Never Alone

Never Alone

I don’t know how much I could have helped her. The last few days of her life it became more apparent of the abuse she suffered at home. How old do you ask? Fourteen; too young for such a life to end.
  I guess she knew it was going to happen though. Only on the day of her death did she admit to the beatings she received every night. Every day. And she never said it to my face; she said it over an instant messenger program.
  I guess I always knew as she turned up for school with fresh bruises or a graze on her body. I guess I was just awaiting confirmation for the pain she was suffering.  I have           never felt so useless in my life. As I think back. I wonder why I never questioned her further about the bruises, but I believed every lie she told me. How naïve of me.
  I’ll start by explaining from when the pain rose. This was to be her last Monday of school.
  We had gym lesson. As usual her bruises shone out making her stand out more than she wanted. But something else caught my eye.
  It was like a little bracelet that was hugging mid-way to her shoulder from her elbow. It looked metal and painful. But most of all she looked like she had been tagged like some pitiful animal.
  I watched her as she grabbed onto it and make a hissing sort of sound. I didn’t want to know more and looked away, deciding that her family problems were not my business. But I could still feel curiosity burning through me.
  At lunch I think it got worse as she started to constantly hold onto her arm, where the metal bracelet was and she would whimper every time she grabbed onto it. So I just had to ask. I will not let her real name drop, for the sake of her, she wouldn’t want people to know. So I will call her ‘Brunette’, just like her hair colour.
  “Hey, Brunette? Are you okay?” I asked, deciding that just coming out of the blue about your observations wasn’t the best move.
  “Yeah, it’s nothing, I have a lot on my mind, that’s all” She answered me back weekly.
  “Be honest with me-” by know the whole group of friends were looking at us.
  “-Are you being … abused at home?” That word was so hard to get out, and it felt like a I had just dropped a forbidden bomb on our world.
  “N-n-no” She stuttered. I could tell she was lying by the stuttering, so I remained suspicious, but I just let it drop.
  Then ironically as it seems, something else happened, as we were just about to get going. There was blood starting to drip from her arm onto her hand. She looked at her hand and instantly went pale. Blood was beginning to drip to the floor now and she rushed away. She didn’t get very far though. She collapsed about half way down the corridor; I sprinted to her side even though it wasn’t that far away. She was bleeding heavily, probably from the wound she had sustained on her arm.
  “Go get a teacher!” I screamed at my friends who were trying to act as though this was not happening. That Brunette wasn’t getting more attention than them. I started to cry as the teacher came running towards us. His face clearly confused. I was kneeling down by her side and sobbing my heart out. The teacher got his mobile out and dialled for an ambulance. I’m not sure which teacher it was, I couldn’t see that clearly since my eyes were all blurry from the crying.
  The ten-minute wait for the ambulance was agonising to say the least. It felt like ten decades. The teacher had moved brunette over to the office where the secretary looked quite worried about the matter at hand.
  When she woke up at the hospital, she looked terrified, like she had revealed a big secret. I didn’t want to tell her that the doctor suspected that she was a poor victim to child abuse. I told him that she wouldn’t say anything. He offered to get the social services in, but I refused, I threatened him if that counts for anything. Brunette asked just one thing when she woke up.
  “Have you told my Dad?” I -who had stayed with her- quirked an eyebrow.
  “No, we were waiting for your permission. Thanks to me” I smiled at my last remark. And if we were lucky we would have been able to reach back to the school by the end of the day, considering that it was only two-thirty.
  “Oh, phew. Thanks” She sighed. I was beginning to get suspicious again. I didn’t say anything though, for the safety of her health. The doctor said that she would be fine as long as she didn’t sustain injuries like that again. He told me that she had been stitched up and pray to the heavens that this thing wouldn’t happen again. I had unwillingly cried again, something, which I never usually did.
  The next day in school, she never turned up. I was getting worried again and my friends went back into the ‘nothing has happened’ as if her not showing up today was nothing out of the ordinary. I was quickly getting frustrated with them. I was beginning to wonder if these people were actually friends.
  When I got home, I rushed to sign on to my instant messenger to see if Brunette was there. Luckily she was, I knew she wasn’t dead…yet. I asked how she was, why wasn’t she in school. But I got the same answer ‘I’m ill’. I never believed it. I knew she was lying. She even refused to go on web cam, something she was always willing to do, so something was defiantly up. She didn’t say anything else. I couldn’t think of anything to say. It was disturbing. I always knew what to say with Brunette. She was always funny and cracking jokes, laughing all the time. Those are my best memories of her. At this point I was unsure of the future. I knew that or at least hoped that something would go right.
  She didn’t turn up for school for the rest of the week either, this got me and a few considerate teachers worried. But still no other friends. Something was off with this Friday. I noticed that from the start of the day, I had a weird feeling. Like something was misplaced.
  As soon as the day ended and I got home, the first thing I did was turn instant messenger on. It had become a bit of a habit this week, to see if Brunette was okay.
  But I quickly noticed; Brunette was not online. I was hyperventilating by then. I had no reason to be, but I just was. I was panicking for no apparent reason. I was just going to have to wait and see if she was coming online.
  I waited for exactly two hours and thirty-six minutes. I counted every minute. I even refused dinner in case she turned up when I wasn’t there. Once she came online I wasn’t sure how to start the conversation, a simple “Hey” didn’t seem like what I wanted to say. I sat there mulling over how to ask her, what to talk about. Brunette got there before I. She didn’t talk, but she started up a video chat and I gratefully accepted.
