"Jade. You've grown into such a beautiful young woman," Nick says.
His hand touches her hip and she freezes because she's remembering everything he did to her, things she tried to forget. His words cause the bile in her throat to rise. It feels like she's nine and she can't stop thinking about the feeling of hands crawling all over her naked body when she hears his voice.
"Stay the hell away from me," she growls, glaring, crossing her arms, stepping away from him, trying to make it out the door so she won't have to talk to him.
"What's wrong, honey?" Her mom steps into the room, breaking the discomfort. Jade finds herself drifting towards her mom for protection, and she finds her mother's boyfriend take a step back from her, pretending like he hadn't just tried to grope her.
"I'm going to be late for school," she grits, making her way outside so that she could meet Beck at his house before school.
Even though she has a coat, she takes it off and lets the harsh wind beat against her pale skin so that maybe she'll be able to think about something else besides the fact that he ruined her life.
••
The first time he touched her, her mom had left them alone to 'get to know each other' when she was 9 years old. ("Be nice to him, Jade. He's a good guy. You'll like him. Ask him about his music. Make him feel comfortable, okay?")
Jade wasn't that tall or heavy, so he could easily hold her down. She doesn't remember much about the moment it started. She thinks he had knocked her out by hiting her in the back of the head; she woke up while he was touching her. His hands were inside of her, and she had started screaming in pain and in fear, but he covered her mouth with his hands, laughing at her. He laughed at her. That was what she can remember. The sound of his laughter as he stared down at her crying face.
"Hello, Jade. You're a very beautiful girl," he had smiled. Those were the first words he had ever said to her. This was her mother's first boyfriend since her parents divorced when she was seven. She knew her mom was happy, so she didn't want to ruin it for her mom.
"Hi," she had said, not thinking anything of it. He was just being friendly, she reasoned. Her mom had told her that Nick was a good guy, and that she really liked him. So she trusted him because her mom trusted him.
She decided to be nice to him. They had spent a while talking about the fact that she liked to sing. He seemed really interested. She liked him... at first. He seemed like a nice person; he made her mother smile. He had told her that he needed help bringing some of his boxes into the house, and that he had a guitar in one of the boxes. So she helped him. She brought them up to his room. And then he raped her. It had happened so fast, so often that instead of crying and screaming, since she couldn't fight back, she would just bite her lip and close her eyes and imagine something else until he left her alone.
For years, he was the subject of her nightmares. She would wake up in the middle of the night crying and screaming. She wouldn't fall asleep in Beck's RV because she was scared that she would accidentally have nightmares. When she slept over, she would close her eyes and pretend to sleep until Beck fell asleep, and she would just lay there, all night, until the sun came up.
She was taken to therapy for the first time when she was six. She had been going for years, mostly for self-harm. She was depression from a very young age, and it got worse after her parents divorce. She started to hurt herself when she was nine years old, right after Nick started raping her and she had been doing it on and off for a while, whenever she was ashamed or felt guilty about herself. She hadn't told her mom or Beck or even Cat about Nick or about the fact that she hurt herself. She didn't want them to worry about her. She didn't think she was really worth it to go through the trouble of fixing her inner most darkest secrets anyway.
••
It had only been three days since Jade's mother's old boyfriend moved back in. Apparently, while her mother was on a visit to Pasadena, she reconnected with Nick.
Jade had tried extremely hard to never be alone with Nick. For years, starting when she was nine, he would touch her and rape her and threaten to kill her if she told anyone. She was afraid of him, so she didn't tell anyone. She harmed herself because she read about it in a book and decided to try it.
After two years of living in fear, her mom and Nick broke up. She wasn't constantly in fear. She never told her mom or Cat or Beck about what he did to her, though. She told herself it was a thing of the past. That she didn't need to bring it up because it wasn't that big of a deal. She didn't need to start problems and have people worry about her. She didn't deserve to have people care. So she tried to forget about it.
But as she grew older, she realized what had actually occurred, she realized how much it had affected her. Whenever people other than Beck, Cat, or her mom touched her, she flinched.
