A/N: THIS IS A WARNING. THIS CHAPTER deals with some HARD HITTING stuff and even though I warned before you started reading, there is some SERIOUS stuff talked about in this chapter. I won't say to spoil it, but it can be very triggering. PLEASE read at your own risk. This is also a VERY SAD chapter, not the lightheartedness that the chapters usually are, but it wouldn't be realistic if it was happy all the time, right? This is a tough chapter to get through, but it's pretty important. Love you all, - Alex

Chapter 25 - Will

    "Are you okay?"

Three words that always meant the person you were asking wasn't okay. But as I stared at the crazy, beautiful, mysterious girl sitting next to me as she cried, I had no idea what to say. I'd never seen Analise cry in the three weeks we'd been friends, and that was saying a lot considering we'd gotten arrested at one point. But sitting here next to whom I now considered my best friend, I felt an ache in my chest as I watched her hastily wipe tears, making room for fresh ones.

I just wanted to take the pain away from her.

We'd left the party a half an hour ago and she hadn't started crying until it was just the two of us. I felt a sense of... pride? I was proud that I was the only person her walls came down around, even if I was the last person who deserved to see the vulnerable side of her. I felt the urge to reach out and wipe away a tear myself, and that's what I did; I brushed my thumb under her eye, wiping a few tears away with it.

She looked up at me, her bottom lip quivering, and my heart twisted painfully. "Don't cry..." I whispered, wrapping my arms around her. She melted in my arms, laying her head against my chest and a warm feeling settled where her head laid. "It'll be okay."

"I haven't- I haven't cried since..." Analise broke off, a loud sob escaping her and I held her tighter. "I act tough, and most of the time I- I am, but sometimes... Sometimes I can't be."

"No one's asking you to be tough, Analise. Nobody is perfect."

"I shouldn't be crying," she blubbered through tears, shaking her head and running a hand through her messy curls. "I'm better than that! I'm better than them! They don't deserve my tears!"

"So don't give them the satisfaction," I told her, looking into her eyes. "They're not worth your tears, you know that, so don't waste them on them."

We sat in silence for a couple minutes before Analise whispered sadly, "I miss them."

I couldn't help the pang in my chest, wondering if I was good enough. Had I been a good enough friend? Analise must have seen some kind of sign to how I was feeling because she pulled from our embrace and took my hand. "No, not like that. You're a great friend, but Tommy's been my friend since we were babies, and Colin not long after that. It's hard losing a friend when you've been friends for so long, no matter how it happened."

I nodded. "I know."

"And Ashlynn, she's such a... God, she sure is a bitch, isn't she?"

"She sure is," I agreed with Annie. I had slowly been getting used to her cursing, even if it sometimes got to me because I hated it. I saw something in the distance and released her hand, getting up and offering it once more. She looked at it questioningly, but grabbed it anyway, and I pulled her into a standing position. I blew out a breath through my teeth, pulling her to follow me wordlessly. We walked until we got to my house, and I pulled her towards my room.

"Why are we in your room?" Annie asked, speaking for the first time since I'd pulled her off the ground.

I looked at the ground sheepishly, "Well, you're drunk, for one. My house was closer to the party, for two. And for three, I saw they-who-shall-not-be-named heading towards the park, and I didn't want them to see you like this."

Analise stared at me for a minute, looking lost in thought. I saw her staring out of the corner of my eye and only worked up the courage to look at her when she spoke again. "You're perfect."

I laughed. "I assure you, I'm not."

She shook her head slightly. "No, you really are. I haven't found one fault you have yet."

"I have plenty of faults, Annie."

"Show 'em then," she challenged disbelievingly.

"Annie..."

"Come on, I've opened up to you. Your turn."

I sighed, looking down at my lap. I had plenty of faults, but I tried not to let them show. After all, how could I? They made me weak when I wanted to be strong. They showed snippets of the old me, not the person I am now. "I'll tell you my faults when you're sober."

