We Were Ghosts--The Secret Life of a Survivor

  We Were Ghosts

  The Secret Life of a Survivor

  Tabitha Barret

  @ Copyright 2017 Heather Baker

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Cover Design: Marianne Nowicki

  For copyright and publishing information, contact Tabitha Barret at her website http://www.tabithabarret.com.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real, living, or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  “There are far too many silent sufferers. Not because they don't yearn to reach out, but because they've tried and found no one who cares.” - Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway

  A Letter to the Reader

  This book has been a long time in coming. I’ve tried to write it many times before, but wasn’t able to find the story. I had too much pain and anger to funnel it into something resembling a storyline. After speaking to one of my oldest friends, it suddenly became obvious that this story should be written through the eyes of a teenager. I gave her my anger, pain, and all the other emotions I had to deal with, but I also gave her something that I didn’t have—hope.

  So many people have experienced abuse in different ways. Regardless of the type of abuse they experienced, they suffered in silence. I was one of them. Though this story is largely fictionalized, certain events and the emotions involved have been inspired by own circumstances. I wanted to turn my experiences into something positive, so I created this story in order to give others hope.

  This book is dedicated to the people in my life who have suffered from their own traumatic incidents, as well as those whom I have never met. We are survivors. No one can take that away from us. No one can make us ashamed of that.

  I encourage you to read this story and enjoy the ups and the downs, but I hope that you take something away with you. No one should have to suffer in silence. All it takes is one person to believe.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 1

  The beige room was too bright and smelled like chicken marsala. The banquet room next door was having a brunch but the smell wafted into our meeting room. I stood at the wooden podium and peeked up at the crowd that had come to listen to me speak, while I reviewed my notes and gathered my courage. They didn’t come to listen to me because I was funnier, or smarter than they were. They were here because we all had something in common. We were survivors. Though our abuse was different, the end results were the same. We had all suffered and we all wanted to find a way to cope with it.

  I cleared my throat and smiled at the men and women who patiently waited for me to start. It was the same smile I used to hide my fears and anxiety as a teenager—the same smile I used to keep everyone in the dark about my situation. I had perfected that smile over the years and now it was second nature.

  I wiped my hands on my black knee-length skirt and leaned into the microphone. “Every morning we wake up and start the day. Every night we close our eyes and go to sleep. Why is this an accomplishment? Why does this matter? It matters because we are still here. So many people who have gone through the things we have experienced are no longer here. They couldn’t deal with their pain so they left this world. We are still here fighting every day to be who we want to be. We are not being controlled by anyone. We are no longer at anyone else’s mercy. We are trying to live our lives the way we want to. This is important because it is our choice. We choose to be happy. We choose to cry. We choose to walk in the world and exist. No one is telling us what to do. No one is harming us. We are free,” I said emphatically as people began to applaud softly and nod their heads.

  I had given this speech to 34 different groups this year. The theme for this tour was, “Freedom from the Past”. Last year, it was a different speech about hope. The year before that, it was about courage. I had been giving these speeches for the last five years. Some of the faces were the same from year to year, though sadly, there were always plenty of new faces. I was never sure if people came because I inspired them or if they were trying to commit my words to memory and use them as an instruction manual. I never claimed to have all the answers, but I offered them something many of them never had before. I offered them hope.

  Yes, we were survivors, but we were all at different stages of recovery. Everyone talks about recovering from an addiction or an injury, but most people never speak about surviving the abuse inflicted by someone in power, whether it’s a mother, father, step-father, teacher, boss, or anyone else who feels it’s within their right to take away someone else’s power. There isn’t a clear path to recovery, but each of us has to learn how to trust, how to love, and how to live again.

  During my speeches, I gave insights into the nightmare that I had escaped from so that the audience would understand that I was one of them. I wasn’t pretending to understand their problems, and talking about abuse in general. I was talking to them from my heart.

  I may not have the best memory of everything that happened in my life or remember everything with perfect clarity, but I remember 1988. I was excited to be one year closer to graduating and a few months closer to getting my driver’s license. Growing up, in my eyes, was never a burden or a curse. I wanted to take on more responsibilities and get a job. I was eager for a boy to ask me to a dance. I wanted to do all the things I dreamt about, but more than anything, I wanted to be free.

  I walked down the hallway of St. Theresa’s Prep School in my blue plaid skirt and ugly navy blue socks, a color I would never wear once I graduated. I smiled at the other kids who acknowledged me and ignored the ones who didn’t. This was a day like any other, until I saw...him.

  It was two months into the school year, an odd time to see a new face floating through the hallways. Halloween decorations were popping up in the classrooms and on the lockers. Everyone was talking about what costumes they would wear and if they would go Trick-or-Treating this year. They were deciding if they were going to the Spooktacular Dance—a name the teachers had made up in an effort to make the dance sound like it took place in a haunted mansion rather than in the school gymnasium.

