Page 42 of Unbroken

I have to take another break. My heart is racing and I’m feeling weak everywhere. I think I’ve definitely peed myself, but I’m sweating so bad, so it’s hard to say for sure what I’m soaked in.

I take a quick moment to process my thoughts. Telling them about Leo’s mother is taking me back, and not in a good way.

I can’t believe I tried to rationalize her behaviour.

What was wrong with me?

You were a kid,a tiny voice fills my head.You didn’t know better.

My heart hurts for that little girl. I feel my lips quiver. I tried to be so positive. Tried to be so nice. And all it got me was pain. I was the perfect target. What would have become of me had Hunter and Leo not been in my life? I physically shudder just thinking about it.

The world would have swallowed you whole, Skye. Would have chomped you between its gnarly teeth, minced your bones into crumbs and spat you out like you were nothing.

“She came around again,” I mutter. “About a year later.”

Because whatever Leo said to her at the bus stop really rattled her. She’d left him to it all throughout the ninth grade. It was a fun year. Filled with laughter, bike rides, and candy on the beach. Things hadn’t changed a whole lot like I worried. I didn’t know there were secrets sprouting beneath our feet, a growing mountain that I was standing atop of, or the hell each boy was going through on their own.

“Why would we let you know, Skye, when you’re so whole, so unbroken?”

At the time, my biggest fear had been they’d make other friends, and we would grow apart. But that didn’t happen freshman year. Rather, the opposite.

Hunter never strayed, following me like a shadow, watching me in that quiet way. Meanwhile, Leo excelled in every way, but despite the attention, friends and invites, he still found me in the crowd. He didn’t have me vying for his attention; it was readily available whenever I wanted it.

To Hunter and Leo, I was never invisible.

Not for a single moment.

“She came at me,” I start, my breaths slowing at the recollection. “I was going to a party…

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