In My Skin Read Free Page B

older. They have always been great to me, and we consider each other full blood, but it’s not like we were all running around the yard, playing games, living under the same roof. It was just me and my sister Pier, who’s five years older, and the two of us could not be more different. We’re much closer now than we were then. Pier was a total girly girl, and I was all rough-and-tumble. She was always in the house, talking on the phone, playing with dolls, watching Saved by the Bell, while I was outside wrestling with the dog in the mud. Pier didn’t like playing with me because I would usually end up doing something to make her cry. The little sister beat up the big sister.
    My mom and I had our bonding moments, but it wasn’t like it is now. She taught me how to sew, and I would curl up on her lap in the living room while she watched her favorite shows: The Price Is Right and Family Feud and anything on the Food Network. I love my mom’s cooking. We were big meat eaters in our family, and every night we would have delicious ham or fried chicken or steak or burgers. And yes, I ate a lot of bacon for breakfast. That was something the media latched onto when I was at Baylor—“BG Loves Bacon”—and I played along with it because it felt like one of the few safe topics I could talk about. But I really do love bacon, and nobody knows that better than my mom.
    When I was little, I was impossible to wake up in the morning. I was just one of those kids (and then teenagers) who would mumble and roll over and never wake up when someone first called to me. I would yell, “I’m up!”—and then I’d close my eyes and go back to sleep. Sometimes Pier would come in to wake me up, and her go-to move was to shake me, which she knew I hated. Who likes to be woken up that way? As retaliation, I would flail my arms while turning over in my bed, occasionally smacking her as she leaned down to poke at me. One time, when I thought Pier was trying to wake me, I shot my arm out while my eyes were still closed, and I clocked my mom in the head. I didn’t hurt her, but I startled her enough that she didn’t take any chances after that day. She would just stand in the doorway and call my name— “Brittney, Brittney, wake up!”—until she saw me finally sit up in bed. Eventually she discovered she didn’t even have to leave the kitchen to get me up. All she had to do was sizzle some bacon in the skillet, and as soon as I smelled it, I was out of bed and on my way to the breakfast table.
    Now fast-forward to my career at Baylor. When we were playing at home, we ate all our pregame meals at Georgia’s, this great place in Waco. If we had a night game, I would always get chicken—a thigh and a leg—and a biscuit. If we had a day game, we would eat breakfast there, and I would get French toast and bacon, every time. One game during my freshman year, when we were on our run to the Final Four, all I had for the pregame meal was a big platter of bacon. That afternoon, I played really well, maybe my best game of the season, and Coach Mulkey jokingly said afterward, “Whatever you ate, keep doing it.” I’m not sure if she expected me to actually answer her, but I did; I told her I had a lot of bacon. From that day forward, our support staff made sure there was bacon at every team breakfast, including on the road. By my senior year, even the national media would ask me about bacon, and the whole thing became an inside joke with me and my teammates—the bacon sound bite. Whenever a reporter mentioned it, I would play along, especially for on-camera interviews. The anchor would ask, “Did you have bacon today?” And I would flash a big grin and say, “I sure did!”
    I’VE ALWAYS HAD a mischievous streak. My mom is really quiet and reserved, sweet and soft, and when I was a kid, I liked to see how much I could get away with on her