  I leaned against my unyielding teal locker and tilted my head toward the boy standing across the way in front of a previously empty locker. “Who is that?” I asked my best friend Megan.

  Megan pulled her head out of her locker long enough to look over her shoulder and turn to wink at me. “I heard Mrs. Haggerty say his name was Zachary Anderson, though he corrected her and said his name was Zack,” she said, waggling her eyes.

  I laughed at her enthusiasm and took another quick glance at t
he boy with the sandy colored hair wearing a brand new white shirt. It still had the crease marks from being folded in the package. I couldn’t see what color tie he was wearing, but he wore tan khakis instead of the navy dress pants most of the boys had on. It was a welcomed change after seeing so many dark pants roaming the halls.

  “I wonder where he’s from. Do you think he just moved here or do you think he was recently sentenced to two years in Catholic School for some terrible crime?” I snickered. I bit my thumbnail, a nervous habit that I barely noticed anymore, though it drove Megan nuts. She wasn’t allowed to bite her nails, according to her mother, so she refused to watch me do it. It was like an ex-smoker watching someone take a drag from a cigarette. She would get jittery and smack my hand out of my mouth.

  Megan shrugged. “I’m not sure, but either way, I’m glad he’s here. After two years here, it’s time for some new guys to look at,” she chuckled. She was more outgoing and flirty than my other friends, which was why I liked her. She tried to draw me out of my shell whenever she could, though I usually resisted.

  She pulled her pink brush through her long, wavy brown hair and dabbed on her frosted lip-gloss as she tried to angle her locker mirror in Zack’s direction.

  “I would say that I hope he likes it here, but there’s really no hope for that,” I laughed. “If the universe doesn’t like him, he might end up getting Mr. Stanish for History. Maybe I should be nice and go warn him.”

  “We’ll pray for him if he does get Stanish. Since you have taken an interest in him first, I’ll let you do the honors. I was planning to offer my assistance and walk him to his next class, but I’ll let you have this one. It’s so rare for you to drool in unison with me,” she laughed. She tossed her black leather backpack into her locker and grabbed a few spiral notebooks.

  I casually looked back at Zack, who was searching the hallway with a lost puppy expression on his dimpled face. I was about to step forward and offer my help when Heather stepped forward and held out her arm to Zack. “You look lost. I’m sure I can help you,” she smiled broadly. The school’s diva had swooped in and taken control of the situation. I thought about stepping on her foot and hip checking her out of the way, but I wasn’t brave enough to do that.

  “I can’t stand her. She’s so pushy,” Megan groused as she slammed her locker so hard that her lock fell off.

  I sighed and slid down my locker to sit on the cold floor. I handed the lock back to her without taking my eyes off Zack. “They’ll be dating by Thursday,” I said mournfully.

  Megan raised her eyebrows at me. “Today is Wednesday,” she said, believing that Heather couldn’t work that fast.

  “What’s your point?” I laughed.

  Megan nodded and bit the corner of her mouth, a substitute for biting her nails. It was a sign that she was upset about something. Though she was pretty and outgoing, none of the boys paid attention to her. I believed it was because she intimidated them. She often said what she was thinking without any kind of filter and could go from zombie to cheerleader within seconds. I had zero experience with boys and dating, so I wasn’t sure why no one ever asked her out.

  The day passed even slower than usual, despite getting through two tests. My only source of entertainment was watching Heather suffocate Zack between classes. At one point, I actually felt bad for him. She was going on about how she didn’t have a date to the dance, though he didn’t seem to pick up on the hint to ask her. She seemed oblivious to the fact that he was new here and too busy figuring out where the cafeteria was to care about a stupid dance. The price tag hanging from his backpack should have given her a clue that he had larger problems today. The poor guy hadn’t even smoothed out the lines in his shirt yet and here she was trying to shove her tongue down his throat. It was pathetic, even for Heather who had dated half of the jocks and was working her way down the list of track runners. Soon she would have to switch gears and move on to the debate team and chess club. Zack was her last shot at a handsome boy who probably couldn’t find Czechoslovakia on a map.

  Throwing myself down into my uncomfortable wooden seat for my last class of the day, I leaned against the desk to stare out the window, hoping to phase out until class was finally over. It was pouring rain outside and chilly for mid-October. I watched the gym class run across the sidewalk to the middle school gym that was a few feet from the high school. The girls were screaming and hiding their hair under their hands, while the boys laughed at them and splashed in the puddles, trying to get the girls wet in their short gym uniforms. I could never understand why everyone got in trouble for rolling up their skirts to make them shorter when their gym shorts barely covered their backsides.

  My Health teacher, Scott, was about to start his lecture on what not to do if impaled on a metal pipe when Zack walked into the room holding a hall pass.

