Thank you, Kelley

Chapter 17

Meghan's POV:

Just as I expected the next three weeks are the slowest of my life.

I arrived back home and it is almost 10 pm. I am absolutely exhausted. Between the physical and emotional exhaustion and camp and the fact that I just drove all the way home, I am so ready for sleep. I park my car in the driveway in front of the small house. I desperately hope I can sneak up to my room without disturbing Greg. I am really not in the mood for dealing with this shit tonight.

I enter through the front door and creep over to the stairs to get up to my bedroom. Luckily I can see Greg passed out in his favorite recliner. I make it to my room and close the door. I stand there for a moment taking in the familiar scene. I still feel like going to camp was a dream. I also remember to text the team group chat telling them that I am home safely. They insisted that I do this and that if I didn't they were going to send a search party out looking for me. I laughed at first but then realized they were serious.

I get settled in and wait for Jan to get home. She should be back any minute from her late shift at the diner we both work at. I know she will want to hear about how camp went.

Her life is shit. I really feel bad for her. She fell in love with Greg when they were teenagers and got married soon after. Greg then changed into the monster that he is. He controls her every move. It is absolutely awful. At least he doesn't hit her though. Nope, he saves that for me.

Jan has always been good to me. She is not usually home when Greg hits me so she doesn't know too much about that but she at least will bring me some food up to my room when she knows Greg won't let me eat sometimes. She does care about me, she just can't show it sometimes because of him.

I can hear her car pull up in the driveway and after a little while, she comes up and knocks on the door. We talked for some time about how good camp was. It was nice to be able to tell someone who wasn't there how great it really was. Jan then reminds me I have to go back to school tomorrow and I groan in response. She leaves and I fall asleep fairly quickly. But it's just not the same without Emily laying here next to me.

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As I had expected going back to school was pure hell.

Before I left camp Rose and Mal had told me about how when I got back to school that everyone would be flocking to be my friend just because I was kind of "famous". I nodded in agreement when they told me but I knew that this would not be the case for me.

The people at school don't really like me. I was pushed away after my ex outed me. I really only have one close friend. Sophie. She is the best. We are the kind of friends who don't need to see each other every day but are still super close. At least she was excited to see me. Nobody else even seemed to notice that I had been gone. The people at this school suck. Oh well, I just have to get through two more years then I will be done.

I will say though there are a few girls on the soccer team who are nice enough. We aren't best friends or anything but they let me and Sophie sit with them at lunch and they actually acknowledge that I exist so that's good at least.

My next three weeks consist of school, soccer practice, work, Greg beating me up, and constant calls with Kelley and Emily. The last part of that was definitely the best. The two of them keep me sane until I am able to go back to camp. I also don't have too many panic attacks which is good. It seems that because a dangerous situation is ever looming with Greg my body knows it's not safe to break down. This is really good for me though because when there is nobody around to comfort me they will last for hours. I usually pass out and then wake up many hours later.

I only had one night where I had to call Kelley in the middle of the night. It wasn't a full-blown one but I knew I needed to calm down before I got there and Kelley is the only one who can do that for me. She was very gracious, which was kind of her even though I woke her up in the middle of the night.