Crushes

Chapter 8

It was finally the last hour of the day and I was really eager to talk to Kate. I walked in and everyone was sitting in their usual spots, except for Sky, who was sitting in my spot, next to Tyler and Kate was sitting by herself. I took a seat next to her, "hey," she said quietly. The bell rand and the teacher explained what we would be doing, "we can work on it later."

"That's something that I never thought I'd hear Kate say," I say to her, a smile on my face.

"Shut up, I care abut my grades, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy slacking off and talking," she says.

"What were you going to tell me?"

"Oh yeah," she says, her mood changing, "if I stop talking, don't make me talk more, it means I need to calm down and need to hold back tears." I nod at her and she continues, "so, in eighth grade, like I said, Sky was dating someone and was spending all of her time with him and didn't notice that I needed to talk to someone," she paused, I did as she said and didn't force her to continue. After a few deep breaths, she was back to it, "my mom had never been proud that I was like my dad, she wasn't the nicest to me. Like, she didn't beat me or anything, but she verbally abused me, always saying how I needed to be more girly, once she realized that that wasn't going to affect me, she started saying how I was too ugly, no one would ever love me, nothing could fix my body, no one was going to love me, stuff like that," she pauses again. "It hurt me more than I thought it would, but I eventually got used to it, but then, she started hitting my dad, she would scream stuff like 'you're the reason she won't be loved,' and, 'you're just teaching her how to fail.' I got really mad when she said these things to my dad, like yeah, it hurt when she said stuff like that to my face, but it made me really mad when she was beating my dad and blaming him for everything," she takes a deep breath, "so I stood up for my dad. That's when she got out a belt," she pulled up sleeve and showed me her arm. Right on her shoulder was a giant scar from where a belt would of hit her, "I knew my dad was afraid of her, so I knew he wasn't going to do anything about. This kind of stuff continued until my dad decided to take me and move away from her. Her words have always stuck with me and my biggest fear is that she will find us."

She stops talking and breathes in and out slowly, they are unsteady breaths. I stay quiet for a few minutes, partially processing what Kate told me and partially letting Kate calm down, "you went through all of that alone?"

"Yeah, it sucked," she said unsteadily.

"You didn't have to tell me that."

"No, I needed to tell someone, now I know if she ever comes back, I can talk to you," she goes quiet.

"What's wrong?"

"I know you were listening to Sky and I this morning, you know how I said my mom's words still affect me?"

"Yeah."

"She told me that I was too fat and," her voice trails off.

My curiosity is picking at me and I'm also very concerned for her, but I manage to say, "you don't have to tell me."

"Thank you," she says.

"No problem."