This chapter is the beginning of this story earning its M rating. You've been warned.

Chapter 12

It took all night for us to get out of the hospital, but at least I don't have to get surgery. The muscle is fine; it's just the tendon that got screwed up. If I could get my hands on that girl who pushed me, well I probably wouldn't do anything to her but I would think about it. Injuries happen to be a part of the game and pushing people around happens to be a part of it too.

I guess that's one of the risks that we athletes take. It's a risk that I took and now I can't play in the state championships. I'm stuck on crutches for the next four weeks and have to go through some physical therapy.

It could always be worse. Then again, it could always be better.

"You're starting to depress me," A pillow hits me in the back of the head.

"I'm not even talking." I pick the pillow up and turn around so that I'm facing Jenny. We're both sitting on my bed with our books open doing our best to be good students and study.

"You look depressed." Jenny closes her book and puts it down on the floor. "You're pouting. You're always pouting. You even pout in your sleep."

"How would you know?"

Jenny gives me a level look that I'm unable to hold. I turn away and release a heavy sigh. I have been pouting a lot lately, but I can't help it. My foot is killing me and I can't play in the state championships. That's reason enough for me to pout. Add onto all that, everything else that is happening and I think I deserve to pout at least a little bit.

"Mel," Jenny moves so that she is next to me on the bed. "What happened to you really sucks. The team's unhappy about it, Coach is unhappy about it, I'm unhappy about it, you're unhappy about it, we're all just really unhappy about it. But it did happen and now we just have to move on. You still got offered some mega money from both Stanford and Tennessee. You've got your ride into college. There's always next season."

"But I want to play in this season." I know that I'm being whiny but at this point I don't really care.

"Mel, you did play in this season. You played a whole lot in this season and, no matter what, you're going with us to the state championships even if you can't play."

So I get a free ride to the capitol of Nevada. I don't even know what the capitol of Nevada is.

"And Mel, I know this might sound completely unfair but the team needs you to be strong. Everyone is devastated that you can't play. We need you sitting there with us at the championships believing that we can win instead of moping because you can't play."

"Is this a version of your 'suck it up for the team' pep talk?"

Jenny bites her lower lip. "Have you gotten the talk already?"

I grin. "No. Although, I've gotten a lot of the 'I know how much this meant to you and let's just take this a day at a time' speeches."

"Well it sounds like your..."

"Just say Sara," Jenny is one of the only people I've told about my situation with Sara. It's not something I find very easy to talk about. I don't quite understand my situation anyway, so there's no way I could stand up in the middle of a room and tell my sordid tale. There would be one too many gaps.

"Well it sounds like Sara is being really supportive."

I shrug. "I guess, but it's really awkward."

Jenny tilts her head to the side a little. "Why?"

"I think it's because she doesn't know how to be supportive and I don't know how to accept her support."

"Why can't you accept her support?"

If I knew that then I probably wouldn't be having this problem. "It's weird."

"You know what I think?" Jenny puts her hand on her chest. "I think that you don't trust her."

"And I think I've got way too many people already trying to psycho- analyze me." I turn away from her and to the book I'm supposed to be studying, but I guess Jenny doesn't want this conversation to be over because she reaches across me and grabs my book.

"If you want to gain an inch in your relationship with your..." She gets hung up on a specific title again and I take this as my opportunity to stop whatever lecture it is she's about to give me.

"Jenny, until you have lived my life please don't judge it."

"I'm not judging you," she says softly. "That's last thing I'm doing is judging you, but I do care about you."

I cross my arms in front of me. "And that means?"

"It means that you're only hurting yourself with your attitude."

"I don't have to listen to this." I swing my legs over the bed and cringe when blood rushes to my injured foot. I've got to remember to take things slowly.

Jenny puts her hand on my arm, effectively stopping me from getting up and hobbling over to my crutches so that I can hop out of the room. "Mel, please don't be so stubborn."

