Hate Me

After the tests were done on my body, I was put back in a hospital room where Amy, Ryan, Kale, May, and Evan all piled into the room.

May and Evan were hysterical. “Nero, baby, why didn’t you tell us everything Sloan was doing to you?” May cried. “We could’ve sent him to get help from a mental institution.”

“If we had known, we could’ve kept this from happening to you,” Evan told me, placing a hand over my forehead, pushing my hair back.

“I’m sorry…,” I choked out.

“No, honey, it isn’t your fault. Sloan, he’s… he had problems at the orphanage. I mean, we thought we could, you know, give him a loving home and maybe he’d get better. But…”

“He didn’t,” Ryan growled from the corner of the room. Amy elbowed him in attempts to get him to shut up.

“Nero, we love you. We still do. What Sloan did was wrong and we understand that what happened to him was an accident,” Dad told me, “But we never expected this.”

“He’d bite others and get in fights with them. His teacher said he had inferiority problems, too,” I looked past my parents to see a woman dressed in a nice, button-down jacket and formal slacks. I figured this would happen sooner or later.

“I’d like to ask everyone to leave so I can interview Norman,” she requested. My parents gave me a small look of sympathy before exiting the room. Amy stayed wrapped in her brother’s one-armed embrace before being ushered out the door by Kale.

Then she took a seat in the chair nearest me. This just proved true what I feared. Sloan really was dead, slain by my hand.

“Obviously, your rape kit came up positive for spermatozoa,” she said in some sophisticated voice, like I’m supposed to be looking up to her… or worshipping her. “However, we need your testimony.”

My words were choked up in the back of my throat, not willing to come out. I couldn’t do anything but stay silent.

“All we ask of you is your cooperation,” She sounded like she was getting agitated. Obviously I was going to be traumatized. I killed my foster brother just after I was raped by him for Christ sakes.

A few more moments of silence go by as my mind is wrestling with my body to speak, form a single sentence, I was raped, is all I need to say.

She let out an aggravated sigh before saying, “It’s not that hard.”

Now I just felt like crying. I felt like I was backed into a corner with no escape. I’m the mouse and she’s the lioness waiting to pounce on me. I don’t want to speak, let alone tell her what happened.

Then the door bursts open. The person that I least expect to be there is standing before me. “It is that hard for him! Don’t you understand what he just went through,” Ryan calls out to her, challenging her before he strides over to me and stands in front of me, like a human meat shield. Instinctively, I grab his sleeve. It was like when he picked me up and I felt that need to grab onto something solid.

“Do you have any idea what I see every day? I don’t have time to waste on a victim that won’t talk. He could easily end this case.”

In that moment, it felt like Ryan and I were thinking the same thing, What a travesty of justice.

“Detective,” A sharp voice calls out. Standing at the door is an older man, maybe mid-thirties with a five o’clock shadow and a tired look about him. “Go see about the Reynolds case back at headquarters, I’ll take this one.”

The woman looked a bit mad but she must have been his subordinate because she backed off of me and stormed out the door.

“Sorry, she’s a bit of a… well, she can be a bitch. And impatient,” he said before easily striding forward and sitting in the seat that the female detective was just sitting in. “But it is true that she sees a lot of bad shit in our line of work. But we’re better off. We’re not living it.”

Ryan didn’t move an inch, like he was protecting me. It was strange, this confused feeling. What’s he thinking? Is he my friend or my enemy? The past told me enemy the present told me friend. Was he always like this? Was he always subtly by my side, sticking up for me when I wasn’t around? His stance makes me feel like he did do all those things. But there was also the way he stood that looked crooked and sad, like he didn’t do enough.

I may sound like an idiot saying this, but I didn’t care that he didn’t do enough, at least he realizes it.

“Do you want him here? Oh wait, you were a witness too, weren’t you?” The detective asked.

Ryan nodded, “Yeah, but I… I didn’t actually see it happen. But the aftermath, yeah, I was there for that.”

“Anyways, I’m Detective Masters. Do you feel ready to talk about this? I’m ready whenever you are,” he said, trying to put me back in my comfort zone.

And so I told, words flowing from my mouth, rivers of vowels and consonants. From where Sloan picked me up and threw me in the bushes, out of sight, to when Amy and Ryan found me.

“Thanks, kid, I appreciate the help. I want you only focusing on one thing: getting better,” Detective Masters said, showing me a kindly smile.

After he left, Ryan and I were left alone. “I’m sorry I didn’t help you all those times. I’m so, so sorry. I wanted to, I really wanted to.”

I released the fabric of his sleeve before resting my hands on my stomach, on top of the sheets. “Then why didn’t you?” I asked, my eyes just staring blankly ahead.

“It’s for such a stupid reason…” he whispered, his voice seeming to choke. Why was he so upset about this?

“Because they know a secret about me that I couldn’t let get out in the school. I’m their pawn. That’s all I really am to them.”

It wasn’t just the seriousness in his voice that made me think that he was telling the truth, but he was also digging his fingernails into the skin of his arm.