Chapter 2 – The Flutter of a Butterfly's Wing

Brittany S. Pierce, Present

You'll meet my mom in this chapter. Her name is Susan, like my middle name. Don't think too badly of her. Even though she does come off as kind of mean, she really isn't. She does love me; it is just that it is complicated. When she was pregnant with me I suppose she had this picture in her head as to what I be like and when I was born I was nothing like it at all.

She was expecting me to be a bit more like my sister Katie, only she was born years after me. Katie is gentle and easygoing, not a walking hurricane who always says the wrong thing like me. I love Katie and I'm glad that mom got the child she wanted eventually but it is hard sometimes being somebody's disappointment.

My mom herself is like a walking quote or proverb, depending on her mood. I'm not joking. She speaks almost entirely in other people's words.

It seems like she's got a lot of problems, always contemplating how many ways there are to skin a cat and how hard it is finding needles in haystacks.

I have solutions to all her problems: don't skin cats and don't put needles near haystacks. If only she'd listen to me, then maybe she'd have less to think about and she'd and be less grumpy with me all the time.

She has a touch of Asperger's herself, as the parents of people like me often do. One thing we always agreed on were rules. Rules simplify things. She kept a list of rules above my bed when I was younger so I would know what is appropriate to do in public and what isn't. The list got longer and longer and longer the older I got until finally she gave up altogether. There aren't enough rules in the world to tell you how to manage your life because each situation makes things different. Rules are a good thought, but mostly I learned that if you stick to them over and over you end up doing the wrong thing anyway or at least miss out on stuff. Mom likes labels too, both the physical kind and the judgment kind. She'd fix labels to household objects with their name on them if she could and she'd tattoo 'autistic' to my forehead because after a while, that's the only way she could see me. Santana and I agreed on that one, labels suck.

You're also going to meet Santana. I don't remember much about my first meeting with her, which is strange because everything else about her that I know, and all our other memories together are preserved in great detail, frame by frame, existing specifically in this huge section of my brain that is reserved just for her.

Of the day we met however, I can only remember bits and pieces, right up until she put her arms around me, then it is all a blur.

We became friends by accident, I don't know how I got her to like me since I had no skills in making friends whatsoever.

I guess I really was just lucky.

You know, for all I know about her, I don't claim to really understand her.

She's been my best friend for so many years, yet I can't put the pieces together of what she does to figure out what they mean. Not even what they mean to me, let alone what they mean to her.

That's kind of a theme with me.

To know another person, first you have to know yourself. You have to understand who you are to be able to set yourself apart from another person.

I guess that was the problem all along. I had no sense of self so I tried to become her, or anyone else around me and Brittany got lost in the process

You be the judge I guess. Here's where it all began. I'm starting from the beginning because as Mom would say "you have to crawl before you can walk."

Brittany S. Pierce, 7 years old.

The waiting room of Dr Lopez's practice was stuffy and filled with kids with hacking coughs and wet noses being nursed by their long suffering parents who looked as if they would rather have been anywhere else.

Brittany Pierce provided a stark contrast to this as she danced around the room, already bored with the broken toys in the corner her mother had told her to play with. She spun faster and began to attract the attention of an elderly couple who didn't seem to appreciate her pushing off of their wheelchairs to get better momentum. Deep into her own world, Brittany hadn't yet noticed that the wheelchairs both contained people.

"Brittany, sit down now!" Susan barked, not wanting her daughter to attract any more attention.

Brittany looked at her without meeting her eyes and regarded her for a while thoughtfully. "Is it a rule?" she asked.

"Yes," said Susan sternly. "It is definitely a rule."

Brittany sat down instantly. She knew all about rules. She was running out of wall space in her room because of all these important rule lists. She looked around for a place to sit by herself, but all the seats were taken except one next to a small dark-haired girl who looked about her age, who was sitting there quietly nursing a bloody nose and several cuts and scrapes, tending to them herself without a parent in sight.

She sat in the chair beside the dark haired girl, ignoring her and playing with the rubber band on her hand that she was supposed to snap on her wrist every time she broke a rule. It really hurt.

The dark haired girl was now clearly wanting some attention paid to her. She side-eyed Brittany for a couple of minutes until she could finally stand it no longer. "Aren't you going to ask me why I'm all bloody?" she asked, incredulous that Brittany could just sit there and not stare like all the other kids in the waiting room had.

"No I wasn't going to ask you that." Brittany said back as she shrugged. Brittany hadn't yet looked at the other girl's face as she tended to avoid eye contact and look at peoples' feet. You could learn a lot about people by what they wore on their feet and it told Brittany a lot more than the little she could tell by looking at faces. For instance, this girl had on a bold pair of purple and black lace-ups with lightning bolts on them so she was probably a fast runner. Still, she she obeyed the girl and chanced a look and then gasped at the girl's injuries.

