Behind Drawn Curtains

Chapter 13

I could hear him fighting with my mom all night long, but not once during the night did my door open up. Not once was I awoken by James standing naked, towing above me. I guess with all the fighting going on my mom never slept and therefore James didn’t get a chance to enter my room, which made me even more scared, because I knew that when the time came he would give it to me even harder than he would have if he just had the chance to come to me during the night.

By the time the light started shining through the curtains and I had to get up for school I hadn’t slept at all. I kept on waiting for him all night, sweating in fear for what he would have in stall for me but it never came.

I got dressed for school as always and the house was weirdly quiet as I walked through it towards the kitchen, searching for breakfast. After searching through the fridge and finding some leftover pizza from the previous night I decided to head out to school. There was no point in me waiting here in a clearly empty house. But just as I got to the front door I heard a voice.

“E.J.,” he didn’t say it loud and I could have easily just ignored it, but somehow as if his voice hypnotized me I walked toward the living room.

He saw me before I saw him sitting on the ground on the other side of the couch. It was weird seeing James like this. I was used to the man that towered above me, taking what he wanted. In complete control of me and everything else around him. This wasn’t him at all. James didn’t sit behind a couch with tears streaking his face. He didn’t look like a five year old who had just lost his pet. He didn’t look pathetic.

“Come here,” he pleaded, and without being able to stop myself I did. I walked over to him and looked down at what he had become overnight. He was a mess, sitting in his underwear, dried snot sticking to his nose and upper lip.

I didn’t know what to say to him. I wanted him to hurt. I wanted this for him. I wanted to see him as pathetic. As the loser he truly was, but somehow, somewhere inside me there was something in me that felt pity for him. That understood how it felt when you saw someone you care for being taken away by somebody else. Chris’ face flashed before me. I could see Andrew putting his arms around him, holding him safe, the same way that Chris used to do for me. Chris had always been my hero, but I guess I never thought that sometimes a hero might need saving as well.

“Sit…” James mumbled and without a thought I sat down in front of him, on the floor, looking him in the eyes that were red from crying.

“You’re mom… She left me…” he said as the tears started falling from his eyes again.

“I know,” I answered, not sure what else to say.

“I asked her to leave you here with me. I can’t be alone. I can’t dammit!” The last word came out louder than even James had intended. “The b***h cheated on me! I just gave her love and she cheated! Are you going to do the same?! Are you also going to throw the love I gave you back into my face?!”

James was up on his feet, and I struggled to get up as well. I could handle the James that came into my room and raped me, but this thing he had become I did not know. I had no idea what he was capable of. I wanted to scream. I could feel my entire body starting to shake. I needed a hero. Where was Chris when I needed him?

“I need to get to school,” I said, turned around and then I ran for my life. I didn’t look back and to my biggest surprise there was no screaming or running after me. James had let me go. He just allowed me to run off into the streets, to go to school. Without making me suck his d**k or anything else. Without even having to answer him.

And this scared me more than anything else.

***

You know that feeling you get when you know something bad is going to happen somewhere, but you have no idea of when, where and what is going to happen? I had that feeling throughout my first three periods at school. Maybe it was because I was tired. I may just need some sleep and then I will be fine again. Still, there was something deep in my mind that kept on telling me that something was seriously wrong somewhere. That something was going to happen, and as the bell rang for lunch I was feeling nauseated to the point where I wanted to puke, but I kept my cool until I got to the swing where I had once met Chris.

It took about five minutes for the storm to hit, and there was no way that I could have seen it coming.

“Chris is still in love with you,” Andrew said as he took up the swing next to me, grinning and showing me his pearly whites.

“I’m not gay,” I answered back, lowering my eyes to my feet.

“So you say…” The pause felt like an eternity. “But Chris told me something else. He seems to think you don’t want to be with him because there’s something else. Someone older…”

I could feel the blood drain from me. At first it was just my face that felt the cold swooping it, but as it tugged at my heart my entire body seemed to go into some kind of paralyzes.

“What did he tell you?” I asked.

“That you like to f**k your daddy,” Andrew answered with a smile, his eyes growing meaner and meaner by the second.

“Are you going to tell anybody?”

The last thing that I wanted or needed was for the entire school to find out what had been happening between me and James. Then it would not matter anymore if I tell someone that I had been raped. They would just accept that I was looking for it. What was worse was that soon everybody would know that my mom was gone, that she left James and left me behind with him. It would look like I was happing an affair with my mom’s husband and she just gave up on both of us.

