Page 99 of I Am Salvation

And only that one time.

Apparently, according to Mike and Zach, sometimes it’s just a beating. Sometimes it’s a rape by one or two of the big ones. Apparently I was special. I got all six.

They took their turns with me, beating my face, my back, my legs, my ass, while they violated me, one after another. Tully took two turns.

I couldn’t sit down for several weeks. Couldn’t go to the bathroom without it being a bloody mess.

But I never told. Even when Leon interrogated me about the bruises, about the split lip and the black eyes.

I didn’t tell. I was no narc.

The kings left me alone after that.

It truly was an initiation and nothing more, and because I fought back so hard, I got it worse.

Had the same thing happened to the big boys? Did they come to the home when they were younger?

I never found out the answers to those questions.

But Tully? The leader of the kings?

He became sorry he ever fucked with me.

And that is the real reason why.

Why I am sin.

Not because my parents thought I had done something horrible to my baby sister.

Not because they abandoned me.

Not because no one adopted me while I was at the first home.

Not because I participated in plenty of beatings at both homes.

Not because I was gang raped by those fucking degenerates.

And not because I became an addict.

But because of what I ultimately did to Tully.

Diana doesn’t know. Hell, Jesse doesn’t know. My therapist doesn’t know.

The one thing I’ve never told anyone.

And the thing is? I didn’t feel one iota of guilt about it.

I’ve learned to compartmentalize. I’ve learned to live in the dusk, just on the cusp of darkness, because I leave what happened to Tully in a part of my mind that I never let myself see.

But when Diana tells me she loves me?

I have to face it.

I have to face who I truly am.

And I have to tell her.

I have to tell her why I’m unworthy of her.

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