I smile, knowing the story I’m going to tell tonight.
It’s been one month since I was raped.
My life is spiraling.
And no one has noticed.
One. Whole. Month.
I walk into high school on the first day of my senior year expecting everyone to notice that I’m different, that everything has changed.
My locker is next to Enzo’s.
I walk up to my shiny red locker where Enzo, Langston, and Zeke are gathered.
“Really? You couldn’t let his best friends have the locker right next to him? Now, we have to deal with your overpowered perfume smell, glitter, and bobby pins every time we want to come to our lockers,” Zeke complains like a bitch.
“Trust me, I’d rather not be stuck between Enzo and Zeke—the Sasquatch. Now I’ll have to deal with your sweaty odor, hair ties, and hair that escapes your stupid man bun.”
Langston snickers at my zing.
Enzo smiles.
Zeke looks ready to kill.
And I’ve never welcomed that look from Zeke more.
If no one is going to save me, the least they could do is kill me.
“What class you got first period, Liesel?” Enzo asks.
“Calculus.”
Langston starts rolling in laughter.
“What’s so funny?” I ask, thinking I have something stuck in my ponytail. I hardly bothered to get dressed for school today. The boys should notice that I’m not wearing my usual skintight dress, heels, curls, and makeup. Instead, I’m wearing ripped jeans, flats, a plain black v-neck, and my hair in a ponytail. I look like most girls around me, except, I’m not most girls.
I’m Liesel Dunn—glamorous, spirited, take no prisoners with my curvy hips and sassy words. I rule this school with my good looks even though I have exactly five dresses—one for each day of the week that I scrapped to save enough money to buy. No one cares that you don’t have money when you walk with confidence like I do.
“There is no way you are going to pass calculus; you can barely do basic addition.”
I flip him off, which makes the immature asshole laugh even more.
I have no hope that Langston or Zeke will notice, but Enzo should.
Unfortunately, he hasn’t noticed me hiding out all summer.
He hasn’t noticed that I haven’t swum in the pool since that day. Or that I haven’t worn anything except bags for clothes to cover my body.
I haven’t hung out with Enzo or the guys for weeks.
I haven’t asked for a second kiss.
I haven’t asked for more.
Instead, I’m hiding and trying to move on.
“Nah, Liesel is smarter than you two idiots,” Enzo says, defending me to his friends.
I smile—it’s fake, but when Enzo smiles back at me, it turns genuine. Butterflies swarm in my belly as the familiar aches of being around Enzo return. After everything that happened, I still want him. His father didn’t take those feelings away.
He took more.
“Enzo! Walk me to class?” Bridget says, pushing her way into the group and grabbing Enzo’s hand.
My smile vanishes, gone from my face in one swipe.
Langston and Zeke give each other mischievous smirks.
Enzo throws his arm around her shoulder and walks her to class with Langston and Zeke strutting behind them.
They ignore me.
They forget about me.
They don’t see my pain.
I’m nobody to them.
I never make it to class.
Instead, I walk out of the building.
I walk to the beach.
And then I sit on the sand watching the world go by. I watch the sun rise high in the sky. I watch it fall below the edge of the water.
I’m alone. I have no one.
I pick up my glass water bottle and slam it on the ground, wishing I had something stronger than water.
Soon, I won’t need anything.
The glass breaks into several pieces.
I pick up one of the pieces under the darkness of night. The piece has a sharp edge—it will do.
Looking up at the sky with tears in my eyes, I slice through my wrist until it’s deep enough to hit a vein.
The second I do, a calmness passes through me.
I’ve taken back control. My life is mine again. This is where it ends.
Pain creeps through my veins slowly, but I feel it. I feel all of it.
It makes me cry—not from the pain, but from the existing. From feeling something when I haven’t felt anything in weeks.
I can still feel.
One last time.
My head starts spinning. I feel weak and tired, so tired.
I fall back onto the sand.
Finally, I managed to kill someone—me.
I look up at Langston sitting on the sand, listening to my story.
That was the last time I remember crying.
The last time tears fell down my face.
I hold out my wrist where the scar remains but is now covered with a tattoo of the word ‘beautifully.’
“I killed myself that day.”
Langston shakes his head. “No, you survived.”
“No, the girl I was before that day flowed out from my veins. I killed her. I used to be kind, sweet, forgiving. After that, I became cynical, angry, bitchy. I became evil.”
Langston narrows his eyes, not sure what I’m going to say next or why I’m telling this story.
“How did you survive?” Langston asks with a heavy breath.
I stare at him, unblinking.
We both know the truth, but I won’t give him any credit.
“The devil saved me. He thought he was doing me a favor. He didn’t know he was only saving a monster.”
He looks away from me back out at the ocean. “Then, you got the tattoo so you wouldn’t have to walk around with the reminder every day.”
I look back at my wrist. “No, I got the tattoo to remind myself that I died beautifully, and that the beauty within me is now gone. All that remains is the wicked.”
“At least that’s the truth,” he mutters under his breath.
Our eyes meet again, cutting through each other.
We both know who found me that night.
I still don’t know why Langston saved me. I don’t know how he found me. I don’t know what happened. I just woke up in his arms.
“You won’t kill me, Langston. I’ll kill myself before you ever get the chance.”
20
Langston
The truth is going to kill me.
I realize that after listening to Liesel’s second story. I didn’t think she’d get this deep with her stories this quickly, but she dove in head first. She flirted so closely with telling the complete truth, but twisted one tiny detail to make the story dig in like a knife to my heart.
It wasn’t so much a lie as an omission.
She didn’t include me in her story.
I noticed her when she showed up at school. I had been waiting for weeks to get to see her in one of her slinky school dresses.
My mouth almost fell open when I saw her in jeans. She still looked hotter than sin, and her muscled legs looked fantastic in her skinny jeans, but I knew something was wrong.
I thought she was pissed at Enzo.
I thought they were together.
I thought he had moved on and dumped her for Bridgett like I knew he would.