WARNING: There will be triggers by mentions of rape, and a non-explicit recollection of said rape. If this bothers you, please be careful reading this chapter.

Sunday morning.  Kith had on a pair of jeans that still fit comfortably, an olive green scoop-neck sweater, and her favorite pair of tennis shoes.  Waking up that morning, she showered and tossed her hair up in sleek ponytail.  Cameron had on a pair of basketball shorts and one of his frat hoodies, not to mention that hat.  Every time he had it on, Kith could do nothing but shake her head.  He'd been exceptionally nice to her over the past few days, almost like they were friends.  His subsequent boredom with lying around on his stomach for hours had resulted in an outing.

On the hood of his truck they sat, eating ice cream in silence.  Kith licked the outer edges of her vanilla cone.  People had stared at her when they were standing at the counter.  Not really people, just the woman working the register.  She'd looked at Kith's stomach before even bothering to glance up at her face.  Once her eyes finally drifted north, they dropped back down to her stomach, and then back up to her face.

Kith knew the woman was thinking all manner of things, none of which were close to the truth.  She was judging, and it made Kith mad.  So mad that she mumbled what she wanted to Cameron's shoulder and then walked back to his truck.

While waiting for him to return with ice cold sweetness, she leaned forward in a stance she hoped wouldn't give her away as easily.  No one was actually paying attention to her, but she still felt overwhelmingly self-conscious.

"Is Heather your girlfriend?" she inquired, biting a small piece of waffle.

"What? No," Cameron replied, seemingly offended.  He'd gotten a chocolate-dipped cone.  Small shards of it had started to melt and drip along with the vanilla interior.

"Then what is she?"

"She's a girl," he answered, quickly sucking up some ice cream that had run down his finger. "That I occasionally have sex with."

"And she's not your girlfriend?" Kith asked for clarification.

"No," he said in a monotone voice. "I'm not into relationships right now."

"Why?"

Cameron just shrugged.

"She's not the one you'd spend the rest of your life with?"

Choking, he held up a hand.  Banging a fist against his chest, he stared at her strangely. "Hell no," he said steadfastly. "I'm nineteen years old. I don't want anything to do with a wife right now. But even if I did, she wouldn't be it."

"Why?"

"Heather's... I just like hooking up with her," he said after a moment's hesitation. "She's even kind of fun to hang out with. But consistently being with her, I think I'd shoot myself. She's not that kind of girl you bring home to meet the parents. She's fun; that's it." Biting into his cone, he wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. "Why are you asking me this?"

"Just wondering," she said shortly. "I was wondering if I could figure out why she thinks I'm a huge whore."

"You're not a whore," he rolled his eyes. "That's another thing of hers that's annoying. She gets really jealous over the smallest things, which I don't understand. I think it's 'cause you and I are living together, or whatever you want to call it. It shouldn't be a problem. She knows I sleep with other girls, and she sleeps with other guys. She needs to calm the fuck down."

Heather reminded her of some of the girls she went to school with.  They sometimes stared at her like she had a sign on her head.  Most times in the hall, she tried to keep her head down.  She didn't know if anyone was looking at her if she couldn't see anyone else's eyes.

It was annoying really.  It takes two people to create a pregnancy.  But everyone always pinned it on the girl, like it was all her fault.  It wasn't all her fault.  She desperately wanted people to know that, but she didn't want to say it out loud.  Even her former friends had shunned her. They never even said 'hi' to her when she walked past; they'd stopped doing that a long time ago.

"You want a boyfriend?" Cameron asked, taking another chunk out of his cone.

"No," she shook her head fiercely.

"Why?"

"Because," she spoke in a small voice.  There was no time for a boyfriend.  In between living on campus, going to school, and going to appointments, she barely had time for herself.

And soon, that alone time would be gone.  She'd have a live baby, a tiny human, someone relying on her constantly.  There were still five months though, five months to cherish the semi-silence of the world.  Five months until she graduated high school, and became someone's mom.  She shivered, and not because the ice cream was cold.

"You're a cool girl," he nodded. "Most girls your age are all about being with some guy. I don't get it."

"Haven't you ever had a girlfriend?"

"Yeah," he said casually. "But that was in... lemme see... tenth grade. We were together for, like, six months. Then I dated another girl senior year. We were together for three months. I don't know; I don't really do well with relationships."

"Probably because you're so irresponsible," she stated.

"Whoa," he held up a hand and tried to subdue a smirk. "I'm not that irresponsible, okay? I just don't fall into society's view of responsible. I'm not... I've seen worse. There are people worse than me living on campus as we speak. I could be responsible if I wanted to."