  Scott, who preferred to be cool and use his first name, looked at up at Zack, annoyed that his important safety lesson was being interrupted.

  Holding out the pass in front of him, Zack’s cheeks turned bright red, just as mine did when I was trying to dig a hole and crawl into it from embarrassment. “Sorry, Mr. Adams, I got a little lost on the 3rd floor,” he murmured. I imagined him trying to wrestle himself away from Heather as she turned into a giant octopus.

  “You can call me Scott, and you can take a seat next to Alicia,” he said pointing to one of the three empty chairs in the room—next to me.

  I tried not to stare as Zack scanned the room and his eyes settled on me. He seemed indifferent to his seating assignment, which was much better than watching him roll his eyes and frown at me. I had decided to wear my shoulder-length brown hair down that morning, and had even pulled a brush through it. In general, I didn’t care about how I looked. As far as I was concerned, hair should be pulled back into a ponytail and makeup should be burned.

  I slid lower into the seat and tried to blend into the baby-blue painted cinderblock walls. I was good at disappearing into the background. Though I had the courage to speak to him this morning, my bravery had crawled away and hidden under a desk at the back of the room. I turned my head and watched the school buses drive through the middle school parking lot into our lot, which was too big for the number of students in attendance.

  I felt Zack’s arm brush past my hair and I suppressed a cringe. I didn’t like having my hair touched, another reason to jam it into a ponytail.

  I heard him move around in his chair to get comfortable and I could feel the heat coming off him as he sat about two feet from me. I wondered if he had a fever. Refusing to acknowledge his existence, I kicked my legs into the space between my desk and the baseboard heater along the wall. Turning my body away from him, I did my best to pretend that he wasn’t there. I didn’t know why I was being stubborn and refusing to look at him. It wasn’t as if he had jilted me or ignored me. He didn’t even know I existed. Maybe I was mad because he had chosen Heather. Either way, I didn’t want to get my hopes up by looking at him. I already knew he had bright blue eyes, a perfect jawline, and an incredibly handsome face. He was broad shouldered, which meant that he would end up becoming a jock, once he figured out which sports were popular at the school. Though our track team did better than our football team, we still held Pep Rallies on game days.

  I bit my thumbnail and tapped my fingers on the desk. Scott’s warning about leaving the metal pipe lodged inside of someone instead of pulling it out wafted past my ears. I made a mental note to remove the pipe from an enemy in that situation and wrap a towel around the pipe if someone I cared about was impaled.

  Turning my head at a noise next to me, I ignored the fallen pencil and locked onto the blue eyes that were smiling apologetically at me less than six inches from my arm. Zack’s smile was something poets took years to describe in poems as they tried to capture the innocence mixed with a hint of mischief. I completely forgot about my wall of silence as I turned my body toward him, unable to resist his playful grin.

  I think my mouth must have
fallen open because I suddenly started coughing as I choked on nothing but air.

  The rest of the class turned to see if they needed to administer CPR or call for the paramedics. Even Scott raised his eyebrow at me. “Do you need water, Alicia? You can run to the water fountain if you need to,” he said, motioning to the hallway. His voice sounded somewhere between amused and annoyed. I was convinced that Scott was gay, though he did everything within his power to hide it from the Catholic School Administration. It would have been frowned upon by the church, though Scott seemed to be liked by the other teachers.

  I nodded my head, trying to remember what it was like to breathe normally. I made it the hallway as fast as my Rockports could carry me. My sensible walking shoes got me to the water fountain and I drained half of the water supply before I came up for air. In an unladylike move, I wiped my mouth from my elbow to my wrist on my navy pullover sweater. When I was able to move air through my windpipe without keeling over, I threw my hip into the nearest locker and leaned my head against it. I suddenly realized why I had put up the frost wall to keep Zack out and why I had nearly swallowed my lungs. I could never have Zack, even if I wished for it on every birthday candle.

  I slunk back into the room and ignored the snickers from the two senior girls in the front row. I pulled my skirt against the backs of my legs and I tried to sit quietly as the wood rubbed against the metal contraption they dubbed a desk. Scott had forgotten about my interruption had moved on to helping someone who had a finger cut off by a jigsaw. The vast majority of the room was grumbling about the graphic photos in the textbook and asking questions about how much ice was needed to keep the finger cold. The morbid kids were busy doodling little squirts of blood around the hand.

  Zack, however, was staring at a blank section of desk. His book was open and he was on the correct page, but he seemed like he was three states away. I knew how he felt. It was like that for me most days.

  Curiosity tugged at me and I was forced to look at him again. He was hunched over on his forearms and his feet were tucked away on either side of the desk. He looked like a normal, bored student, but there was something about his expression that made him stand out from everyone else. His smile had vanished and he almost looked worried about something as he glanced up at the clock. I was sad when the bell rang, signaling that I had run out of time to look at Zack for the day.