Chapter Text
"You've been suspended for a week?!"
Nickie Robinson’s voice sharpened as she glared at her daughter. Kayla opened her mouth to speak, then quickly closed it again, like a fish gasping for air. Her eyes were wide, her brow furrowed in distress.
"Well, yeah, but—"
"No buts, Kayla. This is serious."
"It wasn’t my fault!" Kayla shouted, her face flushed with heat.
"Don’t take that tone with me," Nickie said quietly. The calm in her voice made Kayla freeze.
There was silence in the kitchen. The ticking of the clock sounded unbearably loud. Kayla wished Charlie, her mom, didn’t have to work today. She would listen—really listen—and understand.
"Do you want to tell me what happened?" Nickie’s tone softened.
"Nothing really. Mrs. Grove's such a bitch," Kayla mumbled. She knew her mum hated it when she swore. She looked at her, defiant yet forlorn.
"Language," Nickie replied mechanically. "What did you do, kiddo?"
"What did I do? You’re already on her side, aren’t you? I told you it wasn’t my fault. Why won’t you believe me?"
"Sweetheart, I’m just trying to understand, but I can’t if you don’t tell me anything."
"I don’t want to talk about it."
Nickie’s jaw tightened, and a flicker of frustration crossed her eyes. She’d had a terrible day, and her patience was unraveling.
"Kayla Marie Robinson, I swear to God, if you don’t tell me right now what kind of behaviour got you suspended, you’ll be grounded for the rest of your life."
"Why don’t you see for yourself?" Kayla snapped, flinging the principal’s letter onto the dinner table. "Since you won’t let me explain anyhow!"
"Kayla..."
Nickie reached for her, but the door slammed shut. She sighed deeply.
Later...
"They clearly blew it out of proportion. If I were the principal, I would’ve—"
"You would’ve laughed along with her. Yes, I know," Nickie cut in. Charlie shot her a smug grin.
"I’m just saying, an afternoon detention would’ve sufficed. It’s not like she did drugs or broke somebody’s nose..."
"That would have gotten her expelled; but yeah, it does seem excessive."
"They’ve got sticks so far up their—"
"Charlie!"
"I’m just saying, it’s funny. What’s really concerning to me is that Kayla knew why it was funny. Do you think we should take away her notebook and condemn her to a life of misery?"
"Charlie, please try to be serious. This goes on her permanent record."
"I am serious! As far as I’m concerned, she did nothing wrong. She’s fucking fifteen. Let her be a little immature."
"I really wish you’d stop throwing swear words around when Kayla’s home. You’re not setting the best example—"
"Oh come on, our daughter is an angel. This is literally the first time she got into trouble at school in over nine years. She clearly takes after you in that area," Charlie said and winked at her.
"You know that’s impossible," Nickie objected but blushed all the same.
"Genetics aren’t everything, you know," Charlie said. "She might genetically be mine. But you had her in your womb for nine months before you birthed her. And because of my stupid work hours, you’re practically raising her on your own."
"You’re there for her when it matters," Nickie said lovingly. "I think we did a pretty great job at raising her."
"Yeah. I was a menace at her age, but that kid is a saint, I swear. We should still talk to her. I don’t want her thinking sexuality is something to be ashamed of. Not even the jokes."
Charlie knocked softly. "Kayla?"
"Please go away," came the muffled reply. Nickie sighed, her heart sinking.
"We’re just here to talk, baby," Charlie offered. "And for the record, I do think Mrs. Grove's a bitch, too."
"Don’t encourage her!" Nickie hissed under her breath.
"You can come in," Kayla said. "But I don’t want to talk to Mum right now."
Nickie didn’t look surprised, but rather hurt. "I’m sorry for the way I reacted, sweetie," she apologised. "Sometimes I forget that you’re still a kid, and that it’s your job to mess things up. I don’t really care about your suspension that much; I’m just worried..."
"We both are," Charlie interjected. "Please, let us in?"
"Okay..."
Kayla lay curled on her bed in a fetal position, one overall strap hanging off. Her blonde hair was tangled, eyes red and puffy.
Charlie cuddled up against her daughter from behind, holding her like she was still a little girl. A fresh stream of tears fell down Kayla’s face.
"It’s so unfair," she said between hiccups. "I got molested, but somehow he’s off the hook, and I get suspended? Sometimes being a woman sucks so much."
Nickie and Charlie exchanged a quick glance, their expressions grave.
"I don’t understand, sweetheart," Nickie said cautiously, while her wife continued to massage their daughter’s shoulders soothingly. "In the principal’s letter, we were told that you disrupted the end-of-year ceremony by laughing at an inappropriate joke. Isn’t that what happened?"
"Yeah, part of it... I had a laughing fit but I swear I couldn’t help it. The principal acted like I did it on purpose... Still, she let me off with a warning because I’m an honor student and all that. But then..." Kayla sniffed and cried harder.
