how Jack ruined everything.

“Hey, you’re pretty hot”, sounds like a stupid pick up line but sadly I actually fell for it. I let that stupid bastard hold my drink and then lead me up those stairs.
         It all happened so fast. I couldn’t even remember how I got into that room. I was pretty sure this was Tori’s little sister’s room. The Pepto Bismol pink walls always made me sick. How was I on her fluffy pink duvet with Eddie’s band blasting oldies from downstairs?  Eddie always played wicked loud. Everything was spinning, and stale beer stink was choking me, then Jack just appeared. He was crawling over me like maggots on a rotting carcass. Then just as I could feel me tank top being ripped, I hear the door creak. Oh thank god, help! Too bad I was wrong.
         “Jack, what the … E-Emily?” her voice was like a withering flower. My best friend, tough Tori, I used to call her, was crushed. In that one moment I broke my best friend’s heart.
“How could you do this?” I was speechless
“why” tears were welling up in her eyes, why cant I make my mouth form words?
“i…I..” just say it!
“Emily, tell me what the hell is going on!” her nose was running her face was red with emotion
“Tori she just jumped on me…” yea sure Jack.
“why would you do this, why Emily” If only I could tell her what Jack is really like, but instead I just coward out and run.
         I ran right from one thing to another, turns out while a friendship was ending downstairs, the party was being ended too. Eddie always plays too loud. As I stumbled down into the crashed party I fell into the arms of a police officer. He demanded my address. Even if I was drunk, a little high, and almost raped, I could still remember the place I have lived in for sixteen years.          
I walked downstairs. I had a headache, a stomachache and a broken heart. I though my life couldn’t get worse. I saw my dad, sitting at the head of the table, ratty robe and all. The first words of the end of my life, “why did that officer take you home last night?”
“You were supposed to be at Tori’s”
“I was” Oops, bad move
“Did you simply forget to tell us there were no parents?”
“Slipped my mind” I could almost see the steam oozing from their ears
“Young lady, don’t start!”
“It’s kind of late for that dontchya’ think?”
                             I have to be honest this really took my mind off last night, ironic eh?
“EMILY!”  whoops.
“Ok I get it, I will be in my room.”
For the next half hour I heard them discuss my punishment.
If only they knew the complete story. If only everyone knew the real story. I’m certain Jack is currently sending Tori a bouquet of roses and making sure I become the antagonist in this tragedy. I’m sure he didn’t mention the drugs in my drink and I’m sure Tori will ignore the signs. But who wouldn’t when they have the hottest guy at Duxbury High. I wonder if he has done it before, if I’m just one of many victims. Just one victim out of the other thousands of girls who have been ruined by some horny scumbag.
         The verdict is in. I am grounded until school starts. The only time I am allowed to leave house arrest is when I have dance, and since this is the only offense of the whole summer I can still take the driving test. No friends (not that I have any now), no parties (duh) and no computer (whatever I wouldn’t want to be called a slut through email anyway). Personally I think I will enjoy my punishment. Maybe it will give time for Tori to cool off, or it will just give her time to inject all her angry feelings into the rest of our junior class.
         On day one of my punishment I had dance. I love it too, I always feel so beautiful and delicate when I’m spinning and jumping about the room. Tori used to always want me to quit and start soccer, but I never could just stop. She used to call me “tutu” and gawked at my first pair of toe shoes. I still have them too, long worn out and dusty, but to me they are still beautiful. She thought they were gross, the idea of standing on your tippy toes and walking  like that. I giggled with her at the Nutcracker, but honestly that was when I truly knew I wanted to be Clara.
         Besides my dance class twice a week, house arrest was pretty dull. Three weeks of counting the cracks in my ceiling and shifting my furniture five times over. But it came out pretty awesome once I found a feung shui book in my living room.
         Eddie called about a week after the party, panic stricken as to why I was nowhere to be found. I told him all.  At least one of my best friends would be on my side. Once I was done with my spiel he let out a huge gasp, “why that little manwhore!”
He had heard some gossip from his band mates. He was glad I set him straight. He also made sure I was ok, and if I was still a virgin.
“Yes Eddie, god you always know how to make a young lady blush”,
“Well Miss Emily the best guitarist in all the land does have his ways”.
         That is how my summer panned out. Dance, counting cracks, and my comic relief from Eddie were all I had to look forward to every morning. Although it seemed it would never come, September 5th came rolling around and I got to be released from the hands of jail right at the gates of hell.
         Just as soon as I open the door to my junior year I know that I am entering my worst nightmare. Something is different, not just the new haircuts or baby doll tops either. I know I’m in hell when my name is called in homeroom and the room goes dead quiet. It has to be a dream when I hear every whisper and every gasp as I walk through the halls. By the time I get to first period I have a welt on my arm where I attempted to wake up from this trance. Then when I think this can’t get any worse, I see Tori. It’s like seeing the dagger coming right at you when you’re in dream world. Everything from that night comes rushing back, his hands, his breath, his weight practically crushing me.
         I could handle the stabbing glances; I could tune out the screaming whispers. But the way her face went from happy to ghostly, killed me. I had ground up her strong spirit into little broken fragments. Luckily she isnt ready to confront me either.
         I can’t believe how a friendship so trusting and close was ruined in one short moment, by one bastard. I wonder if she excommunicated Jack too, or if he managed to weasel his way back into her heart.
         By lunch time I was close to running away and changing my name to Rosalinda. Maybe the circus would take and outcast who spoke only Spanish. Too bad I’m so white they would doubt my roots.