"You don't want to be an adult?"

"I'm nineteen. I don't need to be an adult until I'm thirty-five. And by that time I'll have gotten some chick pregnant, at least three times. And she'll take care of me."

Kith just stared at him.  That was the most appalling answer she'd ever heard.

"I'm just kidding," he laughed a bit. "That's a little sad, even for me."

"What do you even plan on doing with your life?" She didn't want to sound rude, but his attitude was just so grating.  He acted like college was some sort of amusement park and he'd just live in his frat house for the rest of his life.  That was far from the truth.  He had two years left and then what?  Did he even have goals?

Cameron looked a little taken aback. "I don't know." He finished off his cone and crumpled his napkin in his fist. "I don't have to declare a major until the end of this year. I'm gonna try to sneak through and just declare next year."

Kith rolled her eyes again, this time off to the side. "What classes are you taking?"

"I'm in microeconomics, some political science class, calculus, and a government class."

"And you don't go to any of them," she said that more as a statement than a question.

"Microeconomics is at nine in the morning," he defended himself. "I left high school two years ago. I didn't come to college so I could keep waking up early. There's a lot of reading, or so I've been told, in the political science class. And math just... it's hard."

"You're not even gonna try?"

"Why are you grilling me right now?" he fired back, rubbing his wrist.  Kith took that as her cue to stop talking.  She finished her cone in a brooding silence. "I have plans." That came out of nowhere. "Okay? I just... right now I like parties and sleeping late and random hook-ups. I know that I'm graduating in two years; I got that, and I know that I won't be in college forever. I'm not one of those guys, alright? I'm smarter than that. I just want to have fun before my life is a monotonous nine to five job and doing adult shit."

"What kind of plans?" she inquired evenly.

"I signed up for those classes because I'm thinking about being an economics major," tossing his napkin into a nearby trashcan, he rubbed the back of his neck, like he didn't like admitting that all. He didn't tell her he'd rather major in history, but even he was practical. What the hell could anyone do with a history degree?

"You'll have to wear a suit."

"What?"

"To work," she explained.

"Don't get ahead of yourself," he smiled, clearing the air. "Me in a suit?"

"Yeah, you're right." That thought was kind of a stretch.  People in suits typically had to wake up in the morning.  Cameron had just expressed his revulsion with that.

"The sexiest thing you'll ever see," he smirked.

"That wasn't where I was going with that."

Scratching the stubble on his chin, he smiled a little wider. "I like talking to you, Kith. You're a good friend."

"Friend?" she asked skeptically.

"Yeah," he said pleasantly. "You have to be friends with someone you live with so closely. I mean... you're not as fun to talk to as some of the guys, but for this situation, you're cool."

"What do you and the guys talk about?"

He made a face. "What do you think we talk about?"

"Oh," she swept hair out of her face.  Friends.  She and Cameron were friends, as proclaimed by him.  He'd even talked negatively about Heather.  For a few seconds, he'd sounded remotely mature, talking about aspirations and plans.  It was kind of refreshing.

Digging beneath her nails, she paused and thought.  He was her friend.  She had a college friend.  Sure, she lived in his room, but they could still be considered real friends.  Right?  She definitely didn't have left any in her school.

She felt her heart pounding.  Open and closing her fists, she slid her hands up and down the length of her thighs.

"We're friends?"

"Yeah," he nodded, confirming what had already been said. "What, you don't want to be friends with me?"

"No," she shook her head. "I mean yes." Was he really her friend?  It had never been so hard to trust someone, or people in general.  Recent events had made it difficult to be so willing. "I... there's something..."

She couldn't finish.

Wrinkling his forehead, he glanced over at her. "What's the matter?"

Squeezing her eyes shut, she rest her forehead into one of her open palms.  Cameron turned slightly on the chilled hood so he could look fully at her.  His smile slowly disappeared into a concerned line. "Kith, what's wrong?"

"Nothing," she shook her head.

"No it's not," he refused to believe her.  Her face had paled a bit. "What's the matter with you?"

"I was...." looking away from him, she felt like the entire world was listening.  The last word came out so quietly that he leaned forward to hear her better.  She didn't repeat it.

"What?"

"He..." she faltered again while trying to quell the rising nausea. "He raped me."

Dazed by the information, he just stared.  After a few seconds of blinking and contemplation, he struggled to formulate a sentence. "Who?" That was it.  That was all he could come up with.

"Austin," she admitted.  Her lips barely moved as she uttered his name.  She'd wanted to tell someone for the longest time.

