Page 9 of Brenna, Brat

“I missed it when I stopped,” he said. “I missed my teammates and I missed getting out and moving. Securitization of non-conforming mortgage loans isn’t actually a physical activity. Maybe you hadn’t heard that.”

Since I was going to have to ask my dad what the securitization stuff meant, I just nodded as if I were in on the joke. “I haven’tspent a lot of time thinking about your field,” I answered more honestly.

“Nobody does.”

“Do you like it?” I asked.

“Do you have to like what you do?”

“I think you’re supposed to, but I don’t,” I said. “My boss at the gallery drives me crazy.” I outlined a few things about Alecta that I considered to be the most damning, like her lack of planning, her inattention to detail, and her constant need for the spotlight. I didn’t add that she was also a drug dealer, but that was a problem, too.

“I don’t want to sound like I’m stereotyping, but isn’t that how artists are?” Campbell asked. “Head in the clouds, not so interested in the mundane shit…”

“That’s true about some of them, but definitely not all. And anyway, Alecta isn’t an artist, not really. She talks about herself that way but she’s just so unoriginal and bland, and she never puts any real work into it. She gets to use our building for free because her mom owns it, so she decided to open a gallery to sell her art. I think she was mostly interested in putting her name on the front of it. She never created enough on her own, so she started showing other people’s stuff and that makes a minor profit for her.” Not nearly as much as the drugs, but the gallery also provided a good cover for her illegal activities. “All she does is fritter away money on a lot of haircare and trips to places that she doesn’t really want to go. She only travels so that she can brag about it, not because she’s interested in the destinations.”

I took a breath. My sisters told me that I complained too much, and that I went off on my boss way too often.

He asked the same question that they always did: “Why do you work there if you hate her?”

“It’s an easy place to be, even though I’m mostly running everything. I have enough time to do what I want,” I explained.

“Which is what?”

“Look out!” I yelled. A little boy had skated directly behind him, and we all went down hard, our bodies crashing.

Then the kid’s father was trying to untangle him and Campbell was helping. “Nice hit!” he said to the sniffling child. “You should play hockey.”

“I played for my whole life,” the kid answered. That meant he’d been on skates for about four years. He stopped sniffling and seemed proud.

“Good for you,” Campbell told him, and they bumped fists. Then he noticed that I was still trying to stand, and he went to haul me to my feet, too. “You ok?”

“Yes, but I’m think I’m done,” I said. He and the boy seemed unscathed after our accident, but I had fallen with my weight onto my right side, wrist and butt. They both hurt.

“Yeah, you look a little cold,” he agreed. “I’m glad you’re all right,” he told the boy, and they bumped fists again and he spoke to the dad, too, apologizing even though it hadn’t been his fault. As I knew from watching Grace progress/regress through life, kids were all kinds of dumb.

While Campbell was making new friends, I carefully shuffled to the wall, and then to the nearby exit from the ice. Shivering, I made my way over to the bench under which I’d left my boots with the other winter footwear. But…

I must have been sitting somewhere else. I limped along, looking beneath all the seats and moving other shoes to check behind them. They weren’t there.

“Want my help getting those off?” Campbell asked. He already had on his own shoes and his skates were apparently stowed in the bag over his shoulder.

“I can’t find my boots. Someone took them,” I stated.

“The black ones you were wearing? I’ll help you look.” He did, but the outcome was the same. The guy at the skate rental counter helpfully pointed out that I could have put them into a paid locker and also pointed to the sign that said the rink wasn’t responsible for lost or stolen property.

“Those were really nice, expensive boots,” I told that dumb person. “They were Schöne, which last forever.” I chose my stuff carefully and unlike other people in my family, I didn’t overbuy. I had assembled a wardrobe that I loved and those boots were part of it.

He shrugged but the girl working with him muttered something under her breath.

“If they were so great, I shouldn’t have worn them here?” I parroted back to her. “Is that what you just said, you rude—”

“Ok,” Campbell interrupted. “I’m guessing that there are no cameras and that no one watches this area.” The rink employees stared at him and he turned to me. “We’re going to take another look around.”

He walked and I clomped in the skates that were fully killing my feet, but the result was the same. Someone had stolen my Schöne boots, the ones that it had taken me seven months to save for in college. I never should have worn them to this nasty place. I never should have come, either, and I couldn’t think of why I had. I sat down on the bench and yanked at the laces of my skates, and then I dropped them onto the rental counter. The two people there had turned their backs and pretended to be busy when they’d spotted me coming.

Campbell had, apparently, already departed, because I didn’t see him anywhere in the busy changing area. Nice! I was even angrier as I left the building. My socks were soaking from going through dirty puddles and my aching feet now froze as I made my way to my car. What a dumb idea to go skating and to have dropped everything for some ridiculous frat boy who wanted to relive his hockey glory days. I would never skate again, of course, and I also considered seeking revenge somehow on the rude employees at the rental desk. But I had done a lot of those jobs, too, where all you got was crap from people like me, people demanding things of you that you had no control over and didn’t care about anyway—

“Brenna!” That was Campbell calling my name. He moved faster and caught right up. “Are you only wearing socks?”

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