When the bell rang, I jolted up from my seat and grabbed my binder, my head groggy with sleep. Charlie tapped me on the shoulder. “Wow, you look awful. Bad dream?”

I smoothed down my brown hair and yawned. Did I look that bad?

It was an awful dream, I signed to her.

She frowned and hugged me. “Want to talk about it?”

I nodded.

She guided me through the classroom door and made our way to our second period class. On the way, I told her about my nightmare.

It was when I was six, and mom was packing her things. Me and Charlie had begged her to stay, to protect us, but she just hugged us and wiped our tears away. She told us she’d come back. She told us she’d end the abuse.

She had been lying.

Then my nightmare skipped to when I was eleven. My dad had me pinned down, an old shirt stuffed in my mouth to keep me from screaming. He had a just recently sharpened kitchen knife.

He dug the blade into the flesh of my forearms. It hurt so much. Blood was streaming in heavy flows down my arm. Charlie was kicking at him, punching him, begging him to stop. But when I was done, he did the same to her. I could do nothing but sob and scream, clutching my arms that were gushing with blood.

Then I was fourteen.

He had locked me up in a dark closet without food or water for three days. I had broken a beer bottle, and he had punished me with the belt and locked me in here. My only comfort was my sister, speaking encouraging words to me at night through the closet door. My stomach was hollow, and my spine was so pronounced, It hurt to sit in a chair. My ribs were visible through the thickest shirt. The bones on my hands popped out. Some people thought I had anorexia. I did. But in a different way.

My dad would shove food forcefully down my throat, then drag me to the bathroom and would make me throw up by squeezing a tendon in my neck that made me gag. My throat always burned from the acid. Dad only did this to me. Not Charlie. I still didn’t understand why.

Charlie hugged me when I had finished signing to her about my nightmare. I could see tears in her eyes when she pulled back.

“It’s okay, Reeve. We’ll get through this one day. It’ll be okay.”

I wish I could believe that.

The rest of the day was uneventful. We had gotten to our classes without getting lost, and we both made a good impression on our teachers. They had looked at me sympathetically when Charlie told them I couldn’t talk. I hated it.

When it was time to go home, I got to the locker first. Charlie was talking to a group of girls she had already made friends with. I smiled sadly. At least she could act normal. I spun the combination and unlocked the locker. I grabbed my backpack and stuffed my binder in it, zipping it up.

Something fluttered from the top shelf in the locker. A sticky note with horrible handwriting.

I looked at it from its place on the ground, then picked it up. I tried to decipher the hieroglyphics scrawled on the note. I stared at it, then slowly read it.

Come to the boy’s bathroom alone.

 I frowned. There was no signature or anything. As far as I knew, I had no friends, and no one knew my locker or combination. So who wrote this note?

I shrugged. Maybe it was someone who wanted to be friends? I didn’t know. But I was curious, so I grabbed the rest of my stuff and signed to Charlie I’d be at the bathroom. She nodded and turned back around to chat with her friends.

I didn’t exactly know where the bathroom was, but I figured it might be somewhere around the lunchroom. But what if the person who sent me the note had meant a different bathroom?

I didn’t let that thought bother me.

I clutched one of my backpack straps as I entered the boy’s bathroom. There were a couple other guys in there, but mostly, it was empty. I glanced around, looking for a clue that might say that the guy who wanted to see me was here. Maybe I had gotten here before him? I doubted it.

“Hey, you’re Reeve, right?” a deep voice said behind me.

I turned around, and my eyes widened. It was Austin, and three other guys with him. I was about to open my mouth to speak, but snapped it shut. I was dumb. I couldn’t speak.

I nodded instead, and Austin smiled. “I’m Austin, and you don’t need to know my friends here.” I frowned. Austin wasn’t acting as if he wanted to be friends. He had his arms folded and his stance was wide, prepared to spring anywhere. His buddies behind him were grinning widely. One was rubbing his fist.

I blanched, and took a step back.

“Hey, no need for that,” Austin chided, closing the distance between us. He smiled at me and snapped his fingers, and one of his guys leaped forward and stepped behind me. I started to turn around, but the guy yanked my arms behind me, making me yelp.

“Alright, stop.” Austin said. He was clearly the leader of the pack. The kid behind me lightened up the pressure a bit. A bit. His grip was like iron.

“So,” Austin said, walking up to me. “How come you can’t talk? Are you lying, or you don’t wanna talk? Were you born like an autistic freak?”

Something snapped inside me. I couldn’t contain myself. Maybe it was the years of physical, emotional, mental abuse from my dad. Maybe it was the stress. But I wouldn’t let Austin’s comment slide. I just couldn’t.

“YOU DISGUSTING UGLY FREAK!” I roared as I broke free of the kid’s hold and gave a crushing right hook punch to Austin’s jaw. I swung my whole weight into the swing, and was rewarded by a crack, and a cry of pain from Austin.

He reeled back, and his other two friends behind him caught him. “Dude, what the hell?!”

The guy who was holding me smashed his foot into my knee-cap, and my legs buckled underneath me. I knelt on the bathroom floor, my arms pinned behind me and the guy’s knee digging painfully into my back.

Austin stood with the help of his two buddies, and he glared down at me. “What’s your problem, dude? That really hurt,”

I glared back. He was acting dumb on purpose. I wasn’t that stupid.

He rubbed his jaw and squatted down so he could look me in the eye. “So, you do talk.”

It wasn’t a question. I remained silent.

“What, now you can’t or something? Why don’t you talk?”

I spat on him instead.

He turned away with a disgusted look on his face. “Dude, I didn't wanna hurt you, but I will because I just changed my mind.”

He grabbed the front of my shirt and hoisted me to my feet. His head rocked back and slammed into mine with overpowering force. My head swung back.

His fist seemed to gauge a hole in my gut as he punched me repeatedly there. I doubled over and collapsed onto the floor. Austin’s foot rested on my back, pinning me down.

“Man, you could’ve just answered the question. But this is much more fun.”

Then the pressure of his foot left my back. I started to lift myself up, but almost immediately, Austin’s foot smashed back down, slamming me to the ground. I cried out.

“Austin,” one of his buddies warned. Austin turned to look at him, and the guy tapped his watch. Austin scowled.

“You got lucky this time. I could’ve gone much harder than that,”

He yanked me back up to my feet and slapped my cheek lightly. “Oh, and if you tell anyone what happened here, we’ll tell them that you can talk, and that you lied to them. And I'll beat up your sister. Got it?”

I didn’t answer.

He punched me again and walked out of the bathroom with his friends.

I curled up on my side on the bathroom floor, trying to breathe fresh air. My brain went to work. I didn’t do anything to Austin. Why did he do this to me?

I didn’t know why, but I started to cry.

I was stressed, I was overwhelmed, my throat hurt, my stomach hurt. Everything hurt. I stayed there like that.

It had been about thirty minutes before Charlie found me, curled up on the floor, crying silently.

She didn’t say anything, but glanced at the red mark on my cheek. She frowned, then helped me up, supporting my weight.

We didn’t speak as we shambled down the empty halls of the school. The janitors looked at us curiously, but didn’t talk to us.

I looked down at my shoes, trying not to think about what I faced when I got home. Dad would be furious and get the harder and skinnier belt out for sure.