"Hi guys…" Cate walked through the front door clad in her hospital scrubs over her black sweater and dark slacks. She looked around first for Bridget then noticed Rory and Kerry sitting on the floor at the table before the TV perusing newspaper clippings and color photos. Kerry had looked up first to acknowledge her mother, but Rory just waved his hand in her direction.
"Hi guys…" Cate draped her jacket over the back of a chair and dropped her purse into the seat. "Where's your sister?"
"Krypton." Rory cracked barely looking up. He mumbled that another of Kyle's photos didn't have enough to tell if it was Bridget or not.
"She's upstairs with dad." Kerry finally gave a decent answer. "Look, mom," She gestured to their clippings and photos. "This is all the photos Kyle had of Bridget in her costume. All of these…" She placed her hand on a stack of snapshots. "Are too blurry to be anything, but these…" She picked up a series of photos. "Are taken from as close as a few feet away and are almost certainly Bridget…"
"Or Jessica Simpson." Rory added. "Or Reese Witherspoon…"
"You suggest any other blonde other than our sister and you're no longer helping me." Kerry shot a look at him.
"Yeah, well…" Cate strided freely into the kitchen and noticed that Paul had been cooking. "I think the whole debate of whether it is or not is about to answered." She took a deep breath ready to call and summon her firstborn daughter before her, but instead heard the fracas coming down the back stairway. She whirled around and saw Paul coming to give her a kiss then noticed Bridget behind him. The blonde one was studying a wad of bandage taped to her finger then looked up with a blank expression to her mother before her.
"Cate, you better check Bridget's finger for me." Paul checked the pork chops in the oven "She cut her finger chopping vegetables and I taped it up, but..."
"Well, that's convenient…" Cate turned to her daughter and took her hand to see inspect the bandage job her husband had done. "Bullets don't hurt you, but you can get a little boo-boo?"
Rory and Kerry turned their heads up to the confrontation.
"Yeah, whatever…" Bridget didn't bother debating it. "No matter what I say you won't believe me. Go ahead and think what you want, but leave me out of it…." Her voice was tired of this subject. She turned to head toward the sofa and noticed Kerry and Rory grinning toward her. They had her. They had her good. Rolling her eyes with a slight sigh, the former blonde sex symbol and self-centered teen exhaled depressed and sadly shook her head turning up the back stairway.
"Cate," Paul was pulling out silverware and plates to set for dinner. "Was it really Bridget?"
"Paul… I know my daughter when I see her!" She was adamant about this. "It was her."
"Mom…" Kerry had stood up on her feet and come up behind her parents. "This is the only clear picture of Bridget in the costume I could find from Kyle's collection. Granted, it was taken from almost two hundred feet away with a cheap Polaroid, but… I'd swear it was Bridget." Paul took the clipping.
"It looks like Reese Witherspoon…" He commented as mother and daughter both glared at him.
"Or Jessica Simpson…."
"The suspicious thing is…" Kerry glared exasperatingly from her father to her brother. "That since last week no one has been able to get another close-up photo of her. Somehow, she can knock out any photographic device within a few feet of her."
"Where'd you hear that?" Paul wondered about that.
"Kyle told me." Kerry answered. "He knows at least two guys who almost got decent pictures of her, but as soon as they start zooming in on her with their picture phones, their batteries goes dead."
"Look…" Cate lightly braced on the kitchen cabinet. "I don't want to bust Bridget's secret identity, I just want her to be truthful about it."
"When was the last time Bridget was anything but truthful?" Paul reacted condescendingly sarcastic. Truthfully, Bridget's attitude had changed in the last week since her seizure. It had been a while since he had to listen to Bridget raving about herself; she seemed to have lost all those materialistic idiosyncrasies and was no longer obsessed with just herself and fashion. He wondered about that fact from the back of his mind. Maybe, just maybe, he did now have the perfect daughter, but could it be possible that she was now much more than the girl she used to be?
Cate just turned and stomped her feet up the stairs of the back stairs to her daughter's bedroom. The door was standing open. Bridget was sitting curled up on her bed painting her toe nails bright pink. As she blew on them, she became conscious she was being watched and turned her head toward her mother in the doorway. Her long blonde locks cascaded from her shoulder as she looked up with her big blue eyes. Those round emotional eyes of hers had not changed since she was a child.
"Bridget," Cate stepped forward clad in her light blue hospital scrubs. "We need to talk."
"About me?" Bridget turned to her toes again. "Or her…"
"Bridget…" Cate stood her ground. "I saw you!" She heard a frustrated groaning noise from her firstborn.
"God…." The blonde one barely looked up. "How much does she look like me?"
