The Little Lightning Girl

41-Not Damaged, Unfinished

Sensitive topics ahead, they will be marked if you wish to skip the section

I used the rest of the summer to get strong. In as many ways as possible, I pushed myself to be stronger. What it was that had caused me to get captured, what weakness it was that had allowed that, I didn't know. So I took the time to get rid of any weakness I could see in myself. I told my friends as much of the story as I could bear to, but to my surprise, Raegan became one of my closest confidants. Our relationship was exactly what we both needed. No lies, no secrets. Even to Maya, I'd only mostly told her the truth. I knew there were details that would... pain her.

Only Raegan knew the parts of my heart, my brain, that I was most ashamed of. And she didn't once look at me with the disgust I'd expected to be there. Only quiet, grim understanding. And I provided the same for her. I doubted anyone in her life knew the true struggle Raegan had been through when she'd lived on the streets of New York. It took her a while to reveal the worst parts, likely because she'd held them inside for so long, lied about her past for so long that she didn't know how to begin telling the truths that haunted her. The worst of her tales she spilled as the sun set one August night.

The two of us sat on the roof as always. I'd just finished telling her about waking up in the hospital, and we were staring at the golds and reds of the sunset when she finally spoke.

*sensitive topics start*

"Remember that first day we talked and you told me how those men touched you? You said you'd rather be beaten than to deal with that, and I said I'd feel the same way."

An ugly twisting emotion began roiling in my gut, in suspicion and anticipation of what I had guessed about her past, what she was about to tell me. I looked over to my steady friend and found tears gleaming in her midnight eyes.

"When I was ten, my gang of boys got caught by two cops and for the first time I couldn't escape. By then, it had gotten harder to pass as a boy. I passed well enough, if I stayed filthy and stood surrounded by a dozen boys of varying ages, but the cops saw right through when they caught me."

She paused and inhaled deeply. I could see the memories playing behind her eyes as she stared into the fading sunset. She squeezed her eyes shut and tears escaped down her cheeks.

"He touched me how those men in the dungeon touched you, but there wasn't anyone to stop him as those men had their... leader. He didn't stop. I was ten years old, and once the gang found out I was a girl, inevitable because a few of them saw the whole thing, they kicked me out. I didn't even understand it, at the time."

I wanted to gasp at those boys who'd left her in the dust because of her gender after she'd been hurt in a way they wouldn't ever understand. That was another reason why I hadn't told James about that part of my torture. He had suffered through almost everything as I had, but I couldn't risk telling him about the fat man touching me when I knew he couldn't understand the full extent of what had been done to me when he wasn't there. I hesitated to do it but I slid my hand closer to hers, leaving the option open for her. She gripped my hand with hers, her fingers strong and calloused from welding. She was shaking but I wouldn't interrupt. I knew she needed to get this out, and it would be easier if she did it unimpeded.

"They left me naked and bleeding in a back alley, where no one would find me for a while. I managed to make it to an old woman's house, and she helped me for a few weeks. Purely by chance, a searcher for the camp found me a month later. He was searching for someone else but knew what I was immediately. I haven't left camp since, apart from quests. It was one bad day in a life that could've gotten me killed. I should be thankful that it wasn't worse. No matter how many times I tell myself it was just one day... I can't forget it. I don't know if I ever will."

*sensitive topics end*

It wasn't sympathy that I felt for her, for her past. I understood it enough to know she wouldn't want sympathy. Raegan and I were very different people, bonded with shared pain and the desire to survive. The healing that I'd done this summer was heavily contingent on the vital lesson that anything I'd done to survive was alright. I had fought tooth and nail to survive that place, and I'd made it out. Whatever the casualties had been, whatever I had done... I had survived and that was enough. Who I was because of what I'd gone through... I was enough. Raegan knew these things as well as I did.

So I held her hand for a while after she finished speaking, to tell her that I understood and wasn't judging her for what had happened. It was a gift she'd granted me these weeks, and it was one I would happily return. I realized that I'd give that gift to anyone, not just her. Everyone deserved a listening ear.

Her story weighed heavily on my heart for the following few days, even a week later when I joked with Rose and Kaley on the train to Hogwarts I felt Raegan's sorrows sit deep within me, knowledge of the world's cruelty that I hadn't known before. That I would never again forget. Never again would I be quick to trust a stranger. I'd never be blinded like I was before, believing that the world was on my side and I could make my way through it easily. Like a stone thrown into a pool, a penny in a wishing well, I felt Raegan's painful memories sitting in me where they would likely be forever. Sitting alongside my own.

But I was still me. I could still laugh with my friends, play Quidditch and Capture the flag and win at both. I wasn't broken, I wasn't even damaged. I was just... unfinished.