Year of Glass

TW: Drug dealing, description of murder, mention of abuse.

Nobody expected me.

Out of all the Morrisons- all seven tyrants of them (including me), nobody ever expected me. I was just a filler for Estelle’s spot. I was just the person everybody avoided; just the other distant relative nobody liked. But maybe they should’ve thought twice before deciding that.

You see, I am my own glass shell. Easily breakable, yes, but people treat me with extreme caution, as you would with a piece of literal glass. So I guess you could say that they were afraid to come anywhere near me, much less touch me. You could also say that I was placed far away purposefully for that very reason.

Estelle was never like that, though. She was the least threatening of all the Morrisons, and my adoptive mother. Well, first foster mother, then fully adoptive when she literally had a mental breakdown when the social worker came to get me. I had expressed my reluctance to not want to go back to my father since day one. Even though he was fully clean, I knew things that the social worker and rehab workers didn’t.

When Estelle died, I was a mere child. Seventeen, to be exact. Nowhere near capable of what I did to Nicolas. In fact, I did what I did to Nicolas just two days before Estelle died. Great Timing.

I was just there to take up space, to fill in for Estelle’s spot in the family photos. I was always the one taking the photos, but that changed because “the photos always looked better with her spot filled in”. Yeah, right.

I was the sole reason that the wealthiest family in America was ripped apart; piece by piece, and nobody would ever know.

Well, maybe not the sole.

I wasn’t always this way, though. It was Nicolas who made the glass shield around me, and it was Estelle who treated me with caution. I was the girl with an addicted dad, the girl who was pitied by Estelle, who was just a waste of space.

And Nicolas poisoned my mind like a snake poisoning a rat. Quickly and easily.

He had several warnings, several. And he thought that little old Brooke would never break out of her glass shell. He didn’t know that I’d been slowly chipping away at it for years- that that day was just the full breakthrough. Nobody would ever treat me like glass ever again.

But they would still be afraid of me, just not for the same reasons.

It was a dark, rainy morning; the morning that I first met Nicolas, and he started forming the glass shell around me. It was a Monday, and my week was off to a really crappy start. I had been living with Estelle for a little over two weeks, and she finally wanted to introduce me to her family, the Morrisons.

Boy, did I have a good first impression. I didn’t know they were the wealthiest family in America, but I could tell that they were wealthy. Expensive-looking China everywhere, chairs in rooms that alone cost my yearly salary, and antique items everywhere you looked.

Nicolas’s son, Hercule, came out of what I assumed was his bedroom, and looked me up and down. I was fifteen at the time, and he was also fifteen, but he was eleven months older than me. He smiled smugly and held out his hand, which I shook as firmly as I could.

I wasn’t anybody to be played with.

That was, until I met Nicolas merely two minutes later.

After two minutes of awkward and uncomfortable flirting with Hercule, Estelle escorted me to their dining room, which was about the size of my whole house before I was fostered and then adopted by Estelle.

That’s when I met Nicolas- also known as when my life changed forever.

Nicolas smiled politely at me, and then spoke.

“Well, you must be Brooke. I’ve heard stellar things about you, young lady,” He said, his light French accent mixed with a Southern accent in his voice. I smiled the practiced smile that I knew all too well, and then offered my hand.

“Yes, I am, and I have heard the same about you, Mr. Morrison. I admire your work and passions, sir,” I said, flattering him with my manners and on-point articulation. It might have sounded fake; and believe me when I say it was.

It was the perfect speech that Estelle had drilled into my brain. Nicolas smiled, nearly chuckling at my perfection.

“Oh, sweet child, please, call me Nicolas. It disturbs me that you are fifteen and call me ‘sir’ and ‘Mr. Morrison’. Really, feel free to be yourself around me, Brooke,”

Yeah, right.

Nicolas obviously wanted to be a nice grandfather figure, but I wasn’t buying his fake cheer. I had been trained to do that, to spot false and real cheer. Only the social worker knows what really happened with my father and my late mother.

We decided to lie to Estelle- the social worker, Rose, decided it would be best for everyone in the Morrison family to just not know.