One day, after almost two years of dating, and only making out, things started to progress. They had been dating long enough that Beck thought it would be time to try something more than just kissing, as much as he loved just cuddling and making out. Things had started to progress from kissing to him resting his hands on her hips, rubbing her back gently. His hand had started to flip up the hem of her shirt, testing to she if she wanted to do more than just kiss. She had ended up punching him in the face out of fear. She was scared of sex and she couldn't control her impulse to flinch from his touch. She hated herself for it.
After it had happened, she started sobbing and she couldn't stop. She kept apologizing and hyperventilating. He was extremely confused and terrified of her reaction and that he hurt her, but he held her, hoping she would explain herself. She never did. He promised he wouldn't tell anybody about what had happened. She was so exhausted from sobbing that she fell asleep and that was that. They never talked about it. But Jade knew it was in the back of Beck's mind and that sooner or later, they would have to discuss it.
She couldn't help but hate how this one man could intimidate her, and how her mother would probably never believe her if she tried to tell her.
And now he was back. He wasn't touching her or raping her; not yet. He was just getting inside her head, which was even more torture than before.
When she was younger, and she was raped so often, she had become numb to it. It was part of her daily routine, as horrible as it sounds. She didn't deal with the emotions it had caused her, until he left. Until she felt a bit safer than before.
The fear of him popping up somewhere was what scared her the most: his face, laughing as he did terrible, horrible things to her.
••
Beck had been watching Jade closely throughout the week ever since she punched him. She seemed off. She seemed very paranoid and skittish, and not very happy. He didn't want to corner her and make her feel pressured to talk, because that was when she would clam up and shut him out.
On Tuesday, he noticed that when she arrived that morning for school, she slammed her locker door, and then left to go to class without saying a word. She had bags under her eyes. She didn't greet him with quick good-morning hug and kiss, like she had every morning since they started dating. She stayed mostly silent during Sikowitz's class, only answering in one-word replies if he called on her. She felt really distant. He noticed that she was using her thumbnail to dig into her skin, drawing up blood. It looked like Jade was doing it on purpose. He knew about her history with hurting herself, and he was afraid she was starting again.
At lunch, he tried to take her hand in his for a second to stop her from making her skin bleed, but she pretended like she didn't see his hand. He knew that she was avoiding his touch, because he had tried three times throughout the day.
During lunch, Jade hasn't said one word. And he knew something was on her mind, and it was probably related to her punching him. She hadn't thrown in any jokes or any playful jabs at his Tori. She was picking at her food with her fork.
He took her hand under the table and caressed it with his thumb but he could see it in her eyes that she was on edge.
He noticed her staring off into space and that her eyes were starting to become glossy. She was chewing on her lip.
"Jade, are you okay?" He whispered.
"Yeah," she replied, not even glancing at him,
"I'm just tired. I think I need to go home," she muttered as she leaned her head in the crook of his neck, closing her eyes and taking comfort in the warmth of his body. She hid her face from everyone's view of the table and breathed in his scent.
He ran his fingers through her dark hair and he could feel how tense her body was when he held her. Jade clutched to his body and wouldn't let go.
When everyone at the table gave him questioning glances, especially Cat, since Jade never liked to show very vulnerable moments, he replied "she's sick", although he didn't know what was really going on with her.
He had wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
"You want to skip the rest of the day?" He whispered into her ear.
He saw her eyes and it looked like gears were turning in her head. She was thinking about whether or not she should tell him.
"I want to go," she whispered, panicking when she felt tears in her eyes. She didn't like anyone seeing her cry. Beck noticed it immediately.
"We'll see you guys tomorrow. Jade's sick so I'm going to take her home," Beck told their friends, lacing his fingers with hers.
The group said their goodbyes and continued on with what they were talking about as Beck and Jade left school early.
•
When they got to his RV, he gave her one of his t shirts and basketball shorts to change into. She fell asleep immediately after she laid down with him.
•
"What's going on, baby?" They were laying on his bed, watching TV that night after she woke up.
When he had asked her, he lifted her chin with his finger so he could see her eyes and decide for himself if she was telling the truth.
"I'm fine," she said, sighing. She sounded so small, like a shell of what she used to be. He used his thumb to caress over her arm. He felt a wetness against his skin and he was pretty sure it was her tears. His fingers traveled down to caress the self inflicted scars on her wrist, and he kissed them, stopping when he noticed that some of them seemed new. Like new as in a couple days new.
