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“Saint hates my guts but with my mom it’s on a whole other level. To him she’s nothing but a whore who is probably after his families fortune even though we had our own damn money from my father’s inheritance. He can’t stand the ground she walks on so she keeps out of his way. Maybe he thinks she’s trying to replace his mom or something. I don’t know but whatever it is it isn’t getting any better that’s for sure.”
“You don’t need to answer this but has either of them ever hurt you? Eric or Saint I mean?”
“Saints never physically hurt me not by his own hand anyway. He gets the bitches of the school to do that for him, but Eric, he just scares the shit out of me, they both do.
“What about Caleb and Colton?”
“Caleb and Saint have been friends for as long as I can remember. Where one normally goes the other follows. Those two are bad enough on their own but then Colton came along. He seemed to come out of know where two summers ago and hasn’t left their side since. Everyone at school fears them including teachers.”
I honestly don’t know what to say. I thought my problems were bad but at least I could get away from Max when I was at home. Home was my haven, my refuge, and safe place. I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to have had to have put up with him everywhere I went. I hold her hand giving her a gentle squeeze.
“I’m so sorry that you’re going through this, but you’re not on your own anymore,” I say reassuringly.
She lets out a deep breath. “You’re the first person at this school to talk to me like I’m an actual human being since our parents first got together, did you know that?” She wipes away a fallen tear. “At first when girls heard Saint was going to be my new stepbrother they were all over me like a rash wanting to be friends. It was nice for a short while, not being the invisible girl anymore. It didn’t last long. Saint made sure of that.”
“That’s awful,” I say.
She stares off into the distance looking dejected.
“It started with silly things like laughing at me for my clothes, leaving cruel notes on my desk and locker for me to find. They called me names, tripped me up in lunch hall, you know that kind of kindergarten type of shit. I tried to ignore it, but the more I did the more they refused to give up. It turned bad. And every time something happened he would be right there to watch it go down,” she says staring off into the distance. “I used to walk home every day because at the time I didn’t live too far from school. Girls would wait for me after school in their cars and throw water balloons filled with what smelt like fish guts or something, I dunno, but it smelt so bad. They put gum in my hair, even stole my clothes once when I was in the showers after gym. All as a warning to stay away from Saint. Like those stupid bitches thought I wanted his attention or something! No one dared to even talk to me anymore in a normal way, and any guy who even dared to look in my direction was on his shit list.”
“So, what, he doesn’t allow you to talk to anyone?”
“Put it this way, last year Mr Jones paired me up with a guy for a class project and straight after he became suddenly too ill to come into school, even though he was at the mall cinema messing around like nothing was wrong the night before I had to hand it in. When I asked him why he flaked he just shrugged and said he liked his legs unbroken. That was nothing compared to the new guy Jake who started working in the coffee shop with me on the weekends. I stupidly told my mom that he asked me out on a date. He never showed up. Saint did, and boy did he take great pleasure telling me that Jake wasn’t coming.”
“I can’t believe he did that to you,” I sympathise.
“I can handle all that but the girls, they’re another ball game.”
“What did they do?”
She pauses for a moment picking a daisy from the ground, twirling the stem around her fingers in contemplation.
“How bad was it, Lexy?”
“Bad. The harassment and child play bullying I could take, but a few days after it came out that I was going to be living with Saint five girls cornered me in the changing rooms at school after gym class and beat me up.”
I gasp covering my hand with my mouth as anger swells within me making my chest feel tight. Lexy is one of the nicest and sweetest people that I’ve ever met. I can’t fathom why anyone would want to hurt her in this way.
“Do you know who it was that attacked you?”
“Georgina, Christy, Mabel, and two other girls. After they gave me the beating they each took turns pouring bottles of piss and that fish shit all over me. When it was over I stayed in that room curled up in a shower cubicle for what felt like hours. I couldn’t even cry. They took everything, my clean clothes, my bag, everything! I tried to clean it off me the best I could without shower gel, but nothing worked. When I finally got the courage to leave Saint was standing at the other side of the door. I thought he would make some remark about the smell or the state I was in, the way he always would, but he just looked kind of sad for me,” she says heavily. “I had to walk to my car in a towel with everyone laughing at me.”
Stalling in contemplation she continues, “I will never get over that smell. After that day, the girls have left me alone except for some snide remarks every now and then. Now I just walk around like a ghost in the halls everyone ignores. I just want to be a normal girl, you know? Sometimes I have this thought of just standing in the middle of the corridor and scream as loud as I can to see if anyone can see me, the real me and not the fucked-up version Saint has told about me to people.” She sniffles as another tear falls down her face, but she quickly wipes it away before it reaches her chin.
“I see you,” I say squeezing her hand a little tighter. “I haven’t met him yet, but I hate them already.
“My guess is he’s punishing me for our parents. They started dating at the beginning of last semester.”
She’s silent for a minute as she composes herself, so I don’t push. She needs to let it all out.
“It’s just all happening really fast you know. It’s getting harder to tell myself at the end of every shitty day that life’s a dick.”
“Life’s a dick?” I laugh trying to break the tension.
“Yeah. Life is a dick, sometimes it’s up, sometimes it’s down but it can’t be hard forever, right?”
I roll over onto the grass with a full-on belly laugh. She joins in. It’s good to hear her laugh for the first time today until the bell rings that lunch is over and her face turns somber once again. We both get up and collect our belongings, throwing our leftovers and trash in the trash can.
