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 Prompt:

You discover a library with a biography for everyone on earth. While reading your own, you notice whenever someone else is mentioned, there's a footnote showing where you can find their biography. It's odd how someone who was only a sentence in your book has a whole chapter for you.

Susannah Marketon

Brooklyn looked up from the book, her head lightly thumping against the bookshelf behind her. It packed more of a punch than she expected and more storylines than she expected. I mean, sure, the first day of school at a new school was an obvious focal point for any author, but it included so many little details Brooklyn forgot about. The first time she met Skye, who would go on to become her best friend. Her first encounter with Mr. Smithers, who shaped and changed Brooklyn’s life in more ways than she realized, and how could she forget the first stare down with Parker Allenton? 

Brooklyn smiled at the old memories tugging at her subconscious. Her first friend, her favorite teacher, and her first boyfriend, the first guy she ever loved, in fact (other than Sam and Sokka, obviously). But there was a fourth name in that chapter that caught Brooklyn’s attention: Susannah Marketon. 

The book’s description of her was fairly accurate based on Brooklyn’s memory. She still remembered the day Susannah showed up to homeroom with the pixie cut. The boys made fun of her profusely, but Brooklyn shut them up with a well timed compliment. It wasn’t fake either. While very few people could pull off that hairstyle, Brooklyn herself included, it worked for Susannah’s small frame and mousey features. It made her look like a badass Tinker Bell in Brooklyn’s opinion and felt more real, somehow.

“I wonder what happened to her,” Brooklyn mused out loud while skimming the pages of her own book. As far as she could tell, Susannah didn’t have her own chapter. Skye and Parker certainly did, but Susannah didn’t. Instead, she was relegated to that single paragraph, and Brooklyn felt a little guilty. She liked Susannah, but their paths rarely ever crossed. Susannah took art classes while Brooklyn stuck to more physical electives. They might have had one class together, other than psychology and homeroom, but Brooklyn wasn't sure. Susannah was always just one of the background characters in her life, someone who was always there but never in the spotlight.

Brooklyn turned back and skimmed the page referencing Susannah. There were thousands of books in the library. One had to be about Susannah. Brooklyn had to know what happened to the girl after high school graduation. She vaguely remembered something about Susannah going to college on the east coast. Maybe she was still there. They could catch up, grab a drink sometime when Brooklyn got back.

Brooklyn’s eyes wandered down the page, eventually landing on a small footnotes section. There, the names Parker Allenton, Skye (Denthor) Chenoa, Susannah Marketon and Frank Smithers were listed in alphabetical order with a series of numbers following each name. As Brooklyn looked closer, she saw the numbers were separated by colons and a few were connected by a hyphen. 

“Page numbers,” Brooklyn whispered, looking down at her squirrel friend. “These are page numbers aren’t they?”

The squirrel nodded, and Brooklyn shook her head in disbelief. She was talking to a squirrel, looking for confirmation that her wild theory wasn’t as crazy or wild as she thought it was. Who was she to assume a book about Susannah even existed? This could be some sort of trap. Brooklyn studied a case at Quantico where a serial killer wrote novels and short stories about his victims before their untimely death. Maybe this was a similar scenario.

But Brooklyn knew in her gut it wasn’t. The numbers were all the confirmation she needed. There was a book about Susannah, and she, Brooklyn Pieper, was going to find it. If it was the last thing she did.

Filled with a newfound vigor, Brooklyn rose from her seated position. A dizzy spell forced her to black out for a moment, but by the time Brooklyn regained her vision and balance, the squirrel was in a standing position, eagerly waiting to guide her around the library. 

Brooklyn sighed, accepting this weird, bizarre reality, “Lead the way.”

The squirrel darted off, and Brooklyn followed. She stopped momentarily to set her pack and book at a nearby table but opted to keep her gun. If her serial killer theory was true, it was better to be prepared. Just in case.

With the gun tucked in the waistline of her leggings, Brooklyn followed the squirrel deep into the library’s labyrinth. They ducked around corners, up a set of stairs and passed a brilliant dust covered stained glass window. In fact, Brooklyn noticed the entire upper floor of the cabin seemed completely abandoned. There was a thick layer of dust on nearly every surface, save the books on the shelves. They looked fresh and clean, as though someone cleaned them that very morning, but there was no evidence to suggest someone else had been there.

