"How are you, Lynn?" he closed the door and made his way around the desk. "I'm Mr. Long, your counselor."
Taking a deep breath, I turned back to the door that blocked my only exit, the door that separated me from the rest of the world. It was just me and someone who claimed to be a counselor, all alone. It was just me and some stranger that I'd never met before. Before I turned back, I took another large breath and tried my best to smile, to put on a mask and attempt to feel things I would likely never feel again.
Wearing a customary smile, he used his chair to roll over to a set of large cube-shaped drawers and pulled one open. There, he ripped out a manila folder and made a slow roll back as he opened it, appearing to scan it for relevant information. I mean, it hadn't taken a genius to figure out what he was studying. Setting it down, he looked up with the same smile he had been wearing the whole few minutes I'd been there and pointed at the chair.
"I'm fine, I think?" I continued to wear the fake smile as I pulled out the chair, calmly sitting. "Am I in trouble for something?"
"Well, I think everyone's heard about you and Devin Herrera at this point. Even us. And normally, we try to stay out of these matters unless they get violent." he brought his fingers together. "But. . ."
My head cocked as I leaned forward. "But, what?"
I watched his fingers crawl to the edge of the folder and shut it before my eyes traveled back up, meeting his once more. His eyes had spoken for him, deep in thought as he tried to carefully formulate the words that would follow. Within those moments of his thought, that smile he donned had faded and was now replaced with the expression of seriousness. A seriousness that I wanted to run from, a seriousness that I hadn't wanted to hear or be a part of.
"We may have reason to believe that your relationship with Devin wasn't consensual." his open palm grazed against my skin softly before setting his palm on top of my hand. "Is this true?"
Even as the look of sympathy passed over his face, I sat entirely still within my own utter shock. I never told a soul what happened, and the only person who knew was Nathan. Had he told someone, even after he said he wouldn't? The only things I could in hear that deathly silence was the sound of my heart as it continued to pound and the distant echoes of a single, lone word. Nothing else was there and nothing else wanted to be there.
Trying my best to collect myself, I took yet another breath and sighed it out as a smile returned to my face with a raised brow. My rationality wanted the truth to be stated, to be told like it should have been in the first place, but I wanted something entirely different. I wanted the truth to be buried six feet under, where it belonged. It was to protect everything I still had in reach, to protect everything I still understood.
"It was consensual." I almost looked away as my hidden left hand began to turn into fist. "I mean, Devin's seriously hot. What girl would be dumb enough to say no?"
"Lynn, I know it must be horrible. But if something did happen to you, then you need to speak up now." he leaned forward.
Looking to my right and up at the wall, I found an abstract painting. It was just splatters of black and red paint, as simple as could be, yet it pulled in me in. It sucked me in like a vacuum, so I could be anywhere but that room, anywhere but my own mind. "Look, I had sex with him. I was willing and so was he. That's it."
This was the moment I needed to carry the strength that Grace always showed to me. The strength to smile through the lies and the pain, the strength to help others and forget about herself. This was the moment I needed her to lend me that strength, wherever she was. I needed her to bring it to me, I needed her to show it to me. This was the moment I needed her to show up and hand it to me.
"Okay. . ." he followed with a long pause as he removed his hand. "Can you look me in the eyes and say that?"
"We only had sex, or did you want me to go into detail about the way he stuck his cock in me?" I launched up, glaring back at him as I turned for the door. "I'm gonna go. . .I don't want to be late for class."
Throwing the door open, I sped through the main office and into the empty cafeteria, where I immediately made a line drive of a dash towards the door. Even after I smashed through the doors of the school, I continued to run away. I ran. I sprinted. I did everything I could think of to escape the lump in my throat, but it still remained as it chased me down the halls. It still remained as I now stood alone at the back of the school.
Damn.
"Shut the fuck up. . ." my hands slammed over my ears. "Leave me alone. . .Please."
Leaning over, the lump in my throat finally won out as the breakfast Nathan had given me was projected out of my mouth and onto the ground right at my feet. What started as food soon turned into water, and then that very water turned into dry heaves. Mixed with suddenly falling tears, my body kept trying to spit out whatever it could over and over again as it brought me to my knees. It felt like it wasn't going to end. It was just another torrential downpour.
It was never going to end. This hell I was putting myself through, the dirtiness I felt every time I awoke and went to sleep, and the nightmares I had every time I closed my eyes. They were never going to end. They were never going to leave. The feelings of shame and disgust, the feelings of betrayal and guilt were feelings that I was stuck with, that I was to forever live with.
