"What are you doing here, Lynn?"
I kept my head low, keeping clear of all eye contact. What was this feeling? It was like I knew as soon as I looked up, I was going to be met with a face loaded with judgement. She was going to look at me with disappointment, just like the one Brian gave me. Shame, had I been feeling shame? Embarrassment, maybe? I respected her, even if we hadn't known each other all that well. I always held respect for people who weren't afraid of being themselves, for people who never cared about other opinions. What I respected in other people was precisely what I always lacked in myself.
Within shallow, compact steps, she made her way over to me. She looked exactly the same, just with longer hair and paler skin. Her body was just as 'healthy' as it had been the last time I saw her, and she still hadn't been afraid to show it off in front of anyone who looked, or wanted to look. Of all the people I could've possibly ran into, I never quite expected to see her there. What could have made someone like her end up in a place like this?
Unlike myself, she looked fine. She still looked like a model, and her smile had still been that of every man's dreams. Meanwhile, I looked like I had just run a mile buried in goth makeup.
"What? You're not going to talk to me? That's fine, I'll just force you." she was clearly speaking through her teeth. "I'm gonna borrow her, Becky. We won't be too long."
Before I could realize she was doing anything, I suddenly felt myself being ripped and tugged through the doors that I had been looking at when I first entered the room. As soon as the air hit my skin, I had caught just how fresh and cool it had felt compared to Ely. Both were filled with nature, and the pollution was always kept to a minimum, so why had it felt so much cleaner here? No. That hadn't been it, it wasn't that the air was cleaner. It was the toxicity of the people that was missing from the air surrounding me.
Ely, behind closed doors, was an evil, judgmental place. Everyone was nice to my face, but I knew that they all had their piece to add about me once they got home and sat their fat fucking asses into a couch. Depending on the night, maybe it had been Brian or maybe it was how I would follow in his footsteps on another. It wasn't just me, either. Even my own parents had partaken in the festivities of late afternoon shit talking.
What had I done? As usual, I kept a fake smile on my face and kept my mouth shut. Did I have any place to speak up to them, or to anyone for that matter? I had hid the fact that I was dating a girl from everyone until it all got exposed and we stopped hiding. How would people have reacted if I told them that their town hero forced himself on and in me? How would they feel knowing that he stole a freshman girl's body for his own empowerment and pleasure?
They wouldn't have felt a damn thing, because I wouldn't have been believed. I was the little sister of a criminal who had caused nothing but trouble his whole life in Ely. He was Ely's golden child, he was going to get into a top football school like LSU or Ohio State and shock the world. Everyone was so sure that he was going to go places that any wrong he did would be swept under the rug and forever forgotten, grades and all.
I had already been destroyed inside and out by Devin. Anything more would have ended me.
"Okay, Lynn, we're alone." she led me down the steps and onto what looked to be an unused dock for small boats. "I really thought we were going to end up being friends, but you disappeared after that party. You and Nathan rarely ever showed up to school, and when I did see you there, you were leaving."
". . .Sorry, Joanna." I glared down into the dark, murky looking water below my feet. She just had to bring me here. "It didn't really have anything to do with you."
"I think it does, especially since both of my friends are involved." a finger hooked my chin and lifted my face upwards. "By the looks of it, something did happened. Did Nathan do something to you?"
"Nothing happened." my eyes averted on their own as I smacked her hand away. "I was going through some stuff, and Nathan wouldn't leave me alone. That's all it was."
"Liar." Joanna followed me further onto the dock. "You won't even attempt to look me in the eye. That obviously means you're lying."
Joanna stood across from me, and was clearly not intending on moving without force. This was only confirmed when I tried to walk around her. She pushed me back into place and waited, as if I was going to try again before I got the point. Her expression and her eyes screamed her seriousness, she wasn't going to budge until she was satisfied with the answer she got. Would, rather, could I budge from myself and what I had held so close to the vest for so long?
I turned my head and looked her in the eye this time. "He. . .H-He-. . .Fuck."
It came to me after stuttering like a drunk child that was just learning how to talk. I hadn't ever actually told anyone what happened. The words themselves never came from my mouth, what had happened and what he had done to me. Nathan had been the only one to hear me say anything close, Nathan had been the only one to know what happened. No other soul aside from Nathan knew what really happened. No other soul knew it had ever happened. Would she believe me, or would she just laugh at me like everyone else would've?