The squirrel came to a quick stop and scurried up one of the nearby shelves. Brooklyn followed suit and followed the squirrel with her eyes. It scampered across the top of one bookshelf and leaped, eventually landing atop the tallest and skinniest piece of furniture Brooklyn had ever seen. Brooklyn doubted it was even as wide as her broad shoulders, yet it held at least 100 books on its tiny shelves. Most of them, Brooklyn noticed, were thin and worn, old paperbacks that received a lot of love in their lifetimes. 

Her eyes skimmed the spines, looking for the familiar name. The only thing Brooklyn found, though, were legitimate book titles, all with a definite romance theme. Brooklyn’s eyes traveled past titles such as “Winter’s Lost Love” and “Of Knight and Day” before she really started questioning her sanity. Brooklyn ran the sequence of events through her head again. She followed a squirrel to a remote cabin in the middle of nowhere, found her name on a book, and proceeded to follow said squirrel for a second time to a different bookshelf filled with nothing but old, well worn romance books. 

Then, Brooklyn’s eyes fell on the book she wanted. Susannah Marketon’s name screamed at Brooklyn from the sign, like a beacon out in the ocean. She plucked from the shelf and followed her own footsteps back to her original spot, quick to move before she lost her nerve altogether. The analytical part of Brooklyn’s brain threatened to shut down as it attempted to make sense of the situation, something the FBI agent couldn’t afford. She needed to read the book. She needed to know what happened to her friend and get some confirmation she wasn’t totally insane. 

The journey back to her original spot didn’t take as long as Brooklyn expected. She didn’t even need to rely on her footprints to guide her. Brooklyn’s years of wandering through mountains and deserts finally paid off, though not necessarily in the way she expected. Brooklyn always figured her topographical skills would come in handy, just not in a never ending maze library.

When she reached the table, Brooklyn set down Susannah’s book to examine it closely. It was certainly different when compared to her own book, starting with its composition. Susannah’s book was thinner than Brooklyn expected and looked just like any old hardcover book. It was made of ornate, expensive looking leather like Brooklyn’s. Rather it was made of sturdy yet earthy materials that made it appear worn and well loved. 

The colors were also brighter than Brooklyn’s. The spine was a deep purple with green etching that matched the book’s cover. Everything about it seemed to starkly contrast the Susannah Brooklyn remembered. She was nice, quiet and demure. High school Susannah kept to herself, but this cover indicated something else. It was bright and vibrant, maybe reflecting the person Susannah became after graduation. The person Brooklyn didn’t know. 

Brooklyn’s rumbling stomach interrupted her thoughts. She checked her watch and phone, shocked to see it was well past six in the evening. No wonder she was hungry.

Ignoring the book momentarily, Brooklyn set up her stove and went to work preparing her dinner. A part of her felt bad for having an open flame in the library, but Brooklyn was careful. She kept the flame small and set her phone timer for fifteen minutes, so as not to forget about it. The entire time, her new squirrel friend was checking out her pack and food, an inquisitive look on its face. Brooklyn sighed before reaching in her pack and procuring a few nuts.

“If you tell anyone about this,” Brooklyn warned as she placed the nuts and dried fruit on the table, “I’ll be the last person you ever lead to this place.”

The squirrel cocked its head before attacking the nuts with gumption. Brooklyn chuckled and settled into a nearby chair, Susannah’s book in hand, and started to read.

(Susannah Marketon) Chapter 14: I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known

Day one of high school. A day I tried to avoid, and I have the scars on my arms to prove it.

I tried not to be here today. The night before I sat in my bathtub wanting to do it. I thought about it so many times, dreamed about it, wished for it. I figured it would be second nature, but turns out it wasn’t. I had the razor in my hand, and I just couldn’t make the cut, no matter how many times I willed myself to do it. 

My mom dropped me off at work with the usual goodbye. She criticized my outfit and hair and told me not to slump my shoulders. Nothing was ever good enough for my mom. She was the mayor of the town, and I was her accidental oopsie daughter. Literally. My older brother Tony was the perfect child, and I’m pretty sure the only one they wanted. Sure, my dad claims they kept trying after he was born, but I doubted it. Tony was golden the moment he came out of the womb, the perfect baby for my mom’s political aspirations. 

