Secret at the Knolls (a demi lovato/timberline knolls fanfic)

Chapter 11 Laila Lies and Napping

Beloved Reader: TRIGGER WARNING: mature content, cursing, self harm and sexual themes present. You are more information than this story so if you are struggling please please do not read this. Reach out! Message me here or on Kik (username ghdcanada) or talk to an adult you trust. You are loved. You are beautiful. You are enough. Much love, LA

Kayla

"Fuck!!" I swear loudly and Laila winces.

"I'll take you to the nurse to get that cleaned up" Laila said still staring at the crimson line that was fast approaching my ankle as if in a race to yell loudly that I had fucked up. Kayla the amazing fuck up!!

" no it's ok, I scratched myself when I was getting dressed" I said, Kayla stay cool. hoping she will believe me. "I filed the nail off so it won't happen again" I stare into her eyes at the "it won't happen again" part as if begging her to let it go. I don't normally pray but I am at the moment, please let her leave it, please let her leave it, please let her leave it.

"Let me check the scratch, if it's deep enough to bleed like that you should be wearing a bandage on it. Show it to me now please." oh shit, it sounds like there is no wiggle room in her voice and I suddenly feel clastrophobic like I did that one time my brother and I were playing hide and go seek and I hid between the fridge and the wall and I panicked because I couldn't out.

I sighed and lowered my left waistband of my shorts to expose my cuts, some new and oozing blood, some scabbed over, pink new scars and some white scars like a graveyard of every hurt in my journey, every moment of anguish and loss.

"oh Kayla" Laila says but it comes out like a whisper in the wind. She hands me a bunch of klenex which I put on the worst gouges. 

"Please Please can we keep this between us?" I ask knowing the answer just as much as I knew the answer when I asked my Dad if he loved me.

"no" she shakes her head "I'm sorry Kayla, we just can't."

"oh yeah because you don't want to lose your precious JOB!!" I spat out in a fury while I sat on the floor with my knees up to my chest as if that would guard me from future hurts. it never worked. " because you have never been here, you don't know how hard it is, how much presure it is, how hard it is to be so far away from your family and have to be spewing out our secrets like you are reaching in our brain for them" I couldn't stop "how it feels to have all that STUFF you have neatly packed away brought out one idea or memory at a time to be slowly tortured with. How hard it is to be put in a house with girls who are skinnier than you but you can't restrict. How girls high on superiority of having a so called breakthrough flaunt it over those of us who've got more fucking baggage than them to unpack. Being plunked in a house where everyone thinks you are a freak because your different and calls you turtle because you have to wear a brace 24/7. Having to hide you're gay because you don't know how people will react when you were out at home." she let me get it all out and now I was sobbing and hugging my knees as if they were my life raft in the ocean of feelings. 

I could feel her come and sit beside me on the floor and when she layed her hand on my back I flinched but she didn't pull it away. I was glad she didn't pull it away as much as I wanted to seem I was tough, right now, i wasn't. I just wasn't. She took big breaths in and out and shortly I went from ragged hyperventilating to matching her breaths. I kept my arms crossed over my legs and my head on my knees. Just breathing. We just sat there for what seemed like an hour but just a second at the same time.

"Kayla, it's ok to be angry. it's ok to not be ok. You are totaly right I don't know what it's like" I lift my tear streaked face to look at her, my bastion of strength had left me "to be you. I can't imagine what you have gone through. Your spinal surgeries, i can't even imagine how scared you were or how brave you had to be. I can't imagine all the horrors you have witnessed that make you want to carve your own skin. But there is one thing I do know. You may think you aren't worthy of getting better" How did she get in my head? "that you have to punish yourself eternally, but you shouldn't be, you didn't do anything wrong. You didn't cause any of this. You can't punish what happened to you away, as much as you want to. It's never going to go away, but I can help you to find ways to cope that are better for your mind and your body. Will you let me help you?"