Stubborn? I'm not being stubborn. I'm being the person who doesn't want to talk about their innermost feelings every ten seconds. I'm being the person who is tired of the guarded looks people give me because they're not quite sure if I'm going to spontaneously combust or something.

"Mel, you've got to stop running away every time someone brings up something you don't want to talk about. Have you ever thought that maybe Sara has such a hard time talking to you because you always run away when she tries to?"

I try not to think as much as possible. I find that ultimately it's what's best. Every time I start thinking about things I either get really depressed or really angry. "Leave it alone, Jenny." I sound defeated, but that's probably because I am.

As carefully as I can manage, I pull myself from Jenny's grip. She's strong and tries to hold onto me, but I break free although it's with entirely too much force. I jump up into the air and try to gain my balance by pivoting on my right foot. I know that if I put my left foot down then I'll be in incredible pain.

Ultimately, I can't keep my balance and decide it's best for me to fall. I land on my back, so my injured foot didn't have to bear any weight. Jenny's face appears above me and I can tell she's moments away from bursting with laughter. "If you laugh at me, I'm going to beat you with my crutch."

"It may be a good thing you got hurt." Jenny jumps off the bed and moves so that she's straddling my torso. "You can't run away anymore. Everyone who wants to talk to you can just sit on top of you and make you listen and talk to them."

I make a rather lame attempt to get Jenny off of me, but fail miserably. I can't over power her since I can't brace both my feet on the ground, and there's no way I'm risking further injury to my foot. It hurts bad enough as it is.

"So, Jenny, did you want to talk about something?" I give her my fakest smile. This really does not amuse me.

Before she can answer, my bedroom door opens. I can't see who it is but I certainly recognize the voice. "Am I interrupting something?" Catherine sounds amused. I'm glad I can amuse everyone so much now.

"Get her off me." I say each word very carefully so that Catherine understands that this is not good times.

I hear Catherine's shoes making their way towards me until they stop right next to my head. Catherine bends down and puts herself right into my limited view. "Why is she on top of you?"

"To make her talk and listen and not run away," Jenny announces proudly. "I just discovered the best way to get Melinda's attention."

"Is it working?" Catherine needs to be less interested in this subject and more interested in getting Jenny off of me.

Jenny shrugs. "I'm not sure yet. I haven't asked her to talk about anything."

"Then don't let me interfere." Catherine sits down next to my head and it doesn't seem like she's taking my side here.

"This isn't funny," I try to push Jenny away with my arms and do little to move her. She's got her legs planted at my sides and her hands are pushing down my shoulders. I give up my shoving and drop my head down to the floor. "Can we at least make a deal?"

Jenny raises a brow. "What kind of a deal?"

"I'll answer two questions then you let me up so that I can throw you out of this apartment and tell you to never return."

Jenny pretends like she's thinking about my offer, but I know she'll accept. It may seem like she's having fun, but I know that she won't torture me with this. There's no way she could be that mean.

"Fine." Jenny releases my shoulders and sits up. "I ask you a question and Catherine asks you the other. I get to go first."

"Do it." There's no way she's going to be able to ask a question that I won't be able to wrangle out of answering.

Jenny rubs her chin and it seems like she's in deep thought. She's not going to come up with anything good, I bet. Her face turns very serious all the sudden and she looks directly at me. Her eyes are holding mine, and suddenly my confidence has completely disappeared. "When you look in the mirror, what is it that you see?"

"Get off me." I don't know what's happening to me, but I'm starting to feel a little dizzy. My heart's pounding and I could swear I'm getting short of breath. I know that I'm way too young and too healthy to be having a heart attack.

Jenny shakes her head. "Not before you answer the question."

"I'll answer the question," my voice is actually shaking. "Just get off of me."

Jenny looks over to Catherine. Catherine looks at me and tells Jenny to get off me. As soon as I'm free from Jenny I sit up and back away from them both. My back hits the desk in the room. I concentrate on my breathing, hoping that it will calm down and I won't pass out.

