Ever After (2 page)

“Go on, get in the shower. I will handle her!” Kate waves me out of the room and heads to my dresser to dig out my phone. My room is less than clean these days. Kate try’s to “tidy up” for me as she says, but I never let her. Sara treats like a housemaid already, and I just won’t do that. Kate is a single mom, with three kids, she usually looks worn out already when she gets here at 7 am, and that’s without picking up my junk.

I give her a quick hug as I head for the shower. I know Doctor Mott and he is never late. I quickly wash my hair. I know why he is so diligent in my care. My parents recently funded the new cancer center at our local hospital (go figure)! The good doctor doesn’t want to tick off my dad in anyway which means he’s seen me more than he probably has seen any of his other patients this year.

I quickly dry off. Looking in the mirror, I can see I’ve lost weight but I still look good… I think or I hope. I grab the brush to untangle my long hair. Sara bugs me to death to get it cut; it’s only to my waist. She thinks it is too long and like a hippie’s. I could care less what she thinks she looks like a plastic Barbie doll… so she shouldn’t talk. I will take my “hippie look” any day over her “fake” look.

I am told I look just like my mother and I think of that all the time. I keep a picture of her on my dresser. My grandma (I call her Grammy and sometimes Gram) gave it to me when I was five years old. I often look into the mirror and wonder if she sees me. Honestly, I hope she can’t right now. I’m not too fond of the girl looking back at me so I can’t imagine she would be either.

I am lucky that Gram still lives with us. She’s always been here for me. I would be majorly lost without her. I know Sara hates that we are so close, that’s probably because Gram doesn’t like Sara. The day they met Gram told me Sara told her she had already picked out a boarding school for me. Gram said she nearly smacked her in the face at the suggestion of sending me away after she married my father.

I try to forget that thought and quickly slip on my yellow flowered sundress. I don’t look in the mirror again. I know I’m pail and look to skinny in it (Sara told me that last week), no need to verify that fact. I head down to the kitchen to grab something to eat before my check-up. I don’t feel hungry, but if I don’t eat, I will get shaky. I hope this is the last check up for a while. I got rid of the home nurse, now I needed to stop seeing doctors. I have had to go to so many I cannot stand it anymore.

I head downstairs to the kitchen. Sara calls it her
gourmet
kitchen
, for someone who cannot boil water its ridiculous. She spent a year designing it, and over thirty thousand dollars of my dad’s money building it. The stupidest thing about it is the only one who cooks in this house is our chef, Cam Parsons. He started cooking for us after Sara fired the last chef for using non-organic eggs.

That’s the thing around here it’s all about organics. Sara swears food chemicals are poisoning us all. I hide most of my junk food so she can’t find it. Kate and Gram have been so sweet to bring me Twinkies, donuts and other various sweet things Sara has deemed poisonous. I would starve to death if I didn’t have my food stash. Hey, a girl has to have her chocolate!

I manage to get the last donut and pour a glass of organic milk. I start thinking about what my stepmom says about chemicals in our food killing us. I go out with Todd to a party, and get mono and get attacked; milk with hormones is the least of my worries. Death by Twinkies on most days sounds really good to me…sadly.

I take what’s left of my breakfast to the media room and flip on my dad’s pride and joy, his giant flat-screen plasma TV. The room is his “man cave” as Sara calls it. The furniture is all black leather, and the windows have remote control shades, for optimum viewing of the TV. and computer screens. My pictures hang next to the ones of dad and Sara; creepily she looks like my sister and not my stepmother. The TV is on CNN naturally and of course, I channel surf to MTV.

I try to watch the videos and quit thinking of ways to torture Todd for destroying my life and making me sick. I to this very day cannot forget what he did to me. I close my eyes as I feel the panic slipping into my mind, as it always does when I think too much. Thinking has been my downfall. If I could stop, I might forget the sheer terror I felt that cold fall night in the back yard of the Delta Kappa Phi house.

