Unwritten: The Brooklyn Pieper Story (continued)

Disclaimer: all characters in this short story are fictional/creations of my own imagination. Sights and locations are based on real cities/towns/National Parks located in the Western United States.

The Book (Again)

William Gibson wasn’t the only person to offer Brooklyn a job in the ensuing days. Edward Mattheson flew out to Nevada to personally check on Brooklyn’s status. He was relieved to see her healthy and well in recovery, so relieved, he offered her a job. Head of Boston FBI’s Organized Crime division or any division she desired.

Randy Jones called to make sure Brooklyn was ok too. The call was innocent enough, Brooklyn thought, but Randy closed by saying Brooklyn always had a place with the Marshals. They were still trying to replace Declan, after all.

Then, there was everyone else. Brooklyn was an overnight sensation, both in the Bureau and with the media. Everyone who was anyone wanted to talk to her. Her phone was flooded with messages from representatives at the Denver, LA, Phoenix, New York and Washington field offices, all of them bartering for Brooklyn’s services. Those calls didn’t compare to the dozens of voicemails from reporters and journalists. Within a few short hours, Brooklyn was a media darling. Her tragedy was a modern journalist’s dream, the perfect click bait for true crime lovers, hopeless romantics and scorned women alike. She was both a hero and a savior who rid the world of an awful man while losing all her loved ones in the process.

It was a story ripe for telling. Brooklyn just wasn’t sure she wanted to tell it.

By the end of the third day, the sound of a ringing phone sickened Brooklyn. Everyone wanted to know what came next for Brooklyn. The pestering journalists, FBI agents, Skye and Jackson. They all wanted to know Brooklyn’s plans moving forward. What would she do? Would she stay with the FBI? Would she join the Park Rangers, uphold her father’s legacy? Would she become a U.S. Marshal to honor the dead fiancee? Would she take the job with the BAU and leave Boston all together?

Would she become a hermit? Would she recover from the trauma and grow into the FBI’s next starlet? Would she join the private sector? Become a consultant?

Brooklyn didn’t know. She didn’t have those answers.

“Ugh,” Brooklyn threw her phone at the wall, secretly hoping it shattered into a million pieces. A reporter friend from Boston was calling her for the fourth time that day, hoping for an inside scoop on her battle with McGinty.

Jackson startled, following the path of Brooklyn’s phone with wide eyes. He was Brooklyn’s lone visitor that evening. Skye was back at the hotel, checking in with her family and figuring out logistics for the weekend. After three days of badgering, Brooklyn gave in and agreed to let Skye’s husband and three kids visit. According to Skye, the kids missed their Auntie Brooklyn and wanted to make sure she was ok.

“Wow.” Jackson’s words were drowned out by the thunking of Brooklyn’s phone against the deeply tanned wall. There was no visible damage, as far as Brooklyn could tell, but it was only a matter of time. She couldn’t even use her dominant arm yet. “That was aggressive.”

Brooklyn sighed and dramatically dropped her head back into the pillows. Like most days, she wanted to scream nonsense into the oblivion, but like always, she kept her frustrations in check, instead opting for a low growl.

“I just want it to stop buzzing,” Brooklyn spoke through gritted teeth. Somehow, the vibrator on her phone seemed louder than her customized ringtone. “Is that so much to ask?”

With the agility of a child, Jackson jumped off the bed and rushed to the other side of the room, heading straight for the phone’s new resting place. At times, Brooklyn was confounded by her friend. Jackson was a large human being, like NFL linebacker sized, yet he possessed the grace of a dancer, the quickness of a hockey player and the brain of a neurological surgeon.

“There,” Jackson proudly held up Brooklyn’s phone, the screen as black as the protective case around it. “It’s not buzzing anymore.”

Brooklyn smiled as Jackson rejoined her on the bed. The sound of crunching plastic filled the room as he lowered his gigantic body, struggling to find a comfortable landing spot. Brooklyn scootched as far to the left as possible, trying to give Jackson room, but it was to no avail. A part of him was teetering off the side, hovering three feet in the air.

“What are you gonna do Jackson?” Brooklyn asked once her friend was settled. For the past few days, Jackson’s phone was almost as busy as Brooklyn’s.

“I don’t know,” Jackson shrugged and casually looked down at Brooklyn. “We always said Boston was temporary.”

“True.” Brooklyn did not request her placement in Boston. All her preferred field offices were actually on the west coast. Denver, Salt Lake, La Vegas were her top three, and Brooklyn was sure one of them would be her placement. It came as a shock when she was informed she was being placed in Boston and in the Organized Crime Unit, on special request of Agent Hubert Boss.

