Chapter 7

Steph had no idea how long she had sat there, on the wet sidewalk, crying, shaking, and choking on her tears at the same time. She only started to understand she wasn’t dead once a strange motorcycle stopped in front of her, and the rider got off, looking towards her. Automatically out of fear, her hands sank into the sidewalk, trying to scoot herself further away.

“Steph,” a familiar voice said, and his eyes came into her sight. “Steph,” he breathed in shock, his wide blue eyes looking at her in panic. “Baby what happened to you?” The girl only kept crying, and even though recognizing Cole’s voice and face, eyes still wide and scared. “Hey,” he said softly, touching her cheek with the back of his hand. “What happened to you?”

“I-I, Chuck…”

“Alright. Okay,” he said. “Here.” He shook his Sherpa jacket off and wrapped Steph up in it, starting to button the buttons while squatting in front of her as he grabbed his phone from the pocket. “Ambulance,” he said under his breath, typing in a 997.

When the thick jacket was on Steph, he observed her skirt and the way she was all soaked and dirty, and frowned, starting to explain the situation to the ambulance and where they were at. He ended up sitting down himself, not caring about his clothes or anything like that. Steph winced when he touched her, but her eyes told him he could do it, so he carefully pulled her onto his lap, so that the girl wouldn’t be sitting on the cold and wet ground.

Her nose was buried into his flannel shirt when the ambulance arrived a few minutes later. Cole was let on the car as well, panicking when he saw an oxygen mask put on the girl. Her neck was full of red marks that were starting to form, and her wrists were bandaged immediately.

“Do you know how she’s in this situation? Is it at her home?” one of the workers asked Cole.

“No, definitely not home,” he said quickly, breathing out deeply to calm himself down, his eyes not leaving Steph’s crying face. “She went on a date, I think the guy did that, but it could be someone from the street. I don’t know,” he cried.

“Alright, sir, calm down,” the woman said and handed him a bottle of water. “We’ll inform her parents as soon we’re in the hospital. Maybe you should call somebody and ask for clean clothes for yourself. You’ll need to stay there for a while”

#

Cole’s dad didn’t pick up, but Mason’s did. He told him about the situation, and Philippe brought him some of Mason’s clothes which were comfortable enough to sleep in as well. Steph fell asleep in the hospital, under the medicine, and was transported to a new room where they could all go to.

While Nate, Jane, and Cory who had come to the hospital (Chic babysitting the younger ones, while they were allowed there only the day after, after school, and not at almost midnight) were in Steph’s room, Cole sat in the waiting room, head in his hands. He wasn’t family, and he shouldn’t even have been there anyway, so what was he doing there? Nobody cared if she was there or not. He knew Steph was his friend but was he Steph’s? Did she remember what nickname he had called her? It had just slipped out. And now he didn’t know if he should go home to his drunk dad or stay in the hospital with his friends’ family.

“Cole,” Cory said, sitting down on the chair next to him. The boy didn’t react and kept staring at the ground, head in his hands. “Did you try calling your dad again?”

“Is she okay?”

The man sighed and leaned against the wall behind his back. “She’s going to be. Thanks to you.”

Cole sighed and raised from the position, leaning against the back of the chair as well, head against the cold white wall. “My dad’s not picking up.”

“Do you want me to try?”

“No… He’s not coming anyway.”

“Why do you think that?” Cory frowned.

“He’s a drunk, Mr. Smith,” Cole said and looked at the man who had once been friends with his father. “He’s probably in a bar at Southside, drinking.” The blond man’s eyes were wide as he stared at Cole in shock. “How long haven’t you talked to him exactly?”

“I’m not sure. Years. Everyone who didn’t stay at Bluewere just lost contact over the time… Do you wanna tell me about it?”

“There’s no story, really. He lost the job as a cop and started drinking. Mom had enough of it, took my sister and went to live in Toledo.”

“Why didn’t you want to go?”

“Nobody asked me,” he said and turned his head away, knowing every time he told that story, he cried. Tonight, he tried not to. “I just woke up one morning and they were gone. She said I’ll see them soon, but here I am two years later, practically homeless.”

Steph’s dad was horrified by the story, not knowing what to say. “And now?” he asked finally. “Does he have a job?”

“He built you your house,” Cole said. “I mean helped at least.”

“Do you… have money?”

“A little. It’s okay,” he lied.

Cory nodded and patted his shoulder a few times. “You want to stay here for tonight?”

Cole looked up rapidly. “Can I?”

“Of course,” the man promised. “As long as you’re not going to school tomorrow. You’re pretty shaken off.”

“I’ll just stay here for now,” Cole nodded as he and Cory entered Steph’s room. He didn’t even want to look at her, but he did. She was so pale, in her hospital clothes, wearing an oxygen mask. Her wrists were bandaged, bruises all over her neck. He felt guilty for some reason.

#

Steph had woken up at six a.m. for an hour while the boys were sleeping. Both Cole and Nate were disappointed, but at least she had talked to her mom and dad a little, nothing about what had happened though. Now it was midday as Cole got back to the hospital. He had gone to his trailer to change into his own clothes and brush his teeth. Chic who had skipped school as well, stepped out of Steph’s room just as the boy reached it. “Hey Cole.”

“Hey. Is she awake?”

“Yeah. And she wants to see you.”

There it was. She was going to be so mad at him for treating her like he did last night. He had called her baby, and instead of calling her parents, called the hospital. “Does she… Is she alone?”

He nodded, “The others went to get food for all of us. And I should go and pick up the boys to bring them here. So… You should keep her company for a while.”

