Sry for the long absence, summer is soooooooooooo buzy! We r trying new thingz and new stlyez so any feedback is mucho appreciated!!!!1
This story is in Jessi's perspective!
I Never Thought…
The best part of the school day is when it's over, everyone knows that, but it's only since high school that I've known what it was like to hang out after school at school. All through middle school, I bolted out the doors and onto a train to go to Stamford for dance class or to a babysitting job or a meeting. But in high school, dance team has replaced my love for ballet. I love choreographing, trying new things, being experimental. And I love that the girls I dance with are all at school and we can talk and gossip in the halls and go to each other's houses and, well, it's just better.
Practice was just ending. It was an unusually warm day in October, sunny, cloudless, and we were at the football field practicing our half-time act. Grace Blume, my best friend and co-captain and I were doodling on each other's arms with glitter pens. She had just written "Jessi love Bart" when I jerked away. I wasn't offended by what she'd written. Bart was my boyfriend, after all. I was just upset because I saw Mary Anne Spier running off towards the woods crying.
Mary Anne had been one of my best friends when I was in the sixth grade. Really, it lasted through part of seventh too. Then the whole Babysitter's Club just kind of grew apart. Mary Anne kept canceling on us to hang out with Logan, Stacey moved back to New York and Claudia fell in with the burnout crowd. And Mal, and her obsession with glitter and unicorns, was at boarding school. And once Kristy and Abby started dating, they only had eyes for each other.
But today, none of that matters. I looked up and saw Mary Anne running into the dark trees, heedless of the branches reaching out like claws to grab at her hair. I didn't think, I just followed, smearing the "t" of Bart across the rest of my arm in pink gel pen.
To be honest, Mary Anne wasn't one of my best friends in middle school. I mean, I guess she was, but we weren't that close. The BSC was great, I mean it, it made me feel like I belonged, but Mary Anne and I didn't really hang out one-on-one. I knew her problems when they were club problems. And now, I didn't know them at all. We said 'hi' in the halls and last year we both took Home Ec at the same time and sat together, but that was just because we didn't know anyone else.
I stopped for a second. Did she even want me to follow her? Maybe I was invading her privacy. Maybe she needed to be alone with her pain, to weep out the wounds that were burgeoning through her heart. But then I saw, she was hurt in more ways than her heart. Her lip was starting to swell. I pushed through the brush.
"Mary Anne, what happened?"
She looked up at me and immediately dropped her eyes, hiding her face in her hands. Her muffled voice came out to me, "Nothing Jessi. Just go away!" Although it started out as a whisper, by the end she was screaming. A shrill high pitched sound of pain and agony. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to respect her feelings but I could tell she needed someone. Even someone she wasn't very close to. I hesitantly sat on the ground next to her and patted her gingerly on the shoulder. She flinched away and I put my hands in my lap.
"Do you, do you want me to text Dawn? I bet she's home from school now?"
"No...I don't need anyone." Her lip looked like it was practically throbbing and there was a bit of blood in the corner.
"I could get Logan, what about that?"
The second I said it, I knew I'd messed up. Mary Anne started crying, or if she was crying, her sobs heightened. I knew Logan better than I knew Mary Anne these days, I guess. Being on dance squad, a lot of my team mates dated jocks and so I knew his friends, like Grace was dating Pete Black and he was friendly with Bart. We also worked together on pep rallies. He was really popular, quarterback, handsome. Some of the girls always were shocked that such a confident guy would date such a mouse. I used to stand up for Mary Anne when they said it, but then I stopped. If Mary Anne had been shy back in our club days, she was infinitely quieter now. It was as if she had once had a wise, old spirit that never needed to speak but was warm and inviting and then suddenly she was just... void.
She drew herself together. "Don't. Get. Logan," came the order, through clenched teeth.
Suddenly, it comes to me. I think of health class, Ms. Stock droning on about abusive relationships while I doodled Jessi loves Bart in my notebook and dreamed about becoming a music video choreographer. Mary Anne did mention things about Logan being controlling back in the club. And once, when they came to the Winter Wonderland dance and danced a fast dance with Bart, Logan practically dragged her out.
I don't know how to say it. I never thought it would happen to someone I knew.
"Mary Anne...Did Logan do that to you?" The words seem to hurt my throat coming out.
She doesn't answer but leans her forehead against her knees while her shoulders begin to shake.
"It's not like that," she said, her voice breathy with woe. "I fell."
