by Pat Brisson
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
PART ONE - in which Molly formulates and carries out a plan
Saintly
How I Ended Up So Good
Bad Boys
Honors Poetry
Attraction
Taking Stock
The Plan
The Friend Situation
Getting Barb on Board
One of the Things About Barbara
And Another Thing
What She Meant
I Wonder Why She Wants to Help
The General Idea
Makeover: Part One
Makeover: Part Two
Running into Grady at the Mall
Grady Dillon: Extrapolation
So Much to Say
No One to Talk To
Too Soon
The Friend Situation, Continued
It’s Not the Same
Now Back to Our Previously Scheduled Program
Math Lesson
Grace Before Lunch
Magic Moments (in Tetrameter)
In the Girls’ Room: A Sonnet
Out of My Stall
PART TWO - in which Molly is wildly successful
In the Lunchroom: Instant Replay
Subject: Angel Kisses
Gram / Molly
I Let His Words Caress Me
The Next Day: English Class
Since Lunch Is the Only Time I Get to See Grady
Lunch: The Second Day
It Wasn’t Perfect, But . . .
The Big Steep
Listen: A Pastiche
Initial Bliss
Weeks Go By
A Weird and Totally Unexpected Gift from Gram
And So It Goes
That Other Girl
The Game
Curious
What If I’m Fooling Myself?
Rules
First Move
WWVD?
Body, Don’t Fail Me Now
Fooling Around with Words When I Couldn’t Care Less About What’s Going on in ...
The Second Class
The Last Class
The Courts
So Easy
Amnesia
Drenched
Sweeter Than Kisses
Carrying My Books Home After Kissing Grady
I Can’t Even E-mail Barb
The Day After Kissing Grady
English Assignment: Write a Poem in a Style Not Your Own, e.g., Shakespeare, ...
Losing
Decisions
Hello, Barbara? Are You There?
Proposition
Thoughts That Afternoon: Definitely Maybe
Hesitation
Her Virginity Speaks
Realization at the End of the School Day
On the Way
And in the Next Few Minutes
I Want It to Be Perfect
I Want It to Be Over
PART THREE - in which Success is redefined as Disaster
Waking Up
Afterward
Third Person Singular
When Grady Leaves
History Now
Carnal Knowledge, but No Other
She Speaks to Her Virginity
Almost Telling Barb
That Night: Thoughts While Lying in Bed
Acting Normal
Emotional Landslide
Alone with My Thoughts
Police News
Upset
The Buzz
PART FOUR - in which Molly can barely think straight
Memo to: Self Subject: Eating, Breathing, Sleeping
Lunching Alone in the Library
School
Rescue Attempt
Poof!
The First Month: Stress
Condom, noun
Condom: An Acrostic
Waiting, Watching, Hoping: Questions
The Second Month: No Period Yet
Missing My Period: Blank Verse
What She Would Secretly Tape to the Door of the Boys’ Locker Room If She Had ...
Pregnancy: The Elephant in the Middle of My Room
The “Where Is My Period?” Blues
The Third Month: Facing the Possibility
The Test
Choices: A Pantoum
I Think, Therefore I Am . . . Confused
In the Dark
PART FIVE - in which Molly makes major decisions
Epiphany: A Prose Poem
The Try-On: A Triolet
The Idea of Adoption Comes to Me in a Dream
Confession
A Difficult Day in Review
Okay Then, That’s Good, I Guess
The Fourth Month: Reality Check
I Let Myself Imagine
Imitation
Walking Through School on a Winter Morning
To: Barb Subject: News
Barb Is Less Than Enthusiastic
At the Doctor’s Office
The Fifth Month: Still Time
Barb Writes Back
Photo Op
Shopping for Clothes Alone at the Mall
A Change from the Usual Teen Angst
My Dog, Art: A Ballad
The Ballad of Molly B. (with Asides by a Chorus of Old Biddies)
The Sixth Month: The Shoe on the Other Foot
Longing
Things to Do When Others Laugh and Stare
The Poetry Slam
You Look at Me
I Look at Them
The Seventh Month: The Hardness Surprises Me
(Bitter) Sweet Sixteen
Barb Sends a Card
Not Who But Where (and What)
The Eighth Month: Hot, Flying Corn
Birthing Class for Teens
Question: How Is a Pregnant Girl Like a Library Book?
The Ninth Month: Almost There
Talk, Talk, Talk
PART SIX - in which Molly gives birth, gains wisdom, and brings the story to a close
A Girl Goes into Labor at School: A Prose Poem/Play
The Next Few Hours
Afterward
Let the Darkness Stay: An Aubade
Someday
The Best and Hardest Thing: A Villanelle
Farewell Song
The End
Chrysalis
I Turn a Corner
Author’s Note
VIKING
Published by Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2010 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Pat Brisson, 2010
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Brisson, Pat.
T
he best and hardest thing / by Pat Brisson.
p. cm.
Summary: When she is a sophomore in high school, Molly gets rid of her good-girl image but ends up becoming pregnant and having to make some difficult decisions.
eISBN : 978-1-101-40449-2
[1. Novels in verse. 2. Pregnancy—Fiction. 3. High schools—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.5.B75Be 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2009033130
http://us.penguingroup.com
For everyone who needs to make a difficult choice—may your thinking be clear and your determination steadfast.
And for the men in my life—Emil, Gabriel, Noah, Benjamin, and Zachary
Molly Biden: An Introduction
She was a Golden Rule kind of girl—
doing-unto-others-as-she-would-have-them-
et-cetera.
If you’d asked her why she was so good,
she’d have been surprised:
doesn’t everyone try to be that way?
Well . . . no.
Then Ms. Stollen,
who should have known better,
told her sophomore English class to write
a different adjective for everybody in the room.
