brandy lasalle | seven, fin

"Exy practice!"

Her mother insisted Brandy tell her every time she left the house. Every. Single. Time. For a while, she responded with malicious compliance, taking her mother's demands a step further and alerting her every time she wanted to move from one room to another in their house at 14 Starling Lane. She began asking permission for silly, menial tasks as well: "Can I have another bite of my meatloaf?" Usually, Pops just furrowed his brow and quietly chewed his food so he could make a fast escape before Brandy finally pushed Momma over the edge. That time in particular though, he'd smirked and said, "You sure you want another one?" (Momma's meatloaf was infamously bad.)

But eventually enough time passed that it felt like she was going out of her way to be petty. Her mother had moved on from it long ago, and Brandy herself had stopped caring at some point along the way, but the habit of being mad kind of stuck around until she made the conscious effort to stop. The compromise was that she would still tell her mother when she was leaving, but only by shouting it across the house while already standing halfway out the front door. You know: teenage attitudes. Or, as Pops liked to call it, that 'Montgomery Women Attitude'- his way of saying Brandy was her Mom's fault, not his. It's even funnier because really, if anything, the people on his side of the family were a lot crazier. Her grandparents on her Mom's side owned a general store and spent their free time tending to the garden at their place or reading different books right next to each other.

Meanwhile. Grammy Pam broke off one of the canines in her false teeth when Brandy was about eight and instead of going and getting them fixed, she sat there with a damn pocket knife and carved herself a replacement tooth out of a deer antler on the kitchen table. It would've been fire if she had any idea what she was doing, but the final result ended up being terrifyingly sharp-looking and longer than the one on the other side by a noticeable length. Plus it didn't fit right, so Brandy and her parents would be at their house for Sunday dinner and her tooth would fall out and clatter across the table. She'd just pick it up and shove it back in there, refusing to let it deter her from chitchatting. But old people deserved to be a bit batty, Brandy felt. They'd earned it by managing to live that long.

Reality was it wasn't an easy thing to do. Between the living conditions in the lower half and the Hunger Games, it was easy to get caught up in all of it. Some people focused on their relationships a lot and by that Brandy meant that some people ended up married with kids by the time they were twenty. Some people looked for escape anywhere they could- drinking, drugs. Others, like Brandy, chose to focus more on succeeding. Not at anything in particular- she wasn't even particularly fond of Exy, it was just something her friends were doing and her guidance counselor said it would look great for her extra-curriculars and then she happened to be good at it. She didn't think it was because she had some secret underlying talent for tossing a ball into a net. She was good at it because she dedicated a lot of time on it, period.

And that's how she tended to look at life: she was going to be successful because she demanded that she succeed in everything she did, in every sense of the word. It made her come off too strongly a lot of the time- she was no stranger to being called a bitch by people less passionate- but ultimately no one could come for her because it was all in the name of being better. Expecting better. You know? Some people could be in group projects and see someone doing something wrong and be too scared to say something, but that's coming out of your grade too. Momma always told her, "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." And that's been what she's lived her life by. So, technically, Pops was right. Brandy is her mother's fault. She definitely didn't get it from him- he's so damn content with what he's got it drives her crazy.

He told her one time, "It's all gonna work out, B. It always does." That was it! Brandy asked him to explain how and he just repeated the second line over and over. Like, thanks but that isn't a satisfying answer.

Brandy slammed the door closed and raced across the yard. She was halfway down the driveway when Momma finally stuck her head out the window: "Stop slamming my door! Home by dinner!"

She knew that already. She turned around and gave her a sarcastic smile and a thumbs up.

"Sorry!"

"Love ya, baby."

"Love you too, Mom."