Emotions and memories hit Brooklyn from all sides. She remembered the initial confusion at the confusion but the excitement that shortly followed. A high ranking, experienced and respected agent wanted Brooklyn in his unit. Jackson too. Brooklyn was honored, and when she was placed with Lancaster, determined to make both him and Boss proud.

Now, she wondered if there was more to it.

“I just.” Frustration bubbled in Brooklyn again. She was the woman with the answer, the witty comeback and classic retort. She was prepared for any and all situations. Life continuously threw her for a loop, but she always came out on top. Always pushed back. Always knew what came next.

Now her world seemed shattered. The books revealed too much. The FBI lost its glimmer and shine. It was an organization rooted in corruption, tarnished like everything else in Brooklyn’s life.

“Hey,” Jackson wrapped his arm around Brooklyn’s shoulders, pulling her into his chest. A familiar, comfortable warmth spread through Brooklyn’s body as she relaxed. Tension flowed out of her, as though Jackson was pulling it away. “You’ll figure it out. Maybe not today. Maybe not next week, but you will. You always do.”

“I’m not so sure this time.” Brooklyn’s voice was small, sheeping, as she retreated back to her childlike state.

“Then I’ll help.” Brooklyn’s shoulders pivoted against her will, her head popping up to look Jackson in the eye. “Life wouldn’t be much fun without you Brooke.”

Brooklyn smiled and punched her friend in the shoulder, “You should just quit the FBI and be my personal assistant. I am a famous celebrity after all.”

The two of them settled into a comfortable conversation until Olga showed up to kick Jackson out. Not even his natural charm could win over the stingy night nurse, who was clearly well versed in the tactics of well-minded children. Somewhere in her late fifties to early sixties, Olga ran a tight ship but seemingly had a soft spot when it came to Brooklyn. Olga often allowed extended visiting hours for Skye and Jackson but was quick to kick out any intruders.

“That Jackson is a troublemaker,” Olga commented with a huff once Jackson left the room, though a smile was on her face as she spoke. She helped Brooklyn through her nightly routine, tending to her bandages and allowing her a quick walk around the room. No shower though. Brooklyn craved a shower more than she craved certain foods, but at least she got the occasional sponge bath.

“Alright sweetheart, how much pain are you feeling today?” Olga plumped the last pillow and turned her attention to the smorgasbord of medications that needed administering.

“Actually Olga,” Brooklyn spoke quickly, hoping to get the words out before Olga administered the morphine. “Do you think we could wait a while before the meds? I was hoping to read.”

A surprised look registered on Olga’s face, her eyes glancing at the ornate book on the bedside table. For three days, Brooklyn did all she could to avoid the book, refusing to open its cover or acknowledge its existence.

“Of course.” Olga handed Brooklyn two tiny plastic cups, one filled with water, the other two generic painkillers. “You know how to get a hold of me.”

With a skilled hand, Brooklyn downed the pills and water in one fluid motion. Satisfied, Olga left Brooklyn in the room with nothing more than her thoughts. They weren’t exactly the greatest companions. Brooklyn’s focus was splintered, her mind constantly wandering back to the question.

What comes next?

Brooklyn didn’t know, but she realized someone did. The author. The novel, which somehow seemed both thicker and heavier. The book had the answer. Brooklyn was sure of it.

So she picked it up from the table and started to read.

The Final Chapter

“What?!”

Brooklyn slammed the leather covers together and cocked her arm, tempted to throw to the other side of the room. Brooklyn respected the written word too much to do so, but the urge to actually throw the book was very strong.

“Brooklyn!” Skye hurtled into the room, nearly sending a splatter of coffee into the opposite wall. “Is everything ok?”

Color burned in Brooklyn’s cheeks, her embarrassment obvious. Brooklyn read through the night, oblivious to the setting and rising of the outside sun. Her nose was stuck in a book, searching for answers to the damn questions that followed her like a plague.

“Cheese and rice Skye, I’m fine.” Brooklyn reassured her friend, holding the book as high as she could. “I was just reading.”

The strangest thing happened. For nearly five days, Brooklyn encountered Skye the mother rather than Skye the best friend. She gave the nurses a run for their money as she tended to Brooklyn’s injuries, eased her pain with morphine and fed Brooklyn every meal. It was enough to drive Brooklyn man.

