I think at one point in every person's journey into adulthood they struggle with one form or another of body dysmorphia. Maybe it's because of a passive aggressive comment from your crush in passing that eats away at you and you run home to spend hours staring at yourself in the mirror and turning to examine your body from different angles to understand why you aren't enough. Or it could possibly be from some mean girl at school who spends most of her time in the bathroom and school struggling with the exact same thing and projecting it on to you.

For April Howard, it was a narcissistic mother and abusive father continuously engraining it into her head that she was a whale. Anytime she'd grab an apple, they'd make snide comments and though she'd eat that fruit, she'd spend the next half hour with her fingers down her throat sobbing as she threw it back up.

I had suspected that the beautiful, quiet blonde struggled with huge demons, but never could I have imagined the hell she went through. And I didn't have to, not until she showed up to support group a few days after Gage's drunk night out with a broken nose.

Though he'd hardly spoke to me, a look of shame had become a permanent mask when he did glance in my direction while we sat outside the school to smoke. The second April sat down on my left, all his own issues vanished and he stared at her in horror.

"What the hell happened to you?"

Way to be subtle Gage.

"Oh, nothing. I'm super clumsy." she stood quickly and headed for the table of food to our backs, something she'd never done and a sure sign she wanted to escape our sympathetic looks and Gage's inconsiderate question.

Once she'd been pulled into conversation by Joe, I looked to Gage. He held his hands up in surrender seeing my warning look. "We were all thinking it."

"Doesn't mean you say it." I whispered. "Especially like that."

He mustered up an apology that April shrugged off just as the meeting started. There were a couple new people, but I was so focused on the girl beside me that I didn't bother to try and learn their names or remember their faces. The bandage over her small nose did nothing to hide the black and blue marks forming beneath both of her beautiful, sad blue eyes. One of her hands was rubbing her pant leg repeatedly, the other was raking through her thin hair, and her eyes remained glued to the door. Then halfway through the meeting, she stood and excused herself to the bathroom. Gage's lips turned down in a frown, but I couldn't find it in me to stay seated and just watched her leave.

"Mar, don't." Gage touched his fingers to my knuckle, stopping my flighty movement. "It isn't your fight."

I hated that saying. I hated those four words. Because I would never want someone to say it to anyone trying to help me.

Instead of sitting and arguing with him, I shook his hand off and hurried after April. Though the faucet in the bathroom was running, it did nothing to overpower the sound of her vomiting in the toilet a few feet away, her arms hugging the porcelain for dear life. She hadn't heard me walk in, but just as she reached to up to insert two fingers in her mouth, I shut the water off and she flushed the toilet. She stared up at me, blue eyes swollen around the edges and glossy with fresh tears threatening to break the surface. I didn't say anything to her; speaking had become something of the past for me over the last year. I grabbed a handful of paper towels from the dispenser instead and dampened them before sitting crossed legged in front of her. I took the first couple to her mouth, then gently dabbed at the mascara running around her eyes.

She touched her cold fingers to my wrist, and not surprisingly, her nails were bitten down and raw, much of her skin was even peeling and bloodied.

"I'm sorry." she whimpered.

I still didn't answer; whether it was because I didn't know what to say or because I knew it wouldn't make a difference, I wasn't sure in that moment. Once she was clean, she slowly lowered herself on to the bathroom floor, her head across my lap and one hand grasping my knee while she bit down hard on the knuckles of her other. Her blonde hair spilled across my black leggings, and I saw just how much of a mess of tangles it was. It wasn't too long after she'd grasped tightly on to my kneecap that she screamed against her fist and started crying uncontrollably.

I knew all too well what it was like to suffer through this pain alone; to scream and cry and slam my hands into everything and watch them bleed. For the voices to win and leave me in a fetal position on the floor with nothing left on the tile except the shell of who I used to be.

So I stayed. I sat there with one hand in her hair and the other around her forearm. Because she needed to know that she wasn't alone. That this wasn't just her fight.

**

April didn't say anything when we left that bathroom at the end of support group. She stood, dusted herself off, then hugged me. It was once we'd went our separate ways that she started to send the texts. That she explained that her parents were responsible for her broken nose, but that she didn't want to talk about it anymore. She'd explained that she felt she owed me an explanation after what happened.

Given that my mother had to take Louis to his game, Gage had picked me up and was unfortunately my ride back home. I knew my stepbrother would be home, probably outside in the bed of one of his buddies truck. He didn't try to pry what happened with April out of me, maybe he figured I trusted him enough to start the conversation on my own. But I didn't. I only sat with my head against the window and thought about her.

About how she had to sleep in forty degree weather that was supposed to drop into the low thirties this coming week. Because that was better than the alternative of being beaten senseless and mentally abused by her parents. I thought about how, though I didn't sleep much and was always on guard halfway off my bed, that she had to sleep on an uncomfortable faux leather seat with one blanket and a couple crappy pillow while I laid inside a warm house under a roof.

