Tears came to Marissa’s eyes as she thought about the life she once lived. She didn’t want to blink for fear that the tears would begin to fall. She continued to stare up at the star filled night sky with her sorrowful brown eyes. She wanted to forget about her past, but as soon as she tried to push the memories to the back of her mind, something would always make them resurface their ugly head.
Three years ago at the age of fourteen Marissa was a wild, out of control teenager who loved to drink and have sex. She never thought about the consequences of her actions. She didn’t care. She was living for the moment.
“Pass me the beer!” she shouted to one of the guys at the party. He handed her a bottle of beer and she gulped it down like a pro as the crowd cheered her on.
“Give it up for the girl!” Leena cheered.
“Third round?” the same guy asked her.
“Yeah,” she replied feeling tipsy.
Marissa closed her eyes trying to shut out the painful memories but to no avail. Tears began to stream down her cheeks as she thought about herself taking another drink.
Leena’s living room was so crowded that she found it hard to breath with all of the hot and heavy bodies around her. She slowly made her way through the crowd of people and upstairs into the hallway that led to the bedrooms. She let her left hand roam the wall for a light switch and was pleased when she finally found one. All she really wanted was to find a bedroom so that she could sleep for the rest of the night.
Unbeknownst to her, someone had followed her.
“You like to drink, huh?” a voice asked her from behind. She turned around to face him.
“Duh! Who doesn’t?”
A sly smile crossed the young man’s face as he eyed Marissa. He was in the mood to have fun, and he hoped that she would have fun on the ride that he was about to take her on.
He began to gently stroke her arm. Without giving it much thought, she pulled him to her and kissed him, and soon afterwards he carried her into a bedroom. They made out for several minutes and then she fell onto the bed. “I’m soo tirred,” she slurred. Then, the guy began to kiss her neck. After that everything faded to black.
The next morning she awoke in a room she was not familiar with. She remembered the party and drinking so much until she nearly passed out, but she did not remember coming into the bedroom. It didn’t take her long to realize that there was a naked guy in the bed with her but that wasn’t unusual. She slowly got out of bed, put her clothes on, and made her way home.
Her mother was not pleased at all when she saw her. She knew that Marissa had been at a stranger’s house drinking and having sex.
She hadn’t been the same since her father passed away. She had always been daddy’s little girl, and her mother knew that she missed him terribly and was grieving.
Whenever her mother would tell her that she couldn’t have dessert, she would always run to her father. After her mother was asleep, he would give her a pack of candy or brownies. She would always get angry because she feared that Marissa would grow up to be a spoiled brat because her father spoiled her so much; but as she got older, she never changed. She was still the same sweet, humble and grounded girl who her mother fell in love with the moment she saw her in the hospital after giving birth.
The Benson household would soon be filled with sadness. A few months after Marissa’s fourteenth birthday, her father was killed by a drunk driver. That very night Marissa stayed up and cried alone in her room for hours. Her mother tried to comfort her but she insisted on being left alone. Christina allowed her to miss several days of school to grieve but the next week she had to return. When she did, she didn’t tell anyone about her father passing away—not even Cami. She just couldn’t bring herself to talk about it.
Shortly afterwards she began attending parties. It was there that she experienced things that a fourteen-year-old child should never experience: alcohol and sex. Leena Davidson ran into her at a friend’s party and was quick to invite Marissa to her parties. With all of the late night partying that she was doing, she began to arrive at home pass her curfew. At first it was 11:00 p.m., but that quickly turned into 5 a.m. This caused her mother to be constantly worried about her because she was concerned that something bad would happen.
Marissa use to be such a good girl. What happened to my baby? Christina thought. She feared that her baby was a sex crazed alcoholic. Marissa had a serious problem, and she knew that she had a problem, but worst of all, she didn’t care. Her mother tried to get her to attend AA meetings. She attended a few but soon after she stopped. She didn’t want to change but soon she would.
It was a cold, stormy Saturday night. Her mother went grocery shopping which meant that she would have the entire house to herself.
The doorbell rang.
It was one of the guys from the party. He looked familiar but she couldn’t quite place where she had seen him before. He said that he needed to make a phone call because he didn’t have any service on his cell phone. As he made his way into her mother’s house, she saw a sly smile appear on his face. Where have I seen that smile before? She rubbed her head trying to think; but before her brain could process the memory, she felt a hard, blunt object connect to the back of her head.
When she awoke, she was on the floor in the living room covered in her own blood. Cool air made contact with the open wound on the back of her head and her naked lower body. She looked over her shoulder to see that the front door was ajar. She wanted to run to the neighbor’s house for help, but she didn’t feel as if she had the energy to do so. Her head was throbbing with pain and her lower body ached. She lifted her head high enough to see that the under garments and jeans that she had been wearing were ripped and covered in blood.
Her eyes stayed locked on her bloody clothing. She knew what had happened to her, but she didn’t want to believe that it was true. She tried to bring herself to stand up but couldn’t. She turned herself onto her stomach. Then she got onto her knees and then shakily stood up. She looked down to see blood trickling down her legs. She began to cry uncontrollably. Her entire body was shaking as her legs tried their hardest to hold her steady. She screamed for help but no one could hear her. As hard as she tried to stand, it just wasn’t enough. She collapsed on the hardwood floor.
Her mother took her to the hospital and had Marissa examined, tested for STDs, the works. While she was in the hospital, she began to think about her father and what he would’ve wanted. If he were still alive, she wouldn’t have done any of those things. He wouldn’t have allowed her to stay out all night, attend parties, drink alcohol, or have sex.
Although he was no longer with her, she still wanted to make him happy. She made a decision to stop doing all of the things that not only would’ve hurt him but was hurting herself and her mother: staying out all night, attending parties, drinking alcohol, and having sex.
Several weeks after the rape, Marissa had continued to keep the promises that she had made to herself. She was no longer a wild, out-of-control, drunken, party girl. Instead, she was the smart, brave girl that her mother always knew her to be. She later received a surprise phone call from Leena saying that she could no longer attend her house parties. Leena’s voice sounded cold and unforgiving as if there was more that she wanted to say, but Marissa had closed that chapter of her life so she didn’t care how Leena was feeling.
As she continued to recall these hurtful events, she found herself hating Leena. If she hadn’t worn her brother’s plaid shirt to school today, she wouldn’t have nearly lost it in front of Cami. She never wanted Cami to find out about any of this. She wanted it to stay hidden in the past along with Leena’s brother.
Marissa never mentioned anything to anyone about her ordeal other than her mother—not even Cami. At school, most of the people who she had partied with didn’t even bother to speak to her.
She later found out that it was because Leena blamed her for her brother’s suicide. But why would she do that? Why would Leena blame her for
something like that? She felt her heart skip a beat as that sly smile invaded her memory. Suddenly everything began to make sense to her.
The night before when she woke up in the bed, he was beside her. She answered the door for him shortly before she was attacked. Then, Leena’s brother raped her. However, these discoveries did not mean that her troubles were over. Marissa was pregnant, and she knew that the baby’s father could only be one person.
Against her mother’s wishes, she got an abortion.
She cried even harder now. It hurt to know that she had killed her own child. It wasn’t something that she wanted to do. She just felt like she had no other choice. If she could go back and change what she had done, she would. She would’ve given birth to the baby and then possibly give him or her up for adoption, or maybe she would have even decided to take care of the baby herself.
She closed her eyes off to the world around her. If only she would’ve made different choices.
Chapter 24