There, all at once, was an earthquake happening, one that existed on a different plane, for the only person whose earth shook so violently hard at one twelve in the morning, was Cosima. She had never known something so simple, say like grabbing a box, to be such an insurmountable task until those few fleeting moments. It wasn't just her hands that were shaking, trembling, it was her arms, her legs. Her knees felt composed of sheer rubber and the air around her felt heavy in her lungs. Her mind was running far faster than her physical being could catch up to and it was pulling at her, nipping at her heels, so desperate to gnaw at every inch of her. She had come this far, she had to know.

As she lifted her arms to retrieve the box, it was hard, like someone had tied fifty pound weights to them. She could just turn and go, retreat back to her make-shift cave in the basement and just leave it be. That would have been tooeasy. She needed the answers that Athena Jane had promised her, for the sake of her own sanity. How was she ever supposed to go back to those school? What was to say that Delphine Cormier's way of thinking wouldn't be contagious, infectious, spreading and catching on to those who once regarded her as innocent. What if they all started blaming her, turning their eyes to her based solely on her sister's actions? Two weeks ago, Cosima had been in love with her job and happy in her life, and somehow, her life had fallen into such a state of disrepair that she wasn't sure she could say either held true any longer. Though she was on paid leave, she was not even sure that she would get her job back, which only furthered the shattering of her heart.

With so many 'what-if's' buzzing around, bouncing off of the inside of her skull, she was of right mind enough to recognize that those were all scenarios that had not played out yet, things she needn't worry about, at least until she was facing them head on. What was calling for her focus and attention was the box that rested uneasily between her shaking palms. It was light, but only in the physicality of it being a small box. Holding it there, looking down at the top of the lid, Cosima nearly buckled beneath the five tons of weight she knew was contained inside, the kind of weight that one could never touch or hold in their hands, but could crush spirits within the blink of an eye. Knowing better than to turn on the light, Cosima sulked her way back to the door, sliding quietly into the hall. Her footsteps were inaudible as she decended the two flights of stairs to the basement, the purple storage box clutched tightly to her side. Her lungs still felt like lead and her head was swimming in circles, but there was no denying what came next, even if there was no possible way to brace herself.

Lifting the lid of the box, a knot formed somewhere high up in her stomach, causing a lump to rise in her throat, making it even harder to breathe. Her mind was moving a million miles an hour, going over the things she had already contained basic knowledge of: Athena had been sick just over a month before the incident, where she had missed a few days of school, but Cosima had gone over every day to drop of her homework and check up on her. Every day she did so but one, Athena had been asleep. Upon her return to school, she had made few mentions to Cosima about still feeling ill and not having much energy, but it just appeared as though her body was having a hard time catching up after being ill for so long. Each time Cos made an offer to bring over soup, or to take her out for a bite, she was met with a polite decline to her offer, which she had thought nothing of. You should have, she scolded herself, You should have been paying attention. She shook her head, the dreads that hung loosely over her shoulders rustling the slightest bit. None of that seemed to make any sense, nor would it until she gathered up the courage to look inside the now lidless box before her.

Pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose, Cosima peered down to see a notebook lying inside, the cover tattooed by the ink of Athena's renditions of dragons and wolves and horses, so lifelike and yet, so limited to the card stock on which they were drawn, never to know any form of replication on another page in its entire carbon pressed lifetime. As she tenderly lifted the journal out, much like it was made of china, she pushed the box backwards. Her hands were still trembling uncontrollably as her fingertips slid over the binding over the notebook, over the pages, studying them, and almost instantly discovering something that seemed out of place.

The first twenty or thirty pages of the journal, just from the side view, fell in perfect order, smooth as the day they were pressed. She thumbed through these entries and found that they were happy things, things about her mile times or how many three point shots she could make in a game. She talked about her ex boyfriend that lived a few towns over and how they went bowling, and about the girl in her forth period ceramics class that she had an impossibly large crush on. Though she was certain that these were not the pages she was meant to see, she couldn't help but tear up as she skimmed them, her heart breaking at each dream she knew would go unachieved, and each chance that never was, and how they never would be.

It was when she got farther in that she could visibly see the difference. October fifth had been the last smooth, flat page to be seen.

"Somehow for the second time this week, that group of idiots showed up to run drills coincidentally the same time I started out onto the track. I know I saw them in my rearview mirror on my way to the school, but they must have doubled back after I pulled into the lot. The whole point of running in the evening is to not be bothered by lame pick up lines and catcalls.

