Chapter One
When Britney was eight years old, her parents moved to a new house. Everything was new. New nanny, new housekeeper, new school, new teacher, and new students. While Britney didn’t enjoy change, she was told by her daddy she would have to accept that things were going to be different in their new life. He had landed an important job working with an important man, which meant he couldn’t spend as much time with her and mommy, but Daddy knew Britney would do just fine. All she had to do was focus on her goals and she could do anything she set her mind to.
Two weeks into her new school, Britney felt like she wasn’t fitting in very well. She missed her old friends. It didn’t help when one of the girls had called her a ‘Teacher’s Pet’. Britney liked to know the answers. Daddy encouraged her to learn everything she could. He said the more she knew, the more successful in life she would be. While she was getting good marks, she wasn’t making new friends.
Then it happened.
One of the boys in her class tripped her at recess. Britney fell hard on the grass, her knee and wrist stinging from the impact. For a moment she lay stunned on the ground. No one had ever been so mean to her before. Children’s laughter filled her ears and Britney looked up to see a group of kids giggling and pointing at her.
“What are you going to do, Teacher’s Pet?” one of her antagonists taunted.
“Are you going to be a Tattle-Tale too?” another asked.
“Maybe she’ll cry,” a boy said callously. “Cry Baby.”
I won’t cry, Britney viciously told herself. Instinctively, she knew crying would be a bigger humiliation. Ignoring the twinge in her wrist, she stumbled to her feet, biting the inside of her cheek to prevent any tears. Taking a deep quivering breath, she waited to see what they would do next.
“Are you okay?”
Britney squinted against the sun as she turned to look at the newcomer. He was tossing a soccer ball between two hands, dark hair barely visible in the sun as it backlit his tall skinny form. She found herself replying, “I’m okay.”
He gave her a last look before tossing the ball at the boy who had tripped her. “Come on, let’s play soccer.”
The boys all followed him out to the field. Left behind, the rest of the crowd scattered to play their own games. Britney looked around to see one of the nerdier kids reading a book. “Hey, who was that?”
“Gabe Ramesly,” he informed her, pushing up his glasses. “He’s a grade ahead of us.”
Britney looked at her rescuer, easily dodging the other boys as he smoothly kicked the ball across the soccer field. He grinned happily as he scored a goal, his team slapping him on the back and high fiving him.
Before meeting Gabe, Britney had always found the princess movies her nanny made her watch to be a bit silly. Why did the boy prince always get to rescue the girl princess? Why couldn’t the princess just rescue herself? Daddy always said people could do whatever they wanted if they just worked hard enough. Britney often wondered if the girl princesses were just lazy.
Now, for the first time in her life, Britney understood those movies. Being rescued from a hard situation was a nice thing. As she watched Gabe race across the grass, her heart fluttered a little in her chest.
The next day she asked if she could sit beside him at lunch in the cafeteria. He said no. Undeterred, Britney asked if she could play soccer with his group. He said no because girls have cooties.
Britney thought hard about her situation. He was her rescuing prince. She was a princess since Daddy always called her so. She was smart and she could solve this just like solving a math puzzle in class. All she had to do was think it through, create a plan and proceed.
It came to her as she lay in bed one night on the pink sheets which her mother had bought. Britney didn’t even like pink. She liked blue, like Gabe’s eyes.
“That’s it!” Britney sat up in bed. If Gabe was going to like her, she needed to know everything about him and like the same things he did. If they liked the same things, then they were sure to become friends.
With a heavy sigh, she fell back onto her bed with all its pinkness. She wasn’t around Gabe enough to find out what he liked. It wasn’t as though she could ask her older brother Jordan either, as he was not in Gabe’s class being two years older than Britney. Thinking hard, she knew she could overcome this problem. As she drifted off to sleep, a thought came to her.
The next day, Britney put her plan into action. She marched up to her teacher and demanded to know what she needed to do to be put ahead a grade.
∞∞∞
“She skipped a grade to get into my class. She switched school districts to get into my secondary school academy. Now she’s trying to get on the all boy’s swim team, declaring it is discriminatory to close the team to girls,” a sixteen-year-old Gabe groaned as he flopped onto Noah’s bed. It was the annual Ramesly family get-together and the older boys were all gathered in Noah’s room as the younger set took over the basement. “I wish I had gone to an all-boys school, but I get the feeling she would just cut her hair and petition to join anyways!”
“Sounds like she has a crush on you,” smirked Noah as he grabbed a box of contraband candy out of his closet. He selected a bag of buttered popcorn before handing the box to Max. Their mother Rachel was currently on a health diet fad and refused to allow junk food in the house.
“It’s a boys’ team,” Jake’s tone was practical as he selected a candy bar out of the box Max was thoughtfully offering around. “Which would naturally preclude girls joining it. The girls have their own team which she can join.”
“That’s what the coach said but they are giving her a hearing where she gets to prove her point and the student council gets to vote on it,” said Gabe as he flung an arm over his eyes. “My friend Tucker mentioned I liked girls with punk green hair and she dyed her hair. It looks awful.”
“Two years then you are in college,” reasoned Henry. He opened a bag of flavored corn chips. “Just don’t tell her where you’re going and she can’t find you.”
“Two years is too long,” lamented Gabe. “I need to get her to go away now.”
