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Chapter One
Brooklyn Walsh
December 2000
Saturday — 01:29am
Thetwo-storyhousewasrelatively quiet, but it wasn't a comfortable silence. There was an uneasiness that hung in the air that had become all too familiar over the past couple of years. The only discerning sound that drifted from the kitchen to the bottom of the staircase located in the short hallway was the loud hum of the refrigerator. The strange whine had only gotten louder throughout the week. It was as if the old model refrigerator was announcing its own forthcoming demise, screaming into the silence its appliance death song as it gave out after years of honest and faithful service.
Brook noiselessly stepped onto the hardwood floor as she stared intently at the front door, keeping ahold of the banister with her right hand. She'd heard her brother sneak out about two and a half hours ago, which had been right after their parents had gone to bed.
Jacob hadn't returned home since.
Where could he have gone so late at night?
It wasn't like he had any friends. There had been a time when he'd hung out with Scotty and Daryll, but they'd stopped coming around about the same time that her brother's demeanor had changed two years ago. She'd learned that word in English class, and she liked how it sounded in her head, but not when it was in relation to her brother.
Their parents had finally started to notice the changes in Jacob's life, but she'd overheard them talking one night a couple of months ago. They thought it was simply a phase that he was going through.
They couldn't have been more wrong.
So, so wrong.
Brook had promised her brother that she wouldn't say a word about the time that he'd come home with blood covering both of his hands. She hadn't been a rat then, and she wasn't a rat now. She'd kept their pinky swear, even though she'd known it was wrong to do so. She had also maintained hope that things would return to normal, but Jacob had kept pulling farther and farther away from everyone.
He had basically retreated into his own, lonely little world.
Sally had been the first of Brook's friends to notice that there was something wrong at home after Brook had kept coming up with excuses as to why they needed to stay overnight at her house. No matter how many times that Sally asked why, Brook had resorted to telling white lies and coming up with excuses.
At first, she'd said that her parents were fighting. One time, she'd even used the excuse that they had black mold in the bathroom after hearing something on the news about how it could cause some kind of sickness. Lately, Brook hadn't had to come up with any reason at all. Sally seemed to have given up on changing Brook's mind about where they spent their time when they had their sleepovers.
Brook yawned as she made her way into the kitchen.
It wasn't like Jacob was going to spontaneously turn back into the brother who used to laugh with her while watching sitcoms on Wednesday nights. He rarely even ate dinner at home, claiming that he was going to the library to study or do homework. He never needed to study anything, because he was the type of student who aced everything without so much as the slightest effort. To say that her brother was smart was like saying the Pope was Catholic. It was a monumental understatement. She often wondered exactly how gifted Jacob truly was, and that knowledge made her even more scared of him.
She, on the other hand, had to study for hours the night before for an exam to get a grade even remotely equal to his.
Unfortunately, she would be doing that tomorrow for this week's upcoming midterms they needed to complete before their Christmas vacation. She'd waited so long to say that she was in junior high school, and now she would have given anything to go back a few years when her brother had been himself and she wasn't forced to study so hard for an A- compared to his A+.
Brook couldn't help but shiver as she reached for a glass in the cupboard next to the sink. Her dad liked to set the thermostat a few degrees lower at night, which always meant that the kitchen tile was freezing and the handle on the sink was cold to the touch. It didn't help that there seemed to be a draft coming from the kitchen window.
She quickly filled her glass with water, wondering if she should have heated up some milk in their brand-new microwave. The beep might have awakened her parents, though. She would just hurry back upstairs and climb underneath the covers to chase the chill away.
"You should be in bed."
Brook swung around in surprise.
The glass that she'd been holding slipped from her hand and shattered upon hitting the tiled floor.
Jacob was standing next to the refrigerator. He was only fifteen years old and somehow had grown as tall as their dad. He had the same square jaw, brown wavy hair, and dark brown eyes, yet there was something missing in her brother that her father exuded with every smile…affection.
Maybe it was all emotions that Jacob lacked.
She wasn't quite sure.
The draft of cold air that had washed over her must have come from when Jacob had opened the front door. He wasn't wearing a winter hat, but he was holding a pair of black gloves in his right hand.
She'd been avoiding him lately, and this was the first time that they'd been alone in months. There was a secret part of her that wished her parents would come rushing downstairs to find out what all the commotion had been about, but Jacob didn't seem concerned in the least that they would appear.