"Austin who?" he questioned.  The only Austin he knew was his brother, and that was crazy.  His younger brother wasn't a rapist.  Instead of continuing, she glared down at the cold tar, at the white lines marking the parking spaces of the strip mall.

"Austin," she said more forcefully.

A chain explosion of thoughts fired off in his head.  He studied her hunched form, the side of her head, everything.  No way, he thought to himself. His younger brother wasn't like that.  He wouldn't do that.  Austin and Kith were friends; they always had been.  They were supposed to get together after this whole baby thing.  Austin didn't.

"No," he shook his head.  Kith must've been confused.  She must've just been mistaking her brother for some other asshole, some asshole who thought it was okay to take advantage of a girl. "No, he didn't. Austin wouldn't... wouldn't do that, Kith."

Tears in her eyes, she whipped her head to the left, making direct eye contact with him. "He held me down," she spoke through the sudden chattering of her teeth and her racing heartbeat.  Kith knew what she was talking about.  She remembered exactly.

It was near the end of summer, August. She was over at his house, along with some of their friends.  Their day had consisted of a trip to the beach and then downtime at Austin's house.  Cameron had just left for college a few days earlier.  Even if he'd been there, he wouldn't have hung out with them.  He'd always done a good job of acting like he was five years older than them as opposed to just two. 

At the beach, they tanned, swam, made sandcastles, and played Frisbee.  The majority of their conversations consisted of excitement over finally being seniors and graduating.  Leaving their sandy bags and towels in their respective cars, they flopped down in the living room to play video games and talk about their upcoming classes for the year.

After losing for the third consecutive round, Kith got up to go to the bathroom.  She'd had to pee like a racehorse for the past hour and a half.  She went in, did what she had to do, flipped off the lights, and came out.  Austin was just standing there when she came out of the bathroom.   He told her he had something in his room he wanted to show her.  It wasn't that big of a deal since she'd been in his room a million times since elementary school.  She'd seen everything, done everything; she'd even slept in there.

She didn't know that he was going to lock the door.  She didn't know that he hadn't intended to show her anything at all.  When she got inside, he shoved her.  Thinking he was joking, she shoved him back, and laughed. 

She laughed. 

Until he pushed her again, harder. 

She leaned against his bed in order to stabilize herself, but quickly realized that was a bad idea.  Once it finally dawned on her that Austin wasn't playing around, she freaked out.  But she was already on his bed. 

And he was already on top of her with his hand firmly over her mouth.  No amount of squirming or fighting got him off of her.  He wouldn't move.  And no matter how much noise she made, no one heard her.  Their friends were right out in the living room, and no one heard her.

He effortlessly unbuttoned the white button of her pink shorts, revealing her drying tie-dye bikini bottom.  She screamed at him to stop, to get off her, but he wasn't listening.  And no one else knew because his hand killed her cries for help.  She cried and cried and cried, and he didn't stop. 

When it was over, he left her there, alone on his bed, crying, shaking, and bleeding.  He went back out to the living room to play games.  After composing herself, she made up an excuse and fled.  She ran home, took off everything, and dove into the shower, sobbing the entire way. 

The clothes she crammed into the bottom of the outside trash can because she couldn't bear to look at them.  They had sand and ocean and blood on them, and she didn't want them anymore.  She didn't want anything.  She clearly remembered feeling like she wanted to die.

Cameron gazed at her in a catatonic silence.  Kith didn't even bother to wipe away the tears rolling down her face.  The act of telling someone had sapped all of her energy.  Staring off into the distance, he ground his teeth together.

"Get in the car."

She didn't move.

"Get. In. The car," he said more forcefully.  Hopping off the hood, he whipped the keys out of his pocket.  Confused, Kith used her sleeves to dry her eyes before following him into the car.  In the passenger seat, she wasn't even buckled up before he threw his truck in reverse.

In silence, he switched gears and tore out of the parking lot, mumbling to himself.  Tightening his grip on the steering wheel, he rested an elbow on the side panel, alternately stroking his forehead and muttering obscenities.

"Cameron."

He ignored her.

Seeing the exit sign they were supposed to take to get back to campus pass in the rearview, she thought the worst.  Resting her head against the window, she let the tears slide down her cheeks like waterfalls.  What have I done, she questioned.  They spent an entire hour in the car in a stale, stifling silence.  It took some time, but she gradually realized where he was taking her.

The houses and the buildings were more than familiar.  They were home.  Whipping into his neighborhood and completely ignoring the residential speed limit, he sped to his house, and parked in the driveway.  Tearing the keys out of the ignition, and still not speaking to her, he threw his hat off into the backseat, and slammed the door so hard that she jumped.

Oh man, some shit is about to hit the fan.