Page 32 of Laila Manning
Gone is the high I was riding from joy and happiness, and in its place falls something heavy. Something dark.
I didn’t know when it was happening in real time, but that heaviness was a drug I’d never even heard of, let alone willingly allowed to fall into my cup of bland punch from the table by the wall. I realized too late what had happened. I realized it only when I woke up the next morning.
Broken.
Taken.
No longer Laila.
Just another girl in the room.
A boy who was three years too old even to be at a high school prom drugged me. Apparently, he did it at every dance. To some lucky girl who was so unsuspecting, she didn’t even think she was in danger until it was too late.
The dream always picks up as I stumble out of the side door of the gymnasium, seeking cool air to clear my jumbled head.
Stupid.
So, so, so stupid.
That was when he swooped in. I vaguely remember him helping me, offering to get me to a bench to sit down so the world would stop spinning.
But he didn’t do that.
He didn’t help me.
He hurt me.
First, when he shoved me into the trunk of his car, shutting off any of the cool air I was seeking and any prying eyes or ears that may have heard me cry for help. And then again, when he dragged me into his disgusting camper by my hair because I was so far gone, I couldn’t even walk. But the pain didn’t stop there.
That was the night I lost my virginity.
Held down by the invisible bindings of the drug as he did horrific things to my innocent body. As if drugging and raping someone weren’t bad enough, he wasn’t done there. And that’s the worst part of the dream, because it ends there. But when I wake up from that nightmare, I remember how he sold me to another guy like some unwanted object, ready for the taking.
And then another.
And then another until the men had no faces, and the days had no ticks of time.
And then I was sold to a new owner, and the process started all over again.
I wake up from the dream, every single time, shaking with anger and pain like I’m back in that dark and musty camper all over again. People came and went, for sex or drugs or his disgusting style of company, and no one saved me.
No one cared.
I was seventeen years old.
A child.
How could the world be so cruel so many times to the same person?
xo- L
My mind spins with the words from her latest entry.
Anger burns in my gut as I hear her voice reading the words like she spoke them to me firsthand.
“Zeke. Are you even listening?” Ryker asked, pausing the obsessive pacing that he’d been doing around his office for the last four days.
“Yes.” I kept staring out the window, fighting the urge to tell him to fuck off.
