Post by NOELLE ASTORIA BROOK on May 2, 2013 20:53:54 GMT -8
| [atrb=style,width: 420px; background-color: efefef; background-image: url(http://i.imgur.com/6jh1H.png); padding: 5px, bTable] NOELLE A. BROOK 17 | STRAIGHT | MOTHER'S HELPER | HIGH SCHOOL KID | JACQUELINE EMERSON THE INTERVIEW HELLO. THANKS FOR COMING IN TODAY. SHALL WE START WITH YOUR NAME? Hello! I'm Noelle Astoria Brook, but everyone just calls me Nell. It was my Papa's nickname for me, and it's always stuck. THAT'S A NICE NAME. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING? Well, I'm only seventeen, so a real job is kind of difficult right now. I'm a high school student, and I have a job as a Mother's Helper after school and on weekends. Basically, Mrs. Wallis needs help with her triplets and keeping the house in order while she works from home, so I do whatever she needs me to. Cleaning, cooking, entertaining the triplets... It's mostly just stuff I do at home anyways. The pay is good, though. Really good. I'm saving up for college, and getting twenty dollars an hour, three hours a day, five days a week? It adds up. I've had the job for about two years now. Before that, I was just babysitting. I guess that's all I really know how to do. INTERESTING. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR FUN? Between my job and school, I don't have a lot of free time for fun. I do enjoy that stuff, though. I love cooking, and baking, and the triplets and I do a lot of art projects together. I like making things, whether its artistic or food related. I'm good at that, and being good at something is fun, I think. I like to make music, too, though I don't get much time to do that. Mostly, I just sing to my little sister when she's had a nightmare. That kind of thing. Mr. Wallis is teaching me to play the piano, too. I love it. I like making beautiful things. Music is one of the most beautiful things in the world, in my opinion. WOULD YOU SAY THOSE ACTIVITIES REFLECT WHO YOU ARE? Um, yeah, I guess so. I'm pretty maternal, but I have six younger siblings, so I figure I've got an excuse. People tell me I'm really creative sometimes, which I think is a pretty great compliment. Happiness, making it for myself and others, is important to me. I hate seeing people unhappy. I like to be useful. It might just be an odd quirk, but I hate not having something productive to do. I mean, I love curling up with a good book, or playing with my sister or the Wallis triplets, but I consider that productive. I'm not just sitting around doing nothing. I'm doing something. I have to have something to do, or I go crazy. Not like, violent crazy or run around screaming crazy, more like 'sit there imagining everything that could go wrong' crazy. I'm a worrier. It's a fault, I suppose. I'm overprotective of my family and friends, and I can be a bit of a pain about it sometimes. I don't drink when I go to parties, you know? I blame it on an allergy to alcohol, but I don't actually have one. I just like having an excuse to be the designated driver and making sure everyone gets home safe and sound. That's who I am. Nell Brook, big sister to everyone around her, whether they like it or not. COOL BEANS. THEY SAY YOUR FAMILY SHAPES WHO YOU ARE. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOURS? I think I'll start with my siblings, because I've got a whole bunch of them. First, there's Ned. He's fourteen months younger than me, and kind of a pain in the neck. We used to get along great, but then we started going to school, and making friends, and we grew apart. Now he just gives me a headache. I've got to threaten him with ice water to get him to wake up most mornings. After Ned, it's Naomi. She's fifteen, and... Well, she's a drama queen. She's a pain in the neck too. She likes to think we have a rivalry, and I really don't have the heart to tell her otherwise. She likes to steal my clothes, though, which is more inconvenient than anything else. Next is Nathan, he's in eighth grade, and he's the jock in our family. He likes sports, and it's hard to get him to think about much else. Mostly, though, he doesn't give me much trouble. The biggest troublemaker in the family is Nick. He's twelve. I get calls from his homeroom teacher at least once a week for some kind of shenanigans he's gotten into. We're hopeful he'll grow out of it. Noah's only ten, but he's already in the sixth grade. He skipped a grade, and I guess that of my four brothers, he's my favorite, which is a terrible thing to say, I know. Noah's easy, though. He's quiet, studious, and always helps with chores without any complaining. Last, but not least, is Nina. She's seven, and... Gosh, she's pretty much my baby. I mean, like, she's my little sister. But at the same time, I've been taking care of her since she was born. Changing her diapers when she was a baby, teaching her to tie her shoes, braiding her hair every morning, cuddling her after bad dreams. We're really close. I don't know how I can leave for college, because last time we even talked about it, she started crying. I worry about her most. So, now my parents? Um. Well, my dad's a plumber and an electrician. He was a high school football star, back in the day. But