I have spent hours in therapy, being analyzed by shrinks. They try to help me quit having nightmares and severe panic attacks, but they never end. All the doctors look at me with their wire-rimmed glasses perched on the ends of their noses and examine me. They all ask the same questions; I should know I have seen five different shrinks. I think wearing wire-rimmed glasses is like a requirement in the psychology field, at least around here. They must hand them out when they get their degrees.

I now take three antidepressants a day. They are for the continuous suicidal thoughts that haunt me like ghosts on a mission to see me self-destruct. My parents and Grandma watch me as if I am a time bomb ready to explode at any given moment. I cannot find one thing about my old self in me now. I don’t like who I have become. It’s like the real me got lost somewhere that horrible night and she doesn’t seem to have any plans to return. I think the “
real
” me died the night Todd attacked me.

I can remember it like it was yesterday. All of the girls from my sorority house had been invited to a party at the football players frat house Delta Kappa Phi. It was the usual “keg” party of course. I didn’t drink but I went anyway. My friends and Todd begged me to go. I didn’t see the harm in it at that time, big mistake on my part. Beth and Kara, my two best friends, had come up to my room before the party.

We all got ready together it was sort of a ritual of ours since middle school. We were having a great time trying on clothes and talking, just typical girl stuff. Todd had been bugging me to go over to the party with him. I told him I was walking over with Beth and Kara, and for some reason that made him really mad. I had been watching him lately; his temper was bad all the time. I told Beth I thought he was getting into drugs and she agreed. Kara’s boyfriend David had told her the football coaches were watching him for possible steroid use.

The party was in full swing when we got there, music blaring, kids were running everywhere, it was totally wild. Todd was really pushy all night; he wouldn’t let me out of his sight. I remembered telling Beth he was getting to be a pain in the butt, when I snuck off to the bathroom and ran into her in the hallway. Todd was also trying really hard to get me to drink which I refused. I’d asked him to get me a Coke after telling him I did not want a beer for like the hundredth time.

I was in shock when he took off finally to find me a Coke without nagging me to have a beer again. I remember how sweet the Coke tasted, much more so than it should, but I was so thirsty I didn’t think about it much. I sat down on the steps going upstairs as my head started spinning. I felt like I was going to throw up. Todd pulled me to my feet; he swore I needed fresh air.

I could hardly hold my head up as he took me outside. I remember how cool the night air was, it gave me chills. I tried to take a deep breath so I wouldn’t throw up but my stomach just churned. I wanted to curl up somewhere and sleep or maybe even die, since I felt so bad. I wanted to call Beth and tell her I needed to leave but I had left my cell phone in my purse somewhere inside the frat house.

Todd told me I needed to sit down and by chance, (
not
) he had a blanket outside behind the gazebo, far from the party. I felt too sick to see he had this planned out. I stumbled as he led me to the back yard. My hearing was getting muffled and I wondered if I had food poisoning, I was close on that thought I found out later. Todd seemed way too helpful as we finally reached the blanket.

The words he spoke were etched into my mind from that night, and they filled my head as a flash back hit me full force. I curled up on the couch and buried my head, as Todd’s voice filled my mind.

“Let’s sit for a while till you feel better and I’ll take care of you.” He said to me. I felt a little better until he started trying to kiss me and when I said I was too sick he said that was too bad

“I need to go home!” I remembered clearly telling him as my stomach flipped over. He only laughed at me.

“You look so hot tonight.” He purred in my ear and I scooted away. He was pushing me to the ground in that next second and I knew right then. I was in major trouble.

“I’m sick, Todd. I need to go home now please.” I kept telling him this over and over. He grabbed my arms as I tried to push him away from me. I felt a rush of panic now.

“No… babe. It’s okay, it will wear off soon it’s not lethal it’s just to loosen you up a little..you know have some fun. They…they told me that. I’ve used it before anyway…with…well never mind.” He stared at me and he looked a little scared for a few brief seconds.

