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Paxon and Bryan had found me in my room, barely breathing, my body covered with bruises. Out of all of us, his life was probably the most sheltered. The money his parents gave him had built a buffer between him and the cursed side of reality the world had to offer. He understood a different kind of pain, but he never had to deal with the struggles of those who didn’t have money to throw around. When he found me that day, his eyes were opened wider than ever. It shocked him. He couldn’t understand why someone would hurt others who were unable to defend themselves.
Bryan’s experience wasn’t physical abuse, or even mental. No, what he understood best was the neglection of humanity’s warmth. He knew all too well what it felt like to be forgotten by family. He didn’t understand punches and kicks. Not yelling and words that had the power to clutch to your soul and mutate until it turned black and ugly and consumed you until there was nothing left but whirling thoughts that left you dizzy and needing to purge your soul into a toilet.
Bryan took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “Please tell me you are fucking around right now.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said.
He didn’t take my nearly deadly beating well at all. Seth was the one to bring him back to reality, helping him get through what he had discovered. I think he took it worse than I had, and I was the one in the hospital for a couple of weeks. In truth, his reaction helped me. Made me realize that the beatings weren’t normal. That they shouldn’t happen. Especially to an eleven-year-old boy who didn’t do anything wrong.
I frowned, realizing I shouldn’t have said anything yet. Bryan was right. We didn’t know anything. Maybe something more innocent than that happened and she was recovering from it still. But I couldn’t hold in that kind of information. The thought of someone hurting Cadence made that darkness in me whirl. I wanted to hurt something… or someone. Preferably, the one hurting her. She was so… I don’t know.
It was hard to explain. Cadence was kind. Quiet but observant. The rare times she smiled had me desperate for more moments like that. If we needed to drag around Paxon’s brother to see her smile more often, I was all for strapping the little man to my back and keeping him close.
I banged my head against the desk, wanting answers and not sure how to go about getting them. My friends were as speechless and confused as I was, and they were the ones who usually had better solutions than the ones running through my head. Ones that didn’t lead to the same ending as mine. Cadence didn’t need to be laid up in a hospital for weeks to get the help she needed.
If she needed it. I had to remind myself that. Maybe I was wrong. I hoped so.
“If Justin thinks it’s more, then we need to find out.” Paxon bit his lip as he tried to think. “We’ll see her during lunch, can we ask her then?”
I snorted. They were as clueless as I was, maybe more so. Bryan raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at me. I sighed and straightened in my seat, ignoring the heavy weight of exhaustion that seemed to stretch through all my weary limbs.
“Guys, she isn’t going to come out and admit someone beats the shit out of her. She’s good at hiding it, so this has been going on for a while. She barely even trusts us. If we ask her, we’re asking her to lie to us. Do you want her lying to us about this?”
They looked at each other and then back to me.
“No,” Paxon said, and I could see the reluctance in his face. That answer pained him almost as much as it did me.
“Then we can’t come out and ask her.”
“Then what the hell are we supposed to do?” Bryan asked.
I took a moment to think about a solution. What would I have wanted? “We need her to trust us. To want to talk to us. Otherwise we will just scare her. We also need to know who exactly is hurting her and why. Maybe it’s a relative or neighbor or someone she works with or shit, I don’t know. We can’t point fingers unless we’re sure. If we push her to talk, she’ll just clam up and push us away.”
“That’s if she’s being abused,” Bryan said, still determined to believe it wasn’t happening.
Paxon ignored him, asking, “Then what do you suggest? We can’t just let her keep getting abused if that’s the case.”
“We make sure she isn’t in a position to be abused. Take up as much of her time as we can. Get her to hang out with us more often. Be there for her. Build her trust in us more.”
“Maybe her parents?” Paxon asked. “If it has been going on for any amount of time, that’d make the most sense. What do we know about them?”
“Her father took off when she was a kid,” Bryan said.
“How do you know that?” Paxon asked.
“She told me during first period. She used to play piano as a kid.” Bryan shrugged. “It came up.”
“And her mother?” I asked.
“No fucking clue. She calls her Lindie, that’s all I know.”
“Lindie? That’s… formal. Maybe her?” Paxon tapped at his desk.
“We won’t know anything until we learn more about her,” I said.
“This is bullshit,” Bryan said, taking his glasses off and cleaning them. It was his nervous tick.
Paxon turned to me. “Are you sure she’s being abused?”