But I will tell you the full story.

I grew up in the life of crime. My father was a convicted drug dealer in the south side of town, and my mother was arrested when I was three for purposefully driving high and running over her ex, accidentally. Then, she died in prison when I was five. So, you could say I had a broken family growing up.

When I turned eight, my father gave me my first real job. I had to track down a classmate’s mother, who happened to be a rich lady my father had set his eyes on for this town.

So, I pretended my best to be her friend- her name was Phoebe, bless her heart. (She became a debutante, from what I heard). Phoebe was as sweet as sugar, and I was honestly not someone to be friends with her; but to me, it was all a sick, twisted game of pretend.

Eventually, I became best friends with Phoebe, and my father practically changed my whole entire personality for that one lady; that one deal- that could change our lives forever. Would have changed our lives forever.

So now, instead of rough, tomboy Brooke, I was sweet, girly Brooke. Honestly, I can’t go back to yesterday, I was a different person then. Anyway, me and Phoebe became inseparable- play-dates, birthday parties, sleepovers, you get the gist. But, my father never wanted me to have friends; you see- his real job was to get close to the victim, sell them something too strong for them (he usually picked on the mentally ill ones, who believed it would end their suffering and pain), and they would pass or not, and we’d flee.

I was the perfect puzzle piece in my father’s wicked, complex puzzle of this job.

One day, he came up to me, his big hands clasped together, and looked at me.

“Today’s the day, pumpkin,” He said, his smile strained.

“What day, Dad?”

“Today, we will finally finish our mission. Then, we’ll get out of this town forever. We’ve stayed in this one for far too long now,”

“Oh. Will I get to say goodbye to my classmates?”

“No, pumpkin, I packed everything up last night, I’m sorry,”

“No, you’re not. You out of all people taught me how to decipher that,”

“Smart girl,”

“I know,”

My father smiled and then grabbed my hand, squeezing it tight. “We have to do this right, pumpkin,” He whispered, his breath retching of alcohol and something else. My father, he took one sip of gin and tonic and then became addicted.

That might’ve been the whole purpose of this deal- we didn’t have any money, so we needed a big deal.

I grabbed my backpack, the pink one with sparkly unicorns on it, and I whispered goodbye to our apartment as I walked out of the door.

We arrived at Phoebe’s house around noon, and while me and Phoebe were innocently playing dolls, my father was selling Phoebe’s mother, Audrey, some drug that I didn’t know of. You see, I was smart for an eight year old. I knew that after this deal, we would move to another town and nobody would know our names. I got to keep Brooke, but my father’s name changed as we moved. It had been Steve, John, Nick, and in this town, Lucas.

The whole play-date/deal lasted just about two hours, and then we literally got out of town and never went back.

Soon, though, I accidentally blabbed to a school counselor in middle school and the next thing I knew a social worker was at my door, ready to take me away, and my father to rehab. She said it was for the better.

So, that's how I ended up in the hands of Estelle Morrison.

And how I met Nicolas Morrison.

In the end, it's all my father's fault. Truly.

Anyway, it wasn't until three days after meeting Nicolas that something happened that made me do what I did. I was still fifteen, and Nicolas was treating me like I was a freaking toddler. I didn't get to sit at the table with all of the adults, I had to sit at a side table with Hercule and Tom, Estelle's sister's, Ellie's, son.

The whole family tree was Nicolas at the top, Estelle and Ellie are his daughters, who married Dave for Estelle (he died before I came along), and Patrick for Ellie. Nicolas's son, who was weirdly young, Hercule, was currently single. Then for Ellie, she birthed Tom and her other son, who was away at a work trip, Harrison. Estelle was infertile, so she fostered kids- I was the first keeper.

I bet you're wondering what on Earth I did to Nicolas and why I did it.

Well, Nicolas had been treating me like crap for, I don't know, maybe the entire time I was known to him? At "family" dinner on Saturday night, he snapped my last straw.

"Brooke, tell me, when you first met me, how practiced was that smile?"

I was taken aback by that question, and I could see Estelle's face turning a shade of red that almost perfectly matched her blush. I was also trained to respond politely to this, but I wasn't trained by Estelle. My father was the trainer in this situation.

