They say there are some places you just can't go back to. The past would be the obvious one but for Brooke Davis it was always her home. There's no place like home, home is where the heart is and that other entire BS was true for Brooke. Although she had left the small North Carolina town of Tree Hill when she was 16, she always knew that that town was the place she called home. It had been over 10 years since Brooke had been ordered out of her mother's house and driven to the airport where she boarded a plane bound for Chicago with her father. She would never forget that night, the devastation she had caused when she came home drunk and confessed all her sins to her mother. It was obviously more than Victoria Davis could take because the next thing Brooke knew, her bags were packed, her parents were screaming at each other and hurling accusations and her mother was kicking both Brooke and her father of the house.
It wasn't the worst decision Victoria had ever made, Brooke had to admit. When she thought back on the last 10 years and what the alternative could have been, Brooke was pretty damn grateful that her Dad hadn't abandoned her like she expected him to and had actually took her with him. Well he hadn't abandoned her in the literal sense, but their relationship didn't improve when they moved to Chicago. He had at least put a roof over her head and paid for home schooling and eventually college. Though she hardly saw him, it seemed to suit them both. He may have got her away from Victoria but she still wasn't his favourite person in the world.
Her one regret, however, was leaving her friends behind. Well, ok, one friend. Peyton Sawyer. Her childhood best friend had been the one constant in her life up until the time she left and it pained Brooke tremendously when she thought about how she had just left in the middle of the night without a word or a goodbye to her best friend. Brooke should have contacted her later to at least let her know she was ok but she just couldn't face the questions that Peyton would have for her. The answers would have been too painful for both of them. She had thought about Peyton often over the last 10 years. Peyton was in fact one of the main reasons that Brooke was, at that moment, driving down a highway toward the picturesque East Coast town of Tree Hill.
A flutter of butterflies in her belly made Brooke feel queasy and not for the first time that day, she wondered if she was making a huge mistake. She had stretched out the drive from her home in Chicago over several days so she would have time to prepare herself for a face to face with the people from her past. I wonder what their lives are like now, she wondered for the thousandth time in 10 years. When Brooke was last in this town, she had been captain of the Tree Hill Ravens Cheer Squad; her best friend had been Peyton Sawyer who had been dating the star of the basketball team, Nathan Scott. When Brooke was last here, she liked to party. A lot. It was one of the reasons Brooke had been so popular; she was a whole lotta of fun, too much fun it seemed, because all that fun, she had got in a whole lotta trouble all those years ago.
It was a clear sunny afternoon that Brooke drove through the main street of Tree Hill, amazed all the changes the town had gone through in the last 10 years. Gone was Karen's Cafe, the squad's old hangout; in its place, a woman's clothing store. The record store across the street where she and Peyton used to spend hours ransacking records every weekend was also gone. (Ok, Peyton would ransack, Brooke would hang out and hit on hot rocker boys that would wander through).
She looked to her right and nudged Sean who was asleep in the passenger seat. They had left the last motel pretty early that morning and she had talked non-stop about Tree Hill for most of the journey so it was no wonder that he had flaked out. He often complained that she talked too much, but she blamed it on his own natural quietness that he couldn't handle being around people who actually talked, especially those who talked for a living, like she did. Sean's usual reaction to her incessant chatter was to roll his eyes and turn up the volume on this iPod, but for this trip, Brooke had stolen and hidden his holiest of treasures which of course, he wasn't one bit happy about. He was just going to have to put up with it though. She had taken her vacation time from work to come down here to reunite and reconnect with the people of Tree Hill. This was important to her and although she hadn't told Sean exactly why they were here, it would be important to him too.