I looked Andrew in the eyes and I begged with all that I had in me, trying to will my eyes into forcing him to not tell anybody. To not betray me like Chris had done.

“Just stay away from Chris okay?” Andrew said, his smile fading from his face. “Look, I don’t want to get you into trouble, but I didn’t always have the most awesome life either. Chris means everything to me. I just want to be happy, but as long as Chris has contact with you he will never be mine. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“I broke off my friendship with him for a reason. I don’t feel the same way, okay?”

“I’m really sorry E.J. For everything,” Andrew said as he stood up, and for a moment I could almost believe that he really was sorry for me. “Just give me and Chris a chance. That’s all I ask.”

“Cool,” I said as I held up a thumb, showing him that everything was okay, while inside I wanted to slam his face into the ground and kick him to death.

I had never been so humiliated in my life before. Unless you off course count James and the things that happened behind drawn curtains, but that was a matter on its own.

I wanted to cry so badly. I wanted to go home, but home was not a place where I would feel safe and warm. Home was a place of torture and humiliation. Home was a place where you could get raped at any second and at any given time. I didn’t want to go to my home. I wanted to go to a home where I could sleep through the night without swallowing a d**k or having a huge piece of plastic pushed up inside me. I needed somewhere safe. In the past I have been safe at school but now even that had been taken away. I wasn’t safe anywhere anymore. I could not go anywhere and just be me, unless I went with my mom. And how long would it be before she brought another stepfather into my life? Another man that would beat and rape me because he wasn’t getting what he wanted from my mother. When would my endless torment stop? When would I finally find somebody that would really care, and even if they did care, would they do what Chris did when he found out? Would they also just leave me behind and move on with their lives? Would they also realize that they did not want some broken piece of trash? Some secondhand human being that has been used to the point of being nothing anymore?

I was halfway to the bathroom when I heard my name being called, but I kept on running. I could not stop to listen. It was already taking every single fiber of my being to keep the tears in until I could get to the bathroom and lock myself in a cubicle where nobody would come looking for me. Unfortunately for me; just as I shut the door to the cubicle I could hear him stepping into the bathroom.

“E.J… Please let me in. I know you’re in there,” Chris’ voice echoed through the bathroom.

“Go away!” I yelled, not being able to contain the fear, the irrational thinking, the rage or the tears any longer. A part of me wanted to rip open the door and kill him. Another part of me wanted to grab and kiss him. All just to try and feel something, anything, except for what was going on inside my mind.

“Please E.J.! Just open the door. Just let me talk to you once. All I ask is five minute,” I could hear him begging. I could hear him trying to open the locked door from the outside.

“You told! You f*****g told Andrew!” I yelled beside myself.

“I’m sorry! I know what he said to you, and I am sorry!” Chris yelled back.

“No you’re not! You don’t give a s**t about what happens to me! You don’t give a s**t when I am being raped and beaten! You know nothing but you think you can tell others about my life! You think I’m gay because I sucked someone off, when he was forcing me! You’re fuckt up Chris! You are nothing! You are a worthless piece of rubbish!” I screamed every single word that I had always wanted to say at the top of my lungs. Not giving a damn if there was someone in the hallway or someone in one of the other cubicles that could hear me. I just didn’t care anymore. I just needed it all to be over. I needed the tears that was streaming over my face to end forever.

“E.J…”

I could hear Chris on the other side of the door, slipping down to the floor, sitting down.

“What?!” I replied, as I too slipped down to the floor, emotions overwhelming me, knowing there was only a thin piece of wood between someone who might have just cared once upon a time.

“I’m sorry… I can help you…”

“You can’t help anyone Chris. You can’t even help yourself. You choose to sleep in a house with a rapist because your mother is too much of a drunk to handle.”

I wanted to hurt Chris so much. I wanted nothing more than to open the door and kill him.

“Andrew won’t say anything to anybody. I promise. I will make sure of it.”

“Do whatever you want,” I replied, ignoring the regret I could hear in Chris’ voice. Ignoring the sound of his voice trembling as he tried to fight the tears.

“I love you E.J. I do. I won’t do anything to hurt you.”

“You already did.”

“I can make it right. I promise. Just give me a chance. Allow me to love you.”

“I’m not gay,” I answered.

It took two bells and lots of silence before I finally heard Chris leave, but I stayed. I stayed in the cubicle where I was safe.