"Two things for you, Nicolas. One: on that day, how practiced was that cheer? You don't know where I come from, old man. I know what's fake and real. Two: how practiced was that smirk you just plastered on your face? It seemed impeccably fake, sir," I snapped back.

Nicolas's face now matched the color of Estelle's face. Hercule tried not to laugh, and ended up coughing to cover his growing grin. Tom was just barely keeping it together, though.

Despite all odds, I had formed an alliance with Hercule and Tom. It had a ring to it; Brooke, Hercule, and Tom. Hercule, Brooke, and Tom. Tom, Brooke, and Hercule. Put it anyway- we had become something like the three musketeers. They had seen this snarky side of me, but how I was pulling it off- snark mixed with politeness, they had never seen before.

Ellie and Patrick were about to blow their tops off, and Estelle's face showed a mix of embarrassment, pride, and surprise. All valid feelings.

"Whoa, little princess, no need to treat your elders like that, baby," Nicolas said, his tone sounding like he'd done some things that I would never say aloud.

"I'm not a princess," I said, my voice dripping with ice.

"Never said you were, sweetheart,"

"Get over yourself, Nicolas. You're a self-absorbed, snooty rich tyrant,"

"I could say the same about you, pumpkin,"

Pumpkin?

Oh, no he didn't.

He smirked in a way that he knew what that God-awful nickname meant, and then he propped his dirty legs on the clean table, like he was the king of the castle and always would be.

Well, I was about to change that.

I got up from the table, not bothering to push in my chair and thank the cook.

I was done being nice.

I stopped by Hercule and Tom and whispered to them, "It's time," My tone sounded like I wanted to kill somebody.

People always said I took things too literally.

Here's how I did it: I took a simple gun, a shotgun, and placed it under Hercule's pillow. It was really Nicolas's fault- why in the world did he have a gun out in the open anyways? Whatever. It's his fault for what I did next.

By the time I had said my prayers and texted Tom and Hercule, dinner was over. They had just gone on without me.

Oh well.

As soon as Ellie and Patrick left with Tom, Tom shot me a knowing look, and I smiled grimly. I could see eye bags under his eyes- he'd been saying he'd been getting next to no sleep.

Oh well.

Later, I saw Nicolas, standing alone in his room, and I slowly grabbed the gun from Hercule's pillow.

I made a quick speech.

"Nicolas. You're about to die. Just know that instead of making me feel welcome..." I said, my grip tightening on the trigger, "You made me feel isolated and worthless. You don't know my past, and that messes with me.

"So, I'm not killing you because of a nickname you called me... I'm not that naive. I'm killing you because of two whole years of silence on my end, and torment on replay on your side. So, buckle up; say your prayers, Nicolas, old man, because it'll be your last time."

Before he could even turn around, he was gone. I threw the gun in the pond, covering it in dog hair and other hand-prints, including Nicolas's. I was smart about it- I was raised by my father.

The next day, it was all over the news. I was never on the news, since I was never in the pictures.

Only Hercule and Tom even think I did it, because I didn't say I was going to kill Nicolas Morrison, I just said he would regret what he said and he would regret messing with Brooke Smith-Morrison.

The day after it blew up, Estelle died. I was taken in by Ellie and Patrick, who were also taking care of Hercule. I had caused their family to slowly break apart, piece by piece; bit by bit.

It went from Six tyrants (not including me) to just four in a matter of the time I came into the picture.

It was raining outside, and I was with Hercule and Tom. There were no more secrets. They wouldn't mind. Hercule had been abused by his father, and he was thinking of offing him before I did, but he never had the guts.

"Okay. I'm going to be real with you guys, since I consider you my brothers now. I killed Nicolas Morrison."

Tom and Hercule stayed completely still, resonating in the rain and silence.

Silence.

I stood up, feeling the cold rain drip down my shoulders. I hugged myself, wrapping my arms around myself. The rain got heavier, and so did I.

A clap of thunder roared, and the rain became louder, stronger.

So did I.

Nobody expected me.