AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
KYLER
“Hi, Kyler.”A woman with graying blonde hair, a slight build, and big, round glasses escorted me into her office. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Christine.”
My stomach was doing flip-flops, but I swallowed down my fear and shook her hand. I was so nervous being here, but I knew I needed help. The kind of help that my chosen family couldn’t give me.
“It’s nice to meet you too,” I mumbled as I sat down on a dark gray couch that was a little frayed around the edges – evidence of how long Christine had been doing this.
“Maya’s told me a little bit about you. She says she’s never seen Ian happier,” she said with a smile.
I chuckled weakly. “I love him so much. And he makes mesohappy. But…” I took a deep breath. “I need help.”
“Okay. Can you tell me a little bit about why you’re here today?”
“I don’t even know where to start,” I admitted with a sigh. “It’s…it’s a lot.”
“Just start wherever you feel the most comfortable.”
“Um…I was raped by three of the most popular boys in my class a few weeks before I turned sixteen. So a little over two years ago.”
She gave me a sad smile, but didn’t say anything, and I didn’t find any pity in her gaze like I’d been afraid of. I didn’t want to be pitied, because I wasn’t doing this for attention. I wanted to be heard. I wanted to be understood. And that was all I found in Christine’s expression. She was listening to me – really listening – and trying her best to understand the trauma I’d been through.
When she didn’t say anything, I continued. I told her about my assault and about everything that had happened to me since then. All the bullying. Things with my mom getting increasingly more hostile, especially since I’d started dating Ian. Finding out there had been someone taking a video of the worst night of my life. My mom flying off the handle when I’d finally found the courage to tell her about what happened to me. The two threats I’d received since I’d made the police report. And now finding out that Eric was hurting Melissa.
“Wow,” she said when I was finally done talking. “That’s a lot to deal with, especially for someone who’s only eighteen.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t really have a choice but to deal with it, you know? It’s not like I can just nope out of knowing I was sexually assaulted or dealing with almost everyone on my high school campus slut shaming me based on rumors that my rapists started. Or out of having a mother who chose to believe them rather than her own daughter. I wanted to tell her what happened to me. I did. But how could I, when I knew she’d just blame me?”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because she’s always found fault in everything I do. If I got an A in a class, she’d ask why it wasn’t an A-plus. If I got home and wanted to chill out for a while and listen to some music before I started doing my homework, she’d yell at me for being lazy and irresponsible. And if I ever dared to get upset when she was screaming at me for something, even if I hadn’t actually done the thing she’d accused me of, she’d tell me I wasn’t allowed to be upset because it was my fault she was screaming at me and then slap me in the face if I kept crying. And I wasn’t even allowed to be alone with boys at all, so she would have just told me I deserved it for deliberately disobeying her.”
“Doyouthink you deserved what happened to you?” she asked.
I froze, not prepared for that question.
Didsome part of me think that?
Logically, I knew it wasn’t my fault. Logically, I knew thatno onedeserved to be raped andno onewas asking for it. But at the same time, I also felt like I could have made better choices that night. I’d been drinking, and if I hadn’t had those wine coolers, maybe I would have known something wasn’t right. Maybe I never would have agreed to go outside with Drew in the first place.
“I don’t think I deserved it, but Idothink I could have prevented it,” I finally said. “I was drinking, and because of that, I put myself in an unsafe situation. That’s on me.”
Christine took a deep breath. “Kyler, I’ve counseled alotof sexual assault survivors, and I’ve heard something similar to that from almost every single one of them. They think it was their fault because they led their attacker on, or because they’d been drinking, or because they were walking on the sidewalk alone at night. Butnoneof those things gives another person the right to violate you. No matter what choices you made that night,theymade a choice to hurt you. And the responsibility for that is solely on them.”
My eyes stung with tears, because I’d heard this all before. I’d heard it from Melissa when I’d told her the next day, and I’d heard it from Ian the night I told him. But knowing that logically and believing it were two very different things. And I hadn’t quite managed to get myself to step two yet.
“In my head, I know that. But every time I think about it, all I can hear is that voice in my head telling me that I could have avoided all of it if I hadn’t had those wine coolers.”
“Whose voice is it, though? Is it your voice saying those things, or is it someone else’s?”
Huh?
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve said a few times that your mom would have just told you it was your fault. So, when you hear that voice in your head telling you that you could have prevented your assault, is it reallyyourvoice that you’re hearing, or is it your mother’s?” she pressed.
A few tears trailed down my cheeks, and I used my sleeve to wipe them away. “I don’t know. Both, I guess.”