That Skye wasn’t the one standing in the hospital room, coffee cup tilted, jacket half off her shoulders. Skye the teenager, the best friend, the instigator, stood on the other side of Brooklyn’s bed, her cheeks puffed and red from the strain of holding back laughter.

Eventually she couldn’t endure it anymore. A shrill snicker rose from Skye’s throat and escaped in a fluttering shriek and long snort.

“What?” A dazed look glossed over Brooklyn’s face as she watched her friend descend into fits of giggles. “What is so funny?”

“Nothing.” A fit of laughter shook through Skye as water pooled from her eyes. She steadied herself to wipe away the tears, before turning her attention back to Brooklyn. “What, uh, what was the book about?”

Brooklyn watched as her friend attempted to settle down with little success. If it was an attempt to placate Brooklyn’s mood, it was working with minimal success. Skye coughed, not once but twice, to suppress the laughter before gesturing for Brooklyn to answer with a simple raised eyebrow.

Brooklyn shrugged, “It’s historical fiction I think. I don’t know, I found it at a library on vacation.”

A stern, sarcastic look occupied Skye’s face, “If I ask you where you found the book, will you tell me what it’s about? Brooklyn ignored her friend’s sarcastic comment, “Fine. It’s about this woman with a perfect life. Perfect family. Perfect boyfriend. Perfect job. Literally, everything is perfect and then one day, bam! Everyone but the woman dies, victims of a mass murderer.”

Brooklyn paused to gauge her friend’s reaction. Skye just stood at the edge of the bed stoically, her expression completely neutral. She was listening, processing, and thinking, which is why she was one of the top agents in the FBI’s Safe Trails task force.

With no clear reaction from Skye, Brooklyn pressed on with her abridged tale, “The woman becomes an assassin, vowing her avenge her family’s death.”

“Sounds exciting,” Skye finally offered, though her voice was as neutral as her face. “Definitely a book you, of all people, would find on vacation.”

“Yeah well, it had a shitty ending.” Malice laced Brooklyn’s tone, her frustration coming to a head. “It’s like it didn’t even have one!”

A small, quiet chuckle broke through Skye’s silence, breaking the revere, “Did she not get her revenge?”

“No she did.”

“Then what is the problem?”

“There was no closure,” Brooklyn whined. “It was ambiguous. Did she continue killing? Did she stay an assassin? Or did she move on? Do something else with her life? I don’t know. The book ended with her reading a book.”

Skye sipped her coffee, sass pooling out of every pore in her body. Again, she cleared her throat and distorted her face, a futile attempt to hide another burst of laughter.

“What?”

Skye set the coffee down on a nearby cart, “It’s just ironic is all.”

“What?” An exasperated sigh of frustration was all Brooklyn could muster as Skye just stood there with an amused work on her face.

“Oh come on, don’t tell me you see the parallels.” Skye moved and sat in the chair next to Brooklyn’s bed, “A character turning to a book in her time of need, just like you.” Brooklyn scoffed, “I don’t do that.”

“Brooklyn,” Skye rolled her eyes and lolled her head in a similar motion. “When Sokka died you read all seven Harry Potter books in three days! You read the first four in less than twenty-four hours, and the only reason you didn’t finish the entire series was because your dad made you go to school the second day.”

“That was a…”

“And what about when Sam was murdered?” Skye pressed on, ignoring Brooklyn’s interjection. Her tone, though, changed. It was harder and far more aggressive, the giggles a far off distant memory. “You went back to school. You spent three years reading about criminals. Studying them. Trying to think like them. Looking for an answer in your textbooks.”

“My dad died Skye,” Brooklyn’s voice rose as she struggled to get her emotions in check. “What was I supposed to do? Become a Park Ranger and pretend it never happened?”

“Of course not, Brooklyn.” Skye ran her hair through her hand, her frustration matching Brooklyn’s. “But you disappeared. I didn’t see or hear from you for a year, and when you came back, it was like I was talking to a ghost.”

“I had to get away Skye.”

“But where did you go?” Ten years of worry spilled out of Skye in multiple forms, including tears and tremors. “Where the hell did you go for the year Brooklyn? Cause it sure as hell wasn’t Colorado or Arizona. It wasn’t Quantico because that’s where I was.”

Brooklyn let out a small sob, “Lost Skye. I was lost.”

The room went silent, the only sound an occasional solemn hiccup or sniffle. Brooklyn and Skye bickered often in their youth, a byproduct of overused sarcasm and sass, but it was never serious. Their fights were immature and stupid, and the only screaming match they every got into was over Parker Allenton. This fight was new territory. It was the first time Brooklyn fully lowered her walls, allowing Skye to see her shattered, broken outer shell.

