The Bullies' Karma (gxg)

Chapter 9

I'm not sure where the pipe came from that Ryley had jammed into my head, but it made a mess of me. It had looked like a post from a chain link fence, so maybe they'd somehow found one that was loose, and used it to beat me with. But now on the top left side of my forehead was a semicircular crescent moon shaped scar that looked like a grotesque smile. It was so bad that you barely noticed the line that was made by the scalpel behind it.

"Nai'a," Syd whispered. She was still holding me, cradling me in her arms while protecting my head, and continuing to kiss my scars. "The scars don't change a thing about you, okay? Believe me, you're a beautiful woman, regardless of a little thing like that."

"Syd, I saw the picture. It looks like part of a damned Halloween costume." She wasn't going to get me to buy in on that so quickly. I appreciated the effort though. She'd let me stain her scrubs with my tears for far longer than most would have put up with me.

"Stop that! When I met you, all I could see was your nose and mouth, and I still couldn't take my eyes off you. When I saw your eyes, they took my breath away. Now that I've seen the rest of you, I don't think I want to ever stop looking at you!" She was speaking emphatically, and I could tell that she was serious. What she said also made my heart leap, even if I was stuck in the bed.

"Do you think that the plastic surgeon can do anything to help?" I wondered. I'd always thought about them with nose jobs or tummy tucks, I'd never thought about repairing a scar.

"It won't be perfect. They can't make the scar go completely away, but they can make it look a lot better," she explained in a soft voice.

"I'll never forget that day. I'll always remember those three..." oh, that was close. I almost said too much about who had done this!

Her head jerked back as she looked down at me. "You do know who it was, don't you?"

"It doesn't matter who it was," I told her. "They'll never touch me again."

"But they should be in jail!" she complained. She wasn't wrong, they probably should be. But I was the only one they ever picked on, and I could determine their outcome. Besides, they had protection, they'd probably never go to prison unless they turned on each other. Not to mention, I wanted their futures to be damaged so bad they'd take years to recover. And not just them either, I wanted their enablers to go down too.

"Syd, I know you're trying to help, and I thank you. But I've been dealing with this for four years, and nothing I say to the cops will matter. You'll probably see that when they come here to question me," I said sullenly. "I just didn't want to have a reminder of them on my head."

She was silent for a bit, and I wish I could read her mind. "When I was much younger, I made a mistake. I had a friend, a guy named Ryker, and he convinced me to try sex. We were at a party, and it was the first time I'd ever had a drink. I wasn't blacking out, but I had definitely had too much to drink. I would have never said yes to him normally, I wasn't attracted to him like that, but that night I did. It was horrible. Even before that night, I was pretty sure I liked girls more, but after him I knew it. After that when I tried to date a few guys, I couldn't even get through an entire date with one, so I stuck with girls. But the thing is, while he started out with a condom, he took it off in the middle of switching positions because it felt weird to him. He never told me that he did that, and I didn't know until it was too late. I was pregnant, and terrified, and never told my folks until it was too far along to consider other options. He wanted to be a part of our lives, but he was too violent and had got involved with a bad crowd outside of school. I had to get a restraining order to keep him away from us. Thankfully he ended up getting arrested for drugs instead, and the judge made him stay away from me and Rose when I filed for full custody. But that mistake gave me my daughter, and I can never regret her."