Thunder

For a minute, Alex was just in pure shock. He didn’t know how he was supposed to handle or respond to what Abigail just told him. Alex knew stuff like that happened every single day, all the time, he just honestly never thought he’d be faced with it.

Abigail sensed the tension that just rose in between her and Alex. She couldn’t believe she just said that. She hadn’t told anyone that before. She hadn’t trusted anyone before, especially someone she only just met that day. “I’m sorry… Alex, I’ll, uh… I’ll see you at school… It was nice, uh… yeah,” Abigail pulled away and started walking away, hoping that Alex wouldn’t run after her.

The girl only walked a few feet away before she heard the feet padding behind her, sounding as if they were jogging.

Sure enough, Alex caught up with her pace and stood in front of her, stopping her. “Abigail, please, don’t leave,” Alex panted from running too fast to catch up with her. It all made sense now – why she caked on the makeup, why she was so quickly against Alex picking her up at home, why she didn’t want to go home… Alex thought harder, maybe she wanted to hide bruises on her arm, and that’s why she wore the hoodie.

“Alex, it’s probably better if I leave. Just forget it what I said, okay? I don’t trust people. What I said… it just kind of came out. I’m sorry,” Abigail said quickly, making it all sound like one big, giant word.

Alex ignored her protests, grabbing for her wrist again, a bit shocked that she didn’t pull away. “You can trust me,” he stated simply. “I promise you can. I don’t care what’s happened in your past. You can trust me, Abigail.”

Abigail, another first time for her, looked Alex dead in the eyes looking for signs of insincerity, but found absolutely nothing. “Alex, I…” before she could finish her thought, the shaggy, dark headed boy in front of her cut her off.

“Is that why you wear the hoodie… because you have, you know, bruises on your arms?” he questioned, raising an eyebrow at her. Hopefully, she’d be honest with him, he couldn’t help but think to himself.

“No. That’s not why, Alex,” Abigail couldn’t help but laugh bitterly. Alex honestly had no clue what she was hiding underneath the dark sleeves, and she didn’t plan on him finding out what it was.

Alex didn’t respond to Abigail’s statement, sensing it was bullshit. He just slowly raised her sleeves up, expecting her to flinch or slap him away to keep him from seeing her arms.

Abigail’s eyes widened at what the boy what doing. For some reason, though, she couldn’t move. She couldn’t move her body to slap him away. She couldn’t make words come out of her mouth, to tell him to leave her alone.

Expecting to see even more bruises, Alex’s mouth dropped at what his eyes were met with. Cuts. Everywhere. Some were horizontal, some were vertical. Some looked jagged. Some were made to be words and phrases like “fat”, “perfect”, “whore”, or “I’m fine”.

Alex didn’t know what to say. He ran his fingers across the pink scars and the fresh new cuts. This was definitely not what he was expecting at all.

Abigail couldn’t even form coherent sentences in her mind. Alex Gaskarth knew her deepest secret. He knew the secret that she hadn’t told anyone. He knew the secret she had kept so well for the last few years. He now knew how broken she really was. Abigail’s worst fear, though, was that Alex now knew how weak she was.

“Take off your hoodie,” Alex finally said, still not taking his fingers or eyes off of the cuts. “Please.”

“N-no…” was all Abigail could manage out of her mouth. She tried her best to fight the tears but they came in a downpour.

“Abigail, please. Take off your hoodie,” Alex pleaded. He wanted, no needed, to see if she had any more cuts. He wanted to know what she was hiding. In all honesty, though, he was terrified out of his mind. The girl who seemed to hold everything together was really falling apart on the inside, and she didn’t know how to deal with it.

“Alex, I… I can’t,” Abigail tried to fight back, but she knew she was going to lose this battle. “You’ll… you’ll think I’m… that I’m crazy,” she sobbed, hearing the nearby thunder. She prayed to herself, hoping that the thunder would come and release a huge storm, making it impossible for her to reveal her secrets.

“Abigail… I’m not going to hurt you,” Alex said. He meant it, too. He had absolutely no intentions of hurting this girl or deserting her in anyway. He also knew that it was probably sometime around five. His mother could wait, though. This was far too important. “Just please take off your hoodie. I’m not going to think you’re crazy, I swear.”

Abigail felt like someone else was controlling her body whenever she reluctantly pulled the dark hoodie off of her and slung it to the grassy, green ground. Under the hoodie, a simple white V-neck was revealed. She didn’t stop there, though. Alex wanted to know what she was hiding, and she wanted Alex to know. Although, she didn’t want him to find out quite like this, she didn’t even know where to begin with any of this. She stood there in her white undershirt, staring at the ground. This had to scare Alex off, she thought.

That was when Alex knew. This girl was scared for her life. She had emotions in her that she didn’t know how to deal with, so this was how she coped. Alex gave her torso a look over. Besides the obvious cuts and scars, he couldn’t help but notice how prominently her bones stuck out.

“Abigail… I…”

“If you think the outside of me looks sad, you should see the inside,” Abigail laughed bitterly. That was her way of dealing with things. She made sick, twisted jokes about them. What she found most enjoyable, though, in a sick, demented, kind of way, was that Alex hadn’t even seen her legs yet. Those were probably a lot worse. “It’s okay if you want to leave me now. It’s… it’s fine. I get it, really.”

Alex shook his head, stepping forward to her. “I don’t want to leave you. I told you, Abigail. I want to fix you.”