Santana smirked triumphantly. "I was in a fight with seven boys on the playground. I won. And I came here all by myself because Papi owns this whole practice and as soon as he sees me he is going to freak out and shut the whole place down just so he can take care of me and spend time with me," she said confidently.

Brittany looked confused. "He practices what? I practice the piano. I don't want to though. I would rather dance. The Macarena is boring now so I've been practicing my moon walk," she said conversationally.

Santana stared incredulously at her. "Focus, Blondie. Aren't you afraid of me? I beat up all those boys, I could beat you up too," she threatened, trying to get the upper hand with this strange girl.

"My name is Brittany, not Blondie. But don't worry I get my name wrong sometimes too. And I'm not afraid you'll beat me up because you've got to hold your nose or you'll get more blood all over your pretty dress," Brittany said nodding at the dried blood stains that were already there.

"Whatever. So anyway Brittany, you don't look sick. What's wrong with you," Santana asked, leveling her with a glare.

"I'm not a sick that you can see," Brittany told her sadly.

"What you're hiding green toes in your shoes or something?" Santana sneered.

"No. My mom says that she thinks that I was born wrong and something in my brain isn't right... and it makes me embarrass her all the time," Brittany said ashamed.

"So?" Santana's voice was confident, with an air of disinterest. "My abuela says I was born wrong too. She said that most kids are born in cabbage patches, and that bunnies like cabbages a lot so they are the ones stopping some babies from getting born, and that's why my tío and tía can't have kids. Anyway, she said that I wasn't supposed to be born, so I must have found a rotten cabbage to get borned in, because a bunny had already ate mine. So that's how I was born so rotten," Santana said mechanically as if she were quoting someone.

"I don't think you're rotten... um…" Brittany really wanted to follow the right rules for once and ask for her name. She liked the story about the rabbits and thought this girl was really interesting and not nearly as mean as other kids who hit her on the playground.
She peered at the girl's forehead. Label free. Obviously her mom hadn't gotten to the dark haired girl with one of her famous label stickers yet.
Last night her mom had labeled the TV, and some of the bowls in the cupboard. She said she was tired of Brittany calling things the wrong names. Brittany thought it wasn't her fault that everything looked the same.

"Garbage fa….no I mean it's… Santana." Santana said testing out the name carefully as if she herself didn't use it very often.

"Santana," Brittany tried the name herself and fixed her eyes on Santana's face. Santana looked at her as if she was waiting for her to say something, but Brittany wasn't sure what she wanted to say next.

"Brittany?" Dr Lopez called.

Susan jumped up and led her daughter into Dr Lopez's office before Santana could jump up herself and get her fathers attention.

Santana sighed. It had been like this all day, the minute she thought she was going to catch him, someone always beat her. She leaned against the wall trying to hear what her father was saying to Brittany about her mysterious sickness. It sounded like Brittany's mother was almost hysterical describing her symptoms. In fact she sounded so high pitched and hysterical that Santana could only make out a few words of what she was saying.

"She won't sleep without…"

"… I can't get her to….."

"… and when she's with other kids she…"

"… when she's hurt she won't…"

Santana heard her papi trying to calm Brittany's mom down, speaking in the same low voice he used when trying to calm down Santana's mami when he came to pick up Santana for the weekend. Her mami didn't seem to like her papi very much anymore. She always screamed at him for not being on time, or for being something called a 'cheating bastard.' Santana wasn't sure if her papi didn't come get her very much because he didn't like the yelling, or because she was a 'cheating bastard' too.
She thought she wouldn't be surprised if she was, because her mami was always telling her that she was just like papi. But then she called her other things too, like a 'useless good for nothing little brat.' Santana wasn't sure what she was anymore.

The door was suddenly flung open and Santana jumped back. This was her chance.

"I'm sorry I couldn't help you, but here's the name of someone who can. He can diagnose your daughter if need be," Dr Lopez said.

"PAPI!" Santana called out unable to be patient any longer. In spite of how brave she was pretending to be, she really was sore, she had more bruises than she cared to count and thinking about the cut on her head made her feel dizzy.

"Santana. Mija, what are you doing here? And what happened to you?" he checked her over. "Is anything broken?" he asked.

She cast her eyes down at her fathers annoyed tone. "No Papi," she mumbled.

He handed her a plastic bag full of ice for her nose.

"I think this looks a lot worse than it is. Well, run along then Santana, you know you aren't supposed to visit me at work unless it is an emergency. I'm very busy. I've got a lot of kids to see today," he said condescendingly as he brushed past her, calling out the name of a kid who looked as if he was about to be sick any second. Then he was gone.

