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“Well, I am absolutely doing this with you,” I spat back. “Because I am done holding my tongue, and I will never allow you to use him as your personal punching bag ever again.”
“You are such a bitch.”
“And you are such a bully,” I roared back. “You know, Gerard took your bullshit for years.” Furious, I shook my head. “He knew the truth and let you treat him like that. Let you try to meddle and twist and turn his friends against him.” I narrowed my eyes in disgust. “That was you, Lizzie. You did that to him, but it stops now. Do you hear me? Go and get help. Sort your head out because I’m done walking this road with you. I’m stepping off!”
“Guys, please,” Shannon offered up. “Please don’t fight.”
“I’m not fighting, Shannon,” I stated. “I’m just done.”
“We can fix this, guys,” Shannon tried to plead. “Come on. After everything we’ve been through. We can get through this together.”
“I can’t.” Lizzie hiccupped a sob. “Not after tonight.”
Neither could I. “Don’t ever speak to me again, Lizzie Young,” I warned, and then, truly disappointed in myself, I walked away from one of my oldest friends in the world for the sake of another.
78
I Love the Bones of Ya!
GIBSIE
“Gerard, please,” Mam tried to coax, but I couldn’t be talked down or consoled in this moment. I was too far gone. Everything I had worked so hard to build back up after he destroyed me had been snuffed out in an instant.
I didn’t know how I got home from the dance. I didn’t know if I was in another nightmare, or if I was even breathing. I couldn’t make sense of a fucking word of anything.
His hand was on the back of my neck, pinning my face into the mattress. “Daddy,” I tried to scream, but he couldn’t hear me all the way from heaven. “Come back and take me with you.”
“Just stay down and take it, you little bastard!”
“It hurts,” I strangled out, my body bowing in agony when I felt something impale me from behind, ripping my small body in half.
“That’s it,” he grunted as he continued to hurt me, pushing me, deeper, harder, rougher. “I’ll make a fucking man out of you, ya little pussy.”
“Stop.” I was crying. I knew I was. My mouth was open, I could feel tears trickling down my cheeks, but my voice wasn’t coming out. “Please stop.”
Numb, I felt the life leave my body, fading quicker every time he rammed his privates into mine, as the pain grew worse, and my mind started to wander away…
Feeling cornered, I came out swinging, ripping and tearing at anything I could get my hands on in the moment, seeing nothing but his face everywhere I turned. “Keith, stop him, please! He’s going to hurt himself!” I could hear my mother saying somewhere in the distance, but her face was gone from my sight. I couldn’t see anything but him.
Curled up in a ball on my bed, I watched as he stood over me and zipped up his school trousers. He wore the ones the older boys wore. The boys who went to secondary school.
“You know the score, baby brother.” Sitting down on the edge of my bed, he pushed my hair out of my face and reached between my legs. “Keep your mouth shut and I’ll keep going easy on you.”
Trembling, I didn’t dare answer him or look in his direction. I knew better. I knew what happened when I didn’t behave. When I didn’t give him what he wanted.
“Good boy. You’re always okay, aren’t ya?” He stroked my cheek and then stood back up. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
I waited until my door was closed before checking myself over and pulling my Power Rangers pajamas bottoms into place, shuddering when my hand emerged with the familiar sight of blood…
I knew I had lost touch with reality. I could feel my sanity slipping back at the school. The tiny shred of dignity and pride I had managed to hold on to for the past ten years had finally upped and left me.
“I’m going to marry you when I’m a big girl,” she told me, reaching across to press her Barbie’s face to my action figure. “You’ll be my shiny prince in the white garner, and I’ll be the princess.” When she grinned at me, I felt my lips smile back. Because she didn’t have any front teeth and I thought she looked so silly.
“You’re really going to marry me?”
“Uh-huh.” Her brown eyes were big and happy, and she smelled like sunshine. “I’m going to take you to my castle in the North Pole, where we can build snowmen all day and Santa flies over our castle every night to give us presents.”
“Does your castle have a chimney?”
