" Please, don't!," Terry continued to scream.
Isaac stood there, dumbfounded. He noticed her eyes weren't focused, she wasn't fully awake. He grabbed her shoulders and shook her, tying to wake her up. If he didn't get her to stop screaming soon, she'd wake the whole house.
" Shhhh! Terry!," he hissed, " It's all right, wake up!"
" Daddy, no!," she cried
Daddy? He shook her harder.
" Terry, it's just me, Isaac!"
She blinked.
"Isaac?"
"Terry, what's wrong? I want to be your friend. I just want to help you. Please, tell me what happened," Isaac pleaded.
" Daddy. Everything I did was wrong. I knew I deserved it when he'd hit me, but I still didn't like it. Then he'd come to me at night and..." she trailed off.
Isaac turned her towards him so he could look at her.
"He raped you, didn't he?," Isaac asked gently.
Terry held back a sob, but the tears spilled anyway. She tried to wipe them away.
"Stupid!," she said. For a minute, Isaac thought she was talking about him, then he realized that she meant herself. " I have to stop crying! Dad always told me that tears showed how weak a person was!," Terry admitted, " I don't want to be weak now!"
" If that was true, then the majority of the human race is pretty weak. Crying is natural and even helps you feel better when you're upset," Isaac replied," Everybody cries on occasion."
"Yeah, like you do!"
" Hmm, sometimes. But you have every reason to cry. I mean, you trusted your dad, he was all you knew and vice-verse. But instead of appreciating what he had, he seemed to go out of his way to make you feel worthless."
"But I am!"
"You don't go around abusing your kids, Terry. You need to know that you did nothing wrong, unless being raised by an ass like that is a crime. He had no right to do what he did," he reasoned," and you need to believe that my family won't hurt you. You can trust us."
Is that true? Terry wondered. Could her father really be the one to blame? Maybe it was even his temper that drove her mother away, not her. Now let's not go nuts. She chided herself. But had she finally found someone she could talk too? Had she found a friend in Isaac Hanson? She looked at the concern on his face how much he wanted her to trust him. Yes. She decided. She had. It was then that she broke down and told him everything; the blame, the accusations, hurt, guilt, always trying to be perfect, but never quite succeeding. Everything, but her secret. She could never tell him that. What would he think then?
" Terry?," Isaac said," When we went to get you for dinner, what were you talking about, when you were saying that we can never know about something? What can't we know?"
"No, I can't tell you!," Terry cried," I just can't! Pleasetry to understand."
Isaac pulled her into his arms and held her, stroking her hair and speaking softly.
" I'm not going to make you tell me anything. That's up to you. And if you don't want me to tell Tay and Zac, I won't, though they are curious."
"No, it's okay, you can tell them. Just please don't tell anyone else," Terry replied.
" I won't, but the point is," Isaac continued, " that I'm your friend. If you want to talk to me, you can trust me. If you don't want to talk, fine, no pressure. I want you to know that you will always be able to trust me."
Terry hugged him close and closed her eyes. At that moment, she didn't care who he told. He could have broadcast it on television and it wouldn't have mattered. What mattered was that he had been there for her when her father hadn't and was surprised when for the first time, she felt a flush of anger when she thought about him.
