Alicia Chapter 23: Birthday Blessings

Bethany surprised us days before Brooke’s 16th birthday with the announcement that she wanted to throw her a surprise party. Akira and I were at first alarmed, and a little suspicious. You could count on one hand the number of friends Brooke could possibly invite to a birthday party, and that included Kali and Annabelle.

“Oh come on!” Beth begged us. “This is her sweet 16. If she’s only going to have one party in her whole life, which is probably accurate, then it has to be this one.” As we hesitated, she pushed on. “It would be good for her to meet some people from the high school so she doesn’t start next year as a total stranger.”
Beth was smart, praying on the social angle. It was obvious to everyone that Brooke was still struggling. Anya seemed to be the only friend she managed to connect with, and sometimes I wondered if that was only because Bethany invited her over so often.

So we gave in, and I’m glad we did, because Brooke had an absolute blast! I think she was more surprised by all the attention she got from her sister than by the party itself. Brooke did her best at mingling with Bethany’s friends and appeared to get along with everyone. They even all brought gifts, which was so kind of them. Most were books, and one computer game. I highly suspected Bethany gave her friends suggestions based on the state of Brooke’s bookshelf.

Akira and I decided to get Brooke the new computer she always wanted. It was a pretty difficult buy for us: the sales associate that helped us out kept asking what kind of RAM Brooke needed, how much hard drive space she would want, and the graphics requirements of any games or photo and video editing she wanted to do. He might as well have been speaking a foreign language to us. In the end we may have purchased a system that was a little over the top, especially judging from Brooke’s reaction. She probably thanked us 20 times. The unfortunately side effect of this gift was that she wanted to set it up immediately, party or not. Akira just shook his head and told me to let her. After all, the party seemed to continue without her.

It was then that we noticed the party was continuing without Bethany, as well. Through the crack in their bedroom door, we could see Beth and Richie sitting on the pink sofa whispering closely to one-another.

So one problem shrank as Brooke socialized with new friends, and another grew as Beth and Richie became closer. A small part of me suspected that Bethany only threw the party in order to see Richie.

Brooke managed to tear herself away from the new computer after a while, but only to drift to another piece of technology: her smart phone. She was attempting to show Akira how her phone could connect to the computer, “sinking”, she called it. This way, she could access school documents on the computer and transfer them easily, and even update her files with photos directly from her phone.

Bless him, he tried to follow along and made interested comments of “mm’hmm” and “ah!” as she explained. Sensing that he was at a loss, she instead showed him a chess game she downloaded on her phone. Someone had created an unbeatable algorithm to play against, and Brooke being the stubborn gal she is only took it as a challenge. She claimed that there was no perfect chess match, and even the computer could be outsmarted at some point.

Akira was enthusiastic, but I saw a sad flicker in his eye. I couldn’t recall the last time Brooke and Akira played chess together.

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