Page 76 of Unspoken Truths

“I’ll try,” I lie, not wanting to worry him. A tear rolls down my cheek, disgusting me. I hate that I’m all twisted up inside. I just want to feel normal.

I had that once, it’s just getting harder and harder to remember the girl I was before freshman year of high school.

“That wasn’t very convincing,” Emil says. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”

“Thanks,” I say, listening to him walk away, and then counting to twenty.

Sticking my head in the pillows, I scream, my hands fisting my sheets.

“I fucking hate this!” I yell, my voice muffled by the twenty odd pillows that I have on my bed.

The sound of the door opening and slamming into the wall makes me sit up and scream again, eyes wild as I look for the person breaking into the room.

“Fuck!” Ignacio yells, breathing hard. “Why are you screaming, and what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You have a lot of questions,” I wheeze, my hand on my chest as my heart pounds. “None of them are any of your business. Last I checked, this was also my room. Get out.”

The adrenaline rush is really going to mess with me now, and I don’t want to look like a freak while I try to figure out how to regulate myself.

“I can’t do this today, Ignacio,” I whisper. “I really fucking can’t.”

“Dad is pulling his hair out, and I heard your mom crying when I was walking up here. Are you dying or something?” he asks.

“Or something,” I breathe. “I really need you to get out.”

“No,” he says stubbornly.

Outside of my window is a thin walkway, so I do what any self-respecting person in the middle of a meltdown does. I leave the damn room.

Getting up from the bed, I unlock the huge windows and pull them open, stepping up carefully onto the sill.

“Are you fucking kidding me? My father will murder me if you jump out of that window,” Ignacio growls.

“You’d deserve it after how you treated me yesterday,” I say, stepping out onto the walkway. It leads to a ladder that goes up to a terrace on the third floor. Apparently, no one uses that room, but I’ve been wanting to investigate it.

Freaking my stepbrother out while I do it will work just fine.

“Rachelle, fuck!” he hisses as I balance and walk along the narrow ledge. Poking his head out the window, he growls at me. Ugh, he’s a caveman, wonderful. “Why are you so difficult?”

“Why are you a douchebag?” I ask, grabbing the ladder to swing my foot up onto it.

“This won’t hold my weight, little girl, so I can’t catch you when you fall. You’re seriously pissing me off,” Ignacio says.

“Maybe next time you’ll catch a clue when someone says they want to be alone,” I say, but the words aren’t as strong as I’d like. There’s a tremor in my voice and I shake my head, mad at myself. For once, it would be nice to be stronger than the sum of my parts.

Because they’re all broken and fractured, showing me pieces that I don’t like very much.

“Why are you crying?” he asks, eyes wide. “God, is it something I did? I felt you freeze last night, I felt you start to lose your shit, but I don’t fucking understand why.”

“I was raped, Ignacio,” I say. “It’s really quite simple. When I can’t see who is touching me, my brain enjoys making me believe my rapist is holding me down. Also, being gang banged isn’t something that gets me hot and bothered. So excuse me if I can’t talk to you while I try to lock up all of my goddamned demons that the Kings let loose to play.”

Fuck my curse words. I don’t care anymore.

Climbing up in my socks, I think about how it would be just my luck if I fell. At least my brain would be quiet, there would be no more nightmares, and there would be peace. Swallowing hard, I look over my shoulder at the ground which now looks really fucking far down. I can’t hear Ignacio anymore, which means exactly nothing.

He could be telling Emil and my mother almost anything by now. His legs are so much longer than mine. Leaning back, I let the wind whip around in my hair. Intrusive thoughts are fierce in my mind right now, though I vaguely know most of them are lies placed in my head so I’ll let go, stop fighting.

It feels wrong that it is so bright and sunny in Portland today. The one day I’d prefer it to be stormy, it isn’t.

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