I hadn't known her much longer than a few hours at best, yet she felt like a friend. I felt comfortable with her, to some degree. But was I comfortable with her knowing this when I hadn't known what she would do with the information? As I looked at Joanna, what proved harder was actually getting the words to leave my tongue and come out of my mouth. It was as though the words were of a forbidden tongue, cursed out of existence by my mind and humanity.
"H-. . .H-He r-ra. . ." I trailed off as my right hand attached itself and dug into the opposite arm's elbow. ". . .I can't."
"You can." Joanna lowered herself to the ground and took a breath, looking up like she had been waiting for me to follow her lead. "Lynn, nobody here can help unless you're honest. We all have our issues and secrets, but those secrets aren't going to pass here. You're easy to read, so stop just trying to hide everything and open up."
Sitting down with her, I wrapped my arms around my legs and rested my chin on the cap of my knee. Had she really been open? Would telling someone what happened make these feelings and memories, if only a little, disappear? How could someone who I'd only known for a few hours at most seem to understand me and what I was feeling? I let my face fall into my lap and stared into the wrinkles on my shirt. The fatigue Rebecca mentioned was beginning to set in just a little as I tried to put something together for Joanna.
"He. . .raped me." I virtually whispered.
"N-Nathan did? Are you serious?" Joanna sounded perturbed, for obvious reason.
"I thought he did at first, but no. . ." Turning my head a bit to the right, I watched the current of the water flow with itself. "It was Devin."
I refused to look up in any manner. Joanna was probably laughing at me, thinking that Devin could have gotten anyone he wanted, so why would he force himself on some random freshman girl? It sounded like a lie and I'm sure she thought it was one. Honestly, I wouldn't have been surprised if she had already walked off. Why would she have believed me, of all people? It was some nobody versus the star, the waste of space versus the do-it-all.
My head was forcefully raised by Joanna and aimed right at her eyes. "Devin? Like Devin Herrera?. . .How?"
Right then, even a whole year later, the tears fell whenever that night came to mind. Just like that night itself, it was like I lacked the control to do anything to help myself. I wasn't able to stop myself from crying and I hadn't been able to stop him. What had I been able to stop? I couldn't stop the tears, I hadn't been able to stop him, and I never had the chance to stop Grace. The only thing I had ever been able to truly stop was myself.
Jesus, you failure. Keep crying like the child you are. It might take you further than actually trying to do something, because we all know you can't do anything well.
"I think he drugged me, like. . .nothing would move. He forced it in me and tried to choked me." she brought herself closer as I suddenly found my hands on my knees. "Nathan tried to stop him, but I don't remember what happened after that. He didn't stop and just kept pushing it in deeper and deeper. I couldn't even cry. . .It doesn't stop. Every time I close my fucking eyes, it just keeps replaying itsel-"
Joanna had told me to stop - not through words, but through action. Did she know? The hell I lived through in my head, the sleepless nights? Had Joanna known the distance I felt from everyone and everything, how I was so close to everyone, yet consistently felt so far away? Did she know how isolated I felt? The past year felt like I had been alone in the middle of the Sahara Desert, while the sky paraded the people around me, living happily while I was tormented, deteriorating from the inside. I was never noticed or remembered, left to be forgotten.
Not until then. It had always been Nathan who listened to me talk, it was always Nathan that let me scream at him. He let me use and abuse him, constantly, and it never came with a single complaint. He had always been there for me, and treated me like a human being, even with how fucked up I had been to him and myself. Did Nathan finally have enough of me and agree to help my parents because of that? Had Nathan been sick and tired of me?
"I thought it might've been something like that." another voice inserted itself.
As Joanna turned her head around, we were both met with the sight of Rebecca. With arms crossed and a hard-to-read expression resting on her face, she seemed to nearly glare at me. If she heard all of that, then what else could I have said? What I told Joanna had been the truth, and they both ended up hearing it. Rebecca's stern expression slowly began to change and eventually turned into soft, almost forgiving expression as she closed in on the both of us.
Rebecca stood to our left and then sat down herself, legs crossed. "We don't have to talk about that until you're ready, Lynn. I do want this out of you from now on, though. Even if it's tough and even if it takes an hour for you to say, we need this kind of honesty from you. The more open you can be with me, the more we can help you. Does that make sense?"
"Yeah. I mean, we're all messed up, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Lucas is quiet and kinda awkward, but he listens whenever you talk to him. Jay can be a cranky, huge dick sometimes, but he has his moments when you get to know him. Me? I don't think we have enough time. So, it's your turn." Joanna slightly raised her foot and then tapped it back down onto the wood.
"Let us get to know the real Lynn."
ns 172.68.244.158da2
and then Add to home screen.