6
“YOU SEEM… HAPPIER,” Sharon remarked as I sat down across from her.
“Yeah, I guess I am,” I said with a smile.
“Do you want to tell me the reason for this change?” She tapped her pen against her notepad.
“There’s this new girl in one of my classes and she said some things that just made me think.”
“What was it she said?” she scribbled something down on her paper.
“Something about, not thinking about the bad so much, that it only gives it the power to hurt you more.”
Sharon smiled. “She sounds like my kind of girl.”
“I really like her. She’s nice and she doesn’t judge me for being… me,” I shrugged.
“I must say, this is major progress, Katy. For as long as you’ve been coming to see me, Rollo has been your only friend. This is good. You need a girl that you can talk to. Did you go to the self-defense class like I suggested?” she raised a brow as she waited for my answer.
“I did,” I wrung my hands together and glanced sheepishly at the floor.
“Did it go well?” she questioned.
“Not exactly…” I bit my lip, looking anywhere but at Sharon.
“Tell me what happened,” she prompted.
“I went with Rollo but the instructor wanted to partner us up with strangers so… When Paul, I think that was his name, grabbed me, I just kind of… freaked. I don’t like being touched by anyone, especially strangers. The whole thing,” I shook my head, “it just brought back memories of that night.”
“Katy,” Sharon turned her head slightly, studying me. “I think maybe you’d feel better… start to heal, if you said it like it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think you need to stop referring to it as that night or the event. I think you need to say what happened. You’re giving Preston too much power by referring to it that way.”
“What do you want me to say? The night I got raped? The night my whole life fell apart because he took a part of me?” Tears clogged my throat.
“Yes, I think it would be very healing for you.”
“No! I don’t need to say it that way! What I need is for my mother to just believe me! Instead she believed that prick! He raped me and all she did was laugh at me! Laugh! What kind of mother does that? Nobody believed me! I was dying inside and everybody mocked me!” I grabbed my bag and stood to leave.
“Katy, please don’t leave. You still have forty minutes left in your session,” she looked up and the clock above the door.
I shook my head. “I can’t do that. I have to get out of here.” I opened the door.
“Katy!” I heard behind me. “You can’t keep running from your problems!”
“Watch me,” I muttered under my breath.
I made it to my car and as soon as the door was closed the tears overwhelmed me. I hated crying over ‘the event’ but sometimes I just couldn’t help it. It hurt, so much, to remember what Preston had done to me. I preferred to block it from my mind. I hated him. Not just for raping me, but for killing some essential part of me when he did it. I’d never been the same since.
I went from being the happy, popular, captain of the cheer squad, to the most hated person in school. Nobody had believed that Preston raped me. After all, why would heart throb, star quarterback, Preston, need to rape anybody?
Even my own mother hadn’t believed me.
That hurt the most.
We’d never been close, but I thought she would’ve been there for me. Instead, it drew us even farther apart.
The only person that didn’t abandon me was Rollo.
Someone tapped on the window and I jumped. Wiping my tear-streaked eyes, I turned to see who stood there.
“Katy, please come back inside,” Sharon said.
Another sob wracked my body.
“Sweetie,” she tapped again.
I was frozen.
She opened the door and I fell into her arms.
“Katy,” she said, soothingly, “It’s okay to cry about it. It’s okay to be angry. You’re only hurting yourself by holding it in.” Her fingers smoothed through my hair.
“I just don’t want to remember! I don’t want to feel!” I cried.
“Katy,” she lightly pushed my shoulders back so she could look in my eyes. “You know that isn’t possible. You can’t undo what’s already done. I wish that wasn’t true, but it is.” She pushed my hair back off my forehead, like I was a child that had fallen off her bike and she was checking for scrapes and bruises. “Please, let me help you,” she said.
I nodded.
“Are you ready to come back inside?”
I extracted myself from her arms and wiped my face. “Yeah.” My voice wasn’t as shaky as I thought it would be.
“Good,” she said, and guided me back inside the building.
~***~
“So,” Rollo said, taking a bite of pizza, as we sat on the floor in front of the coffee table, “how did it go with Sharon today?”
I picked a piece of pepperoni off the pizza, just to avoid Rollo’s watchful eyes. “It was…” I knew I couldn’t lie to Rollo. With a sigh, I admitted, “I kind of had a breakdown.”
“Well, I wish it was a breakthrough, not a breakdown, but do you think it helped?” Rollo asked.
I shrugged. “I think I’m beyond anything helping me. I’m hopeless.”
“No, you’re not,” Rollo took a sip of Diet Pepsi. “No one is hopeless.”
“I’m broken, then.”
Rollo laughed. “Katy, you’re a lot of things but broken is definitely not one of them. Neither is weak,” he said, when I started to open my mouth. “You’re the strongest person I know. True, you’ve got your quirks but they do not make you weak. They’re how you’ve coped.”
A tear slipped out of the corner of my eye. “It’s been two years, Rollo. Some days, I feel like I’m worse now, than just after it happened.”
“No, baby cakes, you’re better every day, especially recently. I think, at least I hope, you’re starting to realize that not everyone is like Preston. Most people are actually decent.” He grabbed another slice of pizza.
“I feel like…” I took a deep breath and braced myself to say the word. “I feel like, when he raped me, that some essential part of my soul was broken, and I don’t know if it can be put back together.”
“It can be put back together… but it will take time,” Rollo’s kind blue eyes met mine, there was a sadness there and I hated that it was because of me.
“When did you get so wise?” I chuckled, trying to lighten the somber mood.
“Puh-lease, I’ve always been wise. You just choose to ignore my insanely awesome wisdom,” he bumped my shoulder.
I flicked a piece of pepperoni at him. It landed on his shirt and he made a face of disgust.
“Ew! Katy! This is my favorite shirt!”
“Your, ‘I only look straight,’ shirt is your favorite? Really, Rollo?” I chuckled.
“What can I say? I like to let the ladies know that I’m off the market. I’m considerate like that,” he grinned, pulling at the tee.
I rolled my eyes. “I sometimes wonder why I’m friends with you.”
“Because I’m insanely awesome, funny, smart-” He rambled.
“Rollo, this is not Match.com, you do not need to list your best qualities to me. I’m very well acquainted with them, and your bad ones.”
“Oh please,” he flipped his curly blonde hair, “you know I have no bad qualities. I’m far too awesome for that.”
I laughed. I could always count on Rollo to make me feel better.
I leaned my head on his shoulder. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Rollo.”
“Sometimes, I don’t know either, baby cakes,” he said, solemnly.
A tear leaked out of the corner of my eye and I hastily wiped it away. “You’ve always been there for me, Rollo. I don’t say it enough, but thank you for being the best friend any girl could ever have.”
“I’m always here for you, Katy.”
“I know,” I whispered.
“And I always will be,” he kissed the top of my head.