“Just shut the fuck up!” Chelsea screamed at Nick. People stared. After a few hours, Chelsea had gone far enough to opening her heart up to a complete stranger. Only, he had betrayed her and the rest of the BSB members and Willow knew about her deepest darkest secret. Her best friend Silvia, had known about it a long time ago, just shook her head disappointedly. After a few hours of shopping, Chelsea and Nick had gotten extremely close and decided to head back to the hotel while the others continued shopping. Chelsea, being uncareful, had slipped out her secret to Nick. At that moment, she thought that she could trust Nick not to tell anyone but the next day, somehow, everyone knew about her secret. Her fear… she was raped. Knowing Willow was one of the most popular girls around school, she knew that Willow could never keep a secret. In probably less than a day, the whole school would have known about the horrible incident that happened on the day that she turned 16.
“But Chelsea, I was only trying to help. You need to tell others instead of having to put up with all this pressure by yourself!” Nick explained.
“I don’t need any fucking help!” Chelsea screeched. Her yells became sobs as she broke down on the carpeted floor. They were on their level and were standing right outside Chelsea’s room. People continued to stare. “How could you? I trusted you and then you go telling the whole world that I was fucking raped!” Chelsea continued to sob as the people around her started to avoid her like she was a plague. They stopped staring and quickly went their ways. Chelsea began to hit him blindly while she tried to search for her computer card to open the room door.
“Chelsea, listen to me. Listen to me! You were only raped!” Nick pleaded as he attempted to hold onto Chelsea.
“Only raped?” Chelsea exclaimed unbelievably. “Get away from me! I hate you! I don’t ever want to see you again!” Chelsea slapped him hard as hard as she could as she slipped the card through the slot. The door opened automatically and she let herself in. Slamming the door as fast as she could, she sat down behind the door as she continued to cry loudly. Nick banged on the door repeatedly. Chelsea had already noticed something was wrong that morning when everyone started treating her like she was an expensive porcelain. Fragile. When they had suggested to do laser tag, Chelsea had wanted to come along but Nick had said that there was something that he needed to tell her.
Chelsea ran to the bed and hugged onto a pillow tightly. She tried to block out all noises and suddenly, after a while, all the banging seemed to stop. She stood up, wiping the tears off her face with her shirt. As she peeked through slight gap. She found that Nick was gone and in his place, was a note. It read:
Chels,
Nick Reading the note made her cry even more. Sure, Nick had wanted to help her but all the while she felt s if she was being treated like some crazy patient at a mental institute. She didn’t want pity. She didn’t want any help. She just wanted to fit in, to pretend as if nothing ever happened. Starting to cry again, she cried herself to sleep with the wet note with the blurred writing from her tears, held tightly in her hand.
* o~c * o~c * o~c * o~c * o~c * o~c * o~c * o~c *
“I can’t believe you told everyone, including Willow! Do you realize what a big gossip she is? This will be all over school before we even get there!” Silvia hissed.
“I’m sorry! I was only trying to help!” Nick replied helplessly.
“She doesn’t need your help thank you and you can just butt out of this whole thing and tell everyone down there that it was another one of your lame, moronic, idiotic, bullshit, crap jokes!” Silvia continued, “And now, get out of my way, I need to get in the room.”
“Let me in, please.” Nick pleaded while rubbing his red cheek with a big hand mark on it.
“Get lost asshole. Willow was right, you are a prick. I detest you.” Silvia gave Nick one last glare before pushing him out of the way to enter the hotel room she shared with Chelsea and Willow.
* o~c * o~c * o~c * o~c * o~c * o~c * o~c * o~c *
Chelsea heard noise from outside the door. It woke her up from her nightmare. In her dream, it was back on the day of her 16th birthday. Knowing that there was going to be a surprise birthday party for her after school because she had overheard her parents, she decided to take the shortcut home. The dark alleys. At first, she wasn’t sure that she should even bother stepping inside. It was wet and dark and anything could be lingering in the darkness. Gathering her courage, she walked inside. Just when she thought the alley was as safe as any public sidewalk, someone had covered her mouth and nose with a white cloth. It smelt heavily of medicine and before she knew it, she had fainted. When she had wakened up, her uniform had been torn, her bra and underwear was nowhere to be found, she was left naked. She rolled herself into a ball and cried softly, knowing that she was raped and feeling the pain. Luckily, she had her drama kit in her bag and she changed herself into her drama clothes and continued to walk home. She trembled with fear with each step she took. But finally, she reached her house. She forced herself to smile and opened the door. Nobody except her best friend Silvia knew about this. Not even her parents. No one, until now. It was too painful to be reminded of. She knew that she would never be able to forget this incident but she hoped that she could just put it away and it would never be brought up again. A single tear rolled down her red cheeks. Whenever she sees dark alleys or movies about woman being raped, she becomes so scared that she just hides in her room, refusing to come out. She sniffed the air hard and wiped her face with a pillow. The door opened. Chelsea hid herself under the covers.
“It’s me Chels,” an all too familiar voice spoke softly. Chelsea started to cry loudly. Silvia walked to her and tore the covers away from her. “Stop it Chels! You being raped is the past. You’re still living. Forget it and live on! You can’t hide yourself from the world all the time! Get a grip on yourself Chels!” Silvia shook Chelsea violently.
“Just leave me alone!” Chelsea shouted.
“We’ve been over this before Chels. What’s the difference?” Silvia spoke softly.
“The difference is that the whole god damned world knows now!”
Silvia sighed. “If that’s the way you want to spend the rest of your life then I must say that you’re a total loser to lock yourself in your room and feel sorry for yourself. What can crying do? Absolutely nothing! Time will not turn back if you cry hard enough Chels! This is reality we’re living in, girl. No one can help you.”
Chelsea stopped crying. She looked up at Silvia, “Guess I was really stupid huh?” Silvia nodded, “Tell me, do I look like a monkey’s ass right now?”
Silvia laughed, “Kind of! I mean, definitely! Yes!” Chelsea smiled but then she sighed. “What’s the matter?”
“Well, I’m worried about Willow…”
“You should be.”
“Sil!”
“Okay! I’m sure if we talk to her, she’ll understand.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah… What are you going to do about Nick?” Silvia asked suddenly.
“I hate him. He’s the world’s biggest jerk I’ve ever seen.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“You don’t.”
“I do!” Chelsea insisted.
“We’ll see about that…”
I’m sorry… I just didn’t know how to help you when you told me that you got… I wanted to help you so much that I asked for advice… it just got around then… I’m so sorry… please forgive me.