Brooke

It was like a magic carpet to a glamorous new life. . . .

In Brooke's most secret dreams, her mother would return to the orphanage, full of remorse for having left her there so long ago. Brooke never imagined a rich couple who looked like movie stars saying, “We'll take her,” and whisking her away to be their daughter.

Yet Pamela Thompson and her husband, Peter, seem thrilled to welcome her to their huge, gleaming house. Soon Brooke is enrolled in a snobby girls school, and receiving daily lessons in etiquette. Every hour and every outfit is planned to prepare her for the beauty pageants Pamela demands that she enter and win. But Brooke just wants an ordinary family life–and to play on the school softball team, where her real talents are appreciated. For only when she's on the field with her friends can she escape the dreadful feeling that she must always be obedient . . . or risk losing her golden chance for a name, a home, and freedom from the terrible secrets of her past.

 

V.C. Andrews
^®
Books

Flowers in the Attic

Petals on the Wind

If There Be Thorns

My Sweet Audrina

Seeds of Yesterday

Heaven

Dark Angel

Garden of Shadows

Fallen Hearts

Gates of Paradise

Web of Dreams Dawn

Secrets of the Morning

Twilight's Child

Midnight Whispers

Darkest Hour

Ruby

Pearl in the Mist

All That Glitters

Hidden Jewel

Tarnished Gold

Melody

Heart Song

Unfinished Symphony

Music in the Night

Butterfly

Crystal

Brooke

Published by POCKET BOOKS

 

V.C. Andrews

 

Following the death of Virginia Andrews, the Andrews family worked with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Virginia Andrews' stories and to create additional novels, of which this is one, inspired by her storytelling genius.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright © 1998 by The Virginia C. Andrews Trust and The Vanda Partnership

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-02032-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-671-02032-3
eISBN-13: 978-1-451-63715-1

First Pocket Books printing August 1998

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

V.C. Andrews is a registered trademark of the Virginia C. Andrews Trust.

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Front cover design by Jim Lebbad Back cover art by Lisa Falkenstern

Printed in the U.S.A.

W
hen I first set eyes on Pamela Thompson, I thought she was a movie star. I was twelve, and I had shoulder-length hair the color of wheat. Most of the time, I kept it tied with the faded pink ribbon my mother had tied around it just before she dropped me off at the children's protection service and disappeared from my life. I wasn't quite two years old at the time, so I can't really remember her, but I often think of myself then as a top, spinning and spinning until I finally stopped and found myself lost in the child welfare system that had passed me from institution to institution until I wound up one morning staring wide-eyed at this tall, glamorous woman with dazzling blue eyes and hair woven out of gold.

Her husband, Peter, tall and as distinguished as a president, stood beside her with his arms folded under his camelhair overcoat and smiled down at
me. It was the middle of April, and we were in a suburban New York community, Monroe, but Peter was as tanned as someone in California or Florida. They were the most attractive couple I had ever met. Even the social worker, Mrs. Talbot, who didn't seem to think much of anyone, looked impressed.

What did two such glamorous-looking people want with me? I wondered.

“She has perfect posture, Peter. Look how she stands with her shoulders back,” Pamela said.

“Perfect,” he agreed, smiling and nodding as he gazed at me. His soft green eyes had a friendly twinkle in them. His hair was rust colored and was as shiny and healthy as his wife's.

Pamela squatted down beside me so her face was next to mine. “Look at us side by side, Peter.”

“I see it,” he said, laughing. “Amazing.”

“We have the same shaped nose and mouth, don't we?”

“Identical,” he agreed. I thought he must have poor eyesight. I didn't look at all like her.

“What about her eyes?”

“Well,” he said, “they're blue, but yours are a little bit more aqua.”

“That's what it always says in my write-ups,” Pamela told Mrs. Talbot. “Aqua eyes. Still,” she said to Peter, “they're close.”

“Close,” he admitted.

She took my hand in hers and studied my fingers.

“You can tell a great deal about someone's potential beauty by looking at her fingers. That's what
Miss America told me last year, and I agree. These are beautiful fingers, Peter. The knuckles don't stick up. Brooke, you've been biting your nails, haven't you?” she asked me, and pursed her lips to indicate a no-no.