he knocked my mom up in their senior year, so instead of taking a football scholarship, he got a job with my grandpa, and has been working there ever since. Dad's a total teddy bear. He works really hard to take care of all of us, and it can be hard to make ends meet sometimes, but he always figures it out. He... He's got a heart condition. So I make sure he eats healthy food, keep him as stress-free as possible. I don't tell him when there are problems with my siblings. A heart attack could kill him. I'm not ready to lose my dad. I lie. As much as I hate to do it, I lie to him sometimes. Tell him everything is okay, even if it isn't. I have to. It's for his own good. My mom works at a grocery store in town. She's not had the job long, just since Nina started school. Her schedule is a little erratic, so she's not around much. We get along good when we have time to hang out, though. Mom and I are pretty much best friends. We tell each other everything. Well, almost everything. It's not easy, having to drop out of high school because you get pregnant. Having to do that hurt Mom. Now that I'm older, I understand that. I try to make sure she doesn't have any reason to feel any worse about it than she already does. I love my mom. And maybe this is my overwhelming urge to protect my family, but I'd do anything to keep her from being hurt again. Some people looked down on her, when she had me and my siblings all so close together. Called her white trash. I... I'm not a violent person, but I'd like to beat those people with an awful big stick. Besides my parents and my siblings, I just had my grandparents. Grandma and Grandpa, on Dad's side, and Meemaw and Papa on Mom's. Grandma and Grandpa retired recently, moving down to Arizona. Meemaw and Papa were originally from the south, and they took care of my siblings and I a lot when we were little. Sometimes, I talk like they do. Like, heavy accent, slang included. My siblings tease me sometimes about how I pronounce certain words because of it. Meemaw still lives nearby, and I visit her every Sunday. We have a girls day, doing our nails and hair, having tea and baking cookies. It's fun. Papa died when I was nine. He had Alzheimer's. It was hard on the whole family, but especially Mom. He forgot all of us... Sometimes, when I'd visit, he'd call me Little Cathy. My mom's name. It hurt. But it was better than having him look at me like I was a total stranger. I was really close to Papa when I was a kid. My best friend died when I was four, and seeing her dead... It messed me up, I guess. Papa and Meemaw spent a lot more time with me after that. Trying to keep my mind off it. I used to sleep over at their house every weekend. Spent all my free time there, reading with them, listening to Papa's war stories, helping Meemaw in the kitchen... Their house was my safe place. My happy place. After Papa died, I dunno. Things started to change. I guess that's what pushed me to start growing up. Other than that, I don't have any significant family to talk about. No pets, either. Our house is enough of a zoo as it is without adding in actual animals. My parents wanted a bunch of kids, because both of them were only children. So they had seven. And now, we're an absolute madhouse. But I love it. AND YOUR LIFE? TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PAST. I'M EAGER TO HEAR. My past? Gosh, okay... Well, my parents were just barely eighteen when I was born. They were in their senior year of high school. Dad was able to stay in until graduation, but the pregnancy ended up forcing Mom to drop out. Like I mentioned earlier, Dad got a job with my Grandpa, working as a plumber, and Mom stayed home with me. About fourteen months after I was born, Ned came along. Then Naomi. Having two younger siblings before I was four was a little difficult, especially since Mom got pregnant with Nathan pretty quickly. Having four kids at twenty-two wasn't easy, so my parents found ways to work out money problems. Mom couponed, and babysat a little girl who lived next door. Beverly. She was my age, and it wasn't like having one extra kid around bothered Mom too much. Plus, the money we got from babysitting her helped keep us in the clear. Bev and I became best friends. We did everything together. A few months before my fourth birthday, though, she was diagnosed with leukemia. Her mom quit working to take care of her. So, the routine changed. Every morning, instead of her parents bringing her over, I'd go over to their house to play. There was a hole in the fences between our backyards, so it was easy enough to go through it to get into theirs. They kept their backdoor unlocked so I could come and go when I wanted. Her parents were like an aunt and uncle to me. Bev being sick never really sank in for me. I mean, I understood that something was wrong, but I was four. I didn't realize how serious it was until... Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway. Bev and I adjusted to the changes. I went over to her house every morning, we'd have breakfast, and spend the day playing. The only times I would go home were when my mom called me for dinner, and when she had to go to the doctor. Sometimes, she'd be tired and sick, so instead of playing fairy kingdom or something, we'd pretend that she was a pampered princess, and I was her maid who took care of her. We'd sit in her bed and play dolls, and I'd do whatever I could to help her. She... She and I understood each other better than anyone else in the world. No one else has ever understood me as well as Bev did. I loved her more than anything. One morning, I went over to play. I noticed her parents were in the dining room talking, but I didn't pay much attention to them. She'd gotten a new game the day before, and we'd only had time to get halfway through it before I had to go home. We planned to spend the whole day playing it. I went into her room, expecting her to have it set up, but... She was still in bed. I didn't really think much about it, I mean, she wasn't always awake when I went over. She was tired sometimes, and stayed in bed for the whole day. If I got there and she was sleeping, I'd wake her up, see if she was up to doing anything. So, I climbed onto her bed, and started trying to wake her up. But she didn't wake up. And after a few minutes of trying, I realized she wasn't going to. I realized that she was colder than she should be, that she wasn't breathing. And then I just laid there, clinging to her, crying and begging her to wake up. It took my dad pulling me off of her and carrying me home to get me to leave. After that, I guess I was kinda depressed. Seeing your best friend dead in their bed kinda does that to you. So, Meemaw and Papa started taking care of me more often. Giving me one-on-one attention that my parents didn't always have time to do. Things got better for me. I learned to love art and baking, I started school, made more friends. Life went on, I guess, even if I've never forgotten Bev. I still have nightmares, about it, sometimes. I got two more siblings by the time I was eight. Nick and Noah. Besides them being born, nothing interesting really happened until I was eight. That's when Papa was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. He had to be put in a nursing home, but Meemaw took me to visit as often as I could. As he forgot things, he forgot who I was. I guess I look a lot like my mom did when she was young, because eventually, every time I visited, he thought I was her. It was better than being a stranger to him, like everyone else was. He lived for about another year, dying when I was nine. It was peaceful, he just passed away in his sleep. His funeral was almost as hard for me as Bev's had been. Losing Papa changed a lot of things. I started acting older, I guess, as a sort of coping mechanism. Then Nina was born, and I really needed to act older. I was a big sister, again, and this time, I was old enough to be actually helpful. I changed her diapers, helped give her baths, played with her... Her first word was Nell. I've always been kind of proud of that, that I was that much of an influence on her, in such a positive way. Since Nina was born, I guess nothing really interesting has happened. Once Nina was in school, Mom got a job, to help make things go a little farther. That was right around the time I got the job with the Wallis family. I started high school, made friends, found my niche, blah blah blah. I've had some good times, I guess. Part of my job with the Wallis family includes going on day trips, if they go to the zoo or the museum during the summer, or on vacations if my schedule allows it. Last summer, I went to Disneyland with them. For the first four days, I was basically a nanny, doing whatever I could to help Mr. and Mrs. Wallis with the triplets. But the for the fifth day, the last day we were there, they gave me the day off. I got to spend the whole day wandering Disneyland. I had so much fun. Wow, I talk a lot. I'm so sorry about that. What about a secret? Everyone has a secret. A secret? Oh gosh. Well... This is off the record, right? No one will ever find out? I've never told anyone this before, but... My mom is an alcoholic. She's been drinking heavily since I was about eleven, and I've been helping her hide it from everyone since then. My dad and siblings have no idea. I'm the only one, besides her and now you, that knows. I don't know what to do. Telling my dad could aggravate his heart condition, and I don't want my siblings thinking bad things about our mom. I love her, and I'd do anything to help her. Even lie to everyone around me. ALRIGHT. TIME'S ALMOST UP. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DREAMS. QUICK! My dreams? Well, I'd like to go to art school or culinary school. I haven't decided yet, but I'm kinda leaning toward culinary. I'd like to be a pastry chef, to compete in competitions throughout the world. France, in particular. That's why I work so hard with the Wallis family. My job there is going to pay for my schooling, without getting me in terrible debt. I've grown up with financial problems. I'd like to escape them in adulthood. AND THAT'S A WRAP. IT WAS NICE GETTING TO KNOW YOU. Thank you! I talk a lot, and I'm so, so sorry about that. I just got really into having someone to tell everything to. BEHIND THE MASK EMILY | 18 | PACIFIC | ALREADY HERE | CASH DUFFY AND CHELSEA PARK   |
