Cherish had never been good at coping. She knew this. It had always been Len who'd held her together. But with Len gone, Cherish turned to the only coping mechanism she knew- denial. It was easy, simply pretend it hadn't happened; pretend he had...
Trigger Warning: Cherish very graphically describes what happened to her. It is slimy and it is violent. To be honest it takes up most of the chapter, so if this is something that will bother/trigger you, just skip this chapter.
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Monday mornings were always brutal on her, but this one seemed a hundred times more brutal than any of the others had been. She had tried to convince herself to stay home, but that would have done no good. She needed to talk to them. Pulling into a parking spot in front of the school, Cherish pulled the baseball cap further down over her head.
No, she hadn't reverted to her sloppy uncaring way of dressing. She was merely hiding her face from anyone she didn't want to talk to. Not that the hat would help at all. Slinking out of her car and across the parking lot, she scanned the bike racks for Harper or Delia, but didn't see them. She wanted to look for Ian, but that would mean seeing Seven as well, and she wasn't quite sure she was ready for that.
"Hey, Cherish." Startled by the greeting she spun to see Dan, and with a frown she looked away and continued walking. He didn't let her deter him and was soon following her, "I wanted to, uh... I'm sorry about the other night."
Cherish didn't acknowledge him any more now than she had when he'd said hi.
"I just didn't think you two were together. I thought he was lying to get rid of me, you know?"
Cherish stalled at the doorway to the stairwell; she had to go downstairs to her locker and didn't really want Dan to follow her. He took her pause as an invitation to babble some more, "I was wondering if maybe, sometime, you'd like to-"
"No, I'm not going to fuck you, Dan, so you can stop trying," she said flatly and left him standing there. Her only hope if he followed her, was the fact that Seven would be downstairs by his locker. She frowned at the fact that Seven was her first thought in this situation. When had she started thinking of him as anything more than the boy she'd convinced herself to hate?
-.-
She didn't stay in class long, too lost in her own drama to focus on Mr. Hennessy's lecture.
"What am I doing?" she muttered to herself as she wandered through the hallways.
"Delia was right," she sighed as she sat heavily against a bank of lockers. Digging her wallet out of her bag, she pulled out her overstuffed picture holder and stared at the tiny picture of Len. Len had always made everything seem so much easier than it was. Cherish had spent so much of her time dwelling on the fact that Len wasn't around to help her out anymore when she should have been helping herself.
In fact, now that she thought about it, she'd spent so much time dwelling over Len that she hadn't even noticed herself spending time with the guys. New guys.
If she had moved here for any other reason, she wouldn't have let the guys even talk to her. She wouldn't have sat in some corner of the school with them where no one could see her. She would never have become friends with Ian. She would never have gone over to his house, even if it were only to spend time with Allie. There would have been no Allie to spend time with, really, because she never would have met her.
