Brooke (17 page)

Peter leaned forward to kiss me on the forehead. “Good-bye, Brooke,” he said. “Good luck.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, and walked down to the car. When I looked back, Peter was still standing in the doorway. The breeze lifted his hair. He raised his hand, and then, as if hearing himself paged, he turned quickly and went back inside.

We drove off. The driver tried to make conversation, but I wouldn't answer any questions, and soon I was riding in silence, listening to my own thoughts. A little less than two hours later, we pulled up in front of the group foster home, a place named the Lakewood House. It was a very large
two-story house of gray clapboard with a wraparound porch. I realized it was very quiet because all of the children were probably at school. The driver began to unload my luggage just as a tall man with dark hair that fell over his forehead came around the corner. He had a pickax over his shoulder and his shirt off. His shoulders were thick with muscle, as were his long arms. His hands looked like steel vises. The fingers easily held the tool when he paused to swing it down.

“Louise!” he shouted. He stared at me. “Louise!” he screamed again, this time followed with striking the side of the building with the flat side of the pickax. I imagined it must have shaken the building and everything inside.

Suddenly, the front door opened, and a tall brunette with shoulder-length hair came hurrying out. She looked about fifty, with soft wrinkles on the sides of her eyes and over her upper lip, wrinkles that would have given Pamela the heart attack she claimed I had almost given her. Louise had young, vibrant-looking, friendly blue eyes, however.

“Sure she brought enough?” the big man asked, nodding at my pile of suitcases and bags.

“We'll find a place for everything,” Louise assured me.

“Not in the room she has,” he corrected.

“We'll figure it out. Hi, honey. My name's Louise. This is my husband, Gordon. He looks after the place. Did you have a long ride?”

“No,” I said.

“She wouldn't feel a long ride in a car like that, anyway,” Gordon said, drawing closer. He stood gazing at me as he wiped his hands on his pants.

“You're lucky. You have your own room. You don't need to share at the moment, but Gordon's right. There's not enough closet space for all this,” Louise said, looking at the luggage.

The driver slammed the trunk.

“What'd ya get for something like this?” Gordon asked him.

“A hundred and fifty,” the driver answered quietly.

“Maybe I oughtta go into the limo business,” Gordon muttered.

“Be my guest,” the driver said, and got into the car. We didn't say good-bye since we never really said hello. I didn't even know his name, and I doubted if he knew mine.

“Who's supposed to carry all this inside?” Gordon asked.

“I can do it myself,” I said. “Don't worry about space. There's a lot I don't want.”

He stared at me with a sharpness and then smiled. “Independent, huh?” he asked.

“Let's get her settled in first, Gordon. Then we'll all get to know each other.”

“Can't wait,” Gordon said, and sauntered off toward the garage.

“Gordon's not used to having children around the house,” Louise explained. “We ran this as a prime tourist resort. But that was before the resort business began to suffer,” she continued, and explained
her history and the building's as we took in some of my things and I settled in my room. Then she showed me around the house, where the dining room was, the game room, the kitchen, explaining what went on in each during the heyday of the resort period. There were pictures on the walls of guests and employees. I did think it was interesting and almost felt as if I had come to a hotel.

But that was a feeling that wouldn't last long.

“I'll get you into school tomorrow,” Louise promised. “For now, why don't you rest and wait for the others to come home? You'll make lots of friends here,” she predicted.

I didn't say anything. The overcast sky was beginning to break up so that patches of blue were visible here and there. The breeze was still strong but warm. I walked the grounds and sat at the top of a small hill, looking down at the lake. There were interesting, beautiful birds to watch. I was so deep in my thoughts, I almost didn't hear the school bus arrive and the voices of other children. I smiled at the sight of them. The house seemed to come alive when they entered, as if it was a big, loving mother opening its arms.

Soon, some curious children came looking for me. I imagined Louise had told them. A small girl with beautiful gold hair and a face that belonged on a doll walked behind an older, taller girl with thick glasses who carried a textbook and notebook. They paused a few feet from me.

“Louise said you just arrived,” the girl with the glasses began. “I'm Crystal. This is Janet Taylor.
You can think of us as your welcoming committee,” she added dryly.

I laughed.

They drew closer.

“My name's Brooke,” I said.

“This is actually my favorite spot,” Crystal said. “As long as the weather's good, I like to start my homework here.”

I nodded and gazed at Janet, who seemed so shy she had to sneak looks at me. I smiled at her, and slowly she smiled back. Then they sat, and the three of us looked out at the lake. The sun was breaking out now, and its rays felt wonderful on my face. It was washing away all the false faces I had worn.

Crystal and Janet stared at me but remained quiet. I knew they had been through the system. We were like soldiers who had fought similar wars and knew that we didn't have to rush to get to know each other. We would have lots of time, because all the promises of new homes that had been made to us would fade in the days to come.

I didn't care. I couldn't think about that now. I was looking beyond the lake.

I could hear all the voices, the cheers, and the screams. I was up at the plate, looking at the pitcher and then back at Coach Grossbard. She closed her eyes as if in prayer and then opened them and smiled. I took a deep breath and dug in.

Almost as soon as I had hit that ball, I knew it was going to be a home run. It carried my hope with
it as it soared higher and higher. I didn't care if I forgot everything else, lost all my recent memories, as long as I could close my eyes and relive that moment.

As long as I could come around those bases toward home.

POCKET BOOKS
PROUDLY PRESENTS

RAVEN

V.C. ANDREWS
^:

The fourth book in the
exciting
Orphans
series.

