Light as a feather

Again

It started again. Or maybe it never stopped. She told me one day. She made me promise not to tell. It was her business and she would deal with it. She was clumsy. No not clumsy. She has perfect balance. Did ballet for years until she couldn't. She never fell. She was pushed. She never tripped, she was hit. She was a sheep surrounded by wolves.

She had a black eye and I came over unexpected. She fell and hurt herself. They week before, she got in a fight with random girls, that's why she looked so beat up. She slipped in the kitchen and banged her back on the counter, it was an accident. She finally broke down. She finally told me. They were no accidents.

She was a foster child. Her foster parents were almost always gone. She was left in the care of the mother's uncle. He had a temper and a dislike of children. His way of disciplining a child is to beat them until they behaved.

Cam.

Cam was outgoing and totally wild. Bothered people too much and stuck her head into people's business. After angering her foster uncle, he hit her. Slapped right across the face. He waited for her to tell. He waited and waited. She never did. He got less careful. Less afraid. When he got angry, he went looking for her knowing he wouldn't get found out.

"I have nowhere else to live. No one else. If I tell and they think I'm lying, I have nowhere to go and I don't want to be in the system again. I refuse!"

It got worst and worst as the year progressed and she told me. She didn't want to keep doing this. She started skipping and acting up and getting darker. Then nothing. Then she started talking to me again and telling me. That's when she told me about it. She told me it stopped. She told me that everything's fine.

I started to pay attention to her more. She wasn't fine. The bruises. The cover ups.

I didn't tell.

I should have told.

She tried to kill herself a few months after that. Freshman year.

~.~.~

"I hate you!" she shouted!

"Ca- "

"I hate you so much!"

"C- "

"Why couldn't you just let me die!" She broke out in sobs. "Get out!"

"Cam pl- "

"I said get out!" she screamed.

"excuse me." The nurse said walking in. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

I looked at her. She cried. Just waking up after 3 days of rest. She didn't take that many. If I didn't come back for my charger when I did, then she would have died. I looked at Cam one last time before walking out.

A few months later, I got a text from her.

"He stopped. For real."

That was the last text she sent me. She never responded to any of mines. I stopped after a month. She didn't want anything to do with me.

But now, it started again.