Nickie waited for her to calm down. "Yes?" she prompted softly.
"These guys started to follow me in the hallway afterward. I didn’t know them, as the older students don’t really talk to us freshmen... They started saying things... sexual things to me."
Charlie’s grip tightened unconsciously, and Kayla flinched.
"I’m sorry, baby," Charlie whispered, pressing a tender kiss against Kayla’s temple. She then looked over to her wife, whose lips were tightly pressed together, and took one of her hands in hers. "Is it okay for you to go on?"
Kayla sniffed noisily, but her breath steadied. She sounded oddly detached as she told them what happened next.
"I ignored them, but they wouldn’t leave me alone. At one point, I got so angry I might’ve insulted a couple of them. They surrounded me so I couldn’t get to my locker to get my books... I tried to get past, but one of them grabbed my arm and—"
"He did what?"
Nickie squeezed Charlie’s hand, and Charlie knew Nickie was trying to tell her to be quiet. Kayla tended to withdraw when upset, but they needed to hear the whole story.
Kayla closed her eyes. Her voice shook as she continued. "He kissed me. I didn’t want him to, but they were all stronger than me... I was scared."
"Fucking hell. I’m so fucking angry."
"Babe, you’re kind of crushing my hand," Nickie told her, and Charlie apologized quickly. "Are you okay, baby?"
Kayla nodded but said, "Not really. He... he shoved his tongue in my mouth. And with his other hand, he... touched me. That’s when I punched him. There was so much blood... Mrs. Grove came around the corner and only saw me hitting him. They told her he just asked me out nicely. They all lied. The principal believed them."
Kayla paused to catch her breath. She was sitting up now, with Charlie’s arms still wrapped around her, and looked expectantly at her parents.
Nickie’s expression was blank, while Charlie’s face was red with suppressed rage. "Where?" she asked, her voice trembling. "Where did he touch you?"
Kayla shook her head. "I’d rather not say," she whispered, looking small and vulnerable.
"Kayla, where did he touch you?"
Kayla winced, her eyes brimming with tears again. Nickie gave her wife a quick look and shook her head. "You’re scaring her," she mouthed.
"Honey bear, we need to know. Do you think you can tell us?"
This is when their daughter broke into violent sobs. Safely wrapped in a cocoon between her mothers’ warm bodies, Kayla cried herself out until her eyes felt dry and stingy.
"The worst thing was what he was saying into my ear while he was doing it," she said. "He, he... please don’t make me repeat it," she pleaded. "I want to sleep."
"Do you want me or Mom to stay with you?" Nickie asked.
"Y-yes. Both of you... Please stay and hold me until I fall asleep?"
"Always."
Chapter Text
The night settled over their small house like a heavy, suffocating blanket. The hum of the city dimmed behind drawn curtains, but inside Kayla’s room, the silence was thick — almost too loud. Nickie sat cross-legged on the edge of the bed, her hand trembling slightly as it rested on Kayla’s tangled blonde hair. The faint scent of lavender from the bedside diffuser mingled with the warm musk of fresh laundry folded on a chair nearby. Charlie leaned in close behind their daughter, her breath soft against Kayla’s neck, steadying her with quiet, unyielding strength.
Kayla’s body was rigid beneath them, trembling in short, uneven waves. She clung to the thin cotton sheets like they might somehow shield her from the raw ache in her chest. Her sobs had faded to quiet hiccups, but her eyes remained red-rimmed and glassy, staring past the ceiling as if trying to see something far away.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” Charlie whispered, brushing fingers gently across Kayla’s temple, tracing slow circles that barely disturbed the strands of hair. “No one should ever make you feel like that.”
Nickie swallowed hard, her throat tight with words she couldn’t say. Instead, she pressed her lips together, focusing on the rhythmic rise and fall of Kayla’s shallow breathing, the faint pulse beating just beneath the skin of her wrist.
The room was small, cluttered with fragments of a fifteen-year-old’s life — posters peeling at the edges, a stack of notebooks with dog-eared pages, the soft glow of a half-finished sketch on the desk. It all felt too normal, too ordinary for the storm of fear and shame that now pulsed through their daughter’s veins.
“You’re safe here,” Nickie said quietly, her voice barely above a whisper. “No one can touch you again. Not while we’re around.”
Kayla didn’t answer, but the tiniest tremble in her fingers told them she was listening.
Charlie shifted closer, smoothing the rough fabric of Kayla’s overalls over her shoulders. “It’s okay to feel scared. It’s okay to feel angry. And it’s okay to cry. We’re here — all of us.”
The soft rustle of blankets mingled with the faint creak of the wooden floor beneath Nickie’s restless movements. Outside, a car passed slowly, the tires whispering over wet asphalt. The faint smell of rain drifted in through a cracked window, cool and clean against the warmth of the room.