What was I supposed to do?
I couldn't stand knowing that Grace would've looked at me like I was another person, that I wasn't the person she said she loved. She would have denied those very words, and she would have said that she still loved me, but they were lies. I would've been only a shell of what once was, and I wasn't going to let that happen. I wasn't going to allow myself to lose the best thing in my life. She was never going to find out any of it, but how was I supposed to stop this unending hell in my head? Why wasn't I allowed to have both?
Devin already got what he wanted out of my body, so why couldn't it be over? Why couldn't I forget and move on from it? Why couldn't I move on and see Grace again like everything was normal? Why was I being forced to suffer when I just wanted to forget?
How was I supposed to live normally when I was being dragged down to hell by every last thing? If it hadn't been Grace herself, then it was something off of the long, long list of things I had done wrong in my life. If it wasn't Grace or that, then it was thinking about everything I could've done differently to save her, to stop her from trying to end her life without giving me an answer or reason why. Now, I had to suffer through this hell with only myself and Nathan.
"Fuck." my right hand hammered itself into the grass, repetitively. "Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!"
As tear after bitter tear fell, I only wanted one thing. I just wanted one thing and one thing only. That was to feel nothing. I longed for emptiness that held no darkness, I longed to be anything other than myself. I longed to run away from this pain and torture, from the hell that was ripping me apart as I fell deeper and deeper. Tear after bitter tear, one thing I longed for more than Grace had finally come.
Numbness. I wanted to disappear from reality and run away from everything that was piling on top of me. I wanted to hide from it all, the people and the feelings, the judgement and the emotions. I needed to black out my heart and my mind, I needed to be something other than myself. There was no way I could have kept living this way, something needed to change. That something had to be me.
"Help me. . ." I pushed myself up from the ground. "You said you'd never l-"
Lifting my head, my eyes made contact with a girl who was passing by on a skateboard. She kicked her skateboard upwards and jumped as she stood only feet away. Smothered in tight black clothes and chains, she was topped off with a snapback and a joint hanging from her mouth. Surprisingly, she made her way onto the grass and threw her skateboard down before sitting on it, right in front of me.
Without a single word, her hair-covered eyes looked right at me as she extended her joint-bearing right hand. A closer look revealed the tattoos that crawled up her neck and down her arms, with no attempt to hide any of it. She looked like she had walked straight out of the eighties punk scene, and was proud of it.
"That isn't the crying of someone who just got dumped. Those are some demons." she shook the joint in between her fingers. "Kinda reminded me of a someone I used to party with."
Taking the joint, I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of his shirt as I tried to make myself look at least halfway normal. "Is that why you stopped, because I reminded you of someone?"
"Not really." she eyed the area I had vomited in and shrugged her shoulders before a short pause. ". . .I don't know, really. I felt like anyone who's willing to cry alone behind a school needs someone, I guess. Someone is better than no one, you know?"
Pulling off her hat, she gave a smile as she watched me hit the joint. It hit me immediately that this wasn't the street stuff that Nathan had in his car. This was the stuff sold medically, with a card, and my cough reflected it. Her hair, after she took off the hat, had only gotten longer and somewhat messier than it already was. Yet, it fit her both her face and her attitude. She really hadn't given a damn about anything, at least from what she was showing me.
"It isn't." I apprehensively answered. "Not if they don't understand what you're feeling inside or what you're seeing in the mirror every day. They just remind you how alone you are and how numb you want to be."
Maybe she had been after something else, but she had been the type of person I least expected to stop for someone else, especially for someone like me. Not because it wasn't her problem, but because she just didn't care about others. That wasn't a facade, it was clearly the way she lived. So, why would she have stopped for some crying teenager, of all people? Had it really just been chance?
"Numb?" she tossed her hat back on. "Are you talking about you?"
". . .Would it matter if I even answered?"
I took another hit of the joint and tried to pass it back to her, but she waved it away as she shook her head. It was as I was as exhaling the second hit of the joint that I saw the smile on her face, a smile that said she had an idea. Springing up, she leaned back over and somehow managed to pull me up with one hand even though she was only slightly bigger than me. Bending over once more, she picked up her skateboard and hopped onto the sidewalk that framed itself around the school.
"If you wanna get numb, then I know some good ways." she smirked, pulling me onto the concrete and letting go as she walked ahead.
"I'm actually heading over to the perfect place for that right now. Wanna come?"
ns 172.70.39.11da2
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