The Passion Agency Read Free Page A

whole
concept of trying to create beauty. She dressed in oversized
corduroys and pullover long sleeve shirts or t-shirts. She wore a
rubber band in her hair.
     
    She was kind to her mom and did what she was told.
She never showed much interest in boys or partying. Donna knew she
had some friends. But for a 19-year-old girl, her existence
couldn’t have been any different than Donna's at that same age.
Donna was an alpha dog and one of the most outgoing and popular
girls in school.
     
    Brea brought home great grades but did nothing
practical with them. She didn’t seem to care about going to college
but she was quietly filling out applications to both schools and
scholarship endowments left and right. This was just her and her
way. Rather than talk about it, she’d go do it. She always would
stay out of everyone’s hair in the process.
     
    Wispy and non-athletic, Brea was hardly a hit with
the boys. It wasn't hard to figure out. She didn’t respond to their
signals of interest with any of her own. She came off as cold.
     
    She would have loved to have a boyfriend. Brea told
one of her friends once when they were getting really high in her
friend’s backyard over in Hawthorne that she wasn’t going to go out
of her way to do anything “abnormal” to make it happen.
     
    Brea called it “not bending to social pressure”.
People who knew her called it downright weird, even going so far as
to say she was mentally disturbed.
     
    When one of her counselors at school (who was
desperately trying to get Brea into a magnet program for the
gifted) told her people thought she was mentally infirm, she
responded: “let them think what she want.”
     
    To Brea, this was just more judgmental behavior from
judgmental people. This behavior she detested more than anything.
To her it was just one more reason not to seek out and connect with
people.
     
    She believed the connections she was making were of
greater depth. There just weren’t many of them. This was fine.
Because to Brea, secrecy was paramount. The people she met and the
lives they shared together were always on her terms.
     
    She could be powerfully attractive because she was so
intelligent and also so difficult. If you were a woman, you’d sense
your own mental superiority being let into her inner circle. If you
were a man, you doubtlessly saw an understated beauty who would
never fail to turn you on by her appearance, despite her outward
indifference to “being made up”.
     
    Donna had always taken a hands-off approach to
raising Brea. She found her brilliant but complicated. Something
that Donna found to be total happenstance and having nothing to do
with her parenting. She figured the girl would find her way,
whatever it was. As it was, Brea was not a lot of trouble. She was
also very light in the expense department compared to what Donna
could have seen with other girls her age.
     
    Conversely, Donna was forever fixated on things Brea
could care nothing about if you forced her at gunpoint. Things like
the latest shoes or how to apply mascara.
     
    Donna never stopped chasing her youth through the
rebirth of her appearance. She had a natural curiosity that was
never satisfied. She was chatty and had a quick cadence, and often
a poor attention span.
     
    Where Donna came off as high energy and engaging,
Brea always appeared lethargic.
     
    When asked about her mom one day by her counselor
during Junior year, Brea remarked that she loved her and Donna was
a great mom. The relationship might have been one of the only
semi-normal things in her Brea's life.
     
    This was the “puzzle of Brea” as Donna called it.
Together they lived under the same roof but wholly separately in
spirit, personality, and outlook. As it turned out, it was this
long-standing acceptance of each other’s differences and lack of
any great need to force themselves on the other which kept their
relationship intact during whatever trauma.
     
    …
     
    Donna never asked how it got