This is my first fanfic, but I hope it's enjoyable nonetheless. Please review (and be kind where possible).
This is a long chapter as I'm introducing my OC and her background, please excuse the length – later chapters should be shorter.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Covenant or its characters (but I do own my OC).
It happened one night in summer. His parents were away although it wouldn't have mattered because he was so rich that he had a floor to himself, an apartment, at the age of 17, with his parents living upstairs. He was my closest friend in New York, though he never lived up to the friends in my childhood, the boys I've now heard have earned themselves the nickname "the Sons of Ipswich." Those boys were like my brothers. This boy was someone who made me laugh, who I went to school with, and who didn't mind having me over to play video games on a Saturday night – we were friends, and I felt comfortable around him and for some reason confident that I didn't have to worry about him hitting on me. I was apparently attractive to boys – I'd been asked out by at least six to our school's summer dance, but I wasn't overly preoccupied with dressing up and going out. I didn't mind it, but I was also a bit of a tomboy, of sorts, in that I enjoyed staying at home and playing Gran Turismo on PlayStation when I wasn't studying. His name was Josh. He was obviously skilled in hiding who he really was, and I was an idiot for falling for it.
I came over late in the afternoon and we'd been eating and screaming mock-insults at each other and the television for about five hours. I thought it was probably time to head off as I was getting a headache and my feet were numb from sitting cross-legged. Josh protested but I told him I was tired and that he could play in single-player mode if he was really desperate. I gathered my phone from down the side of the couch, and my iPod from the player on the shelf nearby, and shoved them in my bag, waving goodbye over my head as I walked towards the door. As I pulled the door towards me it slammed shut. I saw Josh's hand to the left of my head, holding the door shut. He reached around my head with his right hand and re-applied the deadbolt.
'What the hell are you doing Josh? I've got to get some sleep, stop fucking around,' I said without turning around to look at him.
'I want you to stay' Josh replied smugly.
'Cool, that's great, but I'm leaving now so you're outta luck,' still not realising that he wasn't joking.
He didn't say anything then. Instead, he shoved me against the door, his front pressed against my back.
'Jesus Christ Josh, what are you doing? You're hurting me you asshole!'
He still didn't say anything. He pinned my hands above my head with his left hand and pushed my hips against the wall with even more force with his right. I knew what he was doing now. I struggled to break free, trying to kick him but I couldn't reach. Every attempt I made was met with absolute force, and I realised with horror just how strong he was. There was nothing I could do. Tears started stinging the corner of my eyes as I tried to comprehend the betrayal of someone I had called my friend but I tried to stay strong, tried again to break free, tried to scream but no one could hear me. I tried to focus on something else. He scraped his fingers down my arms so hard that he left marks. His right hand tore my already loose skirt so that it fell down to my ankles. He ripped what I had on underneath and I tried not to think about what he was doing with his hand. I could feel him underneath his shorts, hard against the back of my thighs. I could feel his body pressed up against me, hear the excitement in his ragged breath. After a while he threw me against a nearby wall, reasserting his strength and my complete helplessness.
He dragged me by my wrists to the guest bedroom nearby and threw me down with such force that I couldn't keep from crying out. Up until then I hadn't made a sound since I'd realised no one could hear me, I didn't want to give him the satisfaction. I was right to do so - I saw the lust in his eyes when he heard my scream. I saw it as he climbed on the bed, climbed on top of me. I spat in his face - it didn't help, it only made him harder. Once again I could feel his weight, this time bearing down on top of me – crushing me. I felt like I was suffocating but could still breathe. He took a condom out of the top draw of the bedside table nearby and ripped it open. This wasn't him acting in the heat of the moment, it was calculated. He knew what he was doing. I don't have to tell you what happened next. It lasted 20 minutes. The longest 20 minutes of my life. He looked me in the eyes and laughed when he was done. I held some solace in the fact that it wasn't my first time. At least he didn't have that. I wasn't overly promiscuous, I just felt ready a few months earlier, and I didn't regret it, it was fine. This wasn't. I looked at him, a mixture of disgust and sadness floating somewhere on my face. I was determined to hold it together until I was outside.
When he was done he said that even if I did ever "feel stupid enough" to tell anyone his parents' lawyers would make it look like I was in fact a sexually promiscuous 17 year old who regretted a decision she'd made. He said the whole school would be laughing at me. He said my parents would look at me and be ashamed. He said it and I believed it. I felt disgusting as I stumbled out of his apartment, tears running silently down my face. I crept into the house when I got home, my mother at work and my father asleep (they had expected me home the next day from a friend's house). I went upstairs and I showered – for an hour. I proceeded to sit there in the cold, wet shower for another hour until I finally peeled myself up off the floor, put on a pair of tracksuit pants and a t-shirt (in the summer) and went to bed. I didn't cry anymore. I didn't sleep, but I didn't cry. I haven't cried since.
