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Chapter Fifteen

"Miss Lynn?"

"Yes, Meredith?"

I closed my eyes, sighing softly. I was driven by my parents to Miss Lynn's clinic for my therapy session with her. It wasn't all that bad, unlike the other times, until I knew that I needed to tell her about what had happened on Friday. If I didn't, I was afraid that the shadows would consume me. His shadow. My fingers grasped each other tightly at the still terrifyingly fresh memory, and I breathed in, my inhale quivering.

"I have something to tell you."

"Of course," she said, keeping her eyes on her paper. "What is it?"

There was a floating silence, and it was then that I had realized I had never said it out loud. I had never voiced what had happened to me out loud before. I only wrote it on paper and indirectly confessed to Lukas, but coming from my voice?— never. Miss Lynn noticed my slight discomfort and noted it down. I heard her pencil writing down on the paper she had clipped to her clipboard, and she suddenly froze when I interrupted her.

"I was sexually assaulted by someone who I thought was my friend."

Those words left us on a silence.

"What..?"

Her voice cracked at the end.

I gulped down the lump in my throat when I saw that her eyes had widened, glassy from the sudden tears. Sitting up, my legs lifted over each other as I sat with them crossed on the white love seat. Looking up at her, my eyes watered up, and I repeated my sentence in more simpler yet harsher words.

"I was almost raped."

The old woman dropped her pen on the white tiles of the room, and I heard it click to the floor. It was followed shortly after by her clipboard as she suddenly sat up and sprung over, pulling me into a hug with tears streaming down her face. My eyes widened suddenly, and I didn't know what to do. My therapist, the one who was supposed to be the one consoling me, was breaking down. Somewhere inside her chest, I felt her heart racing wildly, as if she understood somewhat most of my pain.

Miss Lynn didn't say anything for a while, and we sat there, silent. She continued crying on my shoulder, and I was hugging her back. Something must have triggered her to do something like this. As I embraced the old woman, I tried to think of what could have been the reason.

I could only wonder.

~~~

Miss Lynn had been assaulted before.

I walked into my room, throwing myself onto the bed, still startled by Miss Lynn's confession.

My therapist, the sweetest little old lady in the world, was sexually assaulted when she was 14 years old and left in a dirty alleyway of two Chinese restaurants, stripped of her clothes, crying her eyes out, and severely traumatized.

Tears ran down my face, but I didn't cry. I couldn't cry. I just let the warm tears fall down my face, laying on my bed paralyzed. Someone in my life, who was so innocent and inspiring to me, had been through a traumatizing experience. She went through what I did when she was 14. I couldn't even grasp the idea of a high school freshman being assaulted by a college student. Nonetheless, the friend of her older brother.

My hands went up to my face, and I wiped away my tears, crying when it finally hit me through my thick skull..

The happiest people in my life can hide their pain so well, to the point where they're tearing themselves apart.

~~~

"You can't sleep?" A delicate voice asked me softly.

I was in my bed, my phone in hand. Lukas has been texting me on Skype, and we were talking about the recent round of Parallel and our skills. I was quite flattered that he told me he would stay up for me. After a few minutes, he recently went to sleep, so I was left staring down at my phone. Looking up, I saw the fading image of Julia in front of me. She was standing with a jacket (that obviously wasn't hers) on her shoulders. I noticed my right arm glowing red, and a red tattoo of a sword imprinted itself on me. She looked down at me, puzzled to see me awake at such a time.

I smiled slightly at her as she sat down on the edge of my bed. "Yeah... It's bothering me I guess, what Miss Lynn told me." I looked off to the side, my smile wearing away quickly, my eyes glassy with tears. "I can't believe I was the first person she told. She's like, what, 60 years old now? That was ages ago, and yet, her eyes tell me it still haunts every day of her life. She didn't tell her brother, and she had to suffer seeing that guy every day of her life." I hugged myself, blinking. Tears ran down my face, but I didn't make a move to wipe them away. "She.. had to suffer from his unwanted touch, every day of her life..."

Julia wrapped her arms around me, kissing the top of my head. I leaned over to her, and though her figure was still opaque, her presence was there. I felt her hand hold my head gently, patting it. "She was scared to tell anyone," Julia whispered, "and that's practical."

"Why wasn't I..?"

"Because back then, Miss Lynn had a lower self-esteem than you do now. She had troubles with her family falling apart, and she didn't have a therapist to tell as you did," Julia explained. She pulled back and smiled lightly, pulling a strand of my hair away from my face with her other hand wiping away my tears. "You're lucky to have had someone to tell. You had the chance to tell."

I nodded, though I still thought it was unfair. "She must've been so scared.." I whispered inaudibly, clenching my jaw tightly when I remembered how hurt my therapist had sounded explaining the story to me. I wrapped my arms around Julia, crying. "I wish I was there to save her."

"You can't change the past, little one," Julia said softly, "Just be glad that she's still here."

A/N

I know what you guys might be thinking.

Julia? How does she know Miss Lynn? Did she see through Meredith's attribute?

Nope.

Meredith's attribute Dream Factory wasn't utilized.

;) you'll just have to wait and find out their connections.