Jade had confided in him that she cut herself when she was eight. What he didn't know what that she also did it at nine because she felt ashamed at what her mother's boyfriend did to her.
It was like Jade had built her walls back up and she wasn't letting him in anymore. And that concerned him deeply. She was lying to him again.
"You're cutting again?" He asked, lacing their hands together.
When he looked at her, her eyes were filled with tears, and she knew he saw them.
"Where did you cut yourself? Show me. Tell me what happened," Beck mumbled against her forehead as he placed a kiss there. The day she had told him about it over a year ago, she said that she wasn't doing it anymore. He made her promise that if she ever did it again, she needed to show him.
He watched her as she pulled the pair of basketball shorts she was borrowing from him up to her thigh, and he noticed about four new cuts on her thigh.
"I did it last night," she said. She immediately buried herself into his hug, purposefully neglecting the fact that they needed to talk about it. These tears were quiet and they soaked into his blue t-shirt.
He didn't think he had ever seen her cry so often in the span of a week, and he knew something was terribly wrong.
"Jade, I'm here. Whenever you want to talk," he told her as he held her.
"I need some time."
•
On Wednesday and Thursday, she was a bit more talkative, but she always veered the conversation away from herself.
She wouldn't talk about herself, and he was tired of fighting her, and he knew that she was tired of it too.
Jade claimed she was 'fine', but that obviously wasn't true. She was cutting again, and something had to be the cause of it. Probably the same reason she had punched him and then had a full blown panic attack after.
He wanted to tell somebody, but he promised her that he wouldn't tell anyone. He didn't know what to do besides try to get her to talk to him.
Her body was in a constant state of tenseness. Her muscles were tense even as she slept. He knew something was wrong, but he didn't know how to approach her about it.
She had been staying at his RV quite a lot.
After three days straight if staying awake, she couldn't help it when she dozed off. But Jade had woken up with nightmares in the middle of the night, screaming and crying. Her face had turned red in embarrassment, but when she realized Beck was looking at her with concern, and he pulled her into a hug, she broke. She couldn't stop crying. It wasn't silent tears like before. It was tears that were excruciating compared to the ones she shed after she punched him.
She sobbed for more than an hour, and then she fell asleep. These tears were loud and heart wrenching. It was like a cry for help. He didn't push her to talk to him. That's what she loved about him. He understood that she would come to him when she was ready.
He held her as she slept. Her muscles relaxed a bit. She didn't look like she was in constant pain.
Jade was the one that liked to come to him about her problems. She never appreciated when he tried to ask her about her own.
After she fell asleep, he got a text from his mom asking him to come inside his house.
"Hey," Beck greeted his Mom. "What's up?"
"Was Jade crying, Beck? She's been staying here an awful lot lately. I wasn't a trying to intrude but I forgot something in my car and it was really loud. It sounded really serious, 's going on?"
"She's just dealing with some stuff, Mom," he said quietly, running his hands through his hair.
"I don't know what. She won't tell me," he said, his voice quivering.
"Oh sweetie, come here," his mom said, opening her arms to him. He hugged her and cried silently into her shirt, feeling lost and alone: not knowing how to help someone who was in pain,
•••
Friday morning, Jade had been halfway out the door of her house. Her mom had already left for work and Nick was sitting in the kitchen.
"Hello, honey," he greeted.
She tried to avoid him, quickly making coffee for herself before she left for school.
She was putting the top on the cup when he came up behind her.
"You better answer me when I talk to you," he growled, grabbing her by the neck to whisper in her ear, and slamming her back against the cabinet, which bruised her back, spilling her scalding coffee on it, and causing her to scream in pain.
She couldn't see because the burn on her back caused tears to blur her vision. She had hit her head against something, which knocked her out. She woke up, laying on the floor, with her pants unbuttoned. She knew Nick had raped her when she was unconscious again. For the first time in at least two years. She had been put on birth control at age 13, since her mom wanted to help her regulate her period.
She was crying out in pain from her back while she stood up and surveyed her surroundings.
