The Broken Sister Part 1

The Broken Sister.

by Leanne Davis.

Dedication:.

For anyone who has ever felt all alone and broken.

*We are all broken, that's how the light gets in *

-Ernest Hemmingway-.

Prologue.

KYLIE MCKINLEY GROANED AS she rolled over on the bed to land flat on her back as her left hand flung out and smacked the mattress. The overwhelming thirst was what first pierced her consciousness. Her throat was on fire. It was a fierce, nagging need that made her saliva stick to her tongue as she tried to alleviate the burning by swallowing. It didn't help. She opened her eyes and stared up. Dizziness rushed through her forehead and seemed to make her stomach pitch and roil as if she were on a storm-bound s.h.i.+p. She took in a breath and turned her head to the right, and then to the left.

Where was she?.

Her consciousness started to waken and come alive as sharp as her thirst had. She sat up with freight and looked around.

Bed? She was on a bed she didn't recognize. Why? How?

She gulped in repulsion when she glanced down, feeling cool air over her bare skin. Her jeans were gone. She wore only her t-s.h.i.+rt, a white one with black lettering, the name of her favorite local indie band on it. It was pulled up around her neck, and her arms weren't in it. She grabbed the edge of the s.h.i.+rt and shot her arms through while pulling it down. She let out a cry as she tried to slide up and frantically get to her knees. Where was she? A bedroom. Someone's bedroom. The bed once had sheets on it but they were scattered everywhere so parts of the bare mattress poked out.

It stank. She wrinkled her nose as the rancid odors of sweat and s.e.m.e.n wafted up to fill her nostrils. She let out a whimper as she realized the dried crusty stuff between her legs was s.e.m.e.n. She was what smelled. She and the bedding. There was posters on the wall of famous quarterbacks. There was a water-stained ceiling over her and just a floor lamp for lighting.

What happened? How did she get there? But more importantly, where was she? How was there s.e.m.e.n on her legs?

The panic started to climb up her spine like a monkey up a tree. She whimpered as she hopped to her feet. The carpet was gritty under her bare feet. Why were they bare? She cringed at what touched her. Glancing down her gaze was drawn to the blood smeared on the mattress, dark spots glaring back up to her. Her blood? Its presence was a mocking clue of what happened there. But, as frantically as she tried to scratch through all her memories, she had none, absolutely none, about this room.

Or what the h.e.l.l she was doing in it.

Frantic, she dropped to her knees and looked under the bed frame. She needed her clothes and she needed them now. She needed to leave before someone came back. a.s.suming, of course, she could leave. What was she doing here? Was she stuck? Some kind of s.e.xual prisoner? She panicked and whimpered again as she started pus.h.i.+ng, prodding, and throwing the bedding around until she located her black jeans. She sighed as she scurried to get them over her nakedness, cringing as the material swiped over the crusty stuff on her inner thighs and up between her legs. She saw her boots, separated; one in the corner, one along the opposite wall. She grabbed them and gripped the door handle. She pushed at her hair, a mess of long auburn hair that was snarled and ratted. She brushed it back. She'd sweated along her hairline and it was now thick with the residue of her hair mouse and spray.

When she burst out of the door, she was met by an ordinary, empty hallway. She was in a house. She was still at the frat house! She dropped her chin to her chest. She came here for the party and flirted and Tommy was finally noticing her... and then what? It ended. Her memories stopped there. Last she clearly remembered, she was standing off in the corner of the crowded kitchen near the back door, talking to Tommy, smiling up at him, licking her lips suggestively, and they were laughing. About what? What were they laughing about? Bits of the conversation start to filter in her brain... It was some silly story about high school... and then it ended. Everything was blank. Then here she was, waking up thirsty, dizzy, and confused. Her head was pounding. She had no idea how she got from the crowded kitchen to alone and stripped naked lying on a dirty mattress in the upstairs bedroom.