The room is spinning and I'm doing my best to focus. Catherine and Jenny are across from me and look kind of concerned. I see Catherine speaking to me, but I don't hear what she's saying.

I actually think I could be dying here.

Okay, I just need to focus. I need to get myself back together so that I can answer Jenny's question and yell at her for being such a bitch. Her idea was obviously a very bad one.

Catherine reaches out for me and I slap her arm away from me. I can't be touched right now. I can't handle that right now.

I'm stronger than this. I know that I'm stronger than this. I've lived through a lot worse than someone asking me a direct question. This is something that can't beat me. Nothing can beat me. My parents can't even beat me anymore.

That's it. I just have to calm down. I have to control myself.

I take a very shaky deep breath and slowly release it. I take a few swallows and focus on the two people in front of me. "I'm sorry." Why am I apologizing? I didn't do anything wrong.

"Don't apologize." Catherine reaches out for me again but I still shy away from her touch.

"I'm sorry." I have nothing to be sorry for. "I don't know what happened." I finally went crazy and completely lost it. I'm becoming more and more like the mother who raised me.

"Sweetie, I think you just had a panic attack." I can see in Catherine's eyes that she wants to reach out to me again. I'm glad she doesn't act on the urge. I wouldn't let her touch me.

"Yeah well whatever it was it sucked." I think the temperature in the room has just dropped about fifteen degrees. I'm getting really cold, and if I could just get my head together for longer than a few seconds then I could figure everything out. "I think I need to leave."

I feel like I'm suffocating in here. "Melinda, that's probably not a good idea."

What does Catherine know? There's no possible way that she could know. "No. I need to leave." I grab hold of the desk and use it to help me stand up. I get to my crutches and make my way to the door. Catherine steps into my path while Jenny looks nervously on.

"Melinda, I can't let you go anywhere alone right now."

I can't look at Catherine right now. Looking at her is making me angry. Being around other people right now is making me angry. "Please let me go." I plead. "Please."

I can feel Catherine's eyes roaming over my body. I can feel them judging me and measuring me up to see if I'm worthy. I can feel them rake over me gauging exactly how screwed up I actually am.

"I'm sorry," Catherine takes a step closer to me, "I can't."

My body starts to shake again, but it's not from another panic attack. My hands are gripping at my crutches with all my strength. If I keep it up I might even be able to bend the metal.

"I don't want to hurt you." When I was a young girl, the woman who raised me would punish me by placing me in a corner, but it wasn't like normal time-outs. She'd make me go to a corner and she'd slap at me with a belt. One time, I forgot to be scared of her and I got angry. I grabbed hold of that belt and pulled it right out of her hands and hit her back. I cut open her cheek.

The cut bled and I was happy that I caused her pain. I was happy that it was finally her turn to bleed.

She ended up breaking my arm that day, we told the doctors at the hospital I slipped on the wet floors of the house. I was clumsy. I was stupid.

Catherine looked at my hands. The grip I had on those crutches had turned my knuckles white. I think Catherine has just realized how serious I really am. She looks afraid of me.

After I attacked her, the woman who raised me was afraid too. I was fifteen when she stopped hitting me. Sure, I had to deal with a broken arm but I certainly did win that little war in the end. I finally showed that woman that she couldn't physically hurt me anymore. She'd just have to settle with slowly killing my soul.

"Melinda you don't have to hurt anyone." Catherine's a brave woman because she takes another step towards me.

When I look in the mirror what is it that I see? That's what Jenny wanted to know, right? She wants a little piece of the puzzle of me so that she can better figure me out. If she had gone to my old high school she would have seen me differently there. People always wanted to fight me. They wanted to find my imperfections and thought they could do so with their fists.

I didn't mind the jealousy. I didn't mind that they thought I had a superior attitude, it just meant that they wanted to hurt me all the more. I could shut up anyone who said anything about me real quick with a single punch.