I didn’t understand what he meant by that. I knew he had done something to me already and it was something bad. I was trying to get through to him that I was sick, but he just didn’t get it. The look in his eyes terrified me. This was not the Todd I knew; this man was crazy. I felt his fingers dig into my arms suddenly as he pushed me down. He slapped me hard across the face without warning. I started crying and the next thing I remember he grabbed me by the hair and slammed my head onto the ground.

I felt pain rip across my head as I fought to stay conscious. I came too quickly, fearing what he might do. I knew I had to get up. I made myself keep my eyes open fighting the darkness trying not to pass out. I could feel Todd pinning me down. My arms seemed to fell heavier and heavier and my legs were like lead weights. Everything was spinning when I looked up, as if I was a child at play on a merry go round. This was no child’s game now, Todd Downs was determined to hurt or maybe even kill me.

I drop what is left of my donut as everything comes flooding back into my mind. I put my head on the arm of the couch trying not to cry. I remember begging him to stop, telling him no, over and over. I tried to scream but my voice seemed to be caught in my throat. In the self-defense classes I took with Beth and Kara they always told us to scream the word “no”. They never told us what to do when we couldn’t scream…I wished they had.

Todd didn’t seem to hear me or he just didn’t care when I pleaded with him to stop. I remember I could still think despite the heavy fog my mind was in. I had to fight. I was not letting that idiot hurt me. I managed to pull up my knee and shove him back. My foot caught his cheek hard. He sat back for a second, dazed. I knew it was about to get worse, when he wiped the mud off his face and just laughed.

“Give up, you stupid hag. That’s all you are, good for one thing.” He crawled back to me, his face in mine. I could smell the beer on his hot breath. “You fight me and I’ll make you wish you weren’t born!”

“No.” I screamed or I think I was screaming at that time. My mouth opened but I didn’t hear anything come out, my body wasn’t my own. I felt like I was floating. My head was spinning. I reached up and scratched his face, which didn’t faze him at all. I could taste blood on my lips, as he started pulling at my clothes. I was too weak to fight; when I heard voices it was Kara and David. David yanked Todd off me throwing him down hard. He was yelling at him that’s the last thing I heard, as Kara knelt down and took my hand.

I woke up three days later in the hospital. I had a concussion, stitches in the back of my head, and two broken ribs not to mention bruises all over. I also learned my stomach had to be pumped out. Todd had put three date rape drugs in my Coke. He nearly killed me with that overdose. I was only thirty minutes from death the doctors told me. Kara told me David and some of the other football players beat the crap out of Todd, for what he did to me before the cops got there. He also had to make a stop at the emergency room before going to the county jail thanks to David and his friends.

I was glad to hear that. I felt like hell when the doctors told me I also had mono or mononucleosis. Thanks to Todd who had passed it on to me a week before the attack. Todd had been seeing three other girls in the freshman class and they all had it too. I couldn’t think of being any worse off than I was now. I was so wrong about that.

So now, I sit here at home still mentally bruised. I have therapy twice a week for being attacked and nearly raped. I have nightmares and severe panic attacks. I’m terrified of people I don’t know and don’t like to go out of the house. I also don’t trust anybody, especially guys. I do not ever plan to date again. I can’t even think about it. I’m doomed to a life alone until I can try to get my life back, if that’s even possible. I thought I would get over it but it’s been months since the attack and I haven’t.

I knew I’d better get ready to see Doctor Mott for his monthly visit. I take a deep breath and wipe the tears from my eyes, from my flash back. I try to be nice as I follow him into my dad’s office not but ten minutes later. Dad’s office is more like a big living room with leather couches and a big screen TV, set to the stock market report 24/7. My dad is busy on the phone as he waves us in.

Doctor Mott has brought his student nurse with him. She is a short, chubby girl my age, with bad acne. I can feel her eyes staring at me. I know she’s probably trying to figure out what kind of freak I am that I have to have a check-up at home. I try to ignore her has I watch Doctor Mott get out his charts and blood pressure cuff, followed by his stethoscope.