“Mona!”

Jen hurries over to me and holds my hair as my stomach contents spills into the kitchen sink. I’m coughing and retching, and my hands are shaking so hard I can barely hold onto the counter.

“A-are you sick?” she asks, but I can’t answer.

I feel tears forming in my eyes.

Why now? Why did this have to happen now? I don’t want Jen to see this. I don’t want her to know.

When I’m finally done, Jen hands me a paper towel so I can dry my mouth and I turn around panting and shivering.

“Mona, are you okay?” Jen asks me with a worried expression.

I look down.

I can’t face her, I can’t answer.

“Are you sick?”

I shake my head.

“Then, did something happen with your brother?”

Her question makes me turn to stone. I can’t breathe.

Don’t ask me about this, Jen… please…

“Tell me.”

Her voice is soft, but insistent and when I look into her eyes so full of worry, I suddenly can’t hold back the tears. They start trickling down my cheeks, betraying the mask I was so desperately trying to put on.

“I… I can’t…” I stifle.

Jen’s thin arms then gently wrap around me and I shake in her embrace.

“You need to tell someone, Mona… It’s slowly killing you…” she whispers.

“No… I-I…”

My tears won’t stop. Why is this clumsy, oblivious girl now so frighteningly perceptive?

“I’m your best friend and I’ll always listen…”

“I… I know…” I whisper between sobs.

Then she suddenly pushes me out from her and instead grabs my hand and pulls me to the living room. Reflexively I sit down when she gestures me to, and then we just sit there on the couch, her hand still holding mine.

“Won’t you tell me?” she then asks.

“Jen… I can’t”

“You can”

“I-I can’t… I’m afraid I might break…”

“You already are…”

She gives my hand a gentle squeeze and I look at her.

This friendship started as a whim. She seemed interesting and I liked her refreshing honesty and how different she was. Her clumsy kindness, her oblivious nature… And how she didn’t judge me for how I acted. When rumors started spreading about me, she didn’t seem to care about it and treated me exactly like before. When she asked about the men I was seeing or had one-night stands with, it was out of curiosity, not disgust. She would ask me about myself but didn’t pry. I started to really appreciate this friendship. It might be the closest I’ve ever been to a person.

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She strokes my hair.

“It’s okay, Mona…” she says, and her warm expression is so comforting, I feel I might be able to tell her…

“It began when I was around twelve, I think…” I begin and when the words finally come out my mouth, it’s like opening a faucet… And I can’t stop, so I tell her everything…

I used to look up to my brother. He was always there for me, even when our parents weren’t. They had fancy, important jobs and not much time for their children. Seeing as my brother is seven years older than me, they trusted him a lot to take care of me.

I didn’t really have a lot of friends growing up, and I didn’t understand why until much later. So, I was a lonely kid. Just had big brother to rely on.

So we’d do most things together. We’d go shopping, he’d cook for me, we’d play video- or boardgames and go out swimming in the pool in the summer. He was very popular and had a lot of friends, so I was very grateful that he’d spend so much time with me. I relied on him, and I was happy.

I was bullied in school which just added further to my isolation but being with him made me happy. It was like he was the only person in the world who was on my side.

But around the time I started middle school I began to notice that something was off. In the beginning I could talk to my new classmates and even had some of them visit my house. I started opening up a little to the people around me and thought that I could finally have some friends. They also seemed to really like my brother and we’d all get along nicely. But with time they began to seem more and more occupied with him than with me, and one day they suddenly stopped coming.

They’d stay away from me at school and my other classmates would ignore me or be mean to me. I didn’t understand what was going on and I was so confused and sad. So I turned to my brother, like I always did, and he provided the warmth and comfort that I was always craving. So, it’d be just the two of us again. Alone.

Then he started coming to my room at night.

At first, I thought he just wanted to sleep together like when we were younger, but he started touching me in places… Places I knew he wasn’t supposed to touch… And he wanted me to touch him as well.

I was too scared to refuse him or tell anyone about it. I hated every minute of it, but I was also afraid that he’d leave me. Afraid I’d be all alone again.

So I did my best to endure it.

‘It’s just touching’ I thought, ‘it’s not that bad’.

But it escalated and when I was fourteen just touching wasn’t enough for him anymore.

Our parents were both away on a business trip, so there was no one in the house to hear my screams.

After that I shut myself in my room for three days. I didn’t want him anywhere near me. I even tried to harm myself.

My parents found out about my self-harm, but they thought it was just some teenage phase. That self-harm was the new trend. They didn’t even bother send me to a psychiatrist, and I didn’t know how to tell them about the real reason.

They seemed completely unaware of my brother’s true self. That, or they just didn’t want to see it. So they had no problem leaving me alone with him and over time it happened again… and again… and again.

I was his puppet, his play-thing, and he would test out more and more extreme things out on me; Tie me up, hit me, choke me.

He got a girlfriend and when I heard them alone together at night, I thought that would be the end of my suffering, but he’d still come to my room without fail. Maybe she wasn’t into the same fetishes as him, or maybe he just enjoyed that I was completely under his control. Day and night. I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without him breathing down my neck.

Then when I was around seventeen, he went rampant when he found out I had been to a party with classmates from high school.

I came home in the early in the evening, but he must have smelled the booze on me that someone had snuck in, because he was immediately angry. He dragged me to his room where he’d beat me, then tie me up and use me like a ragdoll.

Afterwards I was so out of it I just ran out of the house – barefoot and bloodied.

That’s where I ran into my neighbor, Aunt Rose, as we called her. She was coming home late from visiting her son and as she came out of the cab. She noticed my appearance and rushed me inside her home where she tended to my wounds and sheltered me for the night.

In the morning I was so afraid that she’d send me back home, but she didn’t. Instead she let me stay and when my brother or parents came by to ask if she’d seen me, she said she hadn’t. I think I might have stayed with her for a week, without leaving the house, when she came and told me she’d help me move.

She did ask me what happened and who beat me, and I told her it was my brother, though I never told her about the other things he did to me. She wanted me to press charges, but I was too young and too scared, so instead she just helped me get away.

We lived in a wealthy neighborhood, so I figure she must have had a lot of money, because she paid for an apartment out of town and she got all the paperwork in order, so I could transfer schools. How, I don’t know. Never asked.

When I was eighteen and graduated, she helped me receive my inheritance from my grandmother, so when he found me again a year later, I used some of that money to move to this town. Then I worked for a few years to add a little more money to the pool, so I could go to university.

I haven’t seen or talked to my parents or my brother since… Until now.