Relief swam through me. Oh, thank goodness. A reasonable explanation. I didn't want one of my friends to be-- and then I realized that it was a lie. An excuse. And I knew it was true.
"Mary Anne."
"He pushed me, it was a mistake," she said. "He was talking to me and I wasn't listening and he wanted to get my attention, he was just playing around."
My stomach turned to granite. He wasn't playing around. As Mary Anne hunched over, Her shirt rode up and I saw bruises on her back. Each indent was like a bruise in my brain.
No wonder she flinched when I touched her. No wonder she moved through the halls of the high school like a shadow in the night. No wonder I once heard Claudia say in the parking lot that she was pretty sure she hadn't seen Mary Anne in two years.
I stop thinking and realize that Mary Anne is still talking, babbling desperately.
"He loves me and I love him and he'll never love anyone like he loves me and sometimes I mess up, that's all."
I move directly in front of Mary Anne and crouch down in front of her.
"How long? How long has he been doing this to you?"
There's a silence, a pause so deep you could put the ocean in it and she finally looks at me. Really looks at me.
"Since we were 15. But I don't think he'll do it again. Really. And it was my fault. I smiled at Alan Gray when he was walking on his hands down the 2nd floor corridor."
15? She was a senior now. I couldn't believe it. How could it have gone on that long? How could everyone have missed it? Mary Anne had a stepsister and loving parents and... and... but she always dressed to cover and Dawn was in California. For once I was grateful for Aunt Cecilia. With her watching eye and invasive caretaking, I would never be like Mary Anne.
"He only hit me that once," she continued. "He said he wouldn't do it again, he was so sorry, and I believed him, and he didn't, he didn't touch me again until this year..."
She twists her hands in her lap and starts to cry. I want to hug her but I don't know if I can find a place without bruises to touch. I want to go find Bart to break Logan's kneecaps. But most of all, what I want to do is be eleven and sit in Claudia Kishi's safe bedroom. But that can never happen again.
Mary Anne continues her story, "It's just that he's been so stressed lately with college applications. His dad lost his bonus with the economy so Logan's got to get a football scholarship. And I should be better at being a girlfriend but I'm just not!"
I look at Mary Anne in disbelief. How can anyone be better than her? All the guys tease Logan about how pretty and sweet she is and how she bakes him brownies before every football game and cookies before every baseball game.
"Mary Anne, you are perfect," I tell her emphatically, turning to lock her gaze. "You do not deserve this."
A small smile appears on her face. "And you have to tell someone," I say. The smile vanishes.
"I won't," she replies, simply, in a tone that lets me know she has long given up, she has long forgotten her own worth. Whereas my glory is reaffirmed whenever I step onto a stage and dance my soul out, what does Mary Anne have? She has baking brownies for Logan. She has memories of friends. She's so alienated. Her dream is to have a dream. Her hope is to not be hopeless. Her only desire to want something better for herself.
She wants nothing.
I look at Mary Anne's face and really look at her and I can't help it. I start to cry. I'm 15 years old. I'm not equipped to do this type of thing...The worst thing that's ever happened to me is that Becca found my birth control pills and told Aunt Cecelia.
Mary Anne could never stand to see anyone in pain so she starts patting my back and saying "No, no Jessi. Don't cry. It'll be all right. He loves me, you'll see."
I can't believe she's comforting me. I can't believe she's so far gone that she's treating this like a giant misunderstanding. This is the first thing you learn, isn't it? Hands are not for hitting and all that jazz? You're supposed to know that boys shouldn't hit you. For a second, I'm just angry at her, for being so stupid, but the doleful, pleading gaze in her eyes sends the fury away as quick as it came.
"Mary Anne, you don't have to tell anyone, but I will," I say, trying to keep my voice firm. I don't. I tremble with all the nerve and fear and doubt an adolescent so embodies. I quiver with all the world has wrought us. "You can come with me. I want you to. I want you to tell. But if you can't, I will."
I feel like I've somehow gotten through to her with my declaration, that she's shocked, taken aback by my strength, how much I still care, and moved by how sad I am. She's sat up straight. She's not sniveling anymore.
But then I know that it's not admiration, it's fear. Fear of what? Of facing the problem? Of embarrassment?
But then I hear rustling in the woods. I hear a branch snap and I turn. And I know what her fear is.
It's my fear too.
Logan's eyes were wild and I had never seen anyone so angry.