Somewhere Out There(35)
“Faker,” Lily said, with contempt. A moment later, Brooke felt her covers being stripped off her body. She slept in a tank top and a pair of underwear; the cold air in the room pinched at her exposed skin.
“Hey!” Brooke yelled, and she leapt up, tackling Lily by pushing her shoulder into the other girl’s waist. They both ended up on the hardwood floor, wrestling, until Brooke grabbed Lily’s thin, wet hair, yanking it as hard as she could.
Lily screamed, and Jessica appeared almost instantly, attempting to tear the two of them apart. “What’s going on?” Jessica demanded when she was finally able to separate them. She stood between the two girls, staring at Brooke as she spoke, making it clear who she assumed was the instigator.
Brooke’s chest heaved, and she watched as Lily’s usually pale pink complexion turned tomato red while she told Jessica that Brooke had tackled her for no reason. “She pushed me over! And pulled my hair!”
“Did you do that, Brooke?” Jessica asked.
“She pulled my covers off first!” Brooke said, shooting a hateful look at Lily. “I told her I didn’t feel good! I might have pneumonia!”
“You’re a liar!” Lily whimpered through her tears.
“I don’t care if you felt bad or not,” Jessica said. “This is unacceptable behavior. Do you understand me, Brooke? I won’t have it.”
“I don’t have to do anything you say!” Brooke screeched.
“Oh, yes you do,” Jessica said. “As long as you’re living here, you’ll follow our rules.”
“I don’t even want to live here!” Brooke yelled. “I want my mom!”
“Too bad!” Lily taunted. “Your mom doesn’t want you!”
As soon as Lily spoke the words, Brooke felt as though her heart had exploded, breaking up into a million pieces. She wanted to tear Lily into shreds. A hot, primal feeling took her over, and she bent her fingers, clawing at Jessica to get away.
Jessica cringed and cried out, letting go of her hold on Brooke’s wrist, then pressed a hand over the spot where Brooke had scratched her arm. Brooke looked at her fingernails and saw that she had drawn blood. Jessica lifted her hand and saw this, too, and as she stared at Brooke, her jaw dropped.
Brooke trembled, wanting to cry. She wanted to tell Jessica and Lily that she didn’t know what was wrong with her—that she was sorry for all the bad things she’d done. But instead, she crawled back into bed, creating a tent with the covers, where she stayed as Lily got dressed and left for school. Not long after she was gone, through the thin walls, Brooke heard Jessica talking on the phone, but she couldn’t really hear what was being said or to whom she was speaking. After she hung up, Jessica came back into the bedroom. “Are you hungry?” she asked, but Brooke stayed silent. She felt the mattress sink as Jessica sat down and attempted to pull the blankets off.
“Just leave me alone!” Brooke screamed, holding the covers down around her head. “Stop touching me! I don’t want you to touch me!” Her skin hurt, worse than the times Scott had spanked her.
Jessica didn’t say another word. Instead, she simply left the room. Brooke felt bad for being so rude. Jessica was way better than some of the foster mothers Brooke had heard stories about from the other children at Hillcrest—mothers who put locks on the refrigerator and cupboards so the kids wouldn’t eat too much food. She was better than the single woman Brooke had lived with for six months the previous year, who told Brooke that it was her job to clean the cat box and do all the laundry as part of her “rent”; better than the older couple who’d taken her in right after Natalie was adopted and ended up sending her back to Hillcrest after only a few weeks, saying that they’d made a mistake in taking on another foster child when they already had three. Jessica might have punished her, Scott might have spanked her, but hadn’t she deserved it, every time?
If Brooke was honest with herself, there were moments when she liked living with Jessica and Scott. She liked playing Uno with them on Friday nights and having chocolate chip pancakes every Sunday morning. She even liked lounging on the couch and watching Scooby-Doo or Bugs Bunny with Lily after they got home from school. But as soon as she found herself feeling the tiniest bit content, she was overwhelmed with guilt. She worried it would make her mother feel bad if she knew that Brooke was happy living with other people.
Still, Brooke stayed in her room that entire morning, rising only when she had to use the bathroom. She didn’t eat, she didn’t say another word to Jessica, who again had been talking on the phone in a low voice. The only thing Brooke heard her say was “She’s a total hellion!” and she knew that Jessica could only be talking about her.
Scott came home from work early, around noon, and a couple of hours after that, before Lily got back from school, Gina arrived and told Brooke in a quiet tone that it was time to pack her things. Brooke thought about Lily discovering that she was gone, and she wondered if the older girl might miss her. Probably not, with how horrible Brooke had been to her most of the time. She wondered if Jessica and Scott would find another little girl to foster and maybe adopt—a girl who didn’t scream and yell and hurt other people.
“What are we going to do with you?” Gina said as they drove away from Jessica and Scott’s house. She looked in the rearview mirror at Brooke, who was staring out the window. “Did you hear me, honey? What can I do to help you?”