Kayla’s voice came, fragile and raw. “I keep hearing his words… in my head. Like a broken record I can’t stop. I hate myself for laughing at the joke… I didn’t want to laugh. I wanted to disappear.”
Nickie’s heart clenched. She reached out, fingertips brushing over Kayla’s cheek, wet with tears. “That wasn’t your fault, sweetheart. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But I did,” Kayla whispered, her voice cracking. “I didn’t stop it. I didn’t scream. I didn’t run. I just froze.”
“Frozen doesn’t mean silent,” Charlie said firmly. “Your body did what it had to do to keep you safe. You are so brave, Kayla.”
A tear slipped down Kayla’s cheek. She sniffled and nodded, eyes heavy with exhaustion. “I don’t know if I can go back to school.”
“You won’t have to face it alone,” Nickie promised. “We’ll talk to the principal again. We’ll get you help. You’re not the one who should be punished.”
Charlie kissed the top of Kayla’s head. “We love you. Always.”
The room softened around them, the weight of the night lifting just a little. And though sleep still felt far away, wrapped in the quiet embrace of her mothers, Kayla felt, for the first time since the day had started, a flicker of safety.
The sunlight was brutal, stabbing through the thin curtains and right into Kayla’s eyes. She didn’t want to open them. The room spun slightly when she moved, a dull ache pulsing behind her temples. Her breath came fast and shallow, like she couldn’t get enough air no matter how hard she tried.
Her skin felt tight, like it had been stretched too far and left raw underneath. Every noise was too loud — the ticking clock, the distant hum of traffic, even the soft creak of the floorboards. It all rattled her nerves like a storm inside her head she couldn’t quiet.
She pulled the quilt tighter over her ears, desperate to block out the world. But the silence was worse. It pressed down on her chest, making it hard to breathe, harder to think.
The stale smell of old sweat and damp cotton filled her nostrils, a smell that no lavender could mask. Her fingers, numb and trembling, scrabbled uselessly at the quilt, like trying to hold onto a fragment of sanity slipping through her grasp.
Why did it have to happen? Why her?
Her phone buzzed again on the bedside table. She didn’t want to look, didn’t want to answer. The messages from friends felt like another kind of pressure, a reminder of the normal life she wasn’t allowed to have right now.
Her hands trembled as she reached out, finally swiping the screen to silence it. She felt so tired — tired of pretending, tired of fighting, tired of the gnawing ache between her legs that wouldn’t stop.
She pressed her palms to her face, trying to hold herself together, but the tears came anyway — hot and angry, burning down her cheeks.
The bruises on her wrists throbbed, shadows of the fight she’d put up, but the pain inside was worse. She hated how small and powerless she felt, like she was just waiting to be hurt again.
A sudden noise made her flinch. The door creaked open, and Charlie stepped inside, soft and careful.
“Hey,” Charlie said quietly, sitting on the edge of the bed. She didn’t rush to touch her, just gave Kayla space to breathe.
Kayla wiped her face roughly, hating the way her voice cracked when she spoke. “I don’t want to talk.”
Charlie nodded. “Okay. No pressure.”
But Kayla knew they both wanted answers she wasn’t ready to give. She wished she could scream at them to just leave her alone, but instead all she could do was curl tighter into herself.
“I keep hearing the things they said,” Kayla whispered, her hands clutching the sheets. “Especially him... Like it's burning inside my head.”
Charlie’s eyes filled with tears too, but she stayed quiet, letting Kayla spill out the horror in her own time.
Kayla’s throat tightened. “And the principal… she looked at me like I was the problem. Like I was lying or causing trouble. Nobody believed me.”
Her voice broke, and she choked back a sob.
Charlie reached out, finally wrapping her arms around Kayla, holding her close but not pushing. Kayla buried her face in Charlie’s shoulder, trembling with the weight of all the fear and anger and shame tangled up inside her.
“I hate feeling like this,” Kayla said against Charlie’s skin. “Like I’m broken or dirty. Like I’m supposed to be ashamed.”
“You’re none of those things sweetie,” Charlie whispered fiercely. “And I promise you you’re not alone.”
But the words felt small, fragile against the storm raging inside Kayla’s mind. She wanted to believe them, needed to, but all she could feel was the terrible ache of being so scared — scared that nothing would ever be okay again.
Somewhere beyond the window, the faint call of a bird in the early morning cracked the heavy silence. Kayla pressed harder against Charlie’s chest, desperate for even that small, fragile sound to anchor her in a world that felt like it was crumbling.
IsaiahFlamez1997 on Chapter 1 Mon 31 Jul 2023 07:50PM UTC
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cloudedhearts on Chapter 1 Wed 02 Aug 2023 04:59AM UTC
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IsaiahFlamez1997 on Chapter 1 Wed 02 Aug 2023 12:06PM UTC
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