“Use those vocabulary words, people,
and don’t be mean.”
The words were listed on the board—
no duplicates allowed.
Claudia got intriguing, vivacious, mysterious . . .
Molly got studious.
Jacob got adventurous, daring, reckless . . .
Molly got dependable.
Ryan got comical, charming, adorable . . .
Molly got pleasant.
Roger got ambitious, handsome, hungry . . .
Molly got nice.
Stephanie got athletic, attractive, friendly . . .
Molly got quiet.
Janelle got fashionable, intelligent, sophisticated . . .
Molly got saintly.
And that was just too much.
It wasn’t meant to be an insult,
but that’s the way it felt.
Why did everyone think she was
better than them when all she wanted
was to be the same?
She decided then and there,
her good girl days were over.
So when Grady Dillon came along,
lean and hot and looking for some indefinable thing,
she let him know his search was over.
I know just how she did it, too—
that Biden girl was me.
PART ONE
in which Molly formulates and carries out a plan
Saintly
When did “studious” become an insult?
“Dependable” and “pleasant” points of shame?
Why is it that I’m feeling devastated
to have those things marked down beside my name?
They make me feel the opposite of others.
I want to be like Claudia, Janelle.
I have to find a way that I can show them
I’m not a saint and I can raise some hell.
How I Ended Up So Good
When I was nine
my mother got too sick to work.
We went to live with Gram.
She cooked our meals and
washed our clothes at first,
until I learned to do it for us all.
Gram worked the checkout at the ShopRite,
came home each night with tired legs and aching back,
so I soon learned to make myself invisible—
as quiet, small, and good as I knew how.
And by age ten I’d learned to do the laundry,
knew what to wash in hot and what in cold,
knew when to take the clothes out of the dryer
before they wrinkled up too much to wear.
And I could cook us meat loaf or spaghetti,
or tuna casserole or scrambled eggs.
I did the dishes after, then my homework.
I kept the house all tidied up and clean.
I
tried
so
hard,
and Gram was happy,
my mother very sick, but also proud.
And though I worked at home
and went to school and studied
and prayed each night before I went to bed,
my mother died in April, after Easter.
Gram and I live together still.
I’m older now and understand that
cancer’s not a curse for what a person
did or didn’t do in life.
I know my mother loved me
and didn’t want to leave.
I know we all eventually will die.
I make myself remember all the happy times we had.
But the me that’s only ten years old
still cries herself to sleep.
Bad Boys
What is it about some guys?
They give off sparks as they walk by.
It doesn’t matter if they’re short or tall;
it doesn’t matter if they’re dark or light.
Some guys are beyond explanation;
some guys are both wrong and so right.
They give off sparks as they walk by,
and I’m inflammable and dry.
Honors Poetry
We’re not the athletes
dashing off to football,
not on the paper
or the yearbook staff.
We didn’t choose to have a study hall
or go for tutoring or to some club.
We’ve all shown up today
for Honors Poetry,
though “all” is only eight of us this term.
Ms. Butler has us go around the circle:
“Give us your name and
tell us why you’re here.”
Sierra says that she’s been writing poems
since she was four, so she just had to come.
Dakota’s love of poems came from her parents
reciting them to her since she was three.
Kelly tells us all that she’s no poet,
but thinks she’d like to be—that’s why she’s here.
Henry smiles and tells us, “I’ll be honest.
I thought this was a good place to meet girls.”
Kevin is the only other guy here—
he shrugs and mumbles softly, “I dunno.”
Jessica and Kate admit they’re Poem Geeks
and have been since they both were in fifth grade.
And I go last and, blushing, say I’m looking
for something challenging but beautiful and true.
Attraction
Grady is the kind of guy
who shows up knowing
everything at once—
who’s in, who’s not,
what’s out, what’s hot,
how to dress, what to say,
when to leave, when to stay.
He’s almost like some sort of god
surrounded by a glow
of everything-I-do-is-right
and everything-that’s-cool-I-know.
He walks the halls and people stare—
there’s magnetism in the air.
Taking Stock
The me that is
is not the type to capture Grady’s eye:
too blah, too beige, too
blending-in-with-all-the-rest.
I’ll need a plan for change
so big, so brave,
so perfectly pursued,
that boy will be bowled over by
my beauty and bewitching ways.
The Plan
Some old habits come in handy—
I treat it like a research project
and start out at the library.
The magazines are full of help:
“How to Get the Guy You Want,”
“Flirting Basics for the Shy,”
“Let Him Know That You’re the One for Him,”
and “How to Dress to Catch His Heart.”
I make a list of things I’ll need.
The easy ones I’ll buy—
like clothes, perfume, and makeup.
The harder ones can only come with practice—
flirty eyes and
sexy walk
and voice that whispers, “Yes,
come closer;
I’m the one you’re looking for.”
More research then,
except not at the library,
but in the halls at school,
to see exactly how they do it.
They
who are the in crowd:
the beautiful,
the blessed,
the ones whose fairy godmothers visited at birth,
declaring they would always breathe the air of
popularity.
I dive into my research,
confident,
amused.
I’ve gotten A’s on harder tests than this.
The Friend Situation
I’ve never been the kind with lots of friends,
didn’t want a gang
or crowd to hang with,
was more content with having only one
to talk to, laugh with,
joke around or plan with.
For seven years the friend I’ve had is Barbara.
Conveniently, she lives just up the block.
We went through trick-or-treats and Barbie dolls
together,
through first bras, periods, and starting-high-school
fears.
We kept each other sane.
We shared our secrets.
We told each other all our dreams and plans.
It’s funny how you take some things for granted
and count on someone always being there.
You never know what’s just around the corner.