But I smoked - sometimes cigarettes because it went someway towards relieving the stress I started to feel on a perpetual basis, but also weed. I found tobacco wasn't mind altering enough to meet my needs. And I drank. To my "friends" I guess it just looked like recreational use, because a lot of them were doing it too (this might seem ridiculous to anybody who didn't spend at least a part of their adolescence in New York because we were 17, but it's definitely not unheard of in the city of Manhattan), but it was more than that for me. Every time I drank I wasn't just escaping from the otherwise "dull" reality of adolescence (which I'm sure to any other age group that doesn't require constant stimulation and excitement seems anything but dull), I was escaping the sickening thought of what happened that night. The ultimate betrayal of someone who I thought was my friend. My loss of any feeling of safety, of control. I know this seems ironic, as losing my mind is not a logical step towards regaining control, but the only way I can explain it is: that night was the first time in my life that I felt completely helpless. It was a disgusting feeling. I was thrown out into a storm with absolutely no control over what happened next. By doing drugs I felt like I was throwing myself out in to that storm, that feeling was mine, not his. But more than that – I wanted to forget. I didn't want rational thought wherein every string of consciousness that wound its way through my head inevitably led to thinking about him, about that night.
I also had sex. Lots of sex. Again, this may seem ironic but I wanted to reclaim something. Our society is completely saturated with sex. I didn't want to think about that night every time someone mentioned the word sex, every time I saw it up on a billboard, every time it appeared in a movie. I didn't want to feel afraid. I was so angry at him for stealing my ability to feel happiness from something that is such a central part of being a human being, a part that we are supposed to be able to lavish in. "FUCK HIM," I told myself, you can't have it... But he could. He still does. It doesn't hurt any less every time those images flash into my head. I don't feel any less afraid. I don't feel any stronger. The people I'm having sex with don't know that, or don't seem to. I put on a brave, seductive face and pretend that I'm enjoying it. I guess on a carnal level I am, but it's not what it should be. It's dirty. It's something to be ashamed of. It's abusive, something I'm inflicting upon myself – punishment for not being smarter in choosing my friends. Punishment for not being strong enough to fight him off.
Please don't mistake me about the drugs and alcohol – I'm not endorsing what I did, or suggesting that I was any cooler for doing it, I'm just telling you it's what I chose. It's what I felt I needed. As for the sex, I have very little judgement when it comes to sex. I grew up in a household that didn't put a huge, red, negative label on sex – just as long as it was safe, and consensual, and you were ready. Especially after that night I have no judgement for people, especially women, who choose to have copious amounts of sex, I just hope they're enjoying it. I think about the fact that everyone has their reasons for doing something. I know they do. And I don't like to label girls. I didn't beforehand, and I certainly don't now. I mentally punch someone every time I hear the word "slut" directed at a girl, whether she's actually having loads of sex or not.
My grades dropped, I guess that was inevitable. With a neurosurgeon for a mother and a college professor in Government and International Relations for a father I wasn't short on fully functioning brain cells so my grades were amongst the top in my year. Yes, I'm sure I killed off a few million of those cells in my attempts to forget, but I think it was mostly the fact that being sober became associated with thinking about him, and thinking about him was associated with pain, and pain with depression. So soberness was depression. It wasn't obvious, I'm sure.
My good-heartedly sarcastic sense of humour shielded me from the suspicions of people I spent time with. I'm hesitant to call them my friends because they suffer by comparison. They're nice enough, sure, but they could never compare to the friends from my childhood in Ipswich. Caleb, Tyler, Pogue and Reid (in no particular order) were and are the best friends I have ever had. I left them just before I turned 13 to move to Seattle with my parents, as my mother had accepted an offer at a hospital there. All of them except Tyler had already turned 13 over the previous few months. It was pretty painful leaving the guys behind, and what made it even worse was that when I left we weren't exactly on the best terms. I had been angry with them for leaving me out of things and keeping secrets. I guess I know now that that's just what happens when you become a teenager and the inevitable divide between boys and girls starts to rear its ugly head, but I guess I felt we were close enough to not have to deal with that crap. They apologised and said it was nothing personal, but since we never really had the chance to hang out after that and patch things up, I guess things didn't stay as strong as they could of between us across state lines.