"You doing okay?" Gage must have seen a change in me because he broke the silence in the warm car. "You've been pretty quiet."

"My parents want to start me on antidepressants." I felt the need to keep April's life within myself. She deserved that much. She had trusted me with the information, not Gage. "Dr. Chao was talking to me about them this morning."

A dark look crossed his face. "I hate them. Make me feel numb. Like more so than usual. I understand they're supposed to make me not feel so much pain, but I legit feel nothing. At all. I could try and kill myself again and probably wouldn't feel it."

"So you don't think I should take them?"

He sighed and pulled one hand from the steering wheel and buried it deep in his dark hair. "I think that's a decision you need to make on your own, Mar. Maybe you'll have a different experience with them."

"Can I ask you something?"

He smiled a little. "You just did."

"Gage." I said with a slight edge in my voice. "I'm serious."

"Go ahead."

I kept my eyes trained ahead of me on the traffic. "Do you ever feel ugly? Like so disgusting you can't look at yourself in the mirror?"

I'd come to know Gage enough in the last month that I was starting to learn what his triggers were. Outside of his father and my brother, it was safe to say talking about his personal life was another. He always grew anxious or aggravated when I mentioned anything in relation to it. Now, his jaw set and if there wasn't a quiet eighties ballad softly filling the car, I was sure I would be able to hear his teeth grinding against one another.

"I broke my mirror." was what he eventually croaked. "Is that enough of an answer for you?"

I slumped back in my seat hearing the harshness in his words. He calmed himself the rest of the way back to my house, but a tension filled the car as soon as he pulled on to my street. Because I had hit it right on the money. Louis sat in the back of his teammates pick up and they were all laughing and shoving each other playfully.

"You're not ugly, you know." I said, afraid to look at him. "I just thought you should hear that from someone who cares about you."

"Sometime ugliness is more than just physical looks, Marley."

I turned to him at that. He was still staring at my stepbrother, and though there was anger and hatred in those eyes, there was also a yearning in there too. A yearning to not have to struggle to get out of bed every morning, to be loved and adored by everyone everywhere he turned.

"You're not ugly inside either, Gage. Not like he is." I looked to my brother again. "If you were, you would have run in the other direction when you saw how fucked up I am."

He pried his eyes off Louis and looked at me. "We're all fucked up, Marley. You. Me. April. Dr. Chao. That entire support group."

"But you could have continued on and avoided me like everyone else did and you didn't. And you've been here for me this last month in a way I can't explain to you. Thank you."

With that I reached across the console, touched the top of his hand than stepped out of his car. I threw my hood over my head, relieved to see Rodger standing out on the porch hollering at the boys as I approached. I looked over my shoulder to the end of the street where Gage had parked his car. Once he saw that I was on the porch, as far as I possibly could be from Louis, he started his car again and sped down the street.

My mom poked her head out from the kitchen when I walked in, but saw my expression and sighed before going back to cooking. Xavier was darting around the room with a model airplane Rodger had helped him build sometime this week. He grinned when he saw me and nearly knocked me off my feet with a huge hug around my legs.

"Hi, Marley!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Look at this pwane. I love it!"

I tried at a smile, hoping it'd be convincing enough for the three year old. "Wow, that's a cool plane, Xai! Did Daddy help you build it?"

"Yes!" he then ran off toward the open door to his father and I took advantage of it and raced up the stairs before he could catch me again. Once I was in, I shut the door behind me and dropped my bag on top of my comforter. Listening for footsteps, I pulled my sweatshirt over my head when I heard nothing and moved to the body length mirror beside my dresser. To my relief it cut off my head, as I had no desire to face myself right now. But as I stripped out of my pants and stared at my body in the mirror, I understood how April was so broken and saw a completely different person in the mirror and pictures.

Because I didn't see Marley as a whole. I saw scarred thighs with fat overhang and when I turned to see my profile, I saw a butt I'd once thought was my best feature with nothing but stretch marks and cellulite. My stomach help a lot of stretch marks too that touched at my belly button, and one of my breasts was bigger than the other. Stretching my arms out beside me, I found more fat hanging loosely off them. Worse than all the disgusting things I was seeing, were the things that weren't visible to the naked eye. I still saw the bruises up and down both of my legs, the blood trickling down my legs from my cervix. I saw the bruised ring shape near my windpipe that was hit so bad that, even now, I couldn't ever get a full breath out.

Shoving the mirror, I watched it topple over on to its side and I sunk to the ground, my back pressed against the bed frame. Slowly I pulled my legs in and hugged them tightly against my chest.

Because Louis was right.

I was ugly.

I was worthless.

I was a whore.

I should have died.

I shouldn't be here.