Chapter 17’s challenge was that I wanted to pose a small bump in the relationship between Richardo and Brianna. It needed to be small enough so that things wouldn’t be damaged to the point of no return or not speaking to one another, but big enough to where there was some separation between the two. Up until now, things have been great between the two friends. In the previous chapter, Brianna becomes aware of Ricardo’s feelings toward her. With all of the social/peer pressure around her, Brianna decides that she needs to put up a barrier or some distance between her and Ricardo.
At the start of this chapter, Brianna gets some great news regarding her test score. The smile is soon gone after she and Ricardo speak in person and she decides to stop the tutoring. We can see that deep down neither of them wants it to stop since things have been going great for them.
Brianna mentioned it because she felt her test scores were good enough to stop the tutoring, but of course, Ricardo thought it had to do with their previous meeting. The mix of emotions in both of them causes them to miss the chance to quickly understand and fix this and instead walk their separate ways.
Brianna’s friends quickly notice the change of emotion from when she left the lunch table to when she returned to them.