In other news, Kathryn and I have a date next weekend. Cosima keeps joking that since we met in ceramics class, we should definitely do a 'Ghost' photoshoot. But that I had to be Patrick Swayze. Yeah, right."

Pushing her glasses atop her head, Cosima's flow of tears had greatly increased beyond her realm of knowledge as she was so intently pulled into the neat scrawl of what appeared to be the last happy day her sister had. Pulling away from it, though, caused a new train of logic to crash into her at breakneck speeds. While she was famished for the answers she knew were right in front of her, turning that page felt like an impossibility.

The latter half of the journal was, put simply, a disaster. As she leafed through some of the pages, her heart seemed to stop beating in her chest. In inks both red and black, as well as blue, were scribbled words, nearly filling some pages top to bottom. Some were torn or crumpled, ripped out and shoved back in.

Slut.

Idiot.

You fucking idiot.

Whore.

Fucking stupid.

Garbage. You're nothing but garbage.

Cosima was thankful for the isolation the basement had to offer, for had she been upstairs, had she stayed put in Athena's room, the sobs that leaped out of her lungs would have caused her parents to wake and would have initiated an onslaught of questions that per her late sister's request, Cosima would not be able to answer. It was almost too simple to see, with that last content entry, and the sudden ripple in emotions, shifting beyond belief. How could she have honestly believed these things about herself? It tore Cosima up, but as she turned a crumpled page, what she saw scribed so sloppily caused her to throw the journal and break for the nearest trashcan. Her nearly empty stomach only had bile to offer as she heaved and wretched into the bag, the tears spilling over in waves.

I shouldn't have left my water bottle on the bleachers. I don't remember it, but I know it. I feel it every day. It hurts. It's so empty and so dark. I know it.

They raped me. And then one of them drove my car down the alley behind the house and the garage, and dumped me with the week's trash.

There was an incomprehensible amount of confusion that was searing Cosima from the inside out. It had been over a month. Over thirty days and she'd never said anything to her. Athena had kept it in, hiding it under the guise of being sick, and Cosima had never questioned it. Why?! Why had she never questioned it?! It was her job to know that something was wrong! More than Athena's sister, she was a teacher. She had been looking some of those boys in the face with a smile on her own for weeks, never once knowing that they sat there, a smug and sickening entitled sense of knowing the horrible, terrible things they had done, the things they had gotten away with.

She felt betrayed, not by her sister, but by these young men… these despicable human beings who had been able to live their lives as if nothing had happened. Finally knowing, or at least partially knowing, it was never what Cosima could have predicted, and she hated it. She hated that someone she loved so much had been suffering with something so debilitating and she hadn't been able to see it. All of the things she should have done, and yet, she never could have known.

After several minutes of convulsing over the garbage can, Cosima fell to the side, her violently shaking hand extending for the journal and the several leaves of paper that had been knocked loose. She quickly thumbed over the pages toward the back of the journal, looking for later entries, ones closer to the date of the shooting, ones that might have explained what had gotten worse, but there was one page in the very bag, the very last, that seemed to have been damaged by water. What was different about this page, aside from the watermarks, was that the writing was still sloppy, but more composed, and there, at the bottom, was very visibly, Cosima's name.

11/12

Friday, Jonah cornered me after calc and demanded to know if I'd been a 'good girl,' and if I'd 'kept my mouth shut.' Thankfully, Ms Duncan happened to come back into the room, scaring him off.

Tonight, I told Mom and Dad I was going to the library to study. I went to Uncle Cal's instead because I know he's hunting in Ontario. His revolver and a couple of extra rounds were in the drawer.

I can't live like this anymore. If I give them the chance, they'll kill me. I can't let that happen. I won't let them hurt me again. I won't let them hurt anyone else ever again. I can't let them ruin anymore lives. I just can't.

Cosima… I…

I'm

There was no last word. No sorry, no anything. It was just left hanging there, like an empty noose over the condemned. "You're what?!" Cosima nearly choked, staring up expectantly at the ceiling. "You're sorry?! You're done?! You're what, Athena Jane?! You left me, and now, I have more questions than ever! And where are you to answer them?!" Her hands flailed with her gesticulations, knocking the journal off of her knee and sending it spinning in the air until it collided with the storage box, toppling it over, causing something to fall out.

Crawling forward on her knees, Cosima brushed the box aside to see a small, elongated chunk of plastic. As she reached out with her thin, shaky fingers to pick it up, another wave of nausea ripped through her like high tide and she was hysterical with sobs once more.

No, Athena was not sorry, she was not done (although, in a sense, she very obviously was). What she had been, though, was something far more horrifying.

She had been pregnant.