Jess studied her nails. “Pretty much my first day at that school. It’s never good being the new girl in town.”
“But you’re joining in. You were picked for the ski team!” The moment she said it, she wondered how she could have been so blind and stupid. “Oh.”
Jess gave a short laugh. “Yeah, that’s right. I’ve heard it all. How I was only picked because of my dad, how I’m crap, how I have no talent.”
Brenna’s stomach lurched. “Jess—”
“It’s partly my fault because when I started at the school, I talked about him to anyone who would listen. I guess they wanted to make sure I knew my place—” She attacked another nail even though there wasn’t much of anything left to attack. “Do you think that’s why I got on the ski team? Because of Dad? Be honest.”
“No. You’re a gifted skier, Jess. You need more time on the mountain, that’s true, but you have something that most people will never have even if they spend every minute of their lives practicing.”
“So I’ll keep
telling myself they’re wrong.”
“Is anyone friendly?”
“A couple of the girls used to talk to me at the beginning, but they’re worried about being in the firing line so now they ignore me, too. It’s fine,” she said a little too quickly, “I really don’t care.”
It was achingly familiar. “Is it mostly one person or a group?” Talking about it, remembering her own experience, made her feel sick. “Is there a ringleader?”
“Let’s watch more skiing.” Jess jumped to her feet and rummaged through Tyler’s collection for another DVD. “Let’s watch the one where he broke that bone in his foot. I want to know how he managed to get up and ski.”
“He didn’t know he’d broken anything. It was much later that they found a chip in the bone.” Brenna sat, watching, wondering how to deal with this situation.
She could have left it. She could have moved on and not touched a subject that made her insides pitch. But she knew that wasn’t going to help Jess. “Jess, honey, we can do something about this.” She felt as if she were fifteen again. “You don’t have to put up with it.”
Jess stared at the screen. “I mean, I know it wasn’t like a major accident or anything, not like his big one, but it still looked pretty bad. Most people wouldn’t have skied down.”
“Do your teachers know? Does anyone know?”
“No. And I don’t want to tell them, all right?” Jess turned, her eyes fierce. “Otherwise, it will make it a hundred times worse. You have no idea. Parents think they can walk into school, demand it’s fixed, and it will all be fine but it doesn’t work that way.”
“I know.” Brenna’s mouth was so dry she could hardly speak. “I know it doesn’t work that way.”
“Promise me you won’t tell Dad.”
“He knows something isn’t right. You should talk to him about it. He could help.”
“I don’t need help. When he has a problem, he gets on with it. He doesn’t talk about it all the time.” She tucked her legs under her and stared at the image on the screen. “I’ll handle it. I need to toughen up.”
“No, you don’t. It isn’t about you. It’s about them. Don’t let them make you feel bad about yourself. That’s what I did.” It was painful to remember it, and Jess turned and looked at her.
“So what did you do?”
“Nothing,” Brenna said simply. “I had no confidence. I let them strip that away from me, and I wish I hadn’t.”
Jess stared at her in disbelief. “You’re like, so confident. I mean, you run this whole place, and you’re the only person I know who can keep up with my dad on skis. You could have made the U.S. team.”
“I’m confident on the mountain. About the stuff I know. Not about other things. I was hopeless with big groups of kids, I wasn’t interested in any of the things the other girls were interested in. Hair, nails, dressing up, boys—” She blushed, because of course she had been interested in one boy in particular.
“That’s how I feel.”
“If you don’t want to do anything different, I understand, because I felt that way. But maybe we could try and work this out together.” She sat for a moment, remembering how lonely she’d felt when she was in school. “And you can talk to me. Sometimes it helps to talk.”
Jess fiddled with her sock. “You won’t tell my dad?”
“Not if you don’t want me to. But you should think about telling him yourself. He really cares about you.”