“Alex, look at me,” she choked out between her ragged breaths. She had cuts on every inch of her body, even had words carved into her skin to remind her how pathetic she was. “You haven’t even seen the best part,” she spoke, her voice dripping with sarcasm, lifting up her undershirt to reveal her bruised ribs and cut up stomach.

“Abigail, listen to me, okay?” Alex’s voice shook uncontrollably, though he tried to get it under control to where she could at least understand him. “You don’t deserve what your father does to you. Nobody deserves that. You don’t need to hurt yourself. You’re beautiful and-“

“He calls me fat all the time,” Abigail blurted out. She cursed herself for it a million times. Why was all of this just pouring out? This usually never happened. It wasn’t supposed to happen. She didn’t want anyone to know. “This morning he told me to lose weight. So, to please him and obey him on that, I don’t eat,” she said before she could stop herself. Fuck, she thought. That one was definitely not supposed to come out of her mouth.

“Wh-what… Abigail, no… Please, no… Please do not tell me you starve yourself… please,” Alex begged. He really didn’t want this to be true, but he knew she was being one hundred percent serious.

“Well, I don’t not eat all the time,” the brunette shrugged, washing a wave of relief over Alex. That is, until she spoke her next statement. “Sometimes I eat, then I throw it up.”

Alex stared at her in disbelief. This girl was fucking gorgeous… Why did she not believe it? “Abigail, look-“

“That’s not even the entire thing, Alex,” Abigail felt so many emotions at one time. She felt angry, confused, hurt, and cared for… That was a feeling she wasn’t used to.

“….What’s the rest of it…”

“I was…” Abigail couldn’t say the next sentence. She couldn’t tell him this. It hurt too much to even think about. Anytime she thought about it or someone brought it up, which her father usually did, she had the flashbacks. “Never mind… I can’t… I can’t say it out loud… I just can’t…”

Alex knew there was more. He gave a look of concern towards Abigail, which made her feel just a bit better, but not a lot.

“You remember when I, uh… I had the panic attack… and I told you not to touch me or whatever?” she finally managed to get out, running a hand through her hair. She honestly felt naked. Here she was, standing in front of a guy she had just met today, trusting him with all of her dirty secrets. She was standing in front of him telling everything from the abuse, the self-harm, the eating disorder, and now the rape.

“Yeah,” Alex nodded slowly. “You said, ‘please don’t touch me’.”

Abigail was a bit surprised that Alex remembered that about her. No one usually paid attention to her during her attacks. When Abigail finally figured how to say what she wanted to say – she was just going to be upfront and straightforward – she heard the rumble of the thunder again, this time sounding closer. “I was raped, Alex.”

Her words hit Alex like a slap in the face. Then to see the girl in front of him start sobbing uncontrollably, he didn’t know how to take any of this at all anymore. He just did what his heart told him to do.

Alex pulled the girl into his chest, while she sobbed into his t-shirt, feeling it as it seeped through his shirt. “Abigail, shh… It’s okay. I promise. It’s going to be okay.”

The amount of concern in Alex’s voice made Abigail want to believe him, but she knew it wasn’t true. Her past and her secrets were going to haunt her for a while. She knew they would they always would.

“I want to show you something,” the girl spoke, pulling out of the embrace they were in. Before she had a second thought to stop herself, Abigail held up her arm, bringing Alex’s attention to a vertical scar down her wrist. “That was after my dad had shoved me down the stairs. Afterwards, he told me he wished I was dead. So I wanted to give him what he wanted.”

Alex closed his eyes tightly. He knew what was coming next. He really didn’t want to hear the words she uttered, but he did and he couldn’t get them out of his mind.

“That was the first time I tried to kill myself.”

Alex opened his eyes, to see a tear-stained face and gorgeous blue eyes that he had grown accustomed to in such short time. “T-the first time…?”

Abigail nodded, understanding what he was getting at. “I’ve tried three times.” All of the suicide attempts were directly after her father would tell her something like “I wish you were dead already”.

Alex didn’t want to press the subject of her attempts, because he could clearly see how uncomfortable she was getting when she talked about trying to take her own life. He then noticed the thunder, as well. He averted his eyes away from the girl to the sky, and noticed a big, dark cloud above the two.

“Alex, I get it if this wasn’t really what you were expecting,” Abigail finally broke the awkward silence, drawing Alex’s eyes back to her. “I honestly didn’t expect to tell you any of this… It just kind of came out. Just know that I don’t usually trust people at all… It’s why I literally have no friends, so please don’t make me regret it.”

Alex sensed every bit of feeling in her voice. This girl really held herself together so perfectly. If you took one look at her, you would never in a million years imagine that she was so sad and broken.

“I’m not anything special, Alex…” Abigail kept talking. Alex had honestly never seen her talk so much. Abigail was shocked how much she was saying, especially through her tears and heavy breaths. “I’m really nobody. I’m no one’s nobody,” she smiled weakly at her own small joke.

Abigail bent down to pick up her shirt and hoodie, just as the first few rain drops fell down from the sky. Pulling the articles of clothing over her head, she smiled. “It’s raining, Alex,” she stated the obvious, causing Alex to smile. “I love the thunder. It’s strangely calming.”

“You know how you said you’re no one’s nobody?” Alex interrogated, as if she had already forgotten what had had happened just a few seconds ago. As she nodded, Alex smiled, running a hand through his messy hair. “I’m going to sound so lame, though.”

“Just say it.”

Alex thought over his words, carefully dissecting his words. He wanted to make sure they didn’t come off lame or awkward.

“You’ll always be my thunder.”