Just What I Needed

July 8 (Afternoon)

Dear Nicholas,

They arrested Scotty last night. Apparently, he didn't go home after he attacked me. He tried to skip town and hide out at a friend's house in Plymouth. He admitted to attacking me when they found him.

It's probably good that he skipped town. Holly texted me that after I feel back asleep, Nate went out looking for him, even though he told me he wasn't going to go looking for trouble.

I'm still going to have to come back from college to go to court and see that smarmy face again. I'm so lucky that Holly came along when she did. Can you believe that he attacked her last year? I'm sure if you had known, you'd have fixed that situation real fast.

I woke up in the middle of the night and heard dad sobbing in his study last night. I know I was mad at the way he handled losing you and mom but he has promised to go and see a therapist. Dealing with Nate's accident and then my attack certainly hasn't helped very much. It just seems to be one thing after another. Hopefully all of this is behind us.

If you have any kind of pull wherever you are Nicky, can you please put in a word to send us some relief from all this chaos and pain? We're all so tired.

Love you Nicky.

Love your still angry but slowly healing sister,

Jordy

I could smell the scent of cooked bacon wafting down the hallway and infiltrating my room. As I swung my legs out of bed and stood, a wave of dizziness washed over me and I sat back down just as quickly. I waited for the world to stop spinning and slowly made my way to my feet again.

Taking a few short steps to steady myself, I made my way over to the closet to change out of my pyjamas and then walked down the hall to the bathroom so I could see how bad my reflection was.

I had a low throb originating at the back of my head but at least the pressured pounding was gone. The light from outside that was filtering in through the bathroom window was nice and I was thankful that my eyes were not as sensitive to the sunlight anymore.

I looked into the mirror and barely recognized the face staring back at me. My entire face was swollen – big puffy bags under both eyes and a swollen bottom lip that had a healing split. Under my left eye, a deep purple bruise had formed and just above the eyebrow on the same side, a gash that had scabbed. I didn't realize how much of a scuffle I had gotten into with Scotty.

I turned on the tap and felt the warm water run over my hands. My hands felt swollen and my knuckles were bruised. At least the scrapes had scabbed over.

"Are you ok?" Nate peered in the room.

"Yes," I replied. "Just enjoying the feel of the water. I didn't realize how awful I looked."

"You never look awful," Nate said.

I looked up from the sink but he was already gone, back down the hallway.

Grabbing a face cloth from the shelf, I ran it under the water and gently wiped some of the dried blood from my forehead. The bruise under my eye was tender so the idea of trying to put cover up over the bruise sent shivers down my spine. I was just going to have to wait until the tenderness faded.

I looked up at my reflection again. There was no way I could go out in public looking like this.

My arms felt heavy and sore as I tried to pull my hair up into a bun.