LEAH:

My name was Leah Moon. I was fourteen years old and I was a freshman at Marino High School. I don't like to brag about myself, but I did very well in school. I graduated middle school with a 4.0 grade point average and despite being only in the ninth grade, I was already in AP and honors classes. My teachers all would say things about me like,

"You're so successful, Leah. You must want to follow in your older brother's footsteps one day."

If you're wondering who my big brother was, my big brother was Austin Moon. That's right. The Austin Moon. The popstar, record entrepreneur, male model and producer of one of the most successful TV shows in Miami, America's Top Talent, who was well-off, successful, popular and attractive with people of all ages. No, I wanted to be a pediatrician when I grew up.

You see, the summer before eighth grade, I did community service at the Children's Hospital of Miami. I really enjoyed it and decided I wanted to do it someday, plus there were many children who had horrible diseases that were either too hard to treat or cure, and I wanted to change that. Having that said, I loved Austin and his music and I looked up to him. Of course, I was proud of him for his money, popularity and success, I loved him because he was good-natured, caring and fun to hang out with. Even though he moved out six years ago to live with his songwriter and longtime sweetheart, Ally Dawson (now Ally Moon because they had just gotten married three months ago) and we were ten years apart, he didn't live far from home and we still shared a good brother-sister relationship.

I loved Ally and looked up to her the same way I did my big brother. Of course, she was a successful, talented, rich, popular singer-songwriter, makeup, perfume and fashion model and mogul and co-owned my brother's record label, Moon Records, and she was very beautiful, but why I truly loved Ally was because she was very sweet, caring, thoughtful, fun to hang out with, smart, friendly and optimistic. I had just as close a relationship with my sister-in-law as I did my brother. They lived in a cozy, comfortable and calm house (they were rich, but they weren't stereotypical rich people) and had just adopted a cavapoo puppy named Gabby and she was the cutest thing I had ever seen. But my sister-in-law and brother weren't the the only people I was close to.

I was close to my parents, Mike and Mimi Moon. They owned a kind of cheesy king and queen themed mattress store called Moon's Mattress Kingdom. They used to try to pressure Austin into working there when he was my age and older and call him a "prince", but eventually they learned he wanted to make music, and learned that they couldn't keep him from his dream. They even tried to get me to join a few times, and they called me their "princess" (well, I wasn't going to get mad at them for that because they had been calling me that since I was a baby), but they also realized I had a dream of medicine, and my maternal grandmother, Thelma (who my brother and I called Nana), told me that I was following in her footsteps, even though she used to be a gynecologist but retired seven years ago, and I wanted to be a pediatrician, but still, we both had had dreams of medicine.

I had my best friend since I was three years old. Her name was Summer Alvarez-Evans (She was biracial, being mexican on her mom's side and being white on her dad's side). Summer was a cool, confident, funny, optimistic, strong, sarcastic and opinionated girl who loved fashion and art more than anything. My sister-in-law told me that Summer reminded her of her childhood friend, Trish De La Rosa, except she didn't constantly get fired. I wasn't going to argue with Ally. Trish was a lot like Summer, except Summer was a little less loud than Trish and didn't have a reputation from being fired from jobs, and Trish was full mexican, Summer was half-mexican. They also both were snarky sometimes, but they did have sweet, caring and thoughtful sides to them, and they were always there for their friends when they needed them.

They had finally met at my brother's engagement party six months ago and hit it off. Anyway, Summer had been there for me since the day we'd become best friends. She was always there when I needed her. Like right now, I needed her because my boyfriend, Kevin Thomas, who I had been dating for six months now, had been physically and verbally abusing me for the past four months. For the first two months, he acted like an actual boyfriend, but two months later, he wanted to have sex, and I told him I wasn't ready, and he tried to force me.

