Chapter 7

Tris's pov

The girls greet me and Christina gives me an enormous suffocating hug. I look at all the girls and see that the only ones I know are Christina,Lynn,and Shauna. We talk,and by we,I mean them, until Coach Amar comes and tells us to stretch. In unison, the girls bend down as far as they can to touch their toes.

I follow suit, going down so far that my chin ends up between my legs. "Damn girl! Why are you so flexible?" Shauna asks me.

"I used to be in gymnastics when I was younger. I did them until I was around thirteen." I answer back.

This gets another girl's,Cara's, attention."So can you do flips and stuff? And do tricks on a beam?"

"Sure, but I haven't done it since then. I practiced in the park a few times after I quit, but it wasn't the same."

"Do a back bend!"one girl named Amy requests. I abandon my stretching and do a back bend right there. I flip backwards out of my back bend at least six times. I then run at the girls flipping and doing cartwheels. I get to them and land in a split. The girls look at me in awe, speechless.

"That was amazing! Is there anything you can't do?" Christina yells.

There are plenty of things I can't do."Knit."

"That doesn't count. Only old people can knit."

Coach Amar chooses this moment to walk to us."Alright girls! Start with warm-ups! Jog twice around the track." That's way too easy. We get on the line and Shauna yells go. All 10 girls start jogging at around the same pace: slow. Two laps is nothing compared to what I usually do. In fact, I just beat Four this morning in two laps, so I start running. Not a full out sprint, but not a jog either.

When I look back, all of the other girls are pretty far behind me, Christina being the closest. I keep my pace until I reach the finish line, several seconds before any of the other girls do. I hear them breathing slightly hard, but I'm so used to it that my breathing is completely normal. The girls look at me like I'm an alien.

"You didn't slow down, you aren't breathing hard, and you practically sprinted that lap!" Shauna yells at me,"How did you do that?"

"I run a lot." They shake their heads at this, but accept it.

Coach Amar comes out and tells us to sprint two miles and we can leave when we finish. The girls catch their breathe and get set at the starting line. Coach yells 'Go!' and we start sprinting.

I finish the two miles with ease and wait for Christina to finish hers so that we can ride home together. She finishes about three minutes after me, coming in second to me. We get changed in the locker room and start to drive back to the house. Halfway there, she decides to interrogate me.

"How are you so fast? I know you said you run a lot, but you only get that good by running for a reason."

It couldn't hurt to tell her that. I hopefully won't give up too much about my past. Maybe she deserves to know and I'm sure she already suspects my family problems since I am in foster care with her. I take a deep breath and start my explanation.

"I was in a bad situation before my parents died." I start, thinking of Eric."and when I couldn't take it anymore, I tried to run away from my feelings.I was afraid of having a moment of weakness and found something I would regret. After my parents died and I went into foster care, I would get really upset and have tantrums, locking myself in the bathroom, not talking, stuff like that. So instead of doing that, I used running as my way to cope, just like before."

Christina stares at me with pity, which I hate."Wow. That's really deep."

I look at her and burst out laughing, because it is the only thing to do in a time like this. She just had to say that. She just laughs along with me. She decides to change the subject drastically.

"So, Tris. I saw the way you and Four were looking at each other at lunch. Anything you want to tell me?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about." I wasn't being obvious at lunch. Damn her observation skills.

"Oh, come on! You were making googly eyes with each other!"

"I'm not the one that has eye sex with Will!"

"I'm at least getting some kind of sex!"she quips.

"At least I'm not a slut!"

"At least I'm sexy enough to be a slut!"

"At least I come to terms with the fact that Four doesn't like me!"

"At least I don't lie to myself like you do!"

We continue on until we are red in the face from laughing so hard. We finally pull up in the driveway and get out of the car. I go straight to my room and close my door. When I look up, I am faces with my nightmare.

Peter.

"Well, someone finally decided to come home." He sneers hatefully.

"What do you want Peter?"

"To make your life Hell." "Why?" I ask. I have absolutely no idea why he insists on hating me so much, on physically hurting me even though he doesn't even know me.

"It's my favorite pastime."he replies sarcastically,"Now, about what happened in the hallway."

I visibly gulp. Me knocking him down in the hallway wouldn't be a big deal to anyone else but Peter. I personally think that he is just looking for reasons to harm me.

"That was so dumb. Didn't last night show you not to mess with me?" I think about the bruises covering my body. "You are going to pay for humiliating me in front of everyone in that hallway. Now take of your shirt."

The look on his face tells me that it will only be worse if I don't obey him. I just pray that he doesn't try to rape me.I turn around and take of my shirt agonizingly slow, stalling. I turn back around to see him taking off his belt. I scream in my mind. Eric was awful, but he never whipped me. He mostly kicked and punched me. He messed with my mind a lot, and that hurt more that anything he could ever physically do to me.

"Don't make a sound."he warns. I brace myself for the impact, but I could have never prepared for the pain I feel when the leather comes into contact with the tender flesh of my back. My legs instantly buckle and I fall to the ground, but my mouth stays clenched shut, preventing any sounds from escaping.

