Truth of Dark Pasts by Serena Wood (free children's online books .TXT) 📖

eyes until the murmuring gets quieter and then I can’t hear anything again. Someone walks towards me after the silence invades the room for a few minutes.

I open my eyes, expecting to see Robin but instead I open my eyes to see Chloe leaning over me. I gasp and shrink down into my seat, despite the pain it causes. “This isn’t over, you’ll regret fucking with me, Freak.” she hisses and already I regret ever coming near the girl, or her Bitch Posse. She shoves on my shoulders and a sound of pain escapes me again. Robin and someone else comes to my rescue, pulling her away and handing her off to another teacher.

Robin and this other person sit on either side of me, I feel like I know whoever the person is but I don’t automatically recognize them, mainly because I can’t manage to look over to see who it is.

“Is she gonna be okay?” The girl’s voice emits from the unknown individual and Robin’s silent for a moment, “You’d better hope so.” She grumbles in response. The girl goes silent, almost as if she feels guilty. “I didn’t mean for it to happen…” she mumbles and there’s something else she says a minute later but it’s so quiet I can barely hear it, let alone tell what it is that she said. But what I can hear, imagining it or not, was something similar too ‘all my fault’.

After some time, my mom shows up, panicking like she always does every time something happens to me. She makes sure to do as the nurse said and rushes to the hospital in a manner that’s rather reckless compared to her usually cautious driving.

She makes it to the E.R. and guides me inside, the doctors taking me away after she pushes them to take care of me. They better bandage my wounds and send me to my own room, where I wait to get X-Rays and other things that I don’t pay attention too. The whole thing is just exhausting, I’ve had a long day. All I want to do is go home and sleep everything away, eventually I do find my eyelids drifting down until sleep gets the better of me.

Chapter 4 - "White Lights and Red Lines"

A few hours later, I wake up again. The white lights hanging from the ceiling of the hospital blind me as I crack open my sore eyes. Groaning, I lift my sore arms briefly to shield my eyes before they finally adjust to the light. Carefully I look around the room, it’s empty, other than the medical equipment and that strange doctor smell. I take another look around, confused that my mom isn’t in the room. At last, I notice a figure sitting in a chair in the corner of the room. I squint, adjusting my eyes to better see her. But this figure isn’t my mother. “Thank god, you’re awake.” The figure scoots their chair next to the hospital bed and grabs my arm.

“I was starting to get worried, you’ve been asleep all day.” I soon recognize the voice as the figure comes into focus. “R... River?” that can’t be her, what reason would she have to be here? “I know you probably don’t want to see me right now, but I just wanted to make sure you were okay after what happened.”

“Why do you care?” the bitter tone comes out of me without me even really meaning to speak. She stares at me in silence for a moment, seemingly just as stunned by the tone as I am. “I…” she stops to wipe at her eyes. Is she crying? No that’s ridiculous, she hardly ever cries and she certainly has no reason to now.

“I’m sorry… I’ll go now.” she stands up abruptly and wipes at her eyes again, sniffling as she walks. She keeps her hand on my arm, sliding down the length of it as she walks. She pauses when she gets to my hand, sighs, and walks away before I know what to do. She runs into my mother near the doorway, “Are you going home?” I don’t hear a reply, I imagine she just nods. “Are you okay? Is Ellie okay??” she rushes to my side and River takes the chance to leave, for once it seems as if she’s running from me.

“You’re awake, how are you feeling sweetie?” mom’s voice brings me out of my thoughts and I look away from the doorway. “I’m… sore. Can I go home now?” now more than ever I just want to curl up in my blankets and sleep this awful day away.  “Soon, dear. I’ll go talk to the doctor. Do you need anything while I’m gone?” I shake my head and she leaves the room; Leaving me alone with my thoughts. “Soon” turned out to be anything but, as it always is with my mother. “Soon” meant it would take her the rest of the day to talk with the doctors about when they thought it was safe to let me go home. They decided to keep me overnight of course and by the next morning I finally get to go home, doing nothing more than what I had intended. burying myself in a blanket of sleep.

