by Amanda Flynn

Created on: March 10, 2009   Last Updated: March 12, 2009

Megan was always the poised, mature one. Even on that gray day in May she was composed and cool. Her green-brown eyes searched my face for the signs of fear and grief that I was sure she'd find, but she didn't. I had always been the childish one. The impulsive, petulant, attention-seeking one. I was the one who leapt before looking.

I was the one that got hurt.

" When do you go to work?" she asked. I pulled my cellphone out and flipped it open. We were walking through the lawn of the campus, watching as the care takers planted violets and marigolds. How many times had we walked this course, side by side? What made this time so different? Was it that we had just taken our last finals of our freshman year? Was it the silence between us? Was it the memories?

" In an hour." I told her. She sighed.

Megan and I had shared all of the same classes in our first semester and had attended the same incoming-freshman meet-and-greet camp. We became close friends almost immediately and spent almost every available moment together, talking about movies, video games, sword fighting. Like me, she had been shy in highschool, but she had not needed to change herself. I had gone to some length to reform my painfully shy and awkward highschool self to a confident, adventurous college student. And I had been successful.

" Zac's... on the warpath." She started slowly. " He still says you should go to the police, and I really want you to go to a hospital."

" I'm not talking about this again." I growled.

Zac was my first friend in college. We had met at the weekend camp after he accosted me about my history with swordfighting, and we'd had a competitive and noisy relationship ever since. Born exactly three days before me, he had appointed himself my older brother and was fiercely defensive of me. Although he would wrestle with me and get into all sorts of fights with me, he got surprisingly aggressive when I fought with other guys, namely Forrest. He had actually suplexed Forrest for bruising my arm.

" I... I'm not trying..." Megan took a deep breath. " I know this is harder for you than I can imagine, but Amanda, he raped you!"

I was silent.

Zac had introduced me to Andrew, among other people, and Andrew had been my first college crush. It was a destructive relationship from the beginning, as I was an outgoing, forward person and Andrew preferred to wrap himself in an air of mystery. We had many mutual interests though, and one night, one thing led to another... And our relationship was never

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