Wrong

Chase

I only love one person. One and only one person, and there's nothing wrong with her, except that she loved me too.

They would call her gay or lesbian, as if that was an insult. They would use language I'd rather not write in my notebook against her that she used to swear never bothered her. It always bothered her, I could always tell. She wasn't homosexual, and neither am I.

I saw her cry actual tears of sorrow for the first time today. She was the one person I love and she was crying because of me. I remember the whole scene word for word. We finished the finals for today, went to get ice cream, then walked around the neighborhood. It all started like another amazing date, but when we were sitting on a park bench it stated to go wrong. She started crying, lightly first, but those cries grew into sobs.

"Stella, what happened? What did I do? I'm sorry! I'm so, so, so, so sorry!" I babble on trying to figure out what I did wrong to her, but she only shook her head right and left to signify a negative response.

"Don't be, please don't be. You did nothing wrong! It's not you, Chase, oh please don't blame yourself!" She said as she tried to stop the crying.

"Stella, what's wrong?"

She looked at me in the eye and starred for some time and I starred back into her eyes, then she threw herself on to me and hugged me tightly. She whispered softly in my ear, "I love you, you know that, I love you."

"I love you too," I say, but she won't let me continue. She spoke with a tension in her cracking voice, "No, no please just listen. I love you, but you don't love yourself. You let these people say things about you and physically push you around and I just can't let them do that to you but you won't let me help!"

"If you try to help they do the same to you and sometimes worse!" I say, grabbing her hand. Actually I more so screamed it.

"I know!" She yells back, "I know that they do far worse to me! And after what they were just willing to do to me I wonder what they're doing to you!" She spoke so fast that I doubt she knew what she was saying because after it was shouted there was a pause of realization, and then she broke down crying again. I pulled her onto my chest and let her cry into me. "What did they do to you?"

She continued to sob. "Stella! What did they do? Please tell me!"

"No, no you'll hate me!"

"I could never hate you, Stella. I love you. Please tell me what happened."

She started speaking slowly, still violently shaking, "Do you remember last night? I was over at your house. We just relaxed, watched a movie," she smiled at the memory of the night we had, but that quickly faded away, "and you offered to walk me home, but it was only ten thirty and I only live a block away. You insisted, but I convinced you to let me walk home on my own. So I walked home, but I didn't get home until a forty-five minutes later."

"But you live a ten minute walk away," I say and then she somehow managed to sob more as she spoke, "I know! I know! When I was about to turn onto my street, they grabbed me."

"Who!" I say more than ask, I should've known by then to speak gently yet I still didn't yet.

"I don't know!" She said and cried, "but they know me and they know you! They, well, they thought we were, um, sleeping together that night and said they could show me what a real man was like, and then th-they grabbed me, in... places. Th-they ripped off my clothes and th-there were three of them and they all, they all..." she started sobbing uncontrollably and I tried to calm her down but I had no clue what to do.

"It's okay," I tried to sooth her, "it's okay. Are you okay? Did you go to the police?"

And after that it was just more of her crying. It's a blurred memory, until the end. At the end, she said she didn't think she could keep being with me if our peers kept acting like this and she broke up with me.

Stella was the one person who accepted me. Not even my family was completely okay with me. After I let this happen to Stella, I am not okay with myself. No one is okay with me, so I'll do them all a favor. I'll free this world of one unlikable freak.

Chase went out to the shed and found a rope. He made sure it was stronger than the one from two years ago he used before he met Stella. He tied it to the ceiling fan and dropped the chair beneath him. With his last breath, he managed to choke out saying Stella's name before his his body went limp and dangled lifelessly.

(A/N: I don't know if anyone cares or not but I'm thinking about maybe writing a part from Stella's journal later)