Amaris

!!Trigger Warning!!

The following Prologue Contains acts of sexual violence, self-harm, and assault. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

Skip to Chapter One if being triggered is a possibility.

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Prologue

It's my eighteenth birthday and instead of celebrating, I'm standing alone in the pouring rain, shivers racking my body as I watch the casket being lowered down into the ground, my heart shattering as I say goodbye to the only person that I have ever been able to rely on in my whole life. 

Where do I go from here? 

Is this my life? 

Destined to be alone forever?

My brother, Axel, and I grew up bouncing around foster homes, one after another. No one ever wanted us, at least that was how it always seemed. 

We almost had a family once. 

The Montgomery's had told us they wanted to adopt us. God, we were so excited. We were finally going to have a family. A place to call home. 

But then a few days later, all of our dreams went to shit when we came home to our bags packed and a social worker standing on the front porch, waiting for our return from school so that she could take us away.

Away from the people who were supposed to give us a family.

I don't know why they changed their minds. 

I've always felt as if I were...I don't even know how to put it into words...it was as if I didn't belong... 

Some of the places that we lived in were pretty nice. Nice as in the paint wasn't peeling from the walls and we didn't hear the sounds of rats scurrying across the floor throughout the night. Others may have not been dumps, but honestly, I would have rather been in a dump or even on the streets than have to stay in those places. 

And then there were the people themselves. Some of our foster dads, although they never tried anything, the way they watched me, always made me uncomfortable and if I said anything about it, no one ever believed me. 

But Axel always did.

Because, although they never touched me—fuck, Axel, he...he had it so much worse because they did touch him. The things that they did to him...it turns my stomach, making me feel sick just to think about it. 

They were depraved, sick, and utterly disgusting.

And it fucked him up really bad.

And it only got worse as we got older. Not only did he receive abuse at home, but then he started to be abused at school, too. The boys began teasing him, looking down on him, finding him being gay a reason to treat him like scum.

But things escalated quickly. Someone even raped him in the boys' locker room with the end of a hockey stick.

A fucking hockey stick.

And that had been his final straw.

That is what made him take his own life.

That is what made him leave me.

I'd found his note on his desk when I went looking for him. After seeing the words, “Goodbye, Amaris. I'm sorry...” the letter fell from my fingertips as I looked around his room, searching for any sign of where he could be.

That's when I heard the sound of a gunshot ring out from the backyard. When I took off out of his room and down the stairs, I already knew what I was going to find but I still pushed the backdoor open, stopping when I saw him lying on the ground, a handgun a few feet away from him.

The next morning, after spending the night down at the police station, answering as many of their questions as I was able to, I dragged myself back up the stairs, entering his room instead of my own, stopping when I saw his letter laying on the floor where I'd dropped it.

Bending over and reaching out, I picked it up with a shaky hand. Curling up in his bed, I read the note that he had left for me.

He told me goodbye, explaining everything that had happened to him. It broke my heart as I read about all of the things that he'd kept locked inside, not having told a soul about the extent of the abuse that he'd suffered both at home and at the hands of our peers.

As I read the letter, over and over again, tears streamed down my cheeks, my breathing becoming choked as I gasped, sobbing.

Axel wrote about the locker room incident, about the group of boys who'd taken turns holding him down and raping him with the end of a hockey stick. Another student walked in, saw what was happening, and turned back around, leaving the bathroom, not bothering to stop the abuse. The student acted as though he'd not heard Axel as he'd cried out for help. As he'd cried out for them to stop. 

Over and over again, he'd cried out for help, but help never came. 

At the end of the letter, he told me to seek out the captain of the hockey team. Which didn't make any sense.

Kenton Clearwater is the captain of the hockey team—unless the cocky hockey player is the student that had walked into the bathroom and hadn't helped him.

If that is the case then Kenton had failed him by walking away when he needed him the most.

I had failed him by not knowing what he had been going through.

The teachers at school had failed him by not seeing the signs of abuse.

Our peers had failed him by being the ones that would torture him.

Our foster father had failed him by being the one who was responsible for the abuse.

And our foster mother had failed him by turning a blind eye to what was happening, all so they could continue to collect a check from the state each month.

He'd been failed, over and over again, and there is nothing that anyone can do to change it or take it back.

He was gone. 

He'd given in to the only choice that he felt that he'd had. 

And now, here I am.

All alone.