Brooke's Return

Author's Note:

"Andrea's Story" was a piece about a character in a novel that's nearing completion. This too, is related to that novel. In fact, it is an excerpt from the novel.

---

She hadn’t chosen the best of days. It was still frigid with the residue of the holiday season, but the weather had gone crisp opposed to its regular soggy atmosphere. Brooke bought a Bolt bus to Skagit County, and hopped as many public buses as she could to get her up Highway 2 towards Steven’s Pass. Eventually she got to the trail head and began hiking.

Hard core hikers would come through this part of the mountain, but not many at this time. The woods were naked with winter, stark grey and black with shadowing evergreens. Her boots crunched the frosted underbrush which echoed against the tree trunks splotched with lichen, the moss waving over her face, haunting fingers reminiscent of the past.

After seeing Andrea, after throwing her out of her apartment, she realized the nothingness she had become. Every aspect of her and the life she led seemed empty. She had spent so long just trying not to be like she had been before—she wanted so badly not to be the before-times-Brooke—that she was content to be nothing, as long as it wasn’t the former. She realized that December night that being nothing wasn’t good enough. But what was?

After forty-five minutes of diverting from the trail and clearing her own path, the sunlight thickened as a clearing opened up, decorated with wisps of police tape. Her breathing wavered, flashes of memory coming to her—the yelling, the energy, Andrea’s face in hers urging her to move. The gore of Dods, everywhere.

Blackberry brambles had taken over what was once a fairly self-sufficient garden, something they all rotated in looking after, growing their own food. It was the only time Brooke had tasted real food, home grown, organic, quality food. Growing up, she had only had instant meals, other than the odd holiday spread her mom cooked when she managed to get the time off work. But those were once every other year at best. The holidays paid the most, and they were always in need of money. The Family changed all that for Brooke. They seemed to love cooking, and it was always a communal activity, everyone wanted to try their hand, put to use old recipes.

The boards to the front porch groaned under her weight as she ducked under the tape wrapping the house. She could make out dark stains, slightly crimson through the growth of ivy. After getting out of the rehabilitation facility, she had seen something on the news, heard something about there being some sort of show down, heard that some of them had died or been shot at least. Brooke never found out who, never wanted to know. The less she knew, the better. But now, seeing the remnants of that battle between Family and law, she wondered whose blood it was that darkened the wooden lining of the house.

The front door was no longer there. Yet more caution tape cris-crossed the opening, a warning of the forboding darkness. As she stepped from the exterior into the past, she caught her own breath in her chest, sharp and heavy with memory. Through the white of the broken, moss-filtered windows she could make out fallen lamps, molded furniture. Papers were still scattered over the floor, yellowed with age. Books were pulled from shelves and left on the floor, spines broken and flattened with years gone. Stuffing had been pulled from the couches for whatever rodents that had made their nests, and mounds of bird droppings collected in the corners from swallows building their shelter above.

So many nights had been spent in this room, laughing, hanging out, discussing philosophies and ways of living with the Family. It was the lounge pad, where they congregated to check in on each other, love each other, giggle, and gossip. Board games, gnawed on by mice, still were strewn across the floor, kicked around in the skirmish of the raid. Kids had spent hours playing with each other, playing with the adults of the group. Brooke remembered several of them attaching themselves to her. They looked up to her, to Brooke, of all people, and loved her. She was as much their family as they were hers.

She shook her head as disbelief swept over her. How had this happened? How was it that her experience of this exact space had been of warmth and love as she stood in the broken cabin, frosted, cold and damp from neglect, empty of anything but her own breath?

The grey outside was softening, turning to a darker padding. The shadows rustled somewhere. As she felt the imprints of the past, Brooke shuddered, knowing it was time to leave. She hesitated, wanting to explore the rest of the cabin that had reached up three stories. But as she watched the creeping reach of chard extend across the boards, felt the movement of it around her, she tore herself away from her past.

There was part of her that belonged there, that couldn’t leave. She realized that in the dusk as she kicked aside leaves and snapped the twigs along the faint trail away from her former home. It was that, the only place she had ever really called home. It was the only place she had been accepted, found contentment in. She was there, with Andrea, who had sheltered her and protected her through their youth, for so many years. And the Family did the same for Andrea. How could she have ever thought so badly of it? How could she have rejected it so willingly when Andrea offered her a small placement in a fraction of it again? Wasn’t that what Zeal was providing for her? A smattering of comfort?

The sun was low in the trees, burning orange through the blackened, wet trunks. She would have to hurry if she wanted to make the ski bus back into Mount Vernon before dark. The emptiness of space hollowing the light increased, spreading black tendrils freely along the path. The shadows were becoming bolder now. Brooke’s pace increased as she heard the leaves fly up among the footsteps of her memory, of her past, coming for her.

She couldn’t do this any more. She couldn’t be afraid. This was too much, she was done with this. She had lived in the wake of her drug-induced deeds, of the life she had lived with Andrea, with the Family, for far too long. She needed to be something, something other than the mess she was.

Her breathing became harder as the cold pierced her lungs through her asthma. What was it Andrea had done? How was it she had dragged herself out of all this? Surely, if she could do it, then Brooke could do it too? School, or something along those lines, wasn’t it? A secretary degree?

Well that was flat out of the question. There was no way Brooke had the ability, the self control, the looks to be a secretary. She wasn’t tidy, she wasn’t personable. But surely there was something, some way she could just make the shadows go away…

She could figure that part out later. One thing was clear to her as she was birthed through the bushes and onto the main trail: college was going to be a necessity if she had any hope of leaving this self behind.

There was nothing more to it, no other path that parted more readily in her mind. This whole journey, her sojourn into the woods, hadn't led her to her past, but only to her future.

She would take the first bus she could to the community college and work toward her GED. If nothing else, she would be a somebody with a General Education Diploma. Who knows, perhaps she could go on to actually get a career, maybe in counseling or something? Whatever came after the GED could be decided later. All that was apparent was that it was finally time to take hold of her life, take hold of Brooke, and change what it meant to be in her own skin.

With each step she took leaving the woods, her knees felt weaker. This decision to go back to school was heavy, so unlike her, so unexpected, unrealistic. She had no idea if she had any capability, if she could even read after all this time. Her breathing was shallower, harder as she reached the road. Just a little way now to the bus stop. She could see the orange lights of its marquee down the road. Her legs felt weak from a lack of oxygen, but she pushed herself down the pavement, her feet landing heavily with each step.

As the bus was pulling up, she waved her arm, reaching the stop just as it slowed to a stop.

#theusuale #Brooke #flashfictionfriday #flashfiction #novelexcerpt