Toxic

Toxic: Chapter #69 | See You on the Mats

Zach's Past

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⚠️ Warning: ⚠️

This chapter contains mentions of past child abuse, past grooming, past sexual abuse of a child, past attempted rape of a child, stalker behavior, creepy coworker, flashbacks, mild blood, mentions of nightmares and mild sexual content. Take care!!

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Cheerleading had always been a passion of mine as was clearly evidenced by my dedication and participation since seventh grade, leading my squad to nationals all four years of high school and then there I was in my junior year of college getting ready to lead my squad to yet another nationals.

For some reason though, my mind wasn't on the upcoming season that first week back at school. No, my mind was stuck in the past and it was something I hadn't thought about in a long time. I think now is a good time to mention it.

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While my cheerleading journey is always referenced as starting in seventh grade, and my love of it has been lifelong, there was a time when I almost gave it up completely. Our town held a cheer camp for kindergarten through sixth graders and I begged my parents to let me sign up. They could see how much I loved it and how badly I wanted to go. Grandpa was the one to take me up until he passed away and I loved every moment of it. Well, almost every moment.

We had four instructors at the cheer camp, Mr. Donnally, Mrs. Thompson, Mr. Arthur and Miss Hudson. Out of those four instructors, I was quite smitten with Miss Hudson and thought she was really pretty. I didn't realize at the time that pretty can hide great evil in a person. After all, I learned that from Jayden, right? It just made what happened with Jayden even worse when I realized later on that he was much like Miss Hudson had been.

It was a couple of months after my grandpa died that Miss Hudson's demeanor changed. She became sweeter, more affectionate and more focused when it came to me. At first, I thought it was because she saw potential in me, and it was nice to have attention especially in the wake of my grandpa's death. I was miserable and missed him so much that when Miss Hudson started paying more attention to me, I relished it.

I got butterflies in my stomach when she smiled at me, felt nervous when she rubbed my back while I stretched and was so confused when she ignored other kids in favor of staying by my side the entire time. I had no idea at the time what she was doing but I was a child, so I had no way of really comprehending it at that point.

Then came the manipulation tactics and those were even worse. Miss Hudson would tell me how special I was but that the other kids would never understand, said that they would hate me if they knew I was so much better than they were and that they wouldn't understand Miss Hudson's attention. I was only eleven, but I wanted to be liked and if the other kids wouldn't like me, then at least Miss Hudson did, right?

Wrong. So very very very wrong.

I had just had my twelfth birthday when things changed again. Miss Hudson told me that she wanted me to stay and learn some new stretches. Benji was going to swing by and pick me up since he was a year above me and had a baseball practice that was just a block or so away from where mine was. I didn't see the harm in staying to work on some stretching.

At first, it was just going over the stretches I already knew but after Mr. Donnally and Mrs. Thompson left, and after Mr. Arthur had gone to his office, Miss Hudson got closer to me, and her hands started wandering over my body. I was scared and didn't know what she was doing but I didn't want her to think I was a baby about it. So, I didn't say anything, not at that point anyway.