  She then typed ‘I’m doing the same to Raven’ Raven isn’t her real name, but I do not wish to say her real name either. Raven was one of our friends. Not that Raven would care anyway.
  When the screen loaded I was shocked if that’s a strong enough word for it. I wasn’t expecting…this. She looked absolutely horrible. She had cuts running the length of her cheeks still bleeding a bit, dried blood was running down her face. Brunette looked as though she had been crying. Her eyes were all red and puffy. She then decided to talk.
  “Well, you know you’ve been wondering and possibly guessed about what’s been happening to me” Her voice was quiet and hoarse. I called my Mum to see and pressed the record button on the video chat.
  “Well, I figured-” She winced, in pain I guessed.
  “- That now was a better time than any to tell you the truth-” She abruptly stopped and her face went completely pale, paler than it was before. My Mum’s grip on the back of my chair hardened as she called my Dad into the room to watch, this thing was not going to be done privately. We all gasped as to why she wanted to show us this, I had only just figured it out. She wanted help. But we were too scared to move. We wanted to see if anything was going to happen before we went jumping in without any evidence to back up what was happening besides half a confession and a couple of cuts and bruises.
  We then noticed why she went pale and quiet, her father was shadowing her, but she did not put off the video chat. I can’t describe the beating she had off her father. She cried out in pain, she was punched, kicked and whipped with a belt until her back was bleeding heavily, my Mother, Father and I couldn’t take out eyes off the screen, like we were watching some repetitive soap opera. Her cried of pain and pleas for him to stop were loud enough to make my ears bleed, they didn’t though. I couldn’t move an inch, and I wanted to stop the pain that was being caused to her, I wanted to take the pain on myself if it meant for her to stop being in pain. All my suspicions had been true and I couldn’t move a muscle to help her, to get her out of this situation. Some friend I was.
  Obviously the Father hadn’t noticed the video chat, or he wouldn’t have beaten her so badly. It was horrific; my Mum’s hand was shaking. I felt like running to Brunette I wanted to save her from the Hell she called a home. I felt like the Devil had taken her at birth and left her with this sadistic family. No one ever deserves to live like this; no one should feel this pain.
  My Dad was the first of us to move.
  “I’m phoning the Police, once we get to Brunette’s house we can see Brunette and then phone an ambulance” His voice seemed like he had been planning this since the second he saw why we called him. I just nodded, looking and feeling stupid. My Dad told the situation to the police, they said they would meet us around the corner of Brunette’s house. I insisted on going. My Mum and Dad weren’t keen on the idea, but in the end let me go. I wasn’t just going to let my best friend die like this in the hands of strangers. I wanted to be by her side.
  The car ride seemed pretty fast when I think about it. I was looking forward to seeing the old Brunette again, the one who laughed all the time. I doubted that that would happen though.
  We had to wait for the Police to go in first. So they could take down the Father. Then we would be able to go see Brunette’s condition. If she was okay. I heard the word ‘Go’ from the Police and I ran into the house so fast that I thought impossible.
  There she was, on her bed surrounded by her own blood. I slowly walked up to her, she turned fast to see if it was her Father, but she relaxed when she noticed me. She looked like she was in a lot of pain. I looked at my Father, who nodded, knowing the drill, and walking out to phone an ambulance.
  I knelt down beside her and sobbed.
  “Why didn’t you tell us Brunette, we could have helped” I cried and hugged her loosely, making sure I wasn’t causing her more pain.
  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t help it. Don’t be mad. How are you here? Didn’t Dad tell you to shove off? Did he do something to you?” She cried slowly, weekly.
  “It’s okay Brunette, I’ll never be mad at you. And the Police have your Dad. He’s never going to bother you again” I carried on sobbing uncontrollably. I touched a part of her face that wasn’t injured and she was stone cold. I didn’t want to lose her, not here and not tonight. No way. It’s something that was running through my mind repeatedly the whole time, but I knew I would never get my wish.
  The ambulance was there in a matter of seconds, that’s what it felt like anyway, to me. I’m sure it was more and Brunette was rapidly losing body heat. I was reluctantly let onto the Ambulance, the paramedic didn’t approve of it, but I got in, whether the doctor liked it or not.
  This is the where she died. Brunette refused every sort of Medication they tried to give to her. The last words she said to me, seemed over used in movies, but they felt so heartbreaking here at this moment in time. She said.
  “You know, your always were my best friend” Then her eyes were closing slowly and she had a smile on her face, the first proper smile I had seen all week, and I didn’t notice how much I missed it. I cried for her.
  “No, Brunette, don’t let your life go now. You still have a life to live. You can’t leave me on my own” My pleas went unnoticed by Brunette, as she was cold and dead. Her own father had murdered her. How sad is that?
  The only people who know the real reason of her death is my family and the a couple from school, like the teachers and my “Friends” The kids think she died of a sudden illness. So I’m all alone now. Since straight after her death I caught Raven and my other friends laughing at her. Saying stuff like she should have stuck up for herself. I personally had a go at them, and told them they should think about it themselves, she was child abused to Christs sake.
  Brunette’s Mother still doesn’t accept what’s happened. She doesn’t get what went on. She didn’t know about the abuse and she cursed herself for not noticing the pain her child was going through. She feels so guilty about not seeing what was really happening. Guilt is something a person can get over though. But death. That’s a completely different matter. Death stabs you in the heart with more pain than a thousand knives. Brunette was a person, my best friend, and a person to never forget. Her bright smile, he silly little laugh, that’s something that I will never forget. And I know I’m never really alone, even if it feels like I’m alone and on the outside I am alone. But she’s always going to be with me, invisible and I’m going to trust the unseen.