Coming soon in paperback

from Pocket Books.

The following is a preview of
Raven. . . .

 

“I
never asked to be born,” I threw back at my mother when she complained about all the trouble I had caused her from the day I was born. The school had called and the truancy officer had threatened to take Mama to court if I stayed home one more time. I hated my school. It was a hive of snobs buzzing around this queen bee or that and threatening to sting me if I so much as tried to enter their precious little social circles. My classes were so big, most of my teachers didn't even know I existed anyway! If it wasn't for the new automated homeroom cards, no one would have known that I hadn't gone to school. Mama kicked the refrigerator door closed with her bare foot and slapped a bottle of beer down so hard on the counter that it almost shattered. She tore off the cap with her opener and stared at me, her eyes bloodshot. The truancy officer's phone call had jolted her out of a dead sleep. She brought the bottle to her lips and sucked on it, the muscles in her thin neck
pulsating with the effort to get as much down her throat as she could in one gulp. Then she glared at me again. I saw she had a scraped elbow and a bruise on the bottom of her right forearm.

We were having one of those Indian summers. The temperature had reached ninety and it was nearly October twenty-first. Mama's hair, just as black as mine, hung limply over her cheeks. Her bangs were too long and uneven. She pushed her lower lip out and blew up to sweep the strands out of her eyes. Once, she had been a very pretty woman, with eyes that glittered like black pearls. She had a richly dark complexion, distinct, high cheekbones and perfect facial features. Women shot silicone into their lips to get the shape and fullness that Mama's had naturally. I used to be flattered when people compared me to her in those days. All I ever dreamed of being was as pretty as my mother.

Now, I pretended I wasn't even related to her. Sometimes, I pretended she wasn't even there.

“How am I supposed to scratch out a living and watch a twelve-year-old, too? They should be giving me medals, not threats.”

Mama's way of scratching out a living was working as a barmaid at a dump called Charlie Boy's in Newburg, New York. Some nights she didn't come home until nearly four in the morning, long after the bar had closed. If she wasn't drunk, she was high on something and would go stumbling around our one-bedroom apartment, knocking into furniture and dropping things.

I slept on the pullout couch, so I usually woke up or heard her, but I always pretended I was still asleep. I
hated talking to her when she was in that condition. Sometimes I could smell her before I heard her. It was as if she had soaked her clothing in whiskey and beer.

Mama looked much older than her thirty-one years now. She had dark shadows under her eyes and wrinkles that looked like lines drawn with an eyebrow pencil at the corners. Her rich complexion had turned into a pasty, pale yellow, and her once silky hair looked like a mop made of piano wire. It was streaked with premature gray strands and always looked dirty and stringy to me.

Mama smoked and drank and didn't seem to care what man she went out with as long as he was willing to pay for what she wanted. I stopped keeping track of their names. Their faces had begun to merge into one, their red eyes peering at me with vague interest. Usually, I was just as much a surprise to them as they were to me.

“You never said you had a daughter,” most would remark.

Mama would shrug and reply, “Oh, didn't I? Well, I do. You have a problem with that?”

Some didn't say anything; some said no or shook their heads and laughed.

“You're the one with the problem,” one man told her. That put her into a tirade about my father.

We rarely talked about him. Mama would only say that he was a handsome Latino, but a disappointment when it came to living up to his responsibilities.

“As are most men,” she warned me.

She got me to believe that my real father's promises were like rainbows: beautiful while they lingered in the air, but soon fading until they were only vague
memories. And there was never a pot of gold! He would never come back and he would never send us anything.

As long as I could remember, we lived in this small apartment in a building that looked like a strong wind could knock it over. The walls in the corridors were chipped and gouged in places as if some maddened creature had tried to dig its way out. The outside walls were scarred with graffiti and the walkway was shattered so that there was just dirt in many sections where cement had once been. The small patch of lawn between the house and the street had turned sour years ago. The grass was a sickly pale green and there was so much garbage in it, no one could run a lawnmover over it.

The sinks in our apartment always gave us trouble, dripping or clogging. I couldn't even guess at how many times the toilet overflowed. The tub drain was surrounded by rust, and the shower dripped and usually ran out of hot water before I could finish or wash my hair. I know we had lots of mice because I was always finding their droppings in drawers or under dressers and tables. Sometimes, I could hear them scurrying about, and a few times I saw one before it scurried under a piece of furniture. We put out traps and caught a couple, but for every one we trapped, there were ten to take its place.

Mama was always promising to get us out. A new apartment was just around the corner, just as soon as she saved another hundred for the deposit. But I knew that if she did get any spare money, she would spend it on whiskey, beer or pot. One of her new boyfriends introduced her to cocaine and she had some of that occasionally, but usually it was too expensive for her.

We had a television set that often lost its picture. I could get it back sometimes by knocking it hard on the side. Sometimes, mama received a welfare check. I never understood why she did or didn't. She cursed the system and complained when there wasn't a check. If I got to it first, I would cash it and get us some good groceries and some clothes for myself. If I didn't, she hid it or doled out some money to me in small dribs and drabs and I had to make do with it.

I knew that other kids my age would steal what they couldn't afford, but that wasn't for me. There was a girl in my building, Lila Thomas, who raided malls with some other girls from across town on weekends. She had been caught shoplifting, but she didn't seem afraid of being caught again. She made fun of me all the time because I wouldn't go along. She called me “the Girl Scout” and told everyone I would end up selling cookies for a living.