The coffee was cleaned up. She went back to her room and called her mom to tell her to call the school and tell them she felt sick. She laid on her bed for an hour or two on her stomach because she could barely move. After her pain decreased a bit, she looked in a mirror at the hand shaped bruise decorating her skin.
She noticed that Beck had texted her about five times and Cat and Tori had texted her about ten times together, as well as her mother, who had told her that she took care of it.
••
The day she didn't go to school, she told Beck she was sick, and she knew he would deliver to the rest of their friends. She didn't answer Beck's calls all day. Jade eventually called Beck and was going to ask him to come over to her house, but she chickened out and hung up.
After school, Beck ditched the gang who were going to have a movie night at Tori's house, and he went to Jade's house. She was lying on her bed, face down, asleep. She was wearing a sports bra and he could see the burn on her back which looked very recent and extremely painful. He gasped, and it caused her eyes to shoot open in fear, thinking Nick was back. She jumped up a bit in surprise. She looked into his eyes and she stared at him for a while, but she looked like she was staring right through him. She sat up on her bed, leaving room for him to come sit next to her.
"Jade?" He asked. He knew that her family was a very difficult subject and that she didn't like talking about it, but he also knew that that is probably why she's been acting so different lately.
She sighed, running her fingers through her hair.
"You should go. You probably have lots of homework. Thanks for coming here to check on me," she said, grabbing his hand and squeezing it. Her voice was hoarse.
"No. I'm not leaving. What happened to your back?" He asked.
"Nothing. I spilled coffee and slipped on top of it and burned my back. No biggie," she said, twirling here fingers together, something she did when she was lying.
"You know that you can always come to me when something is wrong. I'm not going to judge you. I love you, Jade. Please. Just tell me what's going on. You're cutting and you're depressed and you're not sleeping, and you're losing weight. And you're lying about the burn. And you never told me why you punched me in the face. I care about you. To help you, I need to know what's going on inside your head." he told her.
"I know. But I just, I can't this time. I thought you would be helpful. I don't think I can tell you. I'm not ready," Jade said
"Of course you can. You can tell me anything."
"Beck, you have no idea what I'm going through. It's hard to explain," she stated, running her fingers through her hair again, looking around her room for some sign from the universe to tell her what to do. She felt like she was about to explode and she was terrified for the moment she would open up and tell him everything. She had no idea how he would react.
"Then talk to me. Just let me hold your hand though this. I know something is bothering you. You've been holding something in for a long time. I know you don't like when people push you. But you're hurting. So I'm pushing you because I want you to be happy. So please talk to me. I know it will be hard, but please. Try," he begged her.
She shook her head and bit her lip as tears started to surface.
"You're so independent, Jade. And everyone at school, they think you're some tough, rebellious troublemaker. But they don't know you at all. You aren't as open with your feelings as people think. You're still afraid to talk to me, and to tell me whenever something is bothering you that doesn't have to do with us. To make this work, you need to be able to talk to me. You need to realize that it's okay to ask for help. And your feelings are not stupid or a burden. You need to let me in again."
"I can't."
"What?"
"I'm sorry, Beck."
"You're sorry?" He asks, looking at this seemingly strong girl who is crumbling right in front of him.
"Jade, we've been together for a year, but we've been best friends for almost three. I've been waiting for you for a really long time, okay? I've been waiting for you for three years to tell me why you don't completely trust me. I've been waiting for you to tell me why you punched me in the face and why you flinch every time I accidentally touch your neck or your hip," he cried, and she closed her eyes and bit her lip.
He took her hand in his. "I don't regret getting into a relationship, no matter how hard it may be, because I love you. I love you, Jade. But I can feel you shutting me out again. I can feel it, and it's hurting you when you keep all of this inside of you too."
She's breathing heavily, shaking her head, being stubborn.
"Why can't you learn to talk about your feelings, Jade?"
"I'm sorry. It's too hard," she squeaked out, letting tears fall down the side of her face.
"Can you please leave? Please, Beck," she begged him, curling her body away from him and hiding her face. She heard her door close and she just cried herself to sleep.
•••••
On Saturday, she spent all day in bed in the dark.
••••••
On Sunday, Beck was doing homework on his couch. Jade opened his RV door and sat down next to him, letting her head rest against his lap. He ran his fingers through her hair as is if nothing happened.