Anyway, after living in Seattle for almost a couple of years we moved to New York. Mum's work in Seattle put her amongst the top neurosurgeons in the States and she was offered an even better job, I guess. I missed Seattle when we left – I love the rain and the city certainly gets its fair share. I'd also made friends but no one I'm still in touch with – after Ipswich I tended to be friends with everyone, but not best friends with anyone. Having said that, how could I not have been excited about moving to New York City? All in all I was expecting New York to be amazing, and it was... for about two and a half years. We moved into an amazing town house just off Bleecker Street in SoHo, and I went to a private school nearby. What I was most excited about was being in the thick of it, being amongst the people and the culture. I wasn't really your typical New York City private school kid – whilst I appreciate the opportunities I've gained from my parent's wealth, I'm also not one to flaunt it, I don't like to be judged on how many material possessions I'm capable of acquiring. The wealth of my parents afforded me the luxury of getting a great education, and I'm thankful for that. However, I found the poorer the kids I hung out with, the more interesting they were – the more stories they had, the more understanding they were. I tried to juggle having friends from all walks of life. Being wealthy and apparently good looking automatically put me in with the popular kids, but the fact that I worked hard and generally preferred black Doc Martins and a flannelette to black stilettos and a Missoni mini (granted, the Docs were probably with a pair of denim short-shorts - I liked fashion, but I wasn't caught up in trends) also gave me an in with the scholarship kids and their friends from around the city. I also preferred their taste in music – more of the Beatles and Radiohead and less of the Pussycat Dolls.
I know I'm generalising about the rich kids, one of the reasons I know this is because I know the Sons of Ipswich, but my experience with Josh only fuelled my prejudice. Josh was from my school. I should have known. He pretended not to care about money, about his gigantic apartment on the Upper East Side, a floor below his parents even larger apartment (they weren't exactly engaged in his life). He did care about it though. I guess he found my disinterest in wealth a quirky peculiarity and a refreshing change from the girls he was usually attracted to. I saw that he cared about money when I saw the arrogance I was willing to ignore before that night. I also saw narcissism and a constant need for control. I have no idea how I could have missed them, but I did, and as I've said before – I was punished for it.
I managed to hold it together in the face of my parents for a pretty long time before it became obvious to them that I was falling apart at the seams. I came to dinner at night, I appeared to be doing my homework, and most of the time I was – just not to the same standard that I used to be. Work of an above-average standard was easy for me to pull off, but I couldn't keep up the commitment to school that I had previously, I didn't find pleasure in it, but more than that I didn't see light in my future, I didn't see anything to work towards. My parents are interested and as active as they can be in my life, but when you're working as a neurosurgeon or a professor you can't always be paying attention to the decisions of your 17 year old daughter, and up until then they didn't need to be. So for a while they missed my slipping grades, and my sneaking out, and the bags under my eyes. When they got a call from my principle at the end of our third year in New York they started to ask questions, questions that I wasn't willing to answer. They said they didn't know me any more, and whilst it hurt to lie to them and pretend like I was being your average rebellious teenager, it hurt more to consider telling them what had really happened. They loved me, but they couldn't handle me, and they certainly couldn't handle me in New York, so they sent me to live with my grandmother back in Ipswich, a place I hadn't been in almost five years. I don't blame them for it, and I don't love them any less – I would have done the same thing knowing only what they know, but it still hurts. They think it's going to be good for me to "go home," so to speak. I have an aunty here, and a grandmother, and the boys I grew up with those many years ago, though I don't know what good they'll all do.
My parents think this place has less distractions, and they're right... and I'm petrified. I'm afraid to be with my own thoughts.
Term starts at Spenser Academy tomorrow, the place I'm now going to school, the same place as the boys, though I've already been here a week. My grandmother has been overcompensating by making sure she's always around, and in this place it's the last thing I want. I guess it's made me realise that whilst I was surrounding myself with constant distractions in its many forms in New York, I was completely alone, and I did that on purpose. All of my relationships were superficial, were temporary. I don't want that to change, I don't want to have to open up to anyone, I don't want them to see me up close, to see how broken I am, but it's harder to hide your craving for isolation when that literally means being by yourself, because I can't hide behind distractions, loud music and flashing lights like I did in New York. I've acted courteously towards my grandmother, I give her hugs and tell her I appreciate her taking me in but I spend as much time as I can in my room. I can't keep up the happily sarcastic facade any more – I wonder if I can get away with hiding the whole year? I just have to put my head down and survive one more year before I'm free to runaway and hide in some dark corner of the world. Like I said, I can get good grades without trying, so that shouldn't be hard – it's the people I'm worried about. I'm worried about my grandmother, I'm worried that the boys will expect more, will expect me to be my old happy self. Those boys were like my brothers, we knew each other inside and out. But surely none of us can expect to be as close as we were, maybe they don't even know I'm back, and if they do, surely they don't care – it would be easier that way. I trusted them too, they'd be the only ones I would have trusted with a secret like mine, but I don't know them like that any more. They couldn't know, no one could.
I pray to whoever's or whatever's out there – just let me get through this year.
In the next chapter I will describe what she looks like – possibly from Reid's perspective, I'll have to see if I can pull him off – or if I'll just have to stick to her perspective. I'll also put some photos up of what I picture her to look like on my profile (I may also put a picture up of Reid's absent-from-the-movie-car... most other fanfics have it so that he's lost his license or crashed his car – well not this time).
This is assuming I continue the story. What do you think?
I repeat, this is my first fanfic, I really do hope you like it. Please review.
PS. Sorry about the language and themes – I hope the rating's OK.