BrookLyn's Journey (24 page)

“I love you
,
BrookLyn
.
I
t’s up to you to do with it what you will. When you are finished eating, I’ll take you home and then
,
the ball is in your court.”
Then
she was gone as fast as she
had come
into the kitchen
.

BrookLyn
was done eating before
she had
even started playing with
her
food.
She
tossed
her
uneaten breakfast into the plastic garbage bag, rinsed and washed
her
plate
and
plac
ed
it gently in the dish rack
.
After wiping the sink dry and cleaning
her
mess off of the counter,
BrookLyn
took a
moment to just
breath
e
.

The
anxiety from the thought of being without Gabby
,
and the thought of going home where
she
wasn’t wanted
threatened to overtake her
.
She
didn’t want to experience either one.
I’ve got a tough road ahead
.

Chapter
Eight

As
BrookLyn
walked up the steps
she
was blanketed by fear. Fear of what
she
had to face.
What if her parents had arrived home before she did?
Whether or not they knew
she
was gone,
her
life
t
here wouldn’t change.
S
he
’d walk back into the house of horrors with
her
parents never missing a beat.
Her mother would
still keep telling
her father
lies, search
BrookLyn’s
room weekly and he’d keep his belt buckle as close to
her
as he could.

S
he
approached the big front door
and
she
felt the heat, like
the door to
hell
.
BrookLyn
wished
she
could do anything but enter. Sadly,
she
had no other options.
She
wished she could return to Gabby’s house and not have to participate in
her
life
here.
This was the life
she
was given and
she
had to face it no matter how much it sucked.

BrookLyn
closed the door behind
her and
it felt
heavy from
her
fear.
She
turned back to look at Gabby through the door window
,
searching for some direction but she was already gone
.
Lost inside
my head
I didn’t even hear her drive away
.
Her
heart sank a little more now
,
knowing she
had
left.
BrookLyn’s
head was enveloped in confusion.
Ha
s
G
abby decided to give up on
us?

When
she had
left,
the house had been empty and BrookLyn had savored that emptiness,
but when
she
walked in,
the fear raised up in her throat—her parents had made it home first.
Their bags were on the floor in the foyer.
BrookLyn silently prayed that they hadn’t been up to her room yet.

H
er mother
was in her favorite blue recliner in the living room.
She
didn’t see
her
father.
She
tiptoed up the stairs
,
grinn
ing
softly
,
because
her mother hadn’t
notice
d
her come in.
Her evil eyes
had been
glued
to
the man preaching on the television.
Her
heart was still heavy but
her
walk became lighter with each step
she
took.
Now, if the single strand of
BrookLyn’s
hair that
Gabby
had placed in the doorjamb was still there, it meant no one had been in the room since she had left. BrookLyn crossed her fingers as she crept down the hall.

She didn’t want to turn on the hall light so she opened the cell phone and shone the light near the door handle.
Yes!
The strand of hair was still there. God had smiled on her for once, keeping her mother away from her room for a change.

With absolute relief, she
fell across the bed
,
hanging over the side as blood rushed to
her
head.
She
needed to rest a little.
She
had to go to school tomorrow
,
and
her
head was spinning from all
she
had been through this weekend.
Her room was as dark as Gabby’s was bright. It was
a straw
-
yellow
room
,
but the abus
e that always occurred here kept its brightness from being seen.
It
often
felt as gray as her mood usually was.

BrookLyn
had never been with anyone in an intimate way
,
never held hands with a boy
,
never even
one
look in
her
direction except to make fun of
her
at school.
Somebody was always calling
her
a nerd, knocking
her
books on the floor or blocking
her
path.
She
had never been treated as nice as
Gabby
treated
her
.

If it felt so good, why did it also feel so bad?

BrookLyn
didn’t know how to feel about the possibility of dating a girl. All of this, the weekend, the kissing and touching, and her questions were a lot to digest. It was more than
her
overwhelmed eighteen-year-old mind could handle. What
she had
felt this weekend
she
never knew even existed.
She
didn’t really know that two women could be more than friends.
She
didn’t know if it was right or wrong
,
but
she
kn
ew that
what
she
felt was real.
BrookLyn
couldn’t deny that
her
heart beat differently when
Gabby
held
her
in her arms.

She
lay on the bed thinking about Gabby
. As BrookLyn began to drift off, she heard a shuffle
in the hallway
. Was her
mother standing outside
her
bedroom door
hoping to come in and find something she could distract BrookLyn’s father with tonight
?
BrookLyn almost thought she
felt the heat from her
mother’s
breath just as
she
drifted off to sleep
. She
was too tired to even care.

***

As
BrookLyn woke
up
from a much-needed power nap, she
felt
her
mother’s presence on the other side
of
the
door again.
Had she stood there while I slept
?

Then a loud deep bellow
came
from downstairs. It was
her
father calling out to
her
mother. “
Evelyn
!
Come,”
he yelled.

“Yes, John. Coming.” Her mother’s voice resonated with so much anxiety that
BrookLyn could almost feel
it
race under
her bedroom
door and
flow
into
her
room. For
now,
BrookLyn
would
be safe. It was her
mother’s
turn to be afraid.

The sound of
their muffled voices
crept up the stairs.
What a life
. There was always so much yelling and fear in this house. As much as
Gabby
wanted to, how could
she protect
BrookLyn
from
her
parents
?
How
w
ould
they
even find a way
to spend time
together?

BrookLyn grabbed her journal. She knew she didn’t have a lot of time
,
but wanted to write. She needed to write. When she couldn’t figure things out
,
writing always painted a better picture for her.

She jotted down things about her excursion
,
wonder
ing if her parents knew she was
gone. The hair was still there, she wrote, did that mean they were clueless about her departure? She hoped.
If her father knew
,
she would be made full
y
aware of it
when
he
entered her room growling like a lion.

I
f
BrookLyn’s
parents
found out
about them
, it could put all of her plans at risk
, and she
desperately
wanted to stay on track
.
E
ventually
college would be
t
here.
She
didn’t want
her
parents to keep
her
from leaving
. There was no way she wanted
to rock th
e
already storm
-
battered
boat called home.
BrookLyn
had
much
thinking to do
.

While she was writing, she
remembered something
Tiffany always
said
.
Life is what you make it and living for your parents ain’t no life at all.

Before
BrookLyn had
left her party,
Tiffany had come
clean
,
admitting
that she didn’t live with her parents. She lived with her friends and some cousins.
That made
her choices extremely different.
BrookLyn
basically
had
one choice
—
to
do exactly what
her parents said.
Once I am out of their house I own my choices
,
but not until then.
She put her journal in the bottom of her book bag
hoping it would be safe
.

BrookLyn groaned and got out of bed.
Then she went in the bathroom and
turned on the warm water
to
wash
her
face.
As
she
looked at
her
self in the mirror,
she repeated the words her school counselor had said to her once.
“You
r
circumstances don’t define who you are. You can rise up from what you were born into no matter what it is.”