They sat like that, in the comfortable silence for about twenty minutes. Beck didn't push her. He knew from where they left things Friday, it wouldn't do anything to help the situation.
"My mom's old boyfriend has been harassing me," she says shakily when she gathers enough courage to tell him. She stares at the floor so she doesn't have to look at him.
"He's been raping me since I was nine," she spoke aloud for the first time to another human.
"Jade- I..."
"He's been back for about a month," she bites her lip.
"He threathened to kill me if I told my mom. My mom won't believe me. It happened so long ago," Jade cried quietly into his chest, turning to face him. "He's the reason why I started cutting. I hated myself because I was so stupid to fall into his trap and I wasn't brave enough to get help," she cried.
He cradles her tiny body in his arms to try to comfort her. He moves her so he can hug her and make eye contact with her.
"The other day, he grabbed my neck and spilled my hot coffee down my back and burned me. And then he knocked me unconscious and raped me and left me on the floor," she cried into his neck, clutching the back of his shirt, taking some comfort in the smell of him.
"We need to go to the police, Jade," he tells her.
She argues because she doesn't want to upset her mom.
"My mom hasn't been happy in a really long time," Jade says, grasping onto his arm. He was already half out the door. "If I tell her, nothing would change except for the fact that she's upset again."
"If we told, then you would be safe! She would be happy you're safe!" Beck cries.
"Beck please. You can't tell anyone," Jade pleads.
"What? I-I'm not going to sit here, knowing that this man is hurting you. We need to get him arrested," he screams.
"I love you. I can't watch you suffer," he tells her. "You need to tell your mom, Jade."
She sighs in defeat, falling asleep on him due to her exhaustion. While she's asleep, Beck replays all the moments that could have indicated that Jade was being sexually abused at home.
She lied a lot about the bruises, telling him that she was super clumsy. He felt like such an idiot.
•••
Jade is at home that Monday night, making dinner for her mom and she guesses for Nick too, and the disgusting man comes in and tells her that her mother got caught up at work. He refers to him touching her as "playing" because thats what he called it when she was a kid. And she actually cries in fear when he holds the knife she was using to cook up to her throat, gently sliding it against her skin as if it was a game to him. It was a game to him.
"Don't resist it, baby," he growls in her hair, making her want to vomit. She can feel his hands on her body. She tries kicking him in the groin and eventually, he backs off. It makes him more angry, but then the door opens and her mother comes into the kitchen.
"What happened to you, Jade?" Her mom asks.
Her hair is a disheveled mess, and her arm is starting to bruise from where she hit it against the counter when she was trying to get away from Nick.
"It was Nick, mom," Jade's voice cracks in a moment of courage, thinking about what Beck had said. She needed to tell her mother. She had to.
"He-he tried to rape me. He's been raping me since I was nine," Jade admits to her mother, letting her tears fall down her cheeks and wiping them away with her sleeve.
"What smells so good?" Nick asks, entering the room, pretending he wasn't there before.
Jade's mother is frozen in place. Jade feels her heart beating and she can barely breathe. What if her mom didn't believe her?
But her mom immediately moves to stand in front of Jade, to block her from Nick.
"Nick, did you rape Jade?" Her mother asks, Jade can feel the tension in the room.
"Of course not. Why would you even ask that?" Nick lies.
"Get out, Nick. I'm calling the police," her mom says, getting her phone out.
"She's lying, honey. Jade just wants attention. She made it up because she doesn't like that we're dating again," Nick says defensively.
Her mom dials 9-1-1. "My daughter would never lie about something like this, you sick fuck," she yells at him. Once Nick hears the 9-1-1 operator answer, he darts out the front door.
"Jade, look at me," her mom says while they are waiting in the police to come. Jade can feel herself crumbling and she can't stop thinking about his grubby hands all over her body and her body starts shaking with silent sobs. She tries to hide them by biting her lip but it makes it louder.
"Mom, I'm sorry," she chokes. Her mom brings them to the living room, and they stay there until Jade can calm down and tell her mother everything.
Jade and her mother talk for hours, by themselves and with the police.
Her mom doesn't let go of her the whole time they're talking.
She thinks maybe things will start to change.