Bleeding Heart

A Story by Hannah Wilcox

People lie. It is something we all do. We lie with good intentions, cruel intentions and everything in between. We lie to protect those we love from the harsh slap of reality, and we lie to protect ourselves from reality. People lie to each other; she lied to me.

I think somewhere deep down I did know what was going on. I just ignored the nagging feeling that something was wrong, until I couldn’t any more. I had to find out, had to protect her from the horrible mistake she was making. I didn’t realize that was what I was doing, I was just curious; I wanted to know what she wasn’t telling me. Once I knew I could not hold it inside, I had to tell, I could not believe, could not face this reality alone.

I knew how it began; he drove her home from the mall one day. They had been sitting in front of her house, when he told her. “You’re kind of hot, for a freshman.” He had taken her with just that one line. She knew he could see past her braces, her flaws, her freshman status. She was so taken that HE was interested in her, she gushed to me about it for hours, I knew that moment in the car so well I could have been there.

I knew what happened after. She was over the moon that he was giving her the time of day; he was… HIM. I sat through endless stories of what they had done. She would go to his house to be with him, they would just watch TV and eat cereal. They would hang out at the mall, they would go to the park, they were having fun. All this time telling her parents, she was at Ashley’s, or Katie’s house. They had no idea what was going on, she did not think they should, nothing bad was happening. Then something did.

She moved from the second floor to the basement. The bedroom had a window that opened out into a well, a personal door. That is when it got serious, he started coming to the house late at night. The first few times it was just to hang out, they talked for hours, about anything, everything. Then it was to tell her he was not into his girlfriend anymore… Then it was to spend the night “snuggling”. He thought it was funny that they were sleeping together before they slept together. She would sneak out to go for midnight drives with him, and he would sneak in to be with her.

I knew all about him, what he was doing, what he expected. I told her, I tried. We joked about what a “man w***e” he was, but she was just playing along for my benefit. She did not want my opinion anymore, she did not want my “motherly” advice, she wanted him. I asked her about it, she lied, and it did not even phase her. I don’t know what I expected, but it was not as bad as what happened. I pushed her to tell me more about him, and what was happening, but she cut me off. She stopped talking to me about him; all I got was monotone responses about past experience. While cutting me off, she was telling everyone else the juicy details of her life. I was suddenly untrustworthy; she did not want me to know what she was doing. I got curious. I wanted to know.

I needed to know what was going on, so I took her phone. I knew she had him in her contacts as Cousin David; I scrolled through her messages and found his.

“What should we do now?” (Her)

“What’s one of your Fantasies?”(Him)

“Shower?” (Her)

“Not as fun as you might think…” (Him)

“Oh” (Her)

“What about that friend of yours, what’s her name? Emily or something? She’s into me right?”(Him)

“No, we can’t tell her, she doesn’t know that we did it.”(Her)

I dropped the phone to the bed, backing away. Running away from the knowledge. That night a dark feeling settled into my stomach, I couldn’t sleep well. He was 17 and she was 14, I couldn’t comprehend. I wanted to believe there was an idium of innocence left, that the world wasn’t a reality TV show. The next morning I had to do something, I couldn’t morally support this; cover the lies and secrets like her. So I told.

I betrayed her, destroying her life.

Worse, though, she doesn’t know it was I who told. I lied, pretended I didn’t know, she still didn’t tell me. I was never supposed to know.

I know why she kept it from me, why she lied. She knew I wouldn’t approve. She was ashamed, somewhere deep inside, afraid of what I would think of her if I knew. She knew what she was doing was wrong, she knew.