I’m not allowed to go to school for at least the whole rest of the week, my mother saying it’s unsafe and my school just agreeing with the uptight woman. She keeps me in my bed most of the time, bringing me food or whatever I need, only letting me move around to go to the bathroom or to shower. I think that most kids would complain about how she may over care at times but honestly it doesn’t bother me as much as it use to. Mainly because at this point I’ll take whatever kindness I can get.

Surprisingly enough she even takes a few days of the week off from work just to sit with me and keep me company. She tells me on Wednesday that all most all of the girls that participated in my beating are being punished with school expulsion and even court fines for a majority. All of them except Chloe, who got off on all of it because of her dad being a lawyer.

The only other one that didn’t get in trouble is River, which I’m kind of thankful for. After all she never laid a hand on me, she even pulled some of them away from what I’ve heard.

Why she would do that or why she would even show up at the hospital still confuses me. She hates me… or at least I thought she did. I don’t know what to think about her so I decide not to think about her at all. Or any of them for that matter.

Friday arrives quicker than the rest of the seemingly sluggish week. But I find as quickly as it arrives, it also quickly falls back down with the rest of this agonizingly slow week. I end up sleeping until 3 or so, but I eventually wake up. I usually do when school lets out. I look around for something, anything to do.

Eventually I find my laptop sitting on the dresser by my bed. Stiffly, I sit up and reach out for it. Sore muscles scream out in pain, but I ignore it until I have the laptop on the bed infront of me. I take a minute to recover before pulling it into my lap and opening it.

I sign into a the few social media sites I have accounts on, Facebook, Twitter, things like that. I scroll through Twitter for a bit, finding nothing interesting… other than a few hateful posts about me, which I find surprising. Funny how there’s negative things about me but I’ve yet to see anything about the girls that beat me up. But that’s probably because most of the people posting said hateful comments are friends of said bitches.

Sighing, I log off and move to Facebook. I scroll through the news feed for a bit but something more noticeable catches my eye. I have at least 30 notifications; something I don’t get often and it confuses me. I click on the little globe, for some odd reason getting excited. As if I expected condolences for what happened Monday.

I do see a few scattered get wells from family members and random people that do it to make themselves look friendly. But the first notification at the very top is what tells me my timeline is going to be mainly littered with.

“Chloe Warren wrote on your timeline” I stare at it worriedly for a second before I go to my timeline. “Thanks for ruining mine and my dads week with your bullshit” is all her post says but the comments and post that fill in below it make me feel even worse. “Yeah, my school record is ruined now. Thanks bitch.” says one of the girls that had to go to court. “You’re pathetic, seriously, kill yourself.” that comment stands out the most and I notice that nearly every girl that beat me up that day liked it. All I can do is stare down at all the words, at a loss and on the edges of tears. Before the tears start to uncontrollably pour out of my eyes, mom comes in with a bowl of soup.

“Oh good, you’re awake. I made you some soup, I know how much you use to love my homemade veggie soup when you were sick.” I set the laptop aside as she hands off the bowl of steaming soup. I can do nothing more than stare down at it, watching the crackers crumble in the soup. “Is the medicine making you sick?” mom sits down in the chair she put at the side of my bed. “No... I’m just not very hungry now.” she looks at me quizzically and I can tell she senses something's up. “What were you reading?” I glance over at the laptop and shake my head, trying to shake the thoughts out. “Nothing…” she doesn’t buy it for a second. She sighs, I glance up and instantly I see the anger in her eyes, causing me to shrink away on reflex.

“Your aunt and cousin told me what they’ve been saying on there. Don’t worry about it sweetie, we’re already taking care of it. By the end of next week we’ll have those brats in so much trouble they won’t want to leave their houses.” she smiles at me when I glance up at her again, I try to chuckle at her little joke and it seems to make her feel like she did good. “Now, eat your food, dear. You haven’t eaten much in days.” She stands up, kissing my forehead before she starts to leave. She stops at the doorway, “Oh, I almost forgot, they’re making me do some over time tonight to make up for this week. Do you think you’ll be okay by yourself till tomorrow morning?” I nod my head and put on a smile for her. “Good, don’t forget to shower tonight. I’ll see you in the morning.” I nod again and with ‘I love you’s and ‘goodbye’s she’s gone.

I stare down at my