Ever since, he called me an array of horrible names like "ho," "slut," "skank," "whore," "bitch" and even the ones I don't want to repeat, he would shame and demean me for the outfits I was wearing to school, he had tried to force me to have sex with him, made me accountable for my whereabouts, constantly screamed at me, even when I made the smallest mistakes, and tried to dictate who I saw and hung out with. Plus, it wasn't that appropriate for me to be dating him right now because he was nineteen (he was repeating his senior year because he was a heroin, smoking and alcohol addict, he was suspended a lot for bullying other students and using drugs on campus, and he had grades that were so bad you could write blues songs about them) and I was fourteen. So, I guess, technically, he was a pedophile. My parents, Austin, Ally, Trish, Austin's childhood friend Dez Wade and Summer were all telling me the same thing- leave him. They were right. Why stay in a relationship that's not good for you?

I was also sick and tired of crying myself to sleep, living in fear of him and feeling emotionally numb and helpless. But there was one small problem- I was afraid of how he would react. But no- the last thing I wanted to do was let something as stupid as fear stop me from standing up to myself. I decided that day would be today. I approached Summer at her locker, where she was putting on cotton candy lip gloss and staring into the mirror on her locker.

"Summer-"

I started to say.

She jumped a little bit as she dropped her lip gloss and turned to me.

"Leah! You scared the hell out of me!"

Summer, despite her very religious catholic upbringing (Mrs. Alvarez was a pastor and both her and Mr. Evans were brought up extremely catholic), used the word hell a lot.

"Sorry. I just wanted to tell you that I planned on doing it today."

"Do what today?"

"Breaking up with Kevin."

Summer smiled at me and tossed her long, wavy dark chocolate colored hair which was tied in a messy side ponytail.

"Oh my god. What made you cave in?"

"I realized that I shouldn't let fear stop me from doing what I can do for myself."

"Good for you!"

She hugged me and I hugged her back.

"If you need me to kick that son of a bitch's ass, you know who to call."

I said,

"Thanks, Summer, but I think I can deal with Kevin myself."

"OK, well, still, I'm here for you."

I hugged her again. I looked for Kevin in the halls. As usual, he was bullying some kid by pinning him against a locker. The kid looked really scared and I said,

"Let him go, Kevin."

He let the kid go and the boy said to me,

"Bless your heart."

Kevin grabbed me by my shirt, pinned me against a locker and said to me,

"Why the hell are you telling me what to do, you little whore? I will freaking beat you to a pulp, slut!"

He then punched me very hard in the face. All of a sudden, I could barely breathe and I collapsed on the floor. A while later, I found myself in the nurse's office, lying on a cot, with the school nurse, Ms. Ansell, standing over me.

I asked,

"Where-where am I?"

Ms. Ansell came back with a red solo cup of water.

"You're in the nurse's office. Summer brought you here and she said she saw you lying on the ground unconscious by the lockers."

I took a sip of the water and looked at myself in the mirror. My left eye had a good bruise on it.

Ms. Ansell sat beside me.

"Leah, what exactly happened that made you black out?"

I wanted to lie, but lying about your problems doesn't solve anything.

"Kevin Thomas slammed me against a locker and punched me very hard in the face, last I remember. Please don't tell anyone."

She sighed,

"Honey, I wish you would open up, but if you don't want me to tell anyone, you have my word."

"Thanks."

I walked home and went to my bedroom. I sat in front of my vanity and put concealer over my shiner. I eventually sat down with my parents to have dinner. My dad was pouring my mom a glass of red wine.

He said to me,

"Hey, princess."

I smiled sadly and sighed.

"Hey, dad."

My mom looked concerned.

"Leah, is everything OK?"

"Everything's fine,"

I lied.

I had every intention in the world of saying, No, Mom. I'm not fine. I broke up with Kevin and he physically assaulted me. But I couldn't. I knew that if I told my parents something like this, they would stick Kevin in front of a trial or something. Just the whole thing sounded so unpleasant to me. But having that said, I couldn't hold inside how I felt.

That would only lead to worse problems. I made a plan. My brother told me I was always welcome to talk to him. So in the morning, I decided to talk to him and Ally about it. Because I was hurting and needed my family right now.