I looked at Mrs. Talbot. “I don't bite my nails,” I said.

“Well, whoever cuts them doesn't do a very good job.”

“She cuts her own nails, Mrs. Thompson. The girls don't have any sort of beauty care here,” Mrs. Talbot said sternly.

Pamela smiled at her as though Mrs. Talbot didn't know what she was talking about, and then she sprang back to her full height. “We'll take her,” she declared. “Won't we, Peter?”

“Absolutely,” he said.

I felt as if I had been bought. I looked at Mrs. Talbot. She wore a very disapproving frown. “Someone will be out to interview you in a week or so, Mrs. Thompson,” she said. “If you'll step back into my office and complete the paperwork . . .”

“A week or so! Peter?” she whined.

“Mrs. Talbot,” Peter said, stepping up to her. “May I use your telephone, please?”

She stared at him.

“I think I can cut to the chase,” he said, “and I know how eager you people are to find proper homes for these children. We're on the same side,” he added with a smile, and I suddenly realized that he could be very slick when he wanted to be.

Mrs. Talbot stiffened. “We're not taking sides,
Mr. Thompson. We're merely following procedures.”

“Precisely,” he said. “May I use your phone?”

“Very well,” she said. “Go ahead.”

“Thank you.”

Mrs. Talbot stepped back, and Peter went into her inner office.

“I'm so excited about you,” Pamela told me while Peter was in the office on the phone. “You take good care of your teeth, I see.”

“I brush them twice a day,” I said. I didn't think I was doing anything special.

“Some people just have naturally good teeth,” she told Mrs. Talbot, whose teeth were somewhat crooked and gray. “I always had good teeth. Your teeth and your smile are your trademark,” she recited. “Don't ever neglect them,” she warned. “Don't ever neglect anything, your hair, your skin, your hands. How old do you think I am? Go on, take a guess.”

Again, I looked to Mrs. Talbot for help, but she simply looked toward the window and tapped her fingers on the table in the conference room.

“Twenty-five,” I said.

“There, you see? Twenty-five. I happen to be thirty-two years old. I wouldn't tell everyone that, of course, but I wanted to make a point.”

She looked at Mrs. Talbot.

“And what point would that be, Mrs. Thompson?” Mrs. Talbot asked.

“What point? Why, simply that you don't have to grow old before your time if you take good care
of yourself. Do you sing or dance or do anything creative, Brooke?” she asked me.

“No,” I answered hesitantly. I wondered if I should make something up.

“She happens to be the best female athlete at the orphanage, and I dare say, she's tops at her school,” Mrs. Talbot bragged.

“Athlete?” Pamela laughed. “This girl is not going to be some athlete hidden on the back pages of sports magazines. She's going to be on the cover of fashion magazines. Look at that face, those features, the perfection. If I had given birth to a daughter, Brooke, she would look exactly like you. Peter?” she said when he appeared. He smiled.

“There's someone on the phone waiting to speak with you, Mrs. Talbot,” he said, and winked at Pamela.

She put her hand on my shoulder and pulled me closer to her. “Darling, Brooke,” she cried, “you're coming home with us.”

When you're brought up in an institutional world, full of bureaucracy, you can't help but be very impressed by people who have the power to snap their fingers and get what they want. It's exciting. It's as if you're suddenly whisked away on a magic carpet and the world that you thought was reserved only for the lucky chosen few will now be yours, too.

Who would blame me for rushing into their arms?

I
n my most secret dreams, the sort you keep buried under your pillow and hope to find waiting in the darkness for you as soon as you close your eyes, I saw my real mother coming to the orphanage, and she was nothing like the Thompsons. I don't mean to say that my mother wasn't beautiful, too, wasn't just as beautiful as Pamela, because she was. And in my dream she never looked any older than Pamela, either.

The mother in my dreams really had my color hair and my eyes. She was, I suppose, what I thought I would look like when I grew up. She was beautiful inside and out and was especially good at making people smile. The moment sad people saw her, they forgot their unhappiness. With my mother beside me, I, too, would forget what it was like to be unhappy.