Together

1

Friday, February 28

I could be more motivated. Really, I could. I have this nice, sparkly, pink notebook that my aunt gave my sister for her birthday, but my sister didn't want it, so she gave it to me.

And now she wants me to write in it and my sister is a little stubborn monster. She's nine. I mean, Rowan isn't the smartest of kids, but are any nine-year-olds?

Rowan, my little sister, is in third grade. She has this enviable blonde hair that comes down to her shoulders and, sadly, she's prettier than me.

She's nice enough, but she can wreck and burn when she's opposed, she's a screaming, crying mess when I do something that upsets her, and she has a really strong fist. So yeah. I hate my life. Specifically, I hate her, but she is the closest thing to my whole life, so I think you get what I mean.

But I have a boyfriend, at least? I'm fifteen, in my sophomore year of high school, and I'll be sixteen in three weeks.

There's nothing to look forward to, really. Just a non-existent party with non-existent balloons and stuff.

But I haven't told you my name yet. I'm Luna Abbott. I live in Denver, Colorado, or a suburb of it, called Arvada, and my life absolutely sucks.

But seriously. It does. My dad is out somewhere in Europe, doing medical work on refugees and getting all of them better again. He got called by the government a year ago and hasn't come back. I miss him a lot and often go to bed thinking about him.

And my mother? Well, she's, umm. She's annoying as hell. And super strict. And gets mad when I do one little thing wrong or tell one little white lie! I mean, come on!

I'm bored. And it's eleven-thirty. I should go to bed.

Saturday, March 1

I spent most of today outside, biking around town. I used all of my allowance for the last year to buy myself a phone. I get twenty dollars a month, so that times twelve is two hundred and forty dollars! I bought an iPhone 7 with 128GB of space online for two hundred and thirty-three dollars, plus a new case, which cost me six dollars, and then I had one dollar left.

I'm broke and it's the bare truth.

Sunday, March 2

My boyfriend, Caleb, texted me to meet him behind the school. Is this creepy? I trust him, though, so I am going to go.

Wednesday, March 5

I could be in school right now, learning about things like ratios and all that tenth grade stuff, but instead, I am in the hospital, with immense pain in my, well, I won't talk about that.

Rape. That is the only word that runs through my head right now. I can hear it loud and clear.

I can still hear his shouts at me as he performs what must be the most gruesome and horrible act anyone has ever done in Arvada.

He kicked me down in the area behind the school and did it. I don't even want to say the word, in fear that if I do, he'll come back and hurt me like he did before.

I writhed and kicked at him but he is a big guy and I am a small girl. I am five feet tall and that's that, so he easily pressed me down and did his thing as I screamed for help. There was no one there to answer my calls.

He kept whispering things at me, but I was fighting. He fought back. He punched me in the cheek and left me there. In the woods behind the school.

Thankfully, three hunters came up from the "willows beyond" and saw me there, all swollen and bruised, with blood in my mouth. I was barely breathing. It had been a day since Caleb left me there.

I was nude and grungy.

I am missing a tooth and luckily it is not my front one. But it gets worse.

I have a black eye. A really bad one. And then it gets even more horrible as you go down my body.

My breasts are bruised, I have cuts all over my torso area, and they think that, with that much blood coming out of my crotch, I may be pregnant.

I have cuts all over and I feel sick as a pig, but I escaped with no other internal injuries other than my face.

There isn't any word on whether Caleb's been caught. Apparently, he fled after what he had done. This sounds horrible but I hope he isn't dead.

Not like I would walk past him and not kick him in the balls if I saw him on the street one day. But I don't think that'll happen. Although, I will be surprised if he makes it three days without turning himself in.

Caleb is a rich boy. He has everything handed to him with a pretty little bow wrapped around it. He won't survive without three meals a day and a heck of a lot of clean clothes from Maison Margiela or some other ridiculously expensive boutique that only ridiculously rich people can afford.

I am staying in the hospital for two more weeks because I have a severe iron deficiency anemia and I am dehydrated beyond belief.

Ugh.