Then I came along ten years later. Dad and Tony call me a miracle. Mom, well, she calls me everything but. I’m too quiet, too small, too slight, too quiet. I don’t dress right, my hair is never the perfect style, there’s always tired bags under my eyes and my sense of style is too edgy or too sporty. Basically, I’m the opposite of Tony. He can do no wrong, and I’m the definition of wrong. Pretty sure my mom doesn’t want to deal with me ninety percent of the time. 

Good thing she won’t have to after tomorrow. 

I make a point of slouching as I walk into the school. I don’t want my mom to know anything’s up, and I definitely want to make my last day count. I put extra bend in my shoulders and look back at my mom’s black SUV. She was too busy looking at her phone to notice. 

Typical. 

I pushed through the doors and headed for my locker. No one noticed or spoke to me. I was like a ghost in the hallways just like always. People saw through me, or over me, or around me. There wasn’t even anyone who recognized me as Tony’s kid sister. I was alone. Truly utterly alone in a huge building of people. 

One more day, I chanted to myself as I headed for homeroom. Just one more day of being invisible, then I would disappear forever. 

***

The first five periods of the day were a success. As always, no one took an interest in me. 

“Hey, this seat taken?”

Startled, I jumped in my seat and turned my head toward the speaker. At first, I wasn’t sure she was talking to me. There were at least six empty desks in the classroom, and the girl could have easily been asking someone else if the seat was occupied. But she wasn’t. She was asking me, talking to me as though I was just another freshman, not the school weirdo. 

“No,” I answered bluntly before I returned to my drawing. It was the only way I found solace during the day. While teachers droned on about unimportant subjects, I drew my classmates in the margins of my notebook. Today’s subject was the World Civ teacher, Bruce Templeton, though students usually referred to him as BT or BLT (his middle name is Lance). 

“Thanks,” I heard the girl thank me, but my attention was already back on my notebook. “I’m Brooklyn Peiper. You’re Susannah right?”

I lifted my head and looked over at the girl. She was absolutely striking, in every definition of the world, the daughter my mother always wanted. Unlike my hair, which was so blond it was basically white, Brooklyn’s was the perfect shade of yellow kissed by the summer sun. Her skin was tan, not pasty pale, and her cheeks still held a puffy childlike innocence my mother would have killed for.

“Yeah,” I responded, still in shock she was even talking to me. Other students didn’t talk to me. They talked behind my back, and never to my face.

“We have homeroom together,” Brooklyn continued when I didn’t speak again. I wasn’t exactly the most talking person on a good day, but this was worse than anything I’d ever done. My words were all tangled in my mouth. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t speak. This woman made me tongue-tied. “I'm not a stalker or anything, I swear.”

An uncharacteristic smile stretched across my face. It felt foreign, the muscles straining after years of neglect. I only ever smiled around Tony, and he came back so rarely, my smile was a rare sight. 

“I like your jacket by the way.” The girl did not stop talking, but I didn’t really mind. If she kept talking, it meant I didn’t have to. The problem was I wanted to. “Did you get it around here somewhere?”

“Um,” I fumbled for words and looked down at my black leather jacket. My mom hated it, which made it my favorite article of clothing. “I, uh, there’s this, um, this art fair every summer. I got it there.”

“Cool,” Brooklyn didn’t look like she was just saying that to be nice either. As far as I could tell, she seemed genuinely interested in me and my custom black leather jacket. “I’ll have to check it out.”

My jaw dropped halfway to the floor. Fortunately, BT started talking before I had a chance to respond. I didn’t hear a single word he said though. As BT spewed and I doodled, my mind kept wandering to the girl sitting next to me. Brooklyn Pieper with her long blond hair and striking face. The artist in me saw the woman she would become. Sharp cheekbones, strong jawline, narrow eyes, arching brow line. Her girlish features would fade overtime. She’d grow into the feet I somehow knew were three sizes too big for her body. She would be muscular, toned, a fighter. I knew this, even though I didn’t really know her, but I wanted to.

