I was glad that my dad wasn't home after school. For some reason I really didn't want him present when she was over. Inside I was overly ecstatic that Chloe was there, that she was with me, sitting on the couch in my room, her hands clutching the ends of her sleeves with what seemed to be all of her might while her eyes stared at my carpet.

I was so worried. I felt a constant pressure on my chest that made it hard to breathe, hard to eat, hard to sleep and hard to even move. Never had I experienced any emotion that intense, it was so weird and unwanted.

She was with me now. In my house. In my room. We were alone. And she wouldn't be able to leave easily. She wouldn't be able to just walk away from me like she did last time. Now was the chance to really question her. To really get some answers and to really sate my curiosity.

But even though I knew the circumstances were better than last time, for some reason I was even more nervous.

Then again, when wasn't I nervous when I was around her?

"Chloe?" I spoke up. My voice was weak.

There was an abnormally long pause before she responded to me. My eyes were absolutely glued to her while hers didn't glance my way once, "Yeah..?"

Last time this happened, I asked her if she was okay. That question got me nowhere. So I asked something different, something more direct, something that was harder to avoid.

"What's wrong?"

An expected silence. She sighed to herself, shakily, starting to bounce her leg. It might have been because her entire body was starting to shudder, and she wanted to hide how distraught she was. I couldn't tell for sure, no matter how hard I studied her.

"Um..." I don't think I had ever listened to something more intently than I was listening to her at that moment, "...it's just... school. School stuff. A lot of homework. Stress."

I opened my mouth, almost screaming at her, accusing her of lying, but I held my tongue. It was getting frustrating. I just wanted to help her. I just wanted to know what was going on with her so that I could fix whatever had happened, or try to. I would try my absolute hardest.

"Chloe, we both know that's not true."

I was a bit taken aback when she looked up at me. Our eyes met, "I don't know that, no." We had that same, seemingly unbreakable eye contact as we had when we first met. I couldn't look away. The feeling was mutual for her. I could tell. A silence spread.

"You don't have to hide things from me..." In truth I really wasn't sure what I was searching for. There was no way to predict what she might say. I wasn't sure if I should be terrified, but I was.

"I'm not hiding anything." If she was lying, she was a really good liar. We had complete eye contact, and her expression was absolutely void of any emotion.

"Why did you walk away from me last week? That day outside school?" I knew that question got to her when her eyes moved from me for a second before returning, "I called out to you but you ignored me and kept going. Then you barely spoke to me for a while."

The air in the room became so thick with tension I thought I was going to sink into the floor. Clearly she didn't want to talk about it, but I had an ongoing feeling that it would help her, no matter how reluctant she acted.

"I had to go to home." Was all that she said. Still, dead-faced.

"Why didn't you just tell me that then?" I asked her.

I watched as Chloe briefly ran her palm down her face. Her eyes looked slightly glossy. My chest tightened and it started to hurt to even breathe. It hurt to see her like that. I watched as her eyes moved to the clock on my nightstand, checking the time, before she got to her feet.

"Where are you going?" I stood as well, having an impending fear that she planned on running from me again. I just wanted her to open up. I wanted to help, I wanted to know that she was safe.

"I-I'm supposed to go out to dinner with my parents tonight, I should really head back home so that I can get ready..." With every word she inched closer to my bedroom door, it looked as if she was trying to be inconspicuous about intending to leave, but I could tell what she planned.

"Chloe, no, don't leave again, please just tell me. Nothing bad's gonna happen, I swear." I walked closer to her, ready to stop her if necessary.

"I can't be late, I'll get in-" She reached for my doorknob and I instinctively grabbed her arm, just to stop her for a moment, to draw her attention away from leaving. She stopped, yes. But she also yelped out in pain. It was brief. And she clamped a hand over her mouth immediately afterwards. If she had really wanted to, she could have left at that moment and I would have been too taken aback to do anything to stop her. But she remained standing. Clearly, she did want my help to an extent.

I promised to myself that I would give it to her.

I kept my eyes on her to gauge her reaction, gently gripping the edge of the sleeve of her right arm - the one I had grabbed. I pulled it up, watching tears start to cling to her eyelashes and nearly teem from her eyelids the farther I moved the thin fabric.

Even though I didn't want to see it, and I wished it wasn't there more than anything in the world, I wasn't that surprised. I didn't want to believe it though. I didn't want it to be true.

I held back a gasp. There were bruises. Varying in coloration, and recentness. One was yellowish, healing. Another was a deep purple, one was blue. Some were in blob-like shapes. Others definitely formed the shape of fingers. Like someone had grabbed her far too roughly, and most likely tugged as well. My jaw dropped. There were also some other things that caught my attention even more. It almost made me burst into tears.

Cuts. There were cuts. Near her wrists. I couldn't tell how deep they were and I couldn't bring myself to examine them too closely. My vision was getting a bit blurred by tears anyway, making it hard to do so. I didn't want to believe this. I cared about Chloe. I know I barely knew her at the time but I felt like we had been best friends for years and years. I felt a stronger connection to her than I ever had with anyone in my life. The cuts were fresh. But in the quick glance that I caught, I vaguely saw older scars lingering on other parts of her arm. I released the sleeve of her fairly baggy shirt, and it dropped back down, successfully covering up all of that pain.

