Realizing that something was clearly wrong at this point, I reached up and pulled her hands off my neck.
“What the fuck is going on, Juliet? Huh? I know that during class we only had a few conversations, but back then you were this very flamboyant, outgoing person, you feel me? Happy to talk with everybody type shit. Now you’re over here wearing black and acting all shy. The fuck happened since the last time I saw you?”
She sat there, completely speechless. She couldn’t even look me in the eye at first. But when she finally spoke, her voice was barely a whisper.
“I don’t want to talk about it...”
“Tough titty,” I said, holding her gaze. “We’re talking about this shit right now.”
“If you’re going to push the issue, you might as well leave...” she said, though she didn’t make any move to get off my lap.
“Juliet, why you making it so difficult, bro? Something clearly happened to change you, and I don’t like it.” I mean, I liked the goth thing for some reason, but still. “Keeping it bottled up isn’t healthy, bro. You know I’m easy to talk to. Just tell me what’s happening, please.”
“Just leave, Rico...”
“Alright. Say less.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and pressed it into her hand.
“Call 911.”
Yeah. By the look on her face, you could tell she didn’t see that shit coming at all.
“What?” she breathed.
“You heard me. Call the cops. Tell them I’m trespassing and have them physically drag me out of this bitch. Because I know something is wrong with you, and it’s hurting you so fucking much that you’re having a hard time just coming out and saying it. If you tell the police to pull me out of your house, I’ll walk away and never come back.”
She stared down at the phone. Her hand was just hovering over the screen. She looked up at me like I was bullshitting, but obviously you guys know I was being deadass. She looked back down at the screen, her fingers shaking.
“Looks like your hand is shaking there, buddy,” I said quietly. “You can’t do it?”
SMACK!
She slapped me right across the face.
“Just fucking leave...” she cried.
I just looked at her, my head turned slightly from the blow. “No.”
And then she just started hitting me. Over and over again, her hands raining down on my chest and face.
“LEAVE! JUST GET OUT! GET THE FUCK OUT!!!”
Of course the slaps stung. They stung like a bitch. But then again, my mom used to beat the absolute shit of me when I was a kid, so this was nothing. After about the twenty-fifth slap, her hands slowed down. She was panting, her chest heaving as she sat on my lap, completely exhausted.
“You know, there’s an old saying in this world, Juliet,” I said, reaching up and gently grabbing her wrist.
“No... no, what are you doing?”
I didn’t answer right away. I just lightly rubbed my thumb against her wrist, feeling the fabric of her sleeve.
“Hurt people...”
I slowly started sliding her sleeve up, revealing her skin. She went absolutely crazy.
“NO! NO, NO, NO!” She started thrashing like wild, trying to yank her arm out of my grip. But that football grip is kind of tight. “No! DON’T LOOK, please! I don’t want to remember...”
“Hurt people,” I finished.
When I finally pulled her sleeve all the way down to her elbow, the room went dead silent.
My chest tightened. There were thick, vertical scars running all the way down her forearm.
Holy shit...
the voice in my head whispered, sounding completely stunned.
She was actually trying to kill herself, bro. Usually when people cut, it’s horizontal. But she did her shit vertical.
Yeah, she did. The scars were so thick I could literally feel the ridges of them through her sleeve before I even pulled it up. Once the secret was out, she just stopped thrashing entirely. She slumped against me, looking like a child who had just been caught.
“Juliet, I genuinely feel concerned for you, bro,” I said, my voice softening. “Just talk to me.”
“You’re... an asshole,” she whispered, pulling her arm back. I let her go this time. “You’re such an asshole, Rico...”
And then she just broke down.
“WHY?! Why couldn’t you just let me suffer in peace?!” she sobbed, burying her face into my chest and hitting it with her weak fists.
“Why can’t you just let me suffer alone and not bother anybody?! Why do you have to be such an absolute asshole that you want to help me regardless of whether I want it or not?! This is my life! You can’t tell me what to do with my life!! You can’t just swoop in like some actual anime protagonist and...”
Her fists stopped moving. She let her arms fall, her head resting heavy against my chest as she just wept.
“...and just say the right shit at the right time...”
...I have the strongest urge to kill somebody...
the voice in my head growled, a dark, freezing anger taking over.
Oh boy, so did I.
But then... I felt something wet on my cheek. I blinked, confused. When did her tears get on my face? Why were they running down so fast?
I don’t think those are her tears, gang,
the voice said quietly.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand. I looked down at my wet knuckles.
I was crying.
I was actually fucking crying. I hadn’t cried since I was a little kid. I didn’t even cry when I saw somebody get murdered for the first time in the streets. But something about seeing Juliet hurting like this... it was making me furious, but it made me want to cry my eyes out at the exact same time.
She finally looked up at me, her eyes widening as she stared at my face.
“Why the hell are you crying?!”
“I don’t know...” I muttered, wiping my cheek with the back of my hand. “Probably seeing you cry is making me cry and shit. I just can’t stand seeing you in pain.”
Juliet just sat on my lap, her shoulders shaking as she let it all out. She’d been holding this shit in for way too long.