She quietly stepped forward. There was noise downstairs. Voices. Male voices laughing, talking, ribbing each other. But it was too quiet for the party to still be raging. It was more muted. She stopped at the top of the stairs and then had a view of the front entry and glimpses of daylight seeping in the bare windows. It was morning. Somehow she had missed an entire night of her life.

Maybe she had drank that much. She did drink often way too much when she was partying. She was nervous, and excited to be there. She wanted Tommy to notice her. Maybe she'd just pa.s.sed out from too much alcohol. But... it felt different than that.

She clutched her boots to her scrawny chest. She wished for a shower, coffee, and her mother. She wished the most that she was waking up in her mom's house and going down to breakfast with Mom and Donny and Julia talking nonstop as Donny teased her and Mom. The desire and the breakfast scene played out with perfect clarity in her memories.

The exact opposite of whatever happened here. Nothing played through her memory.

She tiptoed down the stairs. She made it half way before one of them noticed her. They were cleaning up. Two paused from collecting all the trash. Another was mopping up spilled pink liquid, the spiked punch. She stared in fright at the three who spotted her.

"Another one, huh? Well, quit waiting for a wedding ring, continue your walk right out the front door."

She spun around and almost flung herself out of the front door as their laughter followed her. It chased after her like a rabid dog. They were laughing at her, enjoying her misery as she started barefoot, cold, and alone down the sidewalk. Each time she stepped she felt s.e.m.e.n drip out of her core and it squished around her underwear. Each time her legs moved, more spread around her thighs. They are laughing as they had all witnessed her disheveled appearance. She didn't look even remotely like a heartbroken coed.

She looked like a victim of something.

But all they had in consideration or compa.s.sion for her was mocking, evil laughter.

She ran into a few students strolling to get coffee or hit the gym. She kept her head bent down. She staggered to her dorm building. She didn't go into her room. She went straight to the bathrooms, hooked her hand into the stall, and pushed the water to on. She stepped into it immediately.

Cold water poured down over her, her clothes, even the boots clutched in her hands. She let it run and run and run. She opened her mouth to let it fill up her mouth over and over again to try and abate the thirst. It finally turned warm and started to calm her tremors, which came from a combination of fear, grief and cold. She finally found the energy to strip her s.h.i.+rt over her head and pull her sodden jeans off her. She would throw them in the trash.

She curled into the bottom of the stall and let it all wash down the drain. Stranger's s.e.m.e.n. Her own blood. She didn't really know how it got there.

She had no soap. She finally got out and, dripping wet, crossed the tiled bath and put her hand under the hand soap dispenser provided to students to wash their hands. She pushed and pushed on the unit until her palm was covered in the congealed, gooey white soap that smelled like antiseptic. She rubbed it over her entire body and into her hair and then stood some more in the shower. Getting clean. Trying so hard to get clean. It wasn't working.

She finally gave up. She walked naked, heedless of the few she saw to her dorm hallway. She had no keys. She knocked and knocked to no answer. Then she remembered her key had been in her jeans. Silly, stupid girl, she admonished herself. Then she went back to the trash, grabbed her jeans and searched her pockets. Yup, still there. She took it and entered her dorm room, ignoring the few startled looks and one guy who whistled as she walked naked and wet and dripping around the hallway.

What did it matter now, she wondered as she fell onto her bed and wrapped the blankets around her. What did it matter what anyone thought of her now? She was drowsy still. Dizzy. Exhausted.

And maybe raped.

She'd had s.e.x. s.e.x she hadn't wanted or said yes to or been conscious for. Wasn't that rape?

She buried her head into her pillow. But there were no images to banish. There were no noises or smells or memories to replay over and over. There was a blank wall in her.

It was good. She didn't remember it. So it didn't have to mean anything, did it? It didn't happen. It could be buried, suffocated, tossed out, because there was no memory of it to struggle with.

She wasn't really raped. She was, what? What was she? She didn't know. She had no words. She had no memories. She had an aching lower half. She had bled. But she had nothing else.

She had lots and lots of feelings she had no idea what to do with. But how could she grieve something she didn't remember happening to her? Simple: she couldn't.