Brooklyn was truly vulnerable. The only other person to see her vulnerability was Declan. Brooklyn worked to ensure Jackson never really saw it, and Skye caught glimpses but never knew its depth. Not until now.

Skye didn’t falter. She didn’t grimace and shirk away in horror. Instead, Skye jumped onto Brooklyn’s bed and pulled her into a hug, just like she did when they were teenagers.

“I’m here Brooklyn.” Tingling, comforting sensations moved through Brooklyn’s body as Skye ran her fingers through Brooklyn’s blonde hair. “I always will be.”

Brooklyn cried until she ran out of tears. Her body shook and heaved as six months of stress, anxiety and depression left her body. Skye never left. In that moment, she served as both Brooklyn’s best friend and her mother, determined to hold the broken woman in her arms as long as necessary. As long as it took for Brooklyn to remember she wasn’t alone, and she was loved.

“Why did you read that book?” Brooklyn’s body was still by the time Skye spoke, her voice light and curious amidst the lingering sadness.

Brooklyn sniffled and gave a noncommittal shrug, “Don’t know. I guess I was looking for answers.”

Skye gave Brooklyn a sideways glance, “And you thought you’d find them in a book about a female assassin?”

It was more complicated than that, but Brooklyn kept her mouth shut. No need to confirm her insanity at that moment, not when she felt somewhat healed.

“You know, that would be pretty tragic.”

“What would be?” Brooklyn tilted her head, examining her friend. Skye wasn’t in the Nevada hospital though. Not really. She was far off, lost in a prolific, philosophical thought, and Brooklyn needed to just wait it out.

“If we had no say in our lives,” Skye started, staring out the window. “Like, if there was some author who dictated our entire lives by writing it in some book.”

“But if you found the book, the one about your life” Brooklyn argued, her gaze resting briefly on her own novel, “wouldn’t you want to know the ending?”

Skye vigorously shook her head, “No.”

“But you could avoid so much,” Brooklyn continued, her voice rising to a whine. “The heartbreak? The terror? The pain? It would be like having a cheat code.”

“A cheat code doesn’t come free Brooklyn,” Skye’s voice grew dark and cold as though she was issuing a warning. “Is it worth losing those years with Parker and Declan? Is it worth risking those memories?”

Brooklyn couldn’t answer. Once again, she was rendered speechless by Skye’s calm, rational intellect. It almost felt like they were back in high school, Skye and Brooklyn arguing with each other through term papers and assignments, only this time, the stakes felt higher somehow.

“Knowing the ending just makes you miserable,” Skye rationalized. “It changes things anyway. You’d live your life differently if you knew what came next.”

Brooklyn didn’t respond. She simply sat there contemplating Skye’s words, her head resting gently on her friend’s shoulder.

“Maybe that was the point of the book.” Skye mused, not really talking to anyone in particular. “Our lives aren’t set in stone. Our stories are still being written. Day by day. Year by year. We just add more chapters.”

The words hung in the air, almost visible in Brooklyn’s mind. Stories were just words combined into sentences built into paragraphs that somehow, some way made sense. They were carefully crafted and constructed by someone, much like life.

Much like her life.

The image of Susannah’s thin book popped into Brooklyn’s memory. It seemingly ended so definitively, so nicely, Susannah achieving the perfect happy ending. But what if that was only the beginning? What if that was only part of Susannah’s story? The part where she discovered herself, her true self, not the person she desperately tried to be for her mother. There was no epilogue. No explanation for what happened next. No wedding, family or children, the type of epilogue Brooklyn expected.

What if Susannah’s story wasn’t finished? Just like her own.

Brooklyn’s eyes found the book at the edge of the bed. She remembered how it weighed down against her hand, seemingly thicker than it was in the library. The type in the final chapter gleaned in the room’s light, the letters slick and sheen, as though they were freshly printed. The pages themselves were a brighter cream than the others, as though they were an addition. The latest chapter in the life of Brooklyn Pieper.

Skye’s subtle snores reached Brooklyn’s ear as she came to her epiphany. She didn’t understand it. She couldn’t. There was no logical explanation for any of it, and yet, somehow Brooklyn knew it was true. The book ended where it did because it wasn’t finished yet. Brooklyn was the author, and she herself wasn’t finished. There were too many years to live, too many chapters to be added.

Brooklyn’s past was documented.

Her future was still unwritten.