Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 372(@200wpm)___ 298(@250wpm)___ 248(@300wpm)
It might as well have.
I was riddled with guilt. Some days, it felt like it was eating me alive. Burning me up inside and slowly killing something inside of me.
I'd tried to leave once before. Tried to get out of here and not look back.
That'd been my reasoning for wanting to join the Navy. It’d also been my reasoning for joining the Army when I heard that Reed had.
I'd needed to get away from all the ghosts that were haunting me.
The reason Reed's sister was dead was because of Jay. But, if I were being honest, I should've told someone with authority what was going on. What had happened to me.
My mom hadn't been enough. I should've gone to the police. Someone. Anyone.
My mother and Jay...they had a relationship that was like none I'd ever seen. The type where I knew, without any shadow of a doubt, that she would protect Jay. She'd side with him, regardless of whether or not what he was doing was wrong, because she believed her son could do no wrong.
When my mother had learned what Jay had done to me, she'd laughed in my face.
Laughed. In. My. Face.
She thought I was trying to get him in trouble because I had to clean up the bathroom when it wasn't my day.
She'd blamed me. Said I should stop playing around.
And when I explained to her that I wasn't joking or kidding at all—who the hell joked about their brother touching them inappropriately—she'd taken away my allowance. Told me that I didn't deserve it.
But, shortly after his freshman year had begun, something changed. Something happened that made him angry all the time. And something that caused a switch to flip inside of him, turning him into someone I didn't recognize.
It wouldn't be until I was in high school with him that I'd see what was going on at school. How he was bullied, ridiculed and treated like a pariah.
But, at that point, he'd been coming into my room at every night for a long time. I no longer cared what happened to him.
All the love that I'd once had for my brother had died.
All of my friends had disappeared, too. At least all of them but two. The ones that had stuck with me even when I’d tried my best to push everyone away.
I didn't have the best attitude.
I wasn't an easy friend to have.
It literally took everything Hennessy had to hold onto me that year. But, that was likely due to the fact that she was having her own problems at home. Problems that meant she was just as standoffish as I was at times.
Laryn had been trying to get me to spend time with her for a while, and the day that I'd finally relented, I met Reed.
Reed didn't know it, but he'd changed my life. He'd been the person who stopped me from withdrawing further into my shell. A shell I’d erected around me to keep all the pain at bay.
It also helped that my brother had started spending more time with Reed's brother, Tobias.
And, in turn, Reed's sister, Amy. He hadn’t been inappropriate with Amy for their entire friendship. Lusting after her hadn’t been enough and he started sneaking into her bed during the sleepovers.
If I had once suspected what was he was doing to Amy, I would've spoken up. I would've said something. Gone to the police. The grocery store manager that always asked me how I was doing. Hell, even the freaking shoe shop girl who looked at me like she could see through me. Like she knew something was wrong behind my fake smiles and even faker words.
Because had I known that Jay was doing some of the same things to Amy that he'd been doing to me, I wouldn't have stayed silent. I wouldn't have acted like everything was normal. I'd have said something.
Because I was like Amy. I'd experienced that for myself. Felt the horror of it and had thought, before I met Reed, about taking my life just like Amy had. That maybe it'd be easier to just stop living.
I'd been fourteen when Tobias and Jay had become best friends.
He'd changed everything, and again, he didn't even know it. Jay had started looking at Amy and stopped coming into my room.
What would he do if he had known? Would Amy still be alive? Would Jay?
Shuddering at the possibility of Jay still being here, and even possibly my parents, I got up and went in search of my dog.
I found him in the kitchen, staring longingly at the front door which Reed had disappeared through only hours before.
“Seriously?” I asked
Pepé Le Pew, or Pepé as he was better known, glanced at me over his shoulder, unimpressed.
“I don’t know why you like him so much,” I told him. “Seriously, you’re my dog. Mine. He doesn’t bathe you or bring you puppy cookies every day of your life.”