I lay am laying on the ground on my stomach when lash comes. I inevitably cry out.

"What did I just say bitch? Not a sound!" He continues to break the skin on my back until it is bleeding heavily. I see it leaking onto the hardwood floor. I'm not sure how many strikes I have taken because I lost count after 18. This is the worst pain I have ever experienced.

I am almost unconscious when I hear him slip his belt back into the loops on his pants. I think it is finally over when he jerks my head up by my hair and slams it into the ground. The only thought I can form is 'finally' as I slip into an endless blackness.


I open my eyes with a gasp. I could have only been unconscious for a few minutes. Peter must have left. I finally allow myself to cry. I sob into my hand to cover up the inhuman noises that I am making.

I'm not sure how long this goes on, but my tears finally stop and I decide to try and move. Every slight movement causes an excruciating jolt to coarse through my entire body. I crawl to my bed and use it to pull myself up. It hurts like hell, but I can't just lay on the floor all day with a bloody back.

I finally pull myself up and get to the bathroom. I have to clean the blood up so that no one comes in here and sees it. I slowly drag myself to the bathroom and grab a towel to clean up the bloody floor. After I finish that, I realize that the next step is to clean myself up. And I know it's going to be excruciating.

I get into the shower and turn the water on as cold as possible in hopes that it will somewhat numb my back. As soon as the water hits my back, I let out a scream into my teeth. The pain is unbearable. Even though the water beating down on me is torture, I don't budge.

After a few minutes, my back is finally becoming somewhat numb. It still hurts like hell, but I don't need to muffle my screams anymore. After a few more minutes in the shower, I step out and look at my back in the mirror.

What I see shocks me.

I was already expecting my back to be cut up and ugly, but this is a whole new level. What was before smooth, pale, and tender is now just torn flesh. The angry skin is ripped and torn from the leather of the belt. At least it isn't bleeding very badly anymore. The water must have helped.

I tightly wrap a towel around my back, carefully placing it so it doesn't cause any more pain than is inevitable. I keep in there for a few minutes and when I take it off, the bleeding has almost completely stopped from the pressure of the towel. My mom taught me that the quickest way to stop bleeding was to apply pressure.

I carefully put an over sized shirt and boxer shorts on so that they don't cling to the fresh wounds. I lay on my bed and sob silently. That is how I fall asleep.


I wake up with a large hand shaking my shoulder. I yelp at the sudden movement without opening my eyes. The hand stills.

"Tris? What's the matter?"a voice I recognize as Four's asks.

Four? What is he doing in here? Shit! I just helped in pain and he heard it! I can only hope he doesn't read into it and ask questions. I quickly open my eyes and look straight into his dark blue ones.

"What are you doing in here? And why are you waking me up?"I ask before he can question me about my cry of pain.

It seems to get his mind off of it."It's dinner time and Christina made it. You should come down to eat."

Food is the absolute last thing on my mind right now. I can't even think about it without getting nauseous.

"I'm not very hungry, but thanks for the offer,"I reply groggily.

"Tris, you have hardly eaten anything all day, you need to eat. It's not healthy to skip meals. I know for a fact that all you had for lunch was an apple and Christina told me that you only had a granola bar for breakfast."

Why is he so worried about this anyways? I'm not his problem and he should just leave me and my health alone.

"You aren't my mom. In case you didn't know,she's dead. So if you would be so kind, stop acting like it and get out my room."

"Whatever. It's your life and if you want to die, so be it. I was just trying to help,"he exclaims angrily and barges out of my room, loudly slamming the door behind him.

I just ignore the gratitude I feel towards him for being worries about me when no one else is and go back to sleep.

I suddenly remember that I have to go back to school tomorrow and a whole new wave of tears appears.


I wake up the next morning feeling not at all rested. I was kept awake all night by nightmares of Peter and Eric and watching my parents and Caleb die countless new, horrible ways.

My entire back is throbbing and I know immediately that I won't be running this morning or the rest of the day. I get dressed in some black skinny jeans and a loose royal blue t-shirt. I put on some spiked bracelets and my combat boots to finish the look. Hopefully no one will be able to bruises.

When I go to put on makeup, I look in the mirror. I look like Hell. My eyes are red and baggy from not sleeping and crying. I do my best to make myself look presentable by putting on mascara, eyeliner, and dabs over cover up to hide the bags under my eyes.

It's already time to leave for school by the time I get downstairs and Christina is waiting for me by her car. She tries to initiate conversation, but I make it pretty clear that I'm not in the mood by not responding to anything she says.

As soon as we get to the parking lot, I walk as quickly as by now fragile body will let me to my first class.


Well guys, here is the next chapter of Make it Stop! I hope you all love this story as much as I do. I can't believe I didn't write a fanfic sooner because this one has been so much fun:)

Thank you MVL2000 for making me aware that my other chapter was in blob form.

And thanks to everyone else for the helpful feedback and criticism. I appreciate everything you have to say that could possibly make this story better.

Read on and stay classy:)

Love,Ty:)