A/N: I'm just putting a warning that this chapter is kind of intense.

---------------------------------------------------------

Kendra, Nadia, and Brandy stood on Allie's front porch. They were trying to gather their collective strength to confront Allie and to be prepared for what the consequences of their actions might be.

"Are you ready?" Brandy asked the other two.

"Yeah." They responded.

Brandy rang Allie's doorbell and waited for someone to answer. Someone did.

"Hey guys. I was wondering when you were going to get here." Brad said, greeting the girls. "You can go back to Allie's room and knock on her door."

Brad showed the three girls in through the front door. As Nadia passed by he decided to joke with her, as he usually did. He remembered the first time she came over to the house to visit Allie and how shy that she seemed. From that day on, he always made a special point to joke around with her whenever she came over.

"So Nadia, have you given any thought to my idea?" Brad asked teasingly.

"What idea?" Nadia responded suspiciously.

"What idea! The one where you let me tune up your wheelchair and we see how many horses we can crank out of that baby." Brad revealed.

"You're Crazy!" Nadia answered with a giggle.

"So I've been told." Brad replied.

After Brad and Nadia finished their conversation, the three girls went to the last door at the back of the house. Allie's Christina Aguilera poster still hung on the door and Kendra proceeded to give the door a couple of brief knocks.

"Allie, it's Kendra. Brandy and Nadia are here too, can we come in?" Kendra called out.

At first there was no answer but then they heard sounds from the other side of the door. The door opened to reveal a room mostly in darkness, with the exception of the flicker from a medium sized TV. Kendra entered first and had trouble adjusting her eyes to the darkness. It greatly contrasted from the afternoon sunlight she had just left a few minutes ago.

"You can turn the light on if you want to." A voice from inside the room said.

Kendra knew where the light switch on the wall was and proceeded to flip it. The trio saw Allie sitting on her bed, her hair pulled back into a single ponytail and looking like she hadn't slept in days. Brandy sat in a chair at Allie's study desk, Kendra grabbed another chair and sat down next to Nadia. They sat there for a couple of minutes in an awkward silence. Then finally, Nadia spoke.

"Allie, you weren't at school today. We've been worried about you." Nadia confessed.

"There's nothing to worry about." Allie replied.

"Yes there is." Kendra disagreed, "You've been acting really weird for the last few weeks."

"Come on, people do grow up and change." Allie challenged.

"Yeah they do, but not overnight." Kendra continued, "You've just seemed really upset and we wondered if we did anything to make you mad at us? If we did, just let us know what it was."

"It's got nothing to do with anything any of you said or did." Allie assured them.

"Then, does it have to do with Dean?" Brandy asked.

"Don't ever say that name to me again!" Allie snapped.

"Then it is about him." Brandy confirmed, "It's all right, you're not the first girl to date a guy that cheated on you."

"Cheated on me?" Allie said with a puzzled look.

"I had Jamal to ask around with some of the guys and they said Dean had a reputation as a ladies man." Brandy revealed.

"Really?" Allie replied.

"It's okay to be hurt about losing a relationship, but you shouldn't take it out on your friends." Nadia contributed.

"So let me get this straight, you're all here to heal my broken heart." Allie questioned.

"That and we wanted to tell you that hurting yourself isn't the answer to your problems." Kendra added.

"Does anybody else have some advice they'd like to give to broken-hearted Allie?" Allie asked.

The girls sat silently, all eyes on Allie. Allie sat on her bed, staring at the floor for a moment. Then she started to speak again.

"Do you want to know the real reason I've been acting so different lately? Dean didn't cheat on me and he did more than just break my heart, a hell of a lot more. 'The Ladies Man', as you call him, made me feel worse than dirt. He raped me."

Allie wasn't yelling or screaming, she said that one word in a calmness that revealed the true ugliness of it's meaning to her and her friends. Hearing it out loud forced Allie to finally confront what she had been trying to tell herself hadn't really happened, what had kept her awake night after night for the past few weeks. Saying it out loud made her feel like a weight had been lifted off of her, but at the same time, she felt a sense of shame that she hadn't felt since that night it had happened. The night when Dean said all of those awful things to her, after he did what he did.

