Brissa was trying to be nice to me, but she really didn't like me. I could tell. I had a sixth sense about these things. Maybe I was just paranoid, but I could see her glaring at me at the corner of my eye.
I had invaded her space, and she hadn't asked for it. She'd never asked for her mother to marry my father with two kids of his own. Yesterday, her mother had volunteered her to let me shadow her at school. She went to a fancy private Catholic school in town. Dad never could have afforded it, and never would have bothered to look into it. She was there on a partial scholarship.
I had grudgingly agreed. Honestly, I was getting a bit bored. I was still feeling down in the dumps, but not as depressed as I had been. Maybe getting out would do me good.
Since I was just visiting, I was exempt from wearing the ugly-ass uniform Brissa was required to wear. Plaid skirt with knee-high navy socks, white collared shirt with a blue sweater vest. It was the stuff of porn. I swallowed down some french toast Guadalupe had made, along with some orange juice, and followed my stepsister down to the bus stop. Since it was private school they didn't have a school bus service, so we had to catch the public bus.
She sighed as we reached the bus stop, a couple blocks over from the house. I kept my distance, not wanting to crowd her.
"Brissa," I finally said. "Don't worry, I'm not going to be a leech on you all day. I won't even sit next to you."
"It's fine," she said dismissively, leaning against the plexiglass. "You can sit with me at lunch if you want."
I was grateful she was throwing me a lifeline. Even though I'd been born and lived in Puerto Rico the first twelve years of my life I was kind of an outsider now to natives. I'd left the island and gone to New York. Some assumed I thought I was better than they were. The truth is, I wish I'd never left.
Life with Lin and Pippa was great, but I'd never really belonged in their family. Luna slipped right in and was doing great in New York City. Somehow I'd never hit my stride. Maybe there was a part of me deep down that wanted this to fail. Wanted to prove to my dad that he'd made a mistake in sending me away.
With the news from Pippa and Lin that they were having twins, I felt even more out of place. They were expanding their family and didn't need me around. I just made their lives more complicated. If they were going to have two babies to take care of now on top of Ellie, I would just be a burden. My ODD was hard to just bury. I wish I could sometimes, but part of me just didn't allow it.
Now that I was back, I felt like I'd missed out on the last three years. My friends had moved on to other friendship and some weren't even here. Dad had a new family. It's like I didn't belong either place. Why couldn't I find my place?
I envied Brissa. Even though she thought her life sucked, like most teenagers did, she had a pretty good gig. Her mother loved her and kept her in line. She and my dad seemed to get along okay. She went to private school, and she was smart and pretty. Plus, she hadn't gotten pregnant, as far as I knew.
The bus finally arrived and was already crowded. We had to stand. I gripped the metal pole tightly as we made our way through the streets of San Juan. I looked around at the fellow bus riders. They all had skin and hair like mine. I could hear Spanish being spoken. I wondered how all of them had fared after the hurricane. Had any of them left and come back?
We stopped 15 minutes or so later and Brissa mumbled it was time to get off. We stepped off the bus and walked another three blocks to Academia del Perpetuo Socorro. Brissa walked me to the office so I could get a visitor badge for the day. I then followed Brissa to her locker, getting some curious looks from her classmates as I trailed her. Everywhere around, students and teachers were speaking all in Spanish. Lin tried to make a point of talking to Luna, me and Ellie in Spanish but it had been a long time since I'd been immersed. It felt good to hear it all around me.
Her first period class was language. I sat a row over and one behind her so I wouldn't crowd her space. The teacher didn't even acknowledge me, which was fine. The students all glanced at me, curious to see a student out of uniform. I didn't recognize anyone. I realized I kind of liked that. No one here knew I'd had a baby earlier this year. They didn't know how fucked up I was. At least not yet.
School was school. It worried me a little that I'd gotten so behind. I hadn't done any school work in over two months. I dreaded having to log back in to my online school and see all the piled up work.
After another bus ride after school, Brissa and I walked side by side down the sidewalk. I'd become aware we weren't going straight home. We came across a row of business and she ducked into a little corner shop that made bubble tea.
"You ever had bubble tea?" she asked as we joined the line, mostly of teenagers like us.
"No, actually," I confessed, even though we had plenty of bubble tea spots in New York. She looked surprised. She fished her wallet out of her backpack and gave me some advice on what to order. Soon, our drinks were ready and paid for and I followed her out the front door. We walked a block over to a park area and sat down. She sighed heavily.
"My mom is driving me crazy," she confessed. I looked over at her. Was she really talking to me like I was her friend? In my experience, teenagers didn't often complain about their parents to random people.
"Why's that?"
She huffed and bit at her straw with her teeth a little. "You've heard her," she said, then contorted her voice into a hilarious mockery of her mother's. "Brissa, why do you wear so much make-up? You don't want the guys thinking you're loose! Brissa, get off your cell phone! Brissa, why haven't you been to confession lately? I know you've been up to something!"
I laughed out loud, something I hadn't done in...months? She giggled a little as we watched people walking through the park.
"She seems like she could be a bit intense," I agreed.
"A bit," she said. "God, she's nuts. Your dad's a saint for putting up with her."
I'm not sure I'd ever heard anybody call my dad a saint. He'd had a lot of issues throughout his life.
"Well, he's a lot better now than he used to be," I told her.
"What was he like before?" she asked, looking at me.
Why was I opening up to this girl? Weren't stepsisters supposed to be awful and wicked? "He drank a lot after my mother died. Did some drugs. I basically had to take care of my little sister."
She didn't comment right away, inviting me to continue. "He went to prison after the hurricane and tried to commit suicide there."
She gaped at me. Obviously this was new information. "Seriously? Damn, that sucks."
"Yeah," I agreed. "That's when my uncle took us in. In New York."
"What's it like there?" she asked me.
"Loud. Busy," I said simply. "There's kind of a cool energy about it though."
"Do you get along with your aunt and uncle?" she asked.
"I'm a pain," I confessed. "I've been causing a lot of problems."
She nodded, looking into the distance. "Your dad said you had to give up a baby?"
The way she said it made it sound not so scandalous. It didn't sound judgmental at all, and I liked that. Most of the time, it was accompanied by an automatic wince. "Yeah. Stupid guy got me pregnant. I would have been an awful mother."
She sighed. "So would I. Anyone our age I don't think is ready. That must have been hard, though. To give it up."
"Yeah, it was," I agreed, taking a big sip of my drink. It had been a long time since I'd had an actual friend. Most of the girls at my school in New York were afraid of me. Brissa seemed to have a toughness about her. Not in an intimidating way, but in a way that let other people knew not to push her around.
"Do you get to see him?" she asked.
I nodded. "It was an open adoption. I saw him a few days before I left."
"Well," she said, taking a final sip from her drink. "I think it's pretty bad ass that you went through the whole pregnancy then had the guts to give it up."
No one had ever complimented on this. At least, not this way. She made it sound like a badge of honor. I'd survived a teenage pregnancy and having to give it up. I realized I agreed. I should be proud.
"Thanks," I said meekly, and she just nodded simply. Her phone buzzed with a call and we could see that it was her mother.
"Shit," she cursed, standing up. "We better go. My mom freaks out if I'm not home by four."
I nodded and took another swig from my cup. We found a trash can nearby and dropped them in as Brissa talked to her mother in an annoyed tone. As we walked towards the home we shared, at least for these two weeks, I realized I may have lucked out. Brissa wasn't half bad after all. And she was kind of making me feel like I wasn't half bad either.