“I was always the same person growing up,” she sobbed, her voice muffled against my chest. “But I never had any friends. Not in high school, not in middle school... not during my entire school career. Back then, I was just a nerdy girl. I wore glasses and oversized anime hoodies. I always had my earphones in, too. I was always friendly to everybody. I’d say hi, I’d try to talk to them, but nobody ever wanted to be my friend back.”
She paused, taking a ragged breath.
“It made me so sad inside. But I just kept smiling. I kept smiling so everyone would think I was okay. But I wasn’t, Rico. I wasn’t okay at all. I was just lying to them. I was lying to myself.”
She gripped my shirt a little tighter.
“Then I got to college, and my mom helped me improve my look. She taught me how to dress differently and do my makeup. And suddenly, the second my looks improved, everyone wanted to be my friend. It was like magic. People who wouldn’t even look at me in high school were suddenly inviting me to hang out. Even you started talking to me. I... I actually had a small crush on you for a while.”
My heart did a weird, heavy sink in my chest.
Man, we should’ve just cracked her back then,
my second voice whispered in my head.
If we did, maybe she wouldn’t be so fucked up right now. We actually would’ve treated her right.
I wiped the thought away, shaking my head to clear the noise. I had to treat it as an intrusive thought. Now was absolutely not the time to be thinking about that shit.
“But then... I met
him
. And everything started to change.”
“Him?”
“Nathan... Rosario...”
I felt my jaw tighten. “The rich MMA dude?”
She nodded, her eyes staring blankly at the floor.
“One day he walked up to me and told me I was very pretty. Of course, everybody said I was pretty, but he kept flirting with me a lot for about two weeks. He was n—he was
acting
really nice. He took me on a couple of 'dates,' but it was mostly just us going to bars and hooking up in karaoke rooms or hotels. He never took me to any actual places like you did. He was my first... everything. And well... every time we hung out, I was either a little bit drunk, or he would give me these little heart-shaped tablets.”
He was giving her MDA?!
the voice in my head hissed.
That fucking Love Drug shit?!
“It was like that for about six months,” Juliet whispered. “I loved him. But I don’t think he ever loved me. He just kept doing the same stuff over and over. Sometimes he would take pictures, and I didn’t know any better. During the seventh month, I told him I didn’t want to keep doing what we’d been doing anymore. I told him I wanted to go on actual dates, and meet his family and friends, instead of just having sex all the time. It was good, yes, but... I just wanted more.”
“And how did he take it?” I asked.
Her lips started to tremble, her chest heaving as she tried to hold back more tears.
“He just... he just took it...”
Hearing those words made my blood boil so hot I thought my chest was going to catch fire from the friction.
“So... he really—”
She nodded, a tear finally spilling over. “He told me if I ever told anybody, he would leak my pictures and tell everyone how much of a slut I was. And he just kept... taking, and taking... and I thought I loved him so much that I even told him my biggest secret. But he just laughed and didn’t care...”
I opened my mouth, but then I closed it. I shouldn’t ask. But I had to know.
“What did you tell him, Juliet?”
“I told him I was autistic,” she whispered. “Throughout my whole school career, whenever people found out, they always pushed me away. They never gave me a chance to talk or even hang out with them. I was isolated for so long, but I just kept smiling because I didn’t want my family to know I was going through anything...”
I looked down at her. “So why are you telling me? Why do you feel like you can trust me more than anybody else, when we don’t even know each other that well?”
“I... I don’t know,” she said, looking up at me through her wet eyelashes. “My teachers back in middle school told me that people who are autistic just... have this compelling feeling with each other. They said you just feel more comfortable around them because they can understand.”
“Juliet, you do know that I don’t even know if I’m autistic or anything, right?” I said. “But even if I am, or if I’m not...”
I didn’t finish the sentence. I just wrapped my arms around her and pulled her into a tight hug.
“I understand your pain,” I whispered. “At least a little bit of it. If that’s enough.”
She hugged me back, burying her face into my shoulder, her grip incredibly tight.
“And when my back felt like it was against the wall...” she murmured, her voice sounding completely defeated, “I just wanted the pain to go away. I found out my family had a suicide clause in our life insurance, so... I thought if I died, then maybe—”
“Juliet.”
“What?”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said, my voice low and firm. “Shut the fuck up talking like that around me, bro. You are way more valuable being here.”
I felt her cheek curve into a small smile against my chest. “Okay... but...”
“I’ll stay,” I promised, holding her closer. “I’ll stay.”
Gang...
the voice in my head growled, and this time, it sounded like pure, unadulterated ice.
This super-rich, privileged-ass white boy took advantage of an autistic girl and her feelings, bro. Not only that, he took pictures and threatened to leak them if she told anyone. And when she said no, like the blackmail wasn’t enough, HE RAPED HER?! What the fuck are we doin’?!
I’ll tell you exactly what we’re doing.
I am on my YNW Melly shit.
Because tomorrow—
I wake up in the morning, I got murder on my mind. AK-47s, MAC-11s, Glocks, and .9s.