"Chloe... I..." What was I supposed to say? What was I supposed to do? I had never had to deal with something even slightly resembling this situation in any way. I felt myself starting to panic, wanting to break down. It was overwhelming.

"Beca-" She spoke so quickly that her voice broke and shook, she sounded awful. I could hear so much hurt and pain and terror and trauma behind that one word, just my name, it was heart wrenching, "-please. Don't tell anyone... just... act like you never saw this, I..." She was trying so hard to keep it together. It was admirable. But deeply saddening as well, "...I shouldn't have shown you, nobody was supposed to know about this I wasn't going to t-tell anybody,"

"Stop," I told her. My voice was firm enough to stop her rambling, "If you hadn't told me, you might have died. Now... Chloe..." I thought that I knew the answer to the question I planned on asking, but you could never be too careful. I didn't want to go around making assumptions after the surprise I had just recieved, "...who did this to you?"

She let out a sole chuckle at me like I was an idiot, "I did."

She was referring to the cuts. I wasn't.

"N-no..." I took a deep breath. How could she have done that to herself? Hurt herself? Just thinking of her putting a blade to her own skin made my head start to hurt and chills start to go up and down my spine, "I mean the bruises."

She inhaled sharply and held the breath inside of her so long I was worried she might suffocate. But when she let it out, it formed frantic, jumbled, nearly incoherent words, "I can't tell you".

"Yes you can, Chloe. Please tell me. I want to help." The sincerity I managed to put into my voice would have been enough to coerce anyone into doing anything.

"I-I..." I watched the tears start to fall from her eyes, seeing them roll down her cheeks and drip of her chin, seeing her lip quivering and her composure falling apart. I wanted to know but I didn't want to push her.

"Chloe, just..." I sighed, moving my hand forward to intertwine my fingers with her in a hopefully comforting way. Her eyes moved to our hands and she kept her gaze there, expression unreadable.

"It's my parents." She suddenly blurted out. It was so fast and so quaking I almost didn't catch it. But in the dead silence of my room, where every sound seemed to be amplified, it was crystal clear. And it made my chest constrict so much I thought I might be having a heart attack.

"Well, Chloe, we need to call the police they can't just-" I started to speak up but stopped short at the abrupt emotional breakdown she looked like she was about to have.

"No, no no no, you can't tell the cops, please. I told them I wouldn't ever tell anybody, this has been going on for years and years it's just how it is. As long as I get good grades and behave and have friends and follow rules then nothing ever happens usually and life at home is totally fine nothing is wrong, you can ask either of my parents and they'll say the same thing."

My mouth was agape and I kept trying to form words but I couldn't quite manage it. The expression on her face and her pure, utter distress had put me at a loss for words and at a loss for actions. I knew that informing the authorities was the only thing that would do much real good, but after what she had just spouted out, I doubted she would cooperate with them in any way.

"That sounded like the most rehearsed thing I've ever heard in my entire life." I told her in a rather cold tone.

"N-no, i-it's not, I told you everything I know and that's the truth-" It looked like she was reaching for my doorknob, but from behind her back this time.

"-That can't be true Chloe. You don't have to lie to me. You're being abused. You're just too scared to tell me the truth or to go to anyone because... what? You don't want to go into foster care or something? Don't you have any other family that would take you in?" I asked her, my voice gentle and soft even though I was asking some rather hardening questions.

She responded to me very quickly, almost too quickly, "Yes but I don't want to go with them because they're no better, and no I don't want to go into foster care that sounds terrifying, don't you hear the stuff about how screwed up kids get when they're in there? How many criminals that you see on the news went through foster care? A lot of them."

I didn't know what to tell her. If she really didn't want to go to the cops and she didn't want to go into foster care, what could I do for her? "Chloe... that doesn't mean that..." I sighed, not knowing what to say. I still held her hand in mine and I gripped it tighter for a second, "...can't you just run away, then?"

"And go where?" Her voice cracked and the sound broke my heart. Tears would still occasionally roll down her cheeks but she was keeping it together by nothing short of a miracle, "If I went to anyone else in my family they would just send me home. None of my friends will, they haven't talked to me in weeks..." I felt myself start to become more protective than I ever had in my entire life when she let out a single sob, her free hand moving to her face to cover her mouth, "...I don't know what to do..."

For the first time in our entire friendship, I was the first one to hug her. I tugged on her hand and brought her against me, wrapping my arms around her as tightly as I could without causing pain. She hugged me back and let herself cry. She felt so frail and weak and breakable.

I could only think of one solution to her problem. It wasn't likely to work out very well, but I was willing to try anything to help her.

"Chloe, you can stay here. With me. Alright?"

"W-what? N-no that's..."

"Please."

She didn't respond verbally but she stopped crying, for a good minute or so. When she started again, I vaguely felt her nod into my shoulder. I would keep her safe. Her parents wouldn't be able to get to her again.

But there was still the fact that she hurt herself.

Could I prevent her from doing that?