Cole sighed and nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Thank you, dude.” Patting his back a few times, Charles left, knowing Cole wouldn’t let Steph be alone in the room for too long. The beanie-wearing boy took a deep breath, and another one, before pushing the door open softly.

There she was, on the bed, reading a book, her black-framed reading glasses resting on the bridge of her nose. She looked up when he entered, and managed a small smile for him, moving her hand to take off the glasses, closing her book. “Hey,” she said quietly, voice raspy.

“Hey,” he said the same way, closing the door behind him. He took a few steps closer until he was standing in the center of the small room, and then stopped, not knowing how comfortable she was at that moment.

“Come here,” her timid voice said, making the boy move until he was standing next to her bed. She took his hand into hers and pulled him with as much strength as she had, which wasn’t a lot. Cole understood her initiation and leaned down to hug her gently, her arms moving around his neck. “Thank you.”

Not what he had been waiting for, but definitely something he had been hoping would happen. She wasn’t mad at the nickname, and she wasn’t angry that he touched her yesterday when she obviously didn’t want to be touched. Maybe she didn’t even remember, and he had been worrying without a purpose, he wasn’t sure.

“Thank you Cole,” she sighed when they stopped hugging and he pulled away, sitting down on the warm chair right next to her bed. “You saved my life.”

“I just… Did I?” he asked softly, looking worried as ever as he saw the bruises on her neck and collar bones.

“Yeah,” the girl whispered. She had only known him for a few weeks now, three of them at school, but he was the best friend who wasn’t one of her brothers that she had ever had. And she didn’t think it was going to change any time soon. “Could I tell you about what happened last night?” she asked with a shaky voice.

“You wanna tell me?”

“I mean, only if you want to listen… I just need to talk to somebody. You’re the best option right now.”

“I don’t have anything against it, but… What about your family? Why aren’t you telling them?”

“I’ll tell my parents when I can be alone with them. And I’ll probably have to tell my brothers too, but I don’t want yet, because I know how they’ll react. I don’t want them acting out of impulses.”

Cole frowned, knowing she was talking about fighting. Nate and Chic were going to beat somebody up when they were going to hear the story. “Okay. Yeah, of course, you can tell me if you want to.”

“Just promise not to tell anybody, okay?”

“I won’t,” he pled. “Promise.”

“Okay,” the girl breathed nervously, his warm hand still in hers. She stroked the soft curls of it, keeping her eyes on the lines on his palm. They looked similar to what she had. Being a fantasizer, she wondered if it meant something. “So…” she started from the very beginning. “He took me down to the river.”

Cole tensed up at the very first sentence when he saw a tear already rolling down her cheek. “You don’t have to, Steph. I understand it’s too early for you.”

“No, I can do it,” she sighed. “He started touching me and I told him I didn’t want to do anything and that I wanted for him to stop because I wasn’t comfortable… But he had locked the doors and he grabbed me, and I tried to fight back, I swear,” she cried. “He was just too strong, and—” A hiccup from her painful throat cut her up, Cole’s other hand moving to rest on her blonde dirty hair, running his fingers through it relaxingly, allowing the girl a moment of silence. “And he slid the backrest down and held me down when he got some kind of ropes or I don’t even know what they were. He died my hands up to the headrest and… Coley?”

Her green eyes were wide and teary as she looked at the tear that had just fallen from his eye. The picture was too real for him, and he knew exactly what she had looked like the night before. All was just starting to make sense now. Chuck had hurt her. Horribly hurt her. “Steph, you don’t have to tell me. I think I already know.”

“He raped me,” she said quietly, not going into the details anymore. “And he choked me, and I think I lost consciousness for a while. And then he told me I had to wait until we’re back in town before he was going to let me out of the car because he didn’t want me dying there in the woods.”

“Fuck,” Cole breathed, only now remembering all this stuff from two years ago. It had happened exactly after her mom and sister had left, leaving him in a numb state for a while. That was when all of the Chuck drama had gone down.

“Cole?” Steph asked quietly, wiping her tears away when his wide blue eyes met hers. “What is it?”

“I’m sorry,” he breathed.

“For what? It wasn’t your fault.”

“I should’ve remembered.”

“Remembered what?”

He sighed. “Stephie, a girl was found dead in the woods after being lost for nine days. She was one of the girls from the southside who had transferred to Bluewere High because of a foster family she had been living with at the time. Her friends said she had gone out with Chuck the night she disappeared, but there was no evidence or motive for him to kill her. She had been choked, and somebody had left her into the forest unconscious and bleeding.”

Steph breathed out sharply, eyes full of horror and pain. “W-when?”

“A few years ago.”

“But… But why?” she asked, tears pricking in her eyes again. “Why would he do something like that?”

“I don’t know. Something in his head is fucked up,” he said, the hand from her hair moving onto her cheek. “Thank god you’re okay,” he breathed.

“What should I- what should we do?”

“I think you need to tell your parents,” he said quietly, thumb not leaving her soft warm cheek. “And the doctors. They should test you for all the things you could’ve gotten from it, and I think you passing out wasn’t anything good either…” He gulped before adding the last part, “And just in case I would take a plan B pill.”

Steph sighed quietly and nodded, his thumb wiping away the last tear from her face. “Thank you.”

Cole shook his head a little. “There’s nothing to thank me for.”

“You saved my life yesterday. Somebody could’ve done it to me again or killed me. Thank you.”

He sighed and leaned over to kiss the crown of her head. “Just be careful now.”