Sorry there's been such a big delay in the update, I've just been so busy with coursework! Without further ado though, here is chapter 5!
Chapter 5 – Lie in the Sound
I awoke in the morning, eyelids puffy from the night before. I didn't understand any of it, because why now, after all this time would my dad try to talk to me? The saddest thing was he only got in touch with me to find mom. That morning I was dreading school more than I ever had before, but when I got there though, the day actually began to pick up. I hadn't bumped into Lucas yet, and I'd finally decided to take Haley up on her offer of helping me get my grades back up. It wasn't till we finished our first tutoring session though, that I really got a shock.
"Brooke!" I heard Peyton call from behind me, as Haley and I headed to the school parking lot. "Wait up!"
Haley turned around too, flashing a smile at Peyton that, to my surprise, she actually returned. "Hi guys," she breathed. "Brooke, there was something we wanted to ask you about, we need your help."
"We? Sounds interesting," I remarked. "What about?"
Biting her lip, Haley shuffled her feet, staring down at them. "Okay you're starting to worry me, what's going on?"
"Well," Peyton began, linking her arm with mine as Haley took the other side. "One of our friends is moving to Alaska at the weekend to be closer to her grandparents, and well ... she's kind of a cheerleader –"
"No!" I shouted, unhooking my arms and stepping backwards. "No way, I'm not doing that."
"What, Brooke? You used to talk about how much you couldn't wait to be a high school cheerleader! And here's your chance!"
My eyes goggled at Peyton's cheery smile, wondering how on earth she expected me to cheerlead with no experience whatsoever, and there was also the small fact that I didn't even want to cheerlead. When I told this to them though, Haley waved me off.
"It's the same with tutoring," she told me. "You don't want to do something, because you don't know how. Take me, I never wanted to do this either, but when I learned that actually it wasn't that bad, I decided to help the girls out. You know, do them a favour, just like you would be."
"A huge favour," Peyton nodded. "Please Brooke ... pretty please?"
She noticed the determined look in my eyes falter as I considered that maybe cheerleading wouldn't be so bad. I could spend more time with the girls, and perhaps act like a proper teenager for once.
"Yes!" Peyton hissed, steering me back in the direction of the school. "Come on, we're late for training."
Inside the gym I could see the other girls warming up, and I felt the butterflies creep into my stomach. I said I wouldn't be stupid about this, but really, cheerleading? What was I thinking!
"Brooke!" Bevin smiled when she saw me, taking my hand. "I'm so glad you decided to join! Now I promise you, we'll go real slow through the routine to help you out."
I opened my mouth to respond when I heard the distant thud of a basketball getting closer and closer, before the doors slammed open and in bounded the entire basketball team. I could see Lucas chatting to a couple of the other guys, before someone passed him the ball. It was like slow motion, his body arched into the air, his hands lifting above his head as the ball flew straight into the net.
"Nice one Scott!" I heard from one of the team, but I didn't care to turn around and see who it was. All I could concentrate on was Lucas.
"I have a confession to make," Haley whispered in my ear, making me jump.
"Oh yeah?" I asked, turning my back on the basketball team. "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah," she smiled. "Well, apart from the fact that Nathan's still hardly not talking to me, and the only reason I joined this cheerleading team was to be closer to him – that was my confession." I watched her eyes wander behind me and I knew she was thinking about everything that had happened between them.
"I'm not like an expert on any of this," I told her as Bevin called the group around her. "But just give him time, you'd be surprised what it can do."
With a fleeting smile Haley split off from me to get into formation, as I stood there, thinking for what had to be the tenth time in the last five minutes why on earth I was doing this.
"Okay Brooke," Bevin called. "We'll start you off at the back, if you can go and stand next to Theresa?"
Here goes, I thought to myself. Come on Brooke, you can do this.
"You were great," Peyton reassured me on the way home. "I promise. I wouldn't have suggested you do it if I didn't think you could."
I pressed my hand to my forehead, replaying the whole training session in my head. "I don't know Peyton, I screwed up loads of times and I knew everyone was watching!"
"What, as in the basketball team? Don't worry about them; they can't say anything until they actually win us a freaking game this season." She laughed shortly, her tone changing. "Look, I didn't want to bring it up earlier, but have you thought about your dad anymore?"
"Yeah, I have," I told her. "It's not that I don't love him, it's just ... he didn't even call me for me, Peyton. He called me for my mom. And I know I told my dad she was in Florida, but god knows where she really is. It's just wracking me with guilt, that I left without a word and now she could be anywhere."
Pulling over onto the side of the road, Peyton stopped the car. "Brooke, honey," she began, exhaling deeply. "You can't worry about what your mom thinks all the time, if you hadn't forgotten, she was the one that treated you like ass all these years, not the other way round. You had every right to walk out on her, don't spend the rest of your life worrying about what she thinks, okay?"
I nodded slowly. "I know that, I do. But I can't help feeling –"
"No." Peyton cut me off. "I will not let you feel guilty about this, not one bit. She may be your mother, but she's not a mom."
We spent the rest of the night like that, talking in the comet on the side of the road, not just about my mom and dad, but about everything. I knew I didn't need to feel guilty, but my mom was my mom, and as much as she hadn't given a crap about me since we'd moved away from Tree Hill, I knew that there was more to it than that. There had to be – because that was all I had left to hold on to.
Being alone was a peculiar thing. In a literal sense I had more people around me than ever, but inside my head I'd never felt so isolated. Maybe it had been like that for ages, and I just hadn't realised. I felt like I was mixing two worlds together, the one where I was fine, and the one where everything was falling apart. I'd spent my nights for the rest of the week lying awake until the early hours, thinking about cheerleading and boys and girls falling out, and how it compared to having to worry about what you were going to eat that night and how you could control your drunken parent lashing out at you. I knew which one I preferred, the sad thing was the one that I was used to. And just when I thought like it was all getting too much, I'd see the light flash up on my phone, and just the name that I needed to see.