I slipped into no man’s land until the bell rang through the intercom. My head bolted upright as the world returned, a full forty-five minutes passed without me even realizing it. 

“Don’t forget,” BT’s voice rang out over the classroom. “Tomorrow we start with the Ancient Greece not made popular by Disney.”

My classmates started packing up, ready to move to the next class, but I couldn’t. I just sat there, frozen, staring at the drawing in my notebook. I started the class drawing a cartoon version of BT, but that’s not what the end result looked like. Instead of a cartoon, I drew a very real sketch of the adult Brooklyn Pieper, the one my artist brain saw when she talked to me. 

“See you tomorrow Susannah?”

Panicked, I slammed my notebook shut and looked up, making direct eye contact with Brooklyn Pieper. The color of her iris was so rich and deep, I felt like I was staring at a magical orb rather than human eyes. In an instant, I was swept away in their emerald green warmth, and something stirred inside me. A feeling I didn’t recognize or entirely understand. 

“Yeah, yes,” I stammered, overwhelmed and completely overcome by this stranger. “See you tomorrow.”

As Brooklyn Pieper walked away, I knew two things were certain. I would see her tomorrow. I would see her nearly every day for the next five years, and I would avoid her. 

***

“Bah!”

Brooklyn jumped out of her chair, startled by the sound of her buzzing phone. She was so engrossed in the story, she forgot her dinner was cooking on the opposite side of the table. A sizzling sound accompanied the buzzing as did the furiously popping of water bubbles. Brooklyn let the water boil a little too long, and now it was spilling over the sides of her pan. 

Brooklyn ignored her phone and went to work taming the  boiling concoction on the stove. Large droplets of water dotted the wooden table, causing Brooklyn to feel embarrassed. Clearly, she wasn’t very good at the whole leave no trace principle, at least not in the cabin or in her personal life. Outside, in nature, Brooklyn was almost undetectable, as sly and careful as a cougar or bear. As cliche as it sounds, the only thing she ever left behind were footprints, and even those were hard to track and times. Her life, outside of work, was much messier. 

With the water at a rolling simmer, Brooklyn picked up her phone to silence the noise. She was shocked to discover it wasn’t the timer that brought her out of her trance in the first place. Instead it was a phone call, one of three from Jackson in a fifteen minute time span.

“Jackson!” Noticing the three calls, Brooklyn wasted no time dialing her friend’s number. It didn’t ring once before he picked up. 

“Brooklyn!” Relief overshadowed any other emotion in Jackson’s deep voice. It was nearly seven o’clock in Nevada, which meant it was nearly nine in Boston, almost two hours passed their scheduled check in time. “Thank God, I was about to call in the cavalry! How on earth does anyone handle being your handler?”

Brooklyn laughed. In all her years undercover, Jackson never once served as her official handler, even though he was technically her partner-slash-analyst. 

“Sorry for calling so late,” Brooklyn quickly apologized while pouring the boiling water into her bag of freeze dried mac and cheese. “Guess I got caught up in some other things.”

Jackson sighed, “I just assumed you were sleeping at your cabin. You did make it back to your cabin right?”

“I’m inside for the night.” Brooklyn knew better than to outright lie to Jackson. The man may look like a dumb jock, but he had the IQ of an evil genius. If she told him the truth, that she followed a squirrel to a random cabin in the middle of the woods filled with books, he would fly out there and commit her to an insane asylum on the spot. So she went with the abridged version. “I’m ten times safer here than when I was undercover.” “Yeah but when you were undercover I could at least track you.”

Brooklyn grinned, “You could still come out here you know. Use your PTO. The desert might do you some good.”

She could practically hear the gears turning in Jackson’s head. The two of them wracked up at least a year’s worth of paid time off in the last two years, especially with the McGinty investigation and arrest. If anyone deserved a break more than Brooklyn, it was Jackson. When she went undercover, he stayed above ground and led the task force. Every scrap of intel Brooklyn gathered, Jackson analyzed and researched, doing whatever he could to get his best friend above ground.

“Boss might give me the weekend,” he mused. “It’s no fun around here without you anyway.”

“He assign you a new partner already?” Brooklyn asked, her breath hitching in her throat. The past three months were crazy, and she assumed the Bureau would make changes in her absence, but Brooklyn always assumed Jackson would still be her partner at the end of it all.