Brittany had paused while her mother talked to the receptionist, watching the scene and waiting for a break in conversation as she had remembered that it was polite to say goodbye to people you had been speaking to, and she didn't want to break a rule. She was just about to say goodbye and shake Santana's hand, when she stopped and came a little closer than she normally would to a stranger. She had seen something that she usually didn't notice very much. "You have water coming out of your eyes," she pointed out.

Santana wiped at them furiously. "No I don't. I never cry do you understand me?" she threatened.

Brittany looked at her confused; she was pretty sure when water came out of a person's eyes that meant that they were crying, so why would Santana be any different? Maybe Santana was like a special self cleaning device that could spray water from her eyes on her face to clean it when she got dirty. If that was true, then she wasn't a very functional unit, she was just smearing blood all over her face and not really cleaning herself up. Brittany shook her head. She was letting her imagination run away with her again. Just 'cause it could be imagined, didn't always make it true. Brittany found that confusing.

Santana was trying really hard to wipe her tears away but her tears were coming out faster and faster and all her movements were becoming frantic. Brittany immediately wanted to help her. She took a few steps forward hoping that Santana would follow her. When she didn't, she realized she'd have to touch her. Rather than take her hand like Brittany's mother always tried to do when she wanted her to come somewhere (because she hated that), she compromised, and hooked her pinky around Santana's own and led her to the drinking fountains by the TV which seemed to be playing endless episodes of SpongeBob.

She pressed down on the button so Santana could take handfuls of water and splash them on her face, cleaning herself up and washing her tears away. She had calmed down the moment Brittany had curled her pinky around hers, although Brittany wasn't sure why.

After Santana was done, Brittany fished around in her pocket for a Cinderella Band-Aid she'd been hoarding and handed it to her. She figured Santana needed it more than she did and between the two of them they got it out of the wrapper and onto the worst cut on Santana's forehead.

"Thank you," Santana mumbled. "I don't usually cry that much you know," she said defensively.

So she really was crying? Brittany wondered and then she thought to comment. "I cry sometimes. I cried when a huge boy pushed me off the playground yesterday in school, and I cried when I thought the new kitten I got last week was dead but it turns out they don't move much when they're sleeping, and I cried a lot when Mufasa died and Simba was all alone," she said. The list went on but it was a rule that she wasn't supposed to talk so much.

Santana seemed to be studying her, checking for signs of deception or ridicule, but finding nothing but sincerity, a tiny burst of trust came across her face. "You know he pays attention to me all the time, just not when he's at work. I'm not alone like Simba," she explained.

Brittany nodded along like she knew what she was talking about, even though she didn't. Susan suddenly called for her evidently having lost her for the past ten minutes. "Brittany, there you are. Come on now. We have to go," she shouted, her voice rising to that same shrill pitch it had taken on before while she had been talking to the doctor.

Brittany waited hesitantly, not wanting to lose the first person who hadn't pushed her over when she talked to them. "Will I ever see you again?" she asked.

Santana laughed. "Of course, you will, we're in the same class at school silly, you haven't seen me before?" she said incredulously. She was kind of infamous in their class for having beat eleven different boys up this year alone. Some, she had even punched out multiple times.

Brittany got visibly upset at Santana laughing at her, because usually when people started laughing at her that usually meant they were going to hurt her.
She tried to answer Santana, not wanting to make her angrier. "I…I have a really bad memory for faces... and I've only been there a week... You mean... you've noticed me?" she stuttered out.

Santana laughed again, and Brittany flinched more. Santana softened her tone almost instinctively and stopped laughing although she wasn't sure why. "Yeah, me and our whole class. You're kind of hard to miss wearing those ski hats that make you look like a bunny rabbit all the time, and the reason I beat up those boys today was because I saw them giving you a hard time yesterday. Actually, I've seen them be mean to you for pretty much the whole time you've been here, so I hit them extra hard for it. I try to keep the boys from thinking they rule the place which means I protect all the girls. I saw you crying, and you may not have noticed me, but I noticed you," Santana said, slightly embarrassed to have admitted all that.

Brittany was clearly getting confused at all this new information, and she was starting to breathe faster. She looked around wildly for her mom, but found she had impatiently left the Doctor's office and was probably waiting for her by the car.

"Hey, Brittany are you okay?" Santana asked, and she stepped closer to her and took hold of her arm, curling her palms around her skin at the elbow and using her other hand to almost hug the girl, aiming for the back of Brittany's shirt and missing it slightly.

Brittany's eyes widened, her mind spun around in circles, and then everything went black.