don't speak.

chapter nine

Completely ablaze. There is no other way to describe it. My body was completely ablaze.

Every ounce of my being ached – and it wasn't the slap-an-ice-pack-on-it kind of physical pain, it was a more deeply rooted agony. The silent kind that comes up in a roar and can't be cured by a warm water bottle or bandaged together by an adhesive gauze pad. The kind that would fire up beneath my skin when I walked through the halls, and tear me apart when I'd think, when I'd move – when I'd breathe.

The easy answer would seem to be to stop thinking. To stop moving.

Maybe even to stop breathing.

But if I've learned anything it's that the easy answer is not always the right one. So I decided that I'm not allowed to think like that. For this day I was going to try – try to push through this. Try to survive.

Everyone goes through shit in high school. If you don't believe me there are about a million books and films about it, and thanks to Riley's "cry nights" I think I've watched just about all of them. Thanks to them I'd started to ask myself, why is my shit any worse than theirs? Why should I put my pain on a pedestal and negate the feelings of the kid who sits next to me in math class and is afraid to raise his hand, or the girl who I walked in on wrapping her chest and dressing in her brother's clothes? I shouldn't. Because pain is relative. And if they had to live with their shit then so did I.

Except maybe my pain was different. After-all, I caused my trauma. I wasn't sure at first, I wasn't even sure how to describe what happened that night, and so I looked up the word – the measly four letters they've chosen to describe the events that the party entailed. And I looked at what others had to say about it. There are some brutal things out there. People like to say whatever they please, forgetting about the people who may be reading it. It's horrifying the things you see, and the worst part is, is that they make a fair amount of sense.

Don't believe me? Look it up. Look up the word. Google the word rape.

Did you do it?

Because I did.

I just needed to know what to call it; what to title what happened to me. I didn't know if it was bullying or assault. But every lead I followed pointed to rape – and if that's what it was then there are thousands of yahoo arguments discussing how the victim could've stopped it. How it's my fault. How I drank too much or led him on. How I gave up then and was giving up now. So I thought to myself; maybe it's genetic – your dad was a quitter so now you are too.

Except people can and have titled me many things – slut, idiot, whatever. But one thing the world knew I wasn't was a quitter. Because I was the indestructible Maya Hart – which everyone seemed to be forgetting.

So on this day I decided I would no longer be dragging my knuckles on the ground, waiting around for someone to put me back together. I was broken – and I had no one to blame but myself.

I'd readjusted my backpack as I walked through the halls which seemed a lot bigger now. With every step I took the sound of my feet slapping the ground echoed louder and louder until it drowned out every other sound in the world. I squinted to make out what Lucas was saying as he ran up beside me, the sound of met feet dominating his voice.

"Hey are you okay?" I managed to make out as he put his hand on my arm and I instinctively swatted it away. I know I didn't hit him hard – but you'd never know it by looking at his face. And I couldn't help but thinking don't tell me I've broken you too?

In that moment – that moment of silent but booming weakness – I wanted to tell him. I wanted nothing more than to collapse into his arms and relay the horrors of that night. The night that they left me – the night that I left myself. And maybe I should have. Maybe I should've let myself quit this silence-the-pain thing. But my pride got ahead of me – and so I didn't.