Tell My Story

Lainey Stewart was a happy fourteen-year-old girl. Her mother had remarried after the death of her dad, her stepfather was nice, and her grades never slipped.

That was until Carson O' Day came along.

Carson was Lainey's seventeen-year-old stepbrother. At first, he seemed like an okay guy, but he started being mean to her, calling her names and pushing her around. One day, it went too far.

"Just leave me alone, Carson," Lainey said, glaring at the man in front of her. He smirked.

"Make me, slut." She tried walking past him, but he pushed her backward with much more force than he intended. Her head hit the wall and she fell to the ground. Carson walked over and knelt down next to her. Pulling her up by her mid-back length brown hair, he smashed her head against the wall, just hard enough to give her a pounding headache. Mascara tears streaked her cheeks as she stared up at him, terrified. He let go and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him so their parents didn't see her lying on the floor.

She reached back and touched the place where her head hit the wall. When she brought her hand back into view, she was horrified to see it covered with blood. She dashed upstairs to her bathroom so she could wash the sliced skin and stop the bleeding. As she did, she kept thinking, what's gotten into him? I've never done anything to deserve getting beat up. She finished and walked back downstairs to where her parents sat at the table with Carson. As soon as he saw her, he gave her a look that meant "don't say a word or else". She stayed quiet except for when her parents asked her questions about school and what not. They ate dinner and everything was fine. Lainey never told her parents about what happened.

The next day, when Lainey was at school, her best friend Caiti noticed her acting differently.

"You okay, Lain," she asked, worry obvious in her tone. "You seem different." She shrugged.

"Just don't wanna be here." She shut her locker and cradled her books against her chest. "I hate Thursdays."

"Me too." They walked to class and Lainey acted like nothing happened. That ended when they got to lunch with their other friend Sara. Carson was in their lunch period.

"Hey, babe," Carson said. No one knew Carson was Lainey's stepbrother, so her friends thought she must have been dating him. He wasn't that bad looking, either, so they were more jealous than anything else, yet they were happy she had gotten herself a boyfriend.

"Hi," was all Lainey said as a response. Carson kissed her, and she felt like she was going to get sick. She hid her emotions and reactions well, though, so no one knew how she felt. He walked back to where his friends sat and her friends started freaking out.

"Oh my gosh! I can't believe you're going out with Carson O' Day," Caiti said, sounding shocked.

"He's so hot," Sara said. "When did you two start dating?!"

"We're not dating," Lainey mumbled, looking down at her food. She suddenly didn't have much of an appetite.

"He just kissed you in front of everybody," Caiti said, making it sound obvious that they were a "thing". "He must think you two are together."

"Plus you kissed back," Sara pointed out. Lainey just shrugged and Blake and Breanne went on to talk about how cute Lainey looked with Carson. They had no idea what had happened the previous night.

Lunch ended and they went their separate ways, but Carson followed Lainey to her class. He pulled her to the side of the hallway.

"What did you tell them," he said threateningly. She swallowed back the lump that formed in her throat.

"N-nothing," she stuttered. He smirked at how much control he had over her.

"Good." He kissed her again and left to go to his class. Lainey went to the room that held her class for the period. As soon as the bell rang, she felt something come up her throat.

She ran out of the room and straight into a stall in the bathroom. She threw up anything she had eaten in the last 24 hours, including the little bit she ate at lunch. She sat on the floor, rested her head back on the stall door and cried for about ten minutes before going back to class. The teacher asked if she was all right, and she said she was. She knew she was lying more to herself than to the teacher.

She got a text from Carson when the final bell to go home rang.

Im drivin u home. Get out 2 the parkin lot. Or else.

What else could she say to that? She knew what the "or else" meant; he'd do worse than just hit her head against the wall till she bled. She went past her bus to the parking lot where Carson leaned against his gloss blue 2003 Volkswagen VR6. She walked over and stood in front of him with her arms crossed over her chest. He smiled kindly.

"Do you wanna stop somewhere to get something to eat," he asked. She shook her head and he just climbed into the driver seat. She got in on the passenger side and took a silent deep breath. He stared the car and drove home in silence, frequently tightening his grip on the wheel to the point that his knuckles turned white. It was those times she got very tense and scared. She thought he was going to take her home and beat the crap out of her until she was nothing but a bloody heap on the floor. Is he bipolar? I thought he was mean, but not like this.