I can’t even eat lunch in the cafeteria. I was blessed with the latest lunch time in existence and Eddie has the earliest. When I walk in everyone I once knew moves there bags to any empty seat at there table. Apparently my only lunch mate at Duxbury high is made of porcelain.
         Eating in the bathroom sucks. Everything about it, the loneliness, the lack of cleanliness and its dreariness. I decide that I will just suck it up and get some exotic disease from stall number three.
         Gym class wasn’t much better, I’m certain I’m going to get a concussion by midterm, maybe they will switch from baseballs to bats so I can become brain dead, at least then I wouldn’t have to see these people.
         Every day was just as bad as the next. I was hoping people would cool off but they still were removing me from their lives, if only the circus would come to suburbia!
         By Friday I was so sick of the exile. It was crazy, Eddie promised that it would be over just as quickly as leggings did in the 80’s. I wasn’t so easily convinced.
         Dance was pretty much my only outlet from reality. Actually it was the realest thing I had in my life. School felt like a dream, I was alone. My life was disintegrating before my eyes. Dance was the only thing that was stable, working on my pirouettes was the only thing I could control.
         Everything was changed; my life had taken a complete turn. Eddies father got a new job. They were moving to New Hampshire in January. No one else forgave me, they all believed Jacks story. My parents were fighting more and more. They each blamed each other my lack of social skills. I was drifting, farther and farther away from what I knew.          
         My grades slipped. Every single time I walked into my classes, my heart would beat faster and my head would become light. Sleep was hard to get, then it became non existent. Food lost its appeal. It was like living wasn’t even worth it.
         I just wanted everything to stop. I was sick of the guys slapping my ass when I was at my locker. I was tired of the girls in my English class who glared at me whenever I had to recite essays. If only I could just get away, just completely shut everyone out. I just wanted to feel happy again. How was everything so completely warped by one short night?
         I knew the only way to fix things was to make amends with Tori; I had to let her know my side. Then hopefully I will awake from my nightmare. Maybe she will listen and I will be out of hell and I will finally be able to live my life the way I am supposed to.
         I find her in the library, one of our old favorite haunts. She hears the door slam shut and looks at me, that ashen face stabbing me yet again. But this time I try to ignore her face, I have to tell someone.
“Hey, Tori, I need to talk to you” my breath is shortening, the creased in my palms are becoming rivers.
“What you want permission to hook up with my boyfriend this time?” ouch.
“I really need to talk”
“Yeah, well just find some one who actually wants to listen”
“Look just let me speak!” don’t leave, don’t leave
“Fine, hurry up” oh thank god
“Remember that party, when you found…”
“Ya, you think I would forget?” that makes two of us.
“He drugged me Tori, he was talking to me hovering, and then I turned around. Then all of a sudden I was in that room. I didn’t start anything, I just wanted you to know, Jack is dangerous”
“Sure, don’t try and cover yourself know. God I can’t believe you would make up some crazy story about Jack being a rapist. You horrible, I can’t believe I ever called you my friend!”
         That’s it. I have nothing. My best friend doesn’t believe me. The butterflies in my stomach have turned to spiders crawling and slipping towards my throat. Everything is over; I don’t have a reason to be here. My parents don’t know what to make of me. My school thinks I’m a druggie. My class thinks I’m a slut and know my best friend…
         Were supposed to cherish life, to take care of it, to enjoy it. Right know I am doing none of those. The pills slide down my dry throat like pebbles down a mountain. I can feel them hit my stomach, anything to silence the churning, anything to make the pain stop. I feel numb. This morning’s fight about my C in gym, gone. The girls, who laughed at me in math, vanished. Tori’s final words to me, swallowed away.
         I hear yelling, pounding. Then everything goes black, goodbye room, adios school, avoire Tori. Wait every thing is white. No, there are flashes, blinding flashes. Warmth surrounds me, like a blanket in the icy winter. Then my shoulder feels wet. I smell some thing familiar, like lavender and peppermints, its Tori. She’s some where, I can’t see, every breath is harder and harder. Where is all the sounds, what happened to the smell, why is the warmth vanishing. The darkness absorbs me, I’m floating, bobbing between life and death, it’s so cold, and where is everyone…
         I wake up in a hospital bed. My mouth feels like sandpaper and my stomach is growling. My parents are kneeling next to my bed. I feel like a baby being watched from the cradle. They look up, there face change completely. The pale faces begin to glow, tears flow from all of our faces. They try to explain to me what happened; they tell me I’m going to have to get help. They have places I can go to, we will figure it out.
         Then Tori delicately knocks on the open hospital door. My parents take it as a que to leave. They both stroke my hand; as if to make sure I’m really alive. Tori looks at me, more tears. “I am so sorry”
“It’s ok”
“No, its not, I should have listened to you, I should have given you a chance to give me your side”
“Its fine Tori, its useless for should haves now”
“I learned about Jack, you were so right, he is a rapist, that’s why I came to your house, I would like you to press charges with me”
“I would love to, eventually, I just need to get normal again, are you OK? Did he…”
“Yeah, he did”
         So it’s true, many girls’ lives get ruined by horny scumbags. Even two best friends can be ruined. Even the strongest girls, the ones who are independent and brave. Anyone is at risk.
         Rehab helped a lot. I was so relieved to let out all of the emotions I have been forced to hold inside for six months. It felt amazing to have people listen and to not judge me. After a month there I felt like my old self, the girl who had everything going for her, the girl who had friends, loving parents, and a best friend.
I felt lighter, but in a good way when I left on that April morning. It was warm, odd for New England’s type of spring. It was beautiful, so clear and sunny. I stood at the front door of my house; two little girls were playing hopscotch. A dog was barking and all you could smell was the clean scent of new.
At that moment I was ready to begin.