Page 179 of Sins of the Hidden

His arms circled me like walls. Not comforting. Containing. As if he was afraid that what I was about to say might make me flee. The words rumbled against my back. "I'm listening."

If I told him, I couldn't take it back. There'd be no pretending this part of me didn't exist. No keeping the ugliness tucked safely away.

I'd never told anyone what happened that night. Not the court-ordered therapist who sat across from me for fifty-two sessions, her notepad filled with observations about a girl who wouldn't speak. Not my parents, who watched me fade away like a ghost right before their eyes. I'd kept the truth buried so long I'd forgotten it still bled.

Until now.

Childhood was supposed to be simple.

Mine was, once. Before high school. Before that night in the barn.

In elementary school, it was just the three of us—Anne, Karson, and me. Two chubby girls and a pudgy boy with a stutter, united against a world that had already decided we weren't worth much. We'd hide in the library during recess, sharing snacks and making up stories about what we'd be when we grew up. Anne always wanted to be a veterinarian. Karson dreamed of designing video games. I just wanted to bake cakes that made people happy.

It was Anne who loved him first. I'd catch her watching him when he wasn't looking, the way her eyes softened around the edges. And I saw how Karson would blush whenever she laughed, how he'd save the best parts of his lunch for her. They orbited each other like shy planets, never quite colliding.

Then middle school hit, and Karson began to drift away. He was a grade ahead of Anne and me.

"He's going to ask me to the spring dance," Anne whispered to me once, her voice full of hope. "I saw him practicing what to say in the reflection of the library windows."

But he never did. Instead, he asked Jessica Miller—the pretty, thin girl who sat in front of him in Math. I held Anne while she cried in the bathroom stall, her shoulders shaking as she tried to muffle the sound.

Neither of us got asked to the spring dance. We told each other we didn't want to go anyway—we didn't need the humiliation of trying to find dresses that fit or the whispers that would follow us across the dance floor. Instead, we stayed at Anne's house that night, making homemade pizza and watching movies in our pajamas, pretending we weren't checking social media every ten minutes to see the photos being posted.

Things had grown strained between the three of us after that. Karson no longer ate lunch with us, choosing instead to sit with Jessica and her friends. He'd lost weight, his stutter had improved, and it felt as though Anne and I were only good enough when everyone else ignored him—when we were his last option.

Still, he called us late at night when no one else was around, and Anne clung desperately to those crumbs. In the hallways, Karson barely met our eyes, his face flushing with guilt or embarrassment whenever we passed. Anne pretended not to care, but I'd catch her watching him across the cafeteria, something broken in her expression.

The bullying about our weight had grown relentless when we hit seventh grade. Whispers of "Wide Load" and "Double Trouble" followed us through the hallways. Someone left a diet pill brochure in Anne's locker with a drawing of a pig on it. A group of girls mooed when we walked into the locker room for gym class.

We never told our parents. My mom and dad worked so hard to give me everything—the nice house, the best schools, the pretty clothes that never quite fit right. Anne's parents were the same—loving, supportive, and completely unaware of what we endured. They had their own stresses; the last thing we wanted was to become another burden.

And then middle school ended, and Karson moved on to high school.

He stopped answering our calls that summer. His mother told Anne he was "busy with football practice" when she worked up the courage to call his house. By the time Anne and I started high school the following year, Karson might as well have been a stranger.

We saw him that first day of freshman year—or rather, we saw what he'd become. No longer the soft-spoken boy with kind eyes, but a sophomore with broad shoulders and that easy confidence that came from suddenly fitting in. Girls whispered when he walked by. Boys clapped him on the back like they'd been friends forever.

And when he looked at us, he turned the other way.

"He doesn't recognize us," Anne said, her voice small. But the quick aversion of his eyes said enough. He recognized us. He just didn't want to know us anymore.

The first month of high school was brutal. The whispers followed us—"Wide Load walking" when I passed by, "Two-ton Annie" whenever Anne entered a classroom. Someone taped pictures of pigs to our lockers. A group of boys oinked when we walked into the cafeteria. A girl from my math class "accidentally" spilled her soda on my nice shirt.

We retreated further into ourselves, finding sanctuary in a forgotten corner of the school library. No one went there—dusty shelves of outdated encyclopedias made for perfect shields against the world.

"It's okay," Anne would whisper, squeezing my hand under the table when she caught me crying. "We have each other. That's all that matters."

But I saw how the bullying was wearing her down too. The smile that once came so easily now seemed forced, her usual enthusiasm for life dimming a little more each day. She'd grown quieter during lunch, pushing food around her plate instead of sharing silly stories like before.

"You okay?" I asked one afternoon, catching her staring at Karson across the cafeteria.

"Yeah, just tired," she said, brightening immediately with that forced cheerfulness we'd both perfected. "Hey, did you finish that history assignment? I have some ideas for our presentation."

And just like that, she'd redirect the conversation, refusing to dwell on what hurt. We protected each other that way—changing subjects when eyes got watery, making each other laugh when things got too heavy, showing up on each other's doorsteps with ice cream and movies on the worst days without needing to be asked. That was our friendship—a silent agreement to be each other's shield against the world.

It was October of our sophomore year when Karson appeared at our table in the library, startling us both. Anne's face flushed pink immediately, her fingers nervously tucking hair behind her ear—a gesture I'd seen a thousand times when she'd talk about him years before.

"Hey," he said, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. "Mind if I sit?"

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