So, maybe it just didn't really count.

Maybe this was all a blessing.

Huddled under her covers, eyes squeezed shut she chanted over and over: Nothing happened to me. Nothing happened to me. Nothing happened to me.

Maybe if she said enough it would be true.

Nothing happened.

Chapter One.

"HEY, s.k.a.n.k. LOOK OUT!" The car with two guys swerved around her as the pa.s.senger stuck his head out of the window to yell. Kylie stuck her hands into her coat pockets and huddled deeper under it.

Tramp. s.k.a.n.k. Ho. Hooker. s.l.u.t. b.i.t.c.h... Wh.o.r.e.

Kylie McKinley had been called one or more of these on many different occasions since her two and half years at Peterson College. The words rang through her head, tumbling around like dice on a c.r.a.ps table. She had been called such things by the very guys, or on a few occasions girls, she was sleeping with. It totally blew her mind how she was those things, when the person doing those acts with her wasn't. She knew the scuttle that traveled around the school about her. She was easy. The girl to go to for a good time. She would do anyone, any time, for any reason.

Not true. But not totally un-true either.

She glanced over her shoulder as she crossed the street, her book bag b.u.mping against her back as she rushed across before the next wave of cars came through. The day was cloudy and cold. Leaves blew in bl.u.s.tery gusts swirling up and falling down like forgotten confetti from a party. Her boots. .h.i.t the sidewalk just as the breeze whipped over her, catching some frizzies off her scalp from her long hair, which she kept slicked back in a ponytail. She pushed at the stray hairs, trying to smooth them back into place. A voice was calling behind her again. This time no rude slang or names was shouted at her. Just her name.

"Ky! Wait!" It was Meredith. She smiled her greeting and they fell into step together, easy and without any drama or unease.

"Who was that yelling at you?"

Kylie sighed. Yes, so fun to relive the rude slurs she was called sometimes. "Just some a.s.shole from last year."

Meredith's face crumpled. "When are you going to stop?"

"What? Stop with the boys? I wish I could, Mer. You know how much I wish I was actually a lesbian. I tried. Hard. I'm just not."

Meredith shook her head and a reluctant laugh escaped her mouth, which was twisted up in a disapproving pucker. "Why do you have to be so difficult? Of course I didn't mean that. I know you aren't. I don't expect you to. I meant letting these guys talk to you like that."

"I don't 'let' them. They just do. I have a target on my back. You know that. I'm considered one of those girls. One of the girls they talk to that way."

"You don't deserve it." Meredith's eyes s.h.i.+ned with empathy. Kylie winced at the way Meredith took it all so seriously.

She put her hand to Meredith's arm. "It's okay. I really don't care what they think."

"Why does it happen?"

She shrugged. "How does a girl become a social pariah and almost blackballed? Screw the wrong guy. Or actually in my case, be careful who else wants to."

"What?"

"I slept with a guy who had a girlfriend, a sorority sister. He was some big shot in the fraternity, I had no idea. She didn't take too kindly to me and blamed me for what he did with me. She's been pretty awful since and she convinced her sisters to join in the target practice. And she also encouraged the fraternity of the guy I had s.e.x with, hence why every guy in that particular house thinks they can call me whatever they want. It means nothing to them. I'm like free wild game to be shot at." Kylie shrugged her shoulders after the explanation.

"How can things be like this nowadays? How have we gone so backwards?"

"Maybe we never really went forward."

Meredith shook her head. "It would have been so much easier if you'd just have fallen in love with me. I'd never treat you like this."

Kylie squeezed Meredith's arm with a small smile. "I know. I wish so too." Soph.o.m.ore year she'd hooked up with Meredith at the start of the year, hoping to avoid the slurs and c.r.a.p like those that were just hurled at her. But it wasn't for her, no matter how much she wanted it to be. Unfortunately, Meredith had started having strong feelings for her and still did. They were both honest with each other, still friends, even if Kylie couldn't return the feelings. "Where are you headed?"