"What's going on?" So, my mother has decided to join the party. I guess crime in Vegas has gone way down, because it doesn't seem like these two have to work at all anymore.

"I'm leaving." I'm not speaking to anyone directly.

I push past Catherine, then Jenny, then Sara. I make my way quickly out of the apartment. I'm able to make it out of the building without anyone running after me. Maybe Catherine finally caught on to what I was saying.

Plus, it's not like I can go that far from the building. I've got a bum foot and I'm on crutches. It doesn't look like running to the nearest wherever is really an option at the moment, and it's not like I have anywhere to go.

There are a couple of benches over near the pool at the center of the complex. That's where I make my way to. I sit down and look over at the tarp covered pool. It's winter so the pool's not exactly in use. There are leaves and other gunk on the tarp. It doesn't look that pretty.

When the cold fades, though, they'll come out here and remove the tarp. They'll clean up the pool and the water will be a perfect blue. Everything that made its home in it for the winter will die away. The tarp will be put away and this part of the complex will probably be booming with life.

For now, I'm the only one here, and when the summer comes I probably won't be here to see it. Sara and I still plan on moving, but we've got to do it when I can lift more than nothing. I think Catherine wants us to move in with her, but I don't think I'm ready for that.

Anyway, after today Catherine probably doesn't want me around Lindsey. Kids can get on people's nerves and if she gets me too angry then who knows what I'll do. I don't know if I could ever hit a child, but I never thought that I'd go after the woman who raised me either.

She did try to hit me again, right after everything happened. She thought that since she broke my arm she taught me my lesson. It was when I came home late one day from practice. A friend dropped me off and when she saw that it was a guy, she went completely insane. She started ranting and raving about not hanging out with guys because they're evil. She started saying all these weird things about having sex and not taking care of another kid.

Her raving makes complete sense now, but at the time I couldn't keep up. In the middle of the rant, she stopped talking and looked at me. I think me standing there just made her angry, because the next thing I know she's coming after me with a knife.

I was bigger than her, I was stronger than her and I wasn't going to let her hurt me. So I took her weapon of choice away from her. I ripped it right out of her hands and put it to her throat. I told her if she ever thought of raising a hand to me again then I'd kill her.

My threat frightened her, and this time she didn't try and break my arm. She didn't try and do anything. She stood there in front of me looking weak and pathetic. She stood there looking afraid.

"I thought you might come here," I thought it would be Catherine coming after me, not Sara.

"If I had the means, I'd be half way to Tennessee by now." I scoot down the bench giving Sara room to sit down.

Sara takes the seat. "Is that where you want to go?"

"I want to go away from the memories." We may not know each other very well, but I know she understands what I'm talking about.

"No place is far enough away for you to accomplish that."

She would know. "Did she tell you I was going to hit her?"

"She said something like that." I'm not looking at her, but I can tell by the tone of her voice that she doesn't much like the fact I threatened her girlfriend.

"I would have hit her if she didn't let me go." I'm being honest. I would have hit her. I wouldn't have thought twice about it.

"I know."

"So you gonna throw me out now?" I threatened someone she cares for. That's bound to have some major consequences.

"No. Never."

I decide to be a little brave and chance looking up at Sara. She doesn't look angry to me, but doesn't look happy either. "So what are you going to do?"

Sara sighs. "I don't know. Tell me why you were so angry?"

Everyone wants to ask me questions today. "Jenny asked me what I see when I look in the mirror and I freaked out."

"Why did you freak out?" Sara's being a lot calmer than I thought she would be. I expected fireworks. I always get fireworks.

"Because when I look in the mirror I see the scars. I see all the scars. And when I look at my eyes I see her laughing at me."

"Jesus Mel," Sara releases another heavy sigh. "What did she do to you?"

I don't think Sara really wants to know. I don't even want to know. It'd be great if I could forget everything.

Author's Note: Thank you for all the reviews. I am paying attention to them all and appreciate it.