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BROOKE WAS TEN WHEN THE BATTLE OF NEW YORK OCCURRED; SHE WAS ALSO TEN WHEN HER FIRST REAL ART PIECE CAME INTO EXISTENCE, WHICH IS CLEARLY MORE IMPORTANT IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT.
It was a few days after The Incident, as some people went on to call it, and the existence of superheroes finally came into being. At the time, the Fantastic Four were not yet an entity, so everyone latched onto the idea of a real life superhero team and ran with it; at least most did, it took others a good amount time to catch up.
Being a child, Brooke was one of the many who latched on immediately, the talks at school always being about superheroes, older kids talking about the ethics of superheroes whereas the younger kids were stuck to more simple topics of right and wrong, what was right, what was wrong, and why doing wrong things hurt other people. The talks were fun, but they could get pretty boring, at least in Brooke's mind.
The conversations at home weren't much different. Being twelve, Brooke's older sister Liz was more able to follow along with the discussions their parents had at the dinner table. Of course, neither girl understood much of why their parents often agreed wholeheartedly on things and disagreed immensely on others, but were willing to just sit and listen, interjecting with new things they learned at school to try and bring themselves into the family dinner conversations.
It was on one of those days when Brooke had to stay late in extended care due to Liz having dance class. Brooke had tried dance classes with her sister at first, but, after falling too many times, decided that she would try again later. She never did, but she imagined she would at that young of an age.
So while she was waiting for her sister to be finished with dance class, Brooke decided that she had enough with playing Bingo with the rest of the extended care class and went to do something on her own.
Finding that all the board games and puzzles were either occupied or on too high of shelves for her to reach, she decided to just grab some paper and make a drawing for her dad. She had been reading some drawing books she had borrowed from the library and decided that she would put them to use and make a great drawing of the Avengers.
Maybe if she drew them all working together to save the world, her parents would stop arguing about them so much. Her parents worked together, just like the heroes did, so it wouldn't be hard for them to understand, of course, parents were smart like that.
Brooke was a smart ten-year-old. Just as smart as her sister, she bet.
So she set about coloring, making sure that the colors were actually what she thought they were—she specifically made sure crayons were actually black or brown and not purple, remembering all the times she messed up other pictures because she didn't think to check.
"Brooke, your mom and sister are here. Liz, did you have fun at dance, I heard you have a recital soon?"
Brooke looked up from her drawing which was just finished to find her mother signing her out on the clipboard, Liz standing next to her, still in her dance outfit. She was telling the care lady about the new dance she learned and how she was going to show her dad later, but being twelve she only told the bare minimum.
