Status: Active Once More
The Girl Who Cried Rape
Throw The Bottle, Break The Door, And Disappear
Some secrets spill from your lips the moment they appear, without much thought, and then there are others, the ones you hold so tightly and close to your heart they become a part of you. These secrets are the ones that devour your common sense and rationality.
Telling Eric, the truth had never been my intention. I had decided the morning after my attack under boiling hot water and bare skin that no one would ever know the real truth of that night. I have only partially broken that promise I made to myself that lonely morning. Eric knows that Seth hurt me, destroyed me really but he does not know anymore, and since his revelation last week about joining the football team that broke me, it is something I cannot bring myself to tell him.
He seems so happy being on the team, he has been trying really hard to prove to himself and his teammates that he is good enough to stand with them, the top dogs of my school and town. Leaving me to watch him from my window as he promises me this will all be over soon and we can study again.
“How are you feeling Ryan?” It is Petunia that asks me this question on a cold and rainy morning; I pull my jacket a little tighter over my fingers. I am so distracted with thoughts of Eric and the football team that for a second I think it is Eric that has asked me, for a moment I feel joy because he is back but then I realise it is Petunia and I am lonely.
Petunia is wearing her hair out and bright red lipstick, I wonder if she knows I once wore red lipstick but it had stained those boys when they thrust into my mouth and I had thrown up a colour just as bright and vibrant last night, after a forgotten text from Eric, saying he misses me and promises to join me under the stars soon.
Petunia licks her teeth and I can’t help but feel bile rise in my throat, I cough but manage to swallow the disgusting bile. I don’t know what is wrong with me. I want to scratch at my stomach and tear it apart until I find the reason for feeling so sick. There has to be something in there that shouldn’t be that is making me feel so unwell, it can’t all be because of what happened all those months ago.
It can’t be.
It can’t be.
It can’t be.
But I think deep down it is, I know it is because I remember that once upon a time I wanted nothing more than to kiss Seth and end up getting lost in his magical eyes. Only reality was much different, I was lost in my eyes because they kept changing colours and intensity with every body that climbed on top of me and ripped open more than just my soul.
How am I petunia? I want to ask, how am I?
Well I think I am dying but no one is noticing. Not even the boy who promised to never let me get like this again.
*
Eric splits his time between me and football practice and school. He and Jenna have fallen to the way side. In English he still sits next to me but he never brings me jellybeans any more, he has forgotten because next to him sits a perky blonde cheerleader far prettier than I could ever hope to be with pretty eyes that aren’t hollow.
Today he I supposed to be sitting with Jenna and I at lunch, at least that is what he promised me when he found me alone on my roof slowly dying silently. Instead of sitting next to me and talking about nothing important at all he is standing next to a bin talking to some of the football players.
“What happened to Eric?” Jenna asks, it is a simple enough question, from Jenna’s sitting positon she is not able to see Eric and I know she is asking where he is but I can’t help but wonder the same thing as he laughs with a boy I know for certain has a mole on his inner left thigh.
“I don’t know anymore,” I reply looking down into my salad the second Eric catches me eye and waves.
I think I am having trouble breathing, when I was seven my cousin had an asthma attack and I remember watching her in such terror, in such fear that she would never be able to breathe properly again. When a terrible fate that had seemed to my young brain, to be rendered forever breathless. Yet here I sit waiting for my lungs to fill with precious air and it’s not all that bad, not once you get used to it, really.
“I heard Vanessa is thinking of asking him out,” Jenna says eating her slice of cold pizza, I watch her for a moment. Vanessa is a name I am very familiar with, she is one of the girls who cough ‘slut’ as I walk past, but smiles when I look her in the face. She has a pretty kind of ugly face, with disjointed features and crooked teeth.
“She has a bad dentist,” I mutter into my salad, Jenna hears me but is distracted because she has seen someone else. The reason that she is hanging around with me and Eric less and less, a boy named Grant.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” She tells me with a wide smile, I can’t help but envy her. And just like that, here I am again, like at the start of the year, completely alone wondering what happened to my friends and my innocence. I think this time it hurts more because Eric is staring at me mouthing ‘one more minute’. That minute never ends and I walk away before he can come find me.