"Why are you being difficult about this?" Cate sat next to her daughter as the bed frowned under both of them. "I'm not trying to dissect you like some lab experiment… I want to know what happened to you. Bridget… what you're doing, how you're doing it, why you're doing it, please, open up to me!"
"Mom, she's not me!" Bridget stood and faced her mother then shook her head and looked away. "I'm not her." She paused a moment looking for the right thing to say. "I don't know why I'm even trying…. You've already made up your mind based on nothing."
"Bridget," Cate started listing facts off her fingers. "Since last week, you've been coming home early, you've stopped obsessing about yourself, I actually caught you reading something other than Cosmo and you're actually wearing clothing?" She paused right there. "You've got that costume on underneath, don't you?"
"For the love of…" Bridget reached down pulling her long-sleeved shirt off and up over her head to reveal a simple loose lavender chemise underneath it hanging off her bare shoulders. She tossed her shirt on to the floor. "Mom, I've been depressed for the last couple of days. Oh, you didn't notice that!" Her voice was becoming aggravatingly offended. "Kyle and I have broken up, Jenna Green has been turning all my best friends against me and just last week, my favorite coffee shop increased the price of their frappuchinos from a buck seventy-five to two-ten and on top of it, my family thinks I'm some sort of mutant from the planet Crichton."
"Krypton."
"Whatever!" Bridget turned away and placed her left hand to her forehead as if she had a headache. "So… don't accuse me of anything I'm not when you're obviously too busy to figure out what is actually going on." Bridget drew silent for the moment. Her jaw dropping slightly, Cate gasped for a minute and pretended to look away then looked up to her daughter's back.
"Why didn't you just tell me what was going on your life?"
"When would I have had a chance…" Bridget reached her hand up to her face and seemingly hid her tears. "You're always working."
"Look," Reacting from that verbal barrage, Cate stood up a bit overwhelmed and unprepared for this conversation. "I will…" She looked for the right words. "Concede… for the moment that that girl in the news might not be you, but to tell the truth, the fact that she could be scares the crap out of me; however…" She gestured to get Bridget's attention. "You got to admit your recent personality change had a lot to do with it." She paused again thinking she was a great mother. "But, Beej, you can talk to me anytime no matter what. I mean, there has got to be something I can do for you to get you out of this mood."
"Well…" The young girl thought for something she really wanted. "I'd sure love to get a long good soak in your big bathtub… with your herbal shampoo, oils and cucumbers on my eyes and all."
"That sounds like the old Bridget!" Cate forced a grin and turned to hug her daughter. Bridget perked up as well. But in her mind, she realized that this was not the end of these accusations. Kerry was determined to bust her and Rory wanted something out of it. Both of them over dinner faked polite family chatter, but the long lingering glances wondering the truth carried hidden meanings. All Bridget could do was sigh, roll her eyes and change the subject when Kerry started to bring up things in the news or Rory tried to point out that Bridget was not being Bridget anymore. She needed an incident to convince them that it just wasn't possible.
After dinner, Bridget reminded her mother of her promise and Cate went to draw a hot bath for her daughter within her bathroom off the master bedroom. She left out her bath oils and bath salts, waved the waters into thick and perfumed sudsy foam and then looked up to Bridget bringing the cucumber slices for placing over her eyes. The teenage girl was trussed up within her long bathrobe with her bare feet sticking out from under it.
"Bridget," Cate warned her. "You have to be careful not to fall asleep in the tub."
"Of course…" The blonde one rolled her eyes against the parental transgression.
"I mean it…" Cate stepped back as Bridget sat on the rim of the large tub. "I sometimes use an alarm clock to keep me alert or even music."
"I've got it covered." She revealed her CD player. "Josh Groban…"
"Okay…" Cate motioned for the door of the bathroom and looked back to her daughter.
"Oh, mom…" Bridget tested the water temperature with her fingers. "Lock the door so dad doesn't forget and accidentally wander in."
"Right." Cate beamed lovingly and turned the lock on the door as she pulled it closed. Hearing the sound of the door latching, Bridget wafted her right hand once more through the soapy and perfumed water and turned off the faucet with her left hand. Stepping up on to her feet once more, her head tilted to the mirror and she reached up to the top of her bathrobe, loosening it, and letting it fall to her feet to reveal her pastel blue and red costume under it. Her cape tucked into the back of her belt and her stocking boots stuffed into the deep pockets of her robe. Her hands reached behind her and unfurled her cape falling languidly to the floor before pulling her boots out from her robe. She opened the narrow window of her parent's bathroom window and felt gravity slipping away from her body as she started levitating up and out of the house into the night sky. A curled band-aid dropped from the finger of one hand devoid of cuts. Upon clearing the height of the house, her bright blue eyes noticed the lights of town, turned to reach out to them, and propelled forward on the wings of the wind carrying her toward her new adventure.