“Come on now Brooke,” Jackson used the nickname he assigned her at Quantico, when the two were fighting for ultimate supremacy as the top student in class. “You can’t get rid of me that easy.”

Brooklyn sighed but stayed silent. A wave of emotion threatened to boil over inside Brooklyn as she caught Susannah’s book out of the corner of her eye. For years, Brooklyn never understood the type of loneliness Susannah felt, the kind where all you want to do is curl up and die. She had her dad, Sokka, Jackson and Declan. Despair and loneliness were as foreign to Brooklyn as snow was to southerners.

Then, she lost Sokka to old age, her dad to a bullet, and Declan to torture. The feelings Susannah described weren't so foreign anymore, and they threatened to derail Brooklyn's steady resolve all together. Even with Jackson on the phone, the emotions Brooklyn ignored for years crashed through her body, rendering her speechless. Her vision blurred until she could no longer see the book or her food, as Brooklyn battled to stay above water.

“Brooklyn?” Concern returned to Jackson’s voice when Brooklyn didn’t respond. “Is everything ok?”

“Yeah fine. Just distracted, that’s all” Brooklyn cleared her throat, still internally battling the emotional demons so eager to destroy her. Even though Jackson couldn’t physical see her, Brooklyn quickly wiped the tears from her eyes, banishing them and her emotions back to isolation. “Jackson, I-”

Brooklyn never got the chance to finish her statement. There was a loud crash in the background of Jackson’s line, followed by the sound of the highest pitched voice Brooklyn ever heard. 

“Jackson, babe, you here?”

Brooklyn balked, her eyes growing wide with realization, “Chelsea Nooker? Are you still at the office?”

Jackson stumbled through his answer, giving Brooklyn all the confirmation she needed that her best friend was still in his office, now being accosted by her least favorite agent. Chelsea Nooker worked in anti-terrorism and was as annoying as her high pitched Manhattan accent indicated. She was a siren amongst commoners thanks to her enchanting blue and thick coffee brown hair, and Jackson was currently in her sights. It made sense since the two of them were the physical equal of the other. If Chelsea was a siren, Jackson was the hot illegitimate son of the king, sent on a wandering journey to win the heart of a princess. 

“I seriously have no idea why she’s here Brooklyn.”

“No worries,” Brooklyn’ nonchalant attitude was back, the loneliness and emotional constipation a thing of the past. “I’m sorry for interrupting your Friday night.”

“Brooklyn, please, it’s not-”

“I’ll let you go. Talk tomorrow?”

“Of course.” Brooklyn heard the disappointment in Jackson’s voice as he prepared to sign off. “Hey, don’t lose yourself Brooklyn.”

Brooklyn smiled. It was the way they signed off every interaction since the day they met. It was clear from the moment Brooklyn and Jackson stepped on Quantico’s campus they were the top two agents in the class. After their first exercise, a physical test, Jackson shouted those words as Brooklyn passed him on the final length of the trail. She responded the same way she did all those years ago, “You wish Offendorf.”

With that, Brooklyn quickly ended the call and powered off her phone. There was no way Jackson missed the break in her voice or her unsteadiness with her early answers. He was one of the only people to ever see through her outer walls and exterior. Brooklyn let nothing in, not people nor emotions, yet somehow Jackson Offendorf and Declan O’Reilly both managed to break through.

Brooklyn stirred her tea and sat back down at the table. What she wouldn’t give for one of Declan’s soft back rubs, the kind he gave her after nightmares and hard cases. There were so many nights where they just laid in bed or on the couch, Declan holding Brooklyn while he drew soft circles around her back. She still remembered the time he came over and found her curled into the fetal position on the floor. Her dad’s death hit her harder than it did most years, the emotions crippling her into a childlike state, where all she could do was cry. 

Declan didn’t panic when he found her. Instead, he scooped Brooklyn up and held her against his chest, comforting her as the tears fell down her face. That was the moment Brooklyn realized she loved him, though she wouldn’t admit it for another month.

Tears pricked at Brooklyn’s eyelids. Again, she wiped them away and focused her attention on her food and book. Susannah’s story wasn’t over, and Brooklyn needed to know how it ended.