I really can’t breathe anymore.
Telling Eric, the truth had never been my intention. I had decided the morning after my attack under boiling hot water and bare skin that no one would ever know the real truth of that night. I have only partially broken that promise I made to myself that lonely morning. Eric knows that Seth hurt me, destroyed me really but he does not know anymore, and since his revelation last week about joining the football team that broke me, it is something I cannot bring myself to tell him.
He seems so happy being on the team, he has been trying really hard to prove to himself and his teammates that he is good enough to stand with them, the top dogs of my school and town. Leaving me to watch him from my window as he promises me this will all be over soon and we can study again.
“How are you feeling Ryan?” It is Petunia that asks me this question on a cold and rainy morning; I pull my jacket a little tighter over my fingers. I am so distracted with thoughts of Eric and the football team that for a second I think it is Eric that has asked me, for a moment I feel joy because he is back but then I realise it is Petunia and I am lonely.
Petunia is wearing her hair out and bright red lipstick, I wonder if she knows I once wore red lipstick but it had stained those boys when they thrust into my mouth and I had thrown up a colour just as bright and vibrant last night, after a forgotten text from Eric, saying he misses me and promises to join me under the stars soon.
Petunia licks her teeth and I can’t help but feel bile rise in my throat, I cough but manage to swallow the disgusting bile. I don’t know what is wrong with me. I want to scratch at my stomach and tear it apart until I find the reason for feeling so sick. There has to be something in there that shouldn’t be that is making me feel so unwell, it can’t all be because of what happened all those months ago.
It can’t be.
It can’t be.
It can’t be.
But I think deep down it is, I know it is because I remember that once upon a time I wanted nothing more than to kiss Seth and end up getting lost in his magical eyes. Only reality was much different, I was lost in my eyes because they kept changing colours and intensity with every body that climbed on top of me and ripped open more than just my soul.
How am I petunia? I want to ask, how am I?
Well I think I am dying but no one is noticing. Not even the boy who promised to never let me get like this again.
*
Eric splits his time between me and football practice and school. He and Jenna have fallen to the way side. In English he still sits next to me but he never brings me jellybeans any more, he has forgotten because next to him sits a perky blonde cheerleader far prettier than I could ever hope to be with pretty eyes that aren’t hollow.
Today he I supposed to be sitting with Jenna and I at lunch, at least that is what he promised me when he found me alone on my roof slowly dying silently. Instead of sitting next to me and talking about nothing important at all he is standing next to a bin talking to some of the football players.
“What happened to Eric?” Jenna asks, it is a simple enough question, from Jenna’s sitting positon she is not able to see Eric and I know she is asking where he is but I can’t help but wonder the same thing as he laughs with a boy I know for certain has a mole on his inner left thigh.
“I don’t know anymore,” I reply looking down into my salad the second Eric catches me eye and waves.
I think I am having trouble breathing, when I was seven my cousin had an asthma attack and I remember watching her in such terror, in such fear that she would never be able to breathe properly again. When a terrible fate that had seemed to my young brain, to be rendered forever breathless. Yet here I sit waiting for my lungs to fill with precious air and it’s not all that bad, not once you get used to it, really.
“I heard Vanessa is thinking of asking him out,” Jenna says eating her slice of cold pizza, I watch her for a moment. Vanessa is a name I am very familiar with, she is one of the girls who cough ‘slut’ as I walk past, but smiles when I look her in the face. She has a pretty kind of ugly face, with disjointed features and crooked teeth.
“She has a bad dentist,” I mutter into my salad, Jenna hears me but is distracted because she has seen someone else. The reason that she is hanging around with me and Eric less and less, a boy named Grant.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” She tells me with a wide smile, I can’t help but envy her. And just like that, here I am again, like at the start of the year, completely alone wondering what happened to my friends and my innocence. I think this time it hurts more because Eric is staring at me mouthing ‘one more minute’. That minute never ends and I walk away before he can come find me.
I really can’t breathe anymore.