BrookLyn's Journey

Brook
Lyn
’
s
Journey

By

Coffey Brown

Copyright
©
2012 by Stacey L. Pierce

E
Book design by
Bella Media Management

Cover by
Firebird Media Management

Published in
2012
by Stacey Pierce

Book cover model: Rachael S. Ames

Edited by Lisa Dawn Martinez

ISBN: 978-0-9856756-1-5

Publisher’s note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places
,
and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales are entirely coincidental.

This book is also available in print from some online retailers.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without written permission from the
author and
publisher
.

Prologue

Five
-year-old BrookLyn hid under her bed with her ears covered, her brother and sisters were at school and she was all alone, trying to hide from her mother’s loud screams. Her knees knocked with fear and she squeezed them together,
hoping not to pee in her pant
s. Breathing in and out, trying to calm her heartbeat, she was shaking uncontrollably.

It sounded like her father was driving a nail into a board, like when he worked on the house, but it was his fist into her mother. The more he hit her, the louder she became. BrookLyn cringed with every blow.

After what felt like forever, the hitting and the screams
,
finally stopped, but then the whimpering started. She heard the door slam, thinking her father had left the house. Then without warning, she was whisked out from her hiding place. With the swiftness of a burglar, her mother pulled her by her ankles, snatching her from under the bed.

“Why did you write on his walls?”

“It was an accident.”

“No, you were an accident, BrookLyn.”

She didn’t know what it meant, but was sure it wasn’t good. “Mommy, I didn’t mean to.”

“You never do.”

BrookLyn squirmed, trying to break free. Her mother gripped her tighter each time she moved. “You’re hurting me, Mommy.” She begged her to let go, through the thick smell of her mother’s anger and fear.

“If it wasn’t for you children, I could leave him. I can’t—”

Her mother touched BrookLyn’s legs and then looked at her, confused. “Why are you wet?”

BrookLyn was ashamed and unable to move from her grasp. The fear had taken over her little body. She started crying when her mother finally loosened her grip, realizing that she had gone to the bathroom on herself. She rubbed her arms where her mother had squeezed.

Finally, she pulled away completely, running into her sister, Ebonee’s, room for safety. She hid in the closet, lying in a little ball, as small as she could get, hoping it would all be over when she woke up.

But for poor little BrookLyn, it was all just beginning...

Chapter One

BrookLyn
Scott
was looking for a small miracle.
For many kids her age, the task she was
bracing
for would be nothing more than a question. One with a yes or no answer, perhaps a few counter questions first. But for BrookLyn it was so much more.
It was just a party with her friend,
Tiffany
,
from church
.
B
ut b
eing sentenced to a life filled with nothing more than
school, church
,
and choir rehearsal
—the only things her
father felt
she
needed in
her
life
—getting a positive answer would be
a
true
miraculous event
.

S
tuck in a house that
her
older siblings were able to escape
, she
was impatiently waiting
her
turn.
Having
just turned eighteen
, BrookLyn was only a few months away from
graduat
ing
from Pine Bush High School
.

She strode over to her mirror
,
pretending to have the confidence she was going to need to approach her parents about tonight’s party. Most of that fell away when she began to judge the image looking back at her.
BrookLyn
noticed
an old scar on her neck.
I
f her
skin was
d
arker
—
closer to cocoa than tapioca
—
the bruises wouldn’t
need the little bi
t of makeup she sometimes used.

She looked at herself a few more second
s, brushed down her
shoulder
-
length
permed brown
hair,
and sighed
.
She had few
friends at school
, and w
earing her
older sister’s
hand-me-down
clothes
in a time when the other kids were spending hundreds of dollars on a single pair of jeans
,
only further served to make her an
outcast
.
Add
her
4.2 GPA to the mix and
she
was the perfect verbal and physical punching bag
.

Walking down the hall at school was a health hazard for
BrookLyn.
Being tossed into a garbage can was part of a daily ritual that
she
was forced to
endure,
generally after lunch
, all because
they
thought
she
was different.

She’d
never asked to go to a party before because no one
had
ever invit
ed her
.
Her own
cousins never even asked
her
to come to their parties.
Maybe t
hey knew her father would never
let her go
.
She never did anything,
and she wanted that to change
.

She flopped down onto the bed, examined her fingernails and the chewing commenced.
Then she
jumped up
just as quickly,
remembering that she didn’t want to live this mundane life forever. BrookLyn peeked back into the mirror
then
straightened her sister’s old t-shirt, pulling it down to meet her frayed jeans.

BrookLyn had to gather her courage and ask
,
because
Tiffany was the first person to ever
attempt
to include
her
in something
—a
nd
she hung out with the popular kids
.
According to
Tiffany
, most of the kids
that would be at the party
weren’t from Pine Bush High
anyway
, although s
ome of
Tiffany’s
cousins that
BrookLyn
sort of kne
w from church would be there
.

This
wasn’t about
BrookLyn’s
rank among the popular kids improv
ing
, however
.
She
was confident that
she’d
remain at the bottom of the food chain
.
She
just wanted a chance to be in the same place with
these kids,
outside of school.
She
wanted to stand with the
people
that everyone else wanted to be. If
she
could go
,
she
could at least say
that she’d
gone to
one
party while in high school. Isn’t that normal?

But
BrookLyn
was afraid of
her
father
,
never
knowing
what he was going to hit
her
for next. The only thing
she
knew
for sure
was that
she would
get hit
again.
And again.
She
had the pleasure of being bullied in school only to come home and be treated
even worse.
BrookLyn shook her head.
Who wouldn’t want my life? I d
on’t some
times
.

She
stood in
front of her
bathroom mirror practicing to ask
her
mother if
she
could go.
She
’ll
have to run it by him
, she thought
.
It
was something
she
wasn’t allowed to
do.
H
is rule was that
she
had to ask her
mother
and not bother him.
Her
father took the saying
children should be seen and not heard
to another level.

There was a time when BrookLyn would
confide
in
her mother
.
S
he had felt, however briefly, she had at least one parent she could
talk to. But not anymore.

“You can
talk to
me,” her mother
had said countless times
, “
no matter what.
”

Yeah, right.

Somehow after each mother-daughter talk,
BrookLyn
’s father
would viciously
beat her
, telling
her all the things her mother had said to him.
Once
she
realized that her mother was
betraying her,
she started keeping everything to herself.