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BROOKE WAS PAINTING WHEN IT HAPPENED. She had decided to do some personal art while she was home, deciding to try and work on full body realism, using photos of the band from the night before as reference. She had never painted faces to that degree, and could only hope it still looked as good as her more stylized work. She liked Liz's friends well enough, and had quickly grown as much a fondness for Wyatt as much as her sister no doubt did.
If there was one thing that Brooke did know about her family, it was that her parents wouldn't have cared who Liz liked so long as they loved her as much as they did. It was hard not to love Liz, and Brooke struggled not to be too bitter about it.
She sighed as she furrowed her brow, trying to mix the right colors for their hair, as Wyatt had ombre highlights, Sabine's hair had streaks of a specific kind of blonde, and Matthew's hair seemed to switch between blond and brunette depending on its mood.
"Ned's hair isn't this difficult," she sighed to herself, her mind flooding with ideas of other paintings she could do; she had been able to get closer and closer to a likeness of Ned as the days had gone by.
She had gotten a frantic call from Ned about an hour before, the boy screaming into the receiver that they had gotten first place, the sounds of everyone else cheering drowning him out, and Brooke didn't know how to respond, simply congratulating him, only to receive a similar call from Liz who was struggling to sound composed, shouting out compliments to a Michelle.
"We're going to the Washington Monument, I'll send you a picture from the top if you want," Liz said, needing to shout to be heard over the commotion, "I don't know if you like landscapes."
"I'd like that, thank you, Liz! Go back to celebrating!" Brooke called into her phone, feeling rather silly shouting in her empty room, feeling more alone than ever, her voice being the only sound.
But now she was sitting on her chair and painting, trying not to pay too much attention to how alone she felt, and she was doing just fine doing just that. She liked being productive, even if it meant ignoring all her other responsibilities.
Then her mother screamed.
Brooke yelped, her paint nearly flying and splattering on her floor as she jumped to her feet, rushing out of her room and down the stairs to find her mother standing in the living room in front of the TV, staring at the news which showed the Washington Monument, the newscaster loudly explaining the situation, showing Spider-Man climbing up the side, people rushing from the scene, others rushing towards, helicopters appearing and screams filling the room.
Brooke felt like she was in a dream. She couldn't feel anything as she watched the events unfold, didn't have a single thought as she watched the cameras zoom in on her sister and the rest of her classmates evacuating the monument. She couldn't feel anything.
It wasn't indifference. Maybe it was shock. Maybe it was a disbelief that anything wrong could happen to her sister, the startling realization that she could have died. She wasn't sure if her mind had even processed what had happened.