"Oh my God, Allie."

"We didn't know."

"We're so sorry, we should've known it was about more than just a guy dumping you."

The girls' apologies all flooded over Allie at once, and it felt good to hear their comforting words. Brandy came over and hugged Allie, who was crying and shivering by this point. Kendra handed Brandy one of Allie's quilts from the chair she was sitting in and Brandy wrapped it around her.

"Why didn't you tell us before?" Brandy asked.

"I guess I was embarrassed. That, and I wasn't sure if anybody would believe me." Allie confessed.

"What do you mean?" Nadia replied, "Of course we believe you!"

"Yeah, we know you wouldn't make up something horrible like this." Kendra added.

"I guess a part of me was actually believing what Dean said." Allie continued, "After he forced himself on me, I kept crying and asking him why didn't he stop when I said no. He told me that he knew I really wanted it and that no one would believe that I hadn't done it willingly. He said that no one would believe a thirteen year old girl dressed the way I was wasn't a total slut."

"You can't believe the crap that psychopathic asshole said." Brandy asserted, "You were dressed up for a costume dance and even if you weren't, that's never an excuse for someone to do what he did."

"Have you told your Mom yet?" Nadia asked.

"Not yet, I wasn't sure if I could and I was afraid of what she would think of me." Allie said, wiping her eyes with the Kleenex that Kendra had found for her.

"You should tell her and you should go talk to Ms. Sauve at school. She'll be able to help you with everything that you're going through." Nadia added.

The girls sat in silence for a moment, taking in everything that had just been talked about. Nadia was still worried about Allie doing something to hurt herself and felt it was necessary to find out.

"I have another question, if it's okay for me to ask."

"It's okay, go ahead." Allie replied.

"Are you still thinking about suicide?" Nadia asked.

"Suicide?" Allie questioned.

"The other day, when you got upset and left, you said all of your problems would be over soon. We were afraid that you might do something to yourself." Nadia reminded her.

At this point Allie started crying again.

"I'm sorry Allie, I knew I should've kept my big mouth shut." Nadia apologized.

"No it's all right, really. There's something else I have to tell you that I'm not too proud of. It was something that I had been planning since a few days after what happened to me." Allie replied.

Allie then got up from her bed, with the quilt still covering her. She walked over to her closet and reached inside. From inside of her closet she pulled out a shoebox. She then handed it to Kendra and sat back on the bed.

"Go ahead and open it." Allie instructed Kendra.

The other two girls watched as Kendra opened the box and saw her expression change to a look of pure horror.

"Where did you get this from?" Kendra yelled.

Kendra angled the box down so Nadia and Brandy could see the contents of the box and their reaction was similar.

Brandy asked, "Where did you get that gun from?"

"It belonged to my Dad, he left it when he got a divorce from my Mom. I don't have any bullets for it, hell, I don't even know how to fire a gun." Allie confessed.

"Then what were you doing with it?" Nadia asked with fear in her voice.

"I don't know. I had seriously considered taking it and going to shoot Dean. If he could do this to me and get away with it, who's to say he wouldn't do it again and again. I had even tried drinking some of my Mom's alcohol, hoping I could make myself drunk enough to go through with it, but all I did was make myself sick. But I also realized that I'm not like him and I'm not a murderer. Plus I already have enough on my mind, with everything that's happened, without adding to it."

Allie was sobbing heavily again and Brandy let her rest her head against her shoulder. Kendra took the shoebox and asked Brad to take it, with no questions. She told him there was an unloaded gun in there and asked him to get rid of it. Brad, who was sitting on the couch with his girlfriend, said sure. He told her he would take it and put it somewhere, somewhere where nobody could hurt themselves with it.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Next chapter: Allie considers bringing charges against Dean, and finds an unexpected ally.