"Another sociology cla.s.s."

"I have a biology lab. I'll see you, okay? Don't let that c.r.a.p get to you. You're better than that."

Yeah right I am, Kylie immediately thought, but kept the obvious to herself. Meredith got upset if she spoke the truth. Kylie smiled and hugged Meredith. She held on for a second longer than necessary. It always tugged at Kylie's conscious. She hated to hurt Meredith. But there wasn't any way to force herself into loving girls.

She sighed as she turned down the sidewalk, bisecting the gra.s.s that led up to the main quad of the campus. Brick buildings loomed over her on both sides and the center building she was walking towards had a giant, impressive dome of gla.s.s over the top of it that housed the school's library. Ivy trailed up the sides of the buildings, the only color besides the gra.s.s as the November landscape was totally barren and gray. Leaden sky hung almost to the ground and the trees were bare skeletal sticks reaching far up over the walkway. She breathed in the cold air, which was sharp over her lungs.

She deserved better than that. How did Meredith figure? Kylie couldn't fathom how Meredith of all people could believe that. She'd been there, and witnessed some of Kylie's worst behavior. She'd slept with a lot of guys. A lot. During her freshman and soph.o.m.ore years. She had done just about every drug that was available to try. It helped soothe her nerves to deal with college life. It wasn't an easy life for Kylie.

But she didn't quit. Nothing yet had made her quit school and she was proud of that.

She sighed as she finally entered her sociology cla.s.s. What most didn't know about her was that she was pretty intelligent. Her grades were low and her school work wasn't stellar, but the concepts and learning? That all got in her head. She wasn't much of a performer. Or into grades. But she was sure she'd graduate next year. That was something.

She slipped into a seat in the back. Unseen. Mostly ignored. She wasn't all that popular. Not in the daylight or during cla.s.s times. She was overlooked, ignored, whispered about. She now was a social outcast, way more so than last year. All due to the sin of sleeping with the wrong girl's boyfriend. She was startled at first by how another female could be as evil as the one who was currently spreading gossip about her.

She listened the entire cla.s.s period as the female professor talked about the merits and demerits of the media's impact on society. They had a paper due on it by the end of the week. Kylie didn't take any notes, but she quietly took in the professor's entire lecture. She got up minutes before the end and slipped out to miss the crowd. She exited the building and fumbled around in her bag to find her smokes. She found a loose cigarette and lit up, inhaling and exhaling as she sighed with pleasure. While getting the cigarette all arranged, she wasn't watching where she was going and she managed to trip over a root that had pushed up under the concrete to make an uneven lip about three inches up.

She dropped her cigarette and bag as she stumbled right into someone walking the opposite direction. She started to mutter an apology, glancing up at who she had nearly shoved herself into, when her thoughts scattered like the leaves around her feet. Her cigarette continued to smolder on the path. She stared at the guy who had caught her, his arms still under hers, almost cradling her to hold her steady. It normally would have been considered a chivalrous thing to do. He smiled at her, his white teeth s.h.i.+nning and dimples deepening. "You okay?" He nodded to where her foot had turned weird. He c.o.c.ked his head to the side, considering her. His eyes roaming her face. "Kylie, isn't it? I know you, right?"

Her hand started to shake. Her stomach twisted in revulsion... and fear. So much fear. It made cold sweat break out over her entire body. Her skin was hot and cold with stickiness. It was instantaneous. It's his smell. His cologne. It came off his skin in a strong aroma. It was his sickly-sweet cologne smell that she remembered the most clearly, more than anything from that night. As she and Tommy had stood talking and flirting, she had been overwhelmed by the strong scent of him.

Thomas Tamasy. Tommy, to most. She had dreaded this moment: running into him around campus. So far she had rarely. If she saw him, she avoided him. She didn't go to parties at his fraternity anymore. Once, in soph.o.m.ore year, she had walked into her chemistry cla.s.s and he was seated there. She'd walked out and dropped the cla.s.s. She'd done everything to avoid being close to him. But now? Here she was in his arms. It had happened.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed her arms from his grasp. She shook her head in acknowledgment he'd gotten her name right as she kept her face down and gaze glued to the ground at their feet.