He pulled into the driveway and looked at Lainey. She went to get out of the car, but he grabbed her arm. She looked at him with a frightened expression. He gazed at her for a couple seconds before letting go. he stepped out of the car and followed her into the house. She stopped in the living room, afraid to go anywhere without his permission. It was then that she realized he scared her into his control.

It went on like that for weeks. Carson hit her whenever she disrespected him, and she eventually learned to do whatever he said. She was better off that way. Only a month or so after it started, though, she figured out it was too late to save herself.

"Hey, girl," Carson said as he walked into her bedroom without knocking. Lainey rolled her eyes, but didn't answer. "What are you doing?" She looked at the clock.

"Homework. What else am I doing at 10:30 at night?" He smirked. She hated that smirk so much, she wished she could rip it off his face.

"I know some other things we could do together at 10:30." She froze. She prayed he would never say that.

"I'm not tutoring you-" He stopped her by holding his hand up. She never really was good at playing dumb.

"You know what I'm talking about, Lain." She continued to solve the math problems she was given as homework until he rested his hand on hers to stop her from writing. She looked up at him.

"Just leave, Carson," she said sternly.

"No," he said. "I'm not leaving until I get what I came for." In that silent moment, one of many that they had shared, she realized once again that he had complete power over her.

He threw her notebook on the floor, took both of her wrists in one of his hands, and held them behind her. When she opened her mouth to scream, he covered her mouth with his free hand.

"Don't scream or yell, or else I'll make this ten times harder on you." She didn't respond so he kissed her, hard and rough. She let him do what he wanted with her that night, but he didn't say anything when he left two hours later as she cried uncontrollably.

He didn't say a word the next morning when she walked downstairs with bruises on her wrists from him holding her down. He didn't say a word when he drove her to school and he could hear her taking slow deep breaths to calm herself down. He did say many words, however, when they got home. None of them were comforting.

"What the hell is wrong with you," he yelled at her. She was too scared to answer. "How could you do that to me?!"

"I didn't do anything," she screamed back. He stalked over to her and took her head in both his hands. He pushed her back so she was stuck between him and the wall.

"You didn't do anything? Really? You sure you don't wanna tell me the truth?" She didn't say anything. He took a deep, angry breath. "You started crying in the middle of the damn parking lot for no freakin' reason. Everyone thought something was wrong."

"Because there was something wrong-"

"Really, Lainey?! Tell me what your problem is!"

"You," she screamed, tears freely spilling from her eyes. "Everything you done to me is my problem! You think I'm going to act like last night never happened?! Of course I'm not! I am going to have to be haunted by those memories for the rest of my life!" Carson stared at her, shocked that she had raised her voice to him. He felt his anger rise inside of him, and took it all out on her.

He slightly tightened his grip on the sides of her head and bashed it, hard, against the wall behind her. He did it two more times, harder each time, before her eyes rolled to the back of her head. He let her go and watched her limp body fall to the floor. His mouth hung open, realizing what he had just done. Did I kill her?

Just then, their parents walked in. They acted immediately and called an ambulance. She was taken to a hospital where she had woken up an hour later. A doctor told her the heartbreaking news.

Carson had bashed her head against the wall so hard it had shaken her brain. The part of her brain that controlled the functioning of her organs was severely damaged. Too damaged to repair it.

Her body was slowly shutting down.

That's where I come into the story. I'm Nick, one of Lainey's best friends. Her parents asked her who she wanted to be by her side during her last hour. She said she wanted me here. They called me and told me to come to the hospital as soon as possible, that Lainey was hurt.

They didn't tell me she was dying.

I walked into Lainey's hospital room and saw her awake, but with only a heart monitor and IV hooked to her. That's when she told me everything.

She told me about Carson's abusing her, about him raping her, about every single thing she had ever kept from anyone. She told me all of this, remembering everything in perfect clarity. It killed me to hear her telling me these things, knowing she was going to die before midnight.

She died at 7:24pm on November 22nd, 2010. I was the only one in the room with her. When the monitor gave the continuous "beep" sound, nurses and doctors rushed in. They checked her pulse and all left but one young nurse.

"I'm sorry," was all she said. She walked out to tell Lainey's parents she was gone. I stared at her lifeless body, remembering her last words before her eyes closed forever. Three words I would have engraved in my mind for the rest of my life.

Tell my story.