BrookLyn's Journey (30 page)

“
Wherever you want to go
,”
BrookLyn
said.
“Maybe
your house.”

“Really?
Why?
”

“
B
ecause b
eing with you over there was the safest I have felt in all my life.”

“We’ll
dream-
meet at my house tonight
,
but tomorrow,
maybe Vegas, baby
!
”
Gabby was
jok
ing,
but BrookLyn
hadn’t been
. That was
where she wanted to be.

“All right, I’m out
.
”
Gabby
grabb
ed BrookLyn’s
face
and planted a huge kiss there
. “I love you
, BrookLyn,
and no one, not even your parents can change that.” She
kissed the
necklace
she had given BrookLyn then
turned
and
scurr
ied
back down the tree
.

BrookLyn
leaned her head against the window and
watched
Gabby
walk across
the
yard toward her car.
I miss you already.

Her heart pained in her chest because Gabby had to leave, taking BrookLyn’s only comfort with her. The safety she’d felt just climbed out her window. A crazy kind of love was making her want to do some crazy things too, take chances she never would have
even
dreamed of. She had to
—
her heart wouldn’t let her do different anyway.

She sighed
and turned, placing her back against the wall.
“Ah, my heart just
climbed
out the window
,
”
she whispered softly.

Then her stomach twisted and she
ran into the bathroom and threw up.
She
hadn’t done that in a
while.
When she was sure she was done, BrookLyn
brushed
her
teeth
then
turned to leave the bathroom.
She
caught a glimpse of
her
self in the mirror.
She
stopped
, shook her head
.
“What are you doing
,
BrookLyn? Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

She
had no idea what
she
was doing
—a
ll
she
knew was that
she
was doing it.
She was riding a new kind of rollercoaster. At the top,
it felt good beyond belief
, and then the coaster would plummet into
fear and confusion
that gripped
e
very fiber of
her
being. Th
at
fear sometimes
choked
her
breath away as if
her
father
had his angry hands clenched around her throat again.

Just as
she
lay back down
,
her
mother came bursting into
her
room.
BrookLyn
was annoyed and
she’d
had enough.
Without
thinking of the consequences
, she
sat up and yelled,
directly in her mother’s face.
“Really?”

“What did you say to me?”

“
I’m sleeping. I
do
have school tomorrow.”

“I know you didn’t just yell at me in my house.”
T
he hat
r
e
d
in her eyes
seared through BrookLyn’s fear
.

“I’m trying to sleep.”

“Well, you have all day to sleep tomorrow
,
because you aren’t going to school. It’s a holiday for you.”

She
didn’t deserve it
—
she
knew that. E
ven if Gabby was with
her
earlier.
Even if she had stood her ground just a little. How did that rate
a day of abuse
?

She
had no idea where it came from
,
but
she was on a roll and she couldn’t seem to stop. That rollercoaster was heading downhill and gaining momentum. BrookLyn squared her shoulders
.
“No mother, it’s a holiday for you. When he beats me he leaves you alone. I’m not stupid. I’ve been onto you since I was about seven.”

BrookLyn
could feel her
mother
getting ready to explode. She was ready for battle and
BrookLyn
had just started the war.
Her
mother stood with her fists
balled up at her side. For the first time she looked like she was going to do the hitting. And for the first time
BrookLyn
felt like hitting back. Instead
her mother
turned and walked away
—
she was running off to call him
.
BrookLyn placed
the pillow
over her face
and screamed
.

She
wouldn’t get any rest
tonight
.
No, t
onight was the night
she had to
escape this dungeon.
She
could
already
hear
her
mother
on the phone
spewing lies to
her
father. She was getting him riled up.
She didn’t need to
hear hi
s side
to know
he was getting warmed up to come home to beat
her, BrookLyn
could tell from her
mother’s
responses
.
He
’d
always
threatened
that
if her mother
called him at work
he would
be so angry he could
kill
BrookLyn.
She had
no reason not to
believe him.

She
pushed
her
door closed
then
quietly went into
the
closet
. Her hand searched around
desperately
for the
shoebox
—her salvation
, the
cell phone. It wasn’t there.
BrookLyn
crawled around the
dark
room with
her
heart
thudding loudly
in
her
ears. Then
she
climbed back into bed and searched for it there.
I
f
she
turned the lights on
or made any noise it would alert her mother.
What
am
I going to do?
She
needed
that
phone so
she
could get out of here.

BrookLyn
lay
back and slammed her
head on
the
pillow
out of
frustrat
ion.
She
had to get out of this house
and she
had no way to get to the only place
she felt she’d
be safe.
She wanted to let loose a deep primal scream, but settled for slamming her head
into
the pillow again. This time she hit on something hard. Her
cell phone
!
Her
lifesaver
.
Her ticket off this rollercoaster ride.

She wouldn’t risk talking. Her
mother
might
hear
, so instead she
sent Gabby a text
pleading for
her to come and get
her.

S
he replied
almost instantly
.
“Are you sure?”

“No, but I want to live,”
BrookLyn typed.
She
did
—that’s all she
ever wanted
was
to live a life like other kids
did
.
She
didn’t want to
live in fear
.
She
wanted
to have
friends
over
and go to parties. All
she
ever wanted was a good life
, a regular life
.

Her
mother
was
yelling
.
BrookLyn
typed as
the
tears
blurred her vision.
T
his beating was going to be different.
She
could feel it
. She wasn’t going to wait around to prove herself right
.

“Get packed so we can get you home.
”
Gabby texted.

Yes, home.
Away from this
place
that
was as cold and scary as a haunted abandoned house
—e
verything that bumped at night was real
,
here.
“
Gonna
pack,”
BrookLyn typed.
She
had to move quickly
if she wanted to make it
out of
t
here safely.

“I’ll be on the corner.”

BrookLyn responded and then
grabbed a few pair
s
of jeans, underwear
,
shirts,
and
the clothes that Gabby bought
her. She
fold
ed
them neatly
and
pack
ed
them in a medium
-
sized gym bag.
She
didn’t p
lan on coming back
,
or taking most of
her
hand-me-downs
.

She
quickly but quietly retrieved
her
toiletries
and added
them in
her
book bag along with
her
books.
She
felt
around
the bottom of the bag making sure that
her
journal was
still
in there. It was.

She wouldn’t
go to school tomorrow
.
H
e would come looking for
her
there.

As
she
packed
her
clothes
she
remembered the one time
she had
hid
den
in
her
brother’s room for a day
after he
had already left for college.
She
only came out because
she
had to use the bathroom.
She’d
hid
den
in his closet with a pillow and blanket
and
shivered all night from fear. They didn’t think to look there because
Peyton’s
room was in the attic.
BrookLyn
heard them calling
her
but never
so much as made a squeak.
She
hadn’t gone back up there since that day
, either
.
Her
father told
her
she
’d stay up there forever if
she
ever went up there again.

She
looked around
her
room
,
unsure if this would
really
be the last time
she
’d be in
t
here. As
she
heard
her
mother’s feet coming down the hallway
, BrookLyn
grabbed
her
stuff. It was now or never.
She
tossed
her
bags out of the window
,
heard them hit the ground
,
and hoped
she
didn’t fall down behind them.