"I'm sober enough," Analise told me honestly. I looked into her big brown eyes and saw the honesty throughout them. I knew I could trust her. I hadn't ever told anyone before. I looked down again before taking my shirt off. I unhooked my belt, pulling my jeans off, leaving me in my boxers. "Will, what are you-"

She stopped and stared as she saw why I'd gotten undressed. All over my stomach, upper legs, and upper arms were jagged, ugly pink scars. They were a representation of my ugly past, a terrible contrast to my pale skin and still very prominent. They were truly hard to miss. Analise gasped loudly, running her hand over them one by one sending shivers down my spine. "Oh, Will, I didn't-"

"Ever since I was a kid, I've had depression," I started the story I'd never told anyone. "I grew up being bullied for how I looked. Mostly it was because I was the ugly fat kid with glasses. I was a chubby kid, I didn't slim down until I started high school. But all throughout middle school was the worst; I was choked after getting into an argument with this kid in gym because I wouldn't change out because I was self conscious. That was when I made the first cut."

I felt tears of my own well up in my eyes, but I fought them and remembered my anger to push them back. I traced the longest cut of them all, going from one side of my stomach to the other. "The things that kid said to me while he was choking me, telling me I should die, I'm too fat; I couldn't take it. So I cut my stomach with a razor, because while I was focusing on the physical pain, for once the mental pain couldn't get to me."

"This cut," I said, pointing to the second longest one. "Was when I lost my virginity. I was a bet," I mumbled harshly, and Analise's eyes widened. "Yeah. The stupid jocks at my old school thought, wouldn't it be funny if we made a bet on the freak kid; so they did, whoever could get me to have sex with them the fastest wins a hundred bucks. My virginity was worth one Ben Franklin, isn't that nice?"

Analise shuddered, reaching out to me. "Will, I-"

I had to get this out or I'd close up, so I continued. "This one," the third longest. "This one was for my fourteenth birthday. Bunch of kids pretended to be my friends, and I decided to have a big sleepover for my birthday to celebrate. They were playing with me, of course, how could I be so naive? They waited until I was sleeping, stripped me to my underwear, and threw me into my family's pool."

"But you were born in January," Analise murmured sadly, probably remembering when I'd told her when we were getting to know each other.

"Exactly," I confirmed. "I'm lucky I woke up and didn't die from drowning or hypothermia. These kids tormented me until I begged my mom to switch my school sophomore year, and I got better, until one kid took a picture of my dad's casket - how he had it, I still have no clue - and he wrote on there that I deserved it. 'You killed your dad, fatty,' he wrote, and I still hadn't accepted my dads death. I tried to kill myself."

Annie was crying again, and I wiped her tears away. "I swallowed all my moms anti depressants and ran the bath and got in. Obviously it didn't work, since I'm here, and she got me to the hospital on time to have my stomach pumped. They had to pump it twice to get it all out, but they did it."

Analise wrapped her arms around my torso, resting her head on my chest. Her tears landed on my chest, and I wrapped my arms around her instinctively. I chuckled humorlessly. "God, you probably think I'm so ugly now."

She looked up into my eyes and her eyes were full of passion. "I never thought you were ugly before, and I don't think you're ugly now. I think those fucktards you went to school with should go die in a well and if I ever met them I'd run them over."

I smiled sadly. "Thanks, Annie. I'm better now, you know? After that, my mom buried herself in her work and got a high paying attorney job and she was never home, so I had to learn to be there for myself. I surrounded myself with school work at my new school, lost a whole bunch of weight, and made a couple friends. I was okay. I'm okay now. Of course the urge to cut is still there sometimes when my depression hits really hard, but I remind myself how far I've come and I beat it every time. I'm so weak and pathetic."

"No, you're so strong," Analise whispered, wiping her tears, now looking completely sober. "God, and I was such a bitch to you. If I'd known-"

I put up a hand, cutting her off. "Don't. That's why I don't tell people, I don't want to be treated differently; for the first six months after my suicide attempt, the people my mom told walked on eggshells around me and I hated it more than anything. I hate feeling like someone's charity case."

She looked deep in thought before she looked back up at me. "So the first day we met, last summer, when you asked if I was suicidal-"

I nodded glumly. "It brought back memories to my attempt. I wanted to make sure that you weren't, because if you were, I wanted to help save you, or at least try; but I didn't want to look like a sap so I tried to joke about it."

Annie looked deep in thought, her bottom lip between her teeth and I took my thumb, pulling on her lip and releasing it from her teeth. "Promise me you won't treat me differently, Annie? You're the only person I've ever told, and I don't want to be treated differently."

Analise held her pinky out, offering me a smile. "I pinky promise, Rando."

A big smile came to my face and I wrapped my pinky finger around hers, squeezing her tighter into a hug. In a shocking act of bravery, I kissed her forehead gently. Her muscles tensed, but she didn't protest, and I smiled against her head. "Thank you, beautiful."