He leaned down to get right in her line of vision. He smiled again. Full charm on. He was like that. Outgoing. Life of the party. Flirt and friend to all. "Hey, didn't we... hang out some? Last year?"

Tears threatened to blind her. Her eyes ached. They were burning with the unshed salty tears. She kept her head down. She shut her eyes to keep them in and the images out. She never dreamed he'd bring this up. "Maybe..." she mumbled, barely coherent.

Hanging out? That's what he thought it was? That's what he called it? He raped her. Of all the things that happened to her since school started, much of her behavior and actions were self-induced, but she hadn't deserved what this boy had done to her. But then again, she wasn't entirely sure of the facts. She couldn't one hundred percent say.

So she never did. She didn't tell anyone. She went to the campus clinic and monitored herself for s.e.xually transmitted diseases and had taken medication to make sure she didn't get pregnant. That was the only medical help she got.

But she was eighty-five percent completely sure he had raped her while she'd been pa.s.sed out.

But then, here he was, all smiles on his handsome, all-American, pretty face. Maybe she had it all wrong. He had even brought it up. So if he had raped her or at the very least taken advantage of her, why would he bring it up? Could this be real? What she pictured about him? She didn't remember much about that night... could she be wrong? That night was fuzzy. So fuzzy that she could not for sure tell anyone what happened or what it felt like. She had clearer memories of the evening when she got to the fraternity and an ABC party was raging. She knew an ABC party meant to wear anything but clothes but she hadn't done so. People were dressed in duct tape, newspaper, pillows somehow plastered in the right places, and sheets. It was funny. A prank. Fun. She had gone there because she had been admiring Tommy, who was a year older than her, ever since she first spotted him on campus her second week at Peterson. She'd made it her business to follow him and figure out where he was going to be. She figured out he was pledging the biggest fraternity on campus and made it her entire focus to be at those parties. To be one of their groupies. But she'd held back, kept herself away from Tommy. She'd been unsure he'd be interested in mousy, skinny, freaky her. She was sure he would not. So she admired from a distance, tongue-tied in wonder if he ever even pa.s.sed by her.

She had s.e.x with a friend of his. And then hung with that friend another night and Tommy had come to the party. That's all she wanted: him. Her sole focus was on him. She wasn't sure why exactly. Maybe his looks. Sure. But there were a lot of cute guys at college. Maybe it was because he was unattainable for someone like her, so she enjoyed the fantasy of it.

She had gone to the party for Tommy, and ended up getting him. Just not in a way she had ever considered getting it.

But he was staring at her, now over two years later, and a small smirk started to climb up his cheeks. Oh yes, he was remembering it. He was remembering who she was and how he knew her and... most likely, what he did to her that only he could remember. Because Lord knew, no matter how hard she tried to remember, for she had desperately tried to get the images to form and take shape in her brain and give her some idea of what had happened to her that night. She could not figure it out. She could not play the picture she so knew happened to her.

But he remembered.

His smiled changed, his eyes gleamed and his fingers shot out to dig into her wrist. How had she not seen the Mr. Hyde behind his gorgeous and fake Dr. Jekyll on the outside? He liked what he was remembering. Kylie gasped and tugged her arm back. She jerked her book bag back up onto her shoulder, tapped the cigarette with her foot, and then simply pa.s.sed around him. Running away.

She was shaking. Her entire body was trembling and her stomach was gus.h.i.+ng up acid into her esophagus. She made it towards the outer perimeter of campus before she ducked behind a tree and collapsed onto her knees, catching herself on her hands as she started throwing up all over the gra.s.s. Snot streamed down her face to mix with the bile now heaving from her.

When she was done, when there was nothing left for her stomach to spew out of her, she fell back away from it to her b.u.t.t and pulled her knees to her chest, burying her face in her knees.