. Sorry I don't know how to do girly stuff."
We both were laughing the whole way.
And somehow, I didn't know if I had a crush on Brent, or if I just wanted to be his best friend. He was so charming, and his laugh sounded so broken but so sweet. It made me love him, but I didn't know how or why.

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Brent had never seen my room. But we were sitting in my bedroom upstairs. I had a simple room with a white bed, with blue sheets. I had a window with a sitting bench where I liked to read. We were sprawled out on my carpeted floor, along with markers and sparkles and stickers. Brent was colouring a little sign that we were going to stick to Riley's wheelchair, and I was sticking jewels and spilling sparkles on her new breathing mask.
"Imagine going outside for the first time in 2 years," I said, working hard to place a big pink gem in the middle of the mask.
"I mean, she's gonna be so happy. She's gonna be overwhelmed," Brent added. "It's a new experience."
"She's seen nature before. She's seen grass and flowers before. She likes to look out the window and see everything."
Brent was holding his head and sighing. "I've been having a headache for a few hours now. It hurts like hell. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt you."
"Oh jeez. I hate headaches. Do you wanna go home or-?"
"No, I'm fine. Let's finish this up."

When we finished, we took the wheelchair and mask downstairs. Riley looked up at us and smiled. "Is it done?"
"Yep! Here you go," said Brent, as he handed her the mask. He rolled the wheelchair right up next to the couch. She was smiling the biggest smile she could.
"Oh my god. It's so pink. And so pretty. And look at the name tag on the wheelchair! This is all mine?"
"Yeah Riley! You can finally go outside with us!" I said happily.
"And, guess what? The-"
But before Brent could finish, Riley was sitting up and hugging him tight. Her arms, tangled with some cords from Stanley, wrapped all the way around Brent's neck. And Brent looked surprised. But he looked happy and content. He knew he had done something good.
"Thank you Brent thank you Brent thank you thank you thank you."
I looked into Brent's eyes for a minute, and he looked into mine. And I could see how proud he was that he had done what he had done.
And I smiled back at him to thank him.