Sweet Soul (Sweet Home 4)

I blushed, and Lexi laughed, getting to her feet. “Come on, let me show you round.”

I stood and followed Lexi to the door, but I pulled on her arm, bringing her to a stop. Lexi looked to me and I asked, “I don’t understand what I can do to help here? I,” I dropped my eyes and rocked on my feet, “I went hungry through being on the streets, I can’t empathize with having an eating disorder. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to handle all this.”

Lexi put her hand over mine and said, “It’s not this part of the center I was thinking of, sweetie.”

I nodded my head, still not quite sure where she thought I could help, but regardless I followed her through the halls, my heart breaking at the people we passed.

Most of the rooms were filled with young girls all too thin, their clothes hanging off their gaunt limbs. They all greeted Lexi with smiles, but through their smiles, their pain was clear. Various members of staff came out to say hello as we passed through, and I stood that little bit taller from my shyness when I was introduced as Levi’s girlfriend… when Lexi included me in her family.

I hadn’t been a part of a family. Even with my mom it was always just her and I… and even then she was rarely with it enough to be any kind of family to me. Although I loved her with everything I had.

We walked out of a back door into another stunning garden and across to a smaller house; smaller, but no less impressive. As we climbed the steps, Lexi held out her hand for me to take. I put my hand in hers. “This is where I could use your help, Elsie.” She smiled. “And maybe this could in some way start to help you too.”

I kept hold of Lexi’s hand until we entered the house, where a young pretty woman, maybe mid-twenties, with beautiful dark skin and a bright smile, approached. “Hey Lex,” she called and we walked forward until we stepped into her office.  The woman shut the door and held out her hand. “I’m Celesha, the manager of Kind, you must be Elsie.”

I shook Celesha’s hand and nodded my head. As always, my bravery of using my voice disappeared the minute I was faced with a stranger. But Celesha didn’t seem to mind, instead she waved her hand for us to follow.

We walked into the body of the house, but unlike the bigger house, the young people here weren’t underweight. In fact, they all looked like normal teens, sat in groups or in what looked like therapy sessions.

Celesha stopped at the mouth of a huge hall that was filled with young kids and teens playing ball. They were laughing and I couldn’t help but smile as I watched them play. I felt Celesha’s eyes on me. “Kind is a charity, Elsie, for young teens that are victims of bullying.”

My heart fell and I was sure it had landed on the ground. I clasped my hands together and my eyes focused downwards. I could feel the communal tension rising, when Lexi spoke. “A lot of these kids were runaways, Elsie, or ended up on the streets in other ways. Kind gives them a home and place to stay until they’re ready to return home. Or until they’re ready to face the world again when they’re older and healthy enough.

“But all have been affected, severely, by bullying—cyber, physical, verbal, mental, and—” I looked up when Celesha paused to look at a young girl, no older than twelve or thirteen, walk by and wave her hand in greeting. I stared at the young brunette. I stared because she had signed. She had used sign language to communicate.

“That’s Clara,” Lexi said. “She came to us a few weeks ago.” Lexi stepped closer. I watched as the brunette wandered off alone down the hallway. My stomach churned seeing her by herself. “She’s lived with her step dad since her mom died, but they’re not close. She doesn’t have many friends either.”

Like me, I wanted to say, but I held it inside.

I saw Celesha glance to Lexi and she stepped forward. I looked up at the woman looking down at me. “No one here knows sign language too well, and we were wondering if you could work with her some as you can sign? Even if that’s just to talk to her. If you want to, that is. No pressure.”

I rubbed my lips together, and forced myself to say, “My ASL is rusty, I haven’t used it in a long time.”

Lexi smiled, but put her arm around me. “Like we said, there’s no pressure, Elsie. We’d love your help if you think you can do this. If it’s too much, if all this is too soon for you, then it’s fine. I can take you home and we can figure out something else.”

“We want staff that have personal knowledge of what our girls and boys are going through.” Celesha smiled and intimated, “That’s what we pride ourselves on, truly understanding what our kids talk to us about. We’d love it if you can help, but if you can’t, then that’s just fine too.”

I turned my head to the hallway and saw Clara sitting by the window, staring out at the garden, all alone, and my heart broke. As I stared at the young girl, I found myself saying, “Yes, I want to try and help her.”

Lexi squeezed me tighter. “I’m so proud of you, honey.”

“Thank you,” Celesha said, and I could see the happiness on her pretty face.

I nodded my head when Lexi let me go. “Okay, I’ll be in the other house in my office if you need me, sweetie. I’ll be going home in a few hours. Take the time to wander around and familiarize yourself with the building and what we do. This is all on your terms, so talk to Clara when you want. It’s entirely dependent on when you’re ready. Remember that.”

I nodded my head again. It took me a few minutes to realize I was alone in the hallway. I’d been swept up in a daze of trepidation, and self-doubt. I’d been trying to push the thoughts of Annabelle and those girls from my head.

Feeling a wash of nerves, I crossed my arms around my waist and wandered into a room that was filled with about ten teens. A man sat in the circle, while a young girl was speaking through her tears.

“…he took a picture of me and I didn’t know.” The young girl shook her head, pausing in the middle of the sentence as I walked in. She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “He sent it to his friends, they sent it to their friends, and by the time I went to school the next day, almost all of the student body had seen me… naked.” The girl covered her eyes, her voice raw with pain. “I couldn’t get away from it all. I was called a slut, a whore. They painted it on my locker, my mom’s car that I’d taken to school. It was all over Facebook, and it never went away.”

“Take your time, Charlotte,” the man soothed. Charlotte took a deep breath.

“Weeks and weeks went by and it never went away. I kept thinking they would forget, that something else would happen to take the attention off me, but it didn’t. My best friends distanced themselves from me. I had no one to sit with at lunch. I had no one to talk to, to confide in… and I couldn’t do it anymore.”

My muscles were frozen as I waited for what came next, but I already knew. Because it had happened to me too. I suspected that every young person in the room knew exactly what came next; only the finer details would be different.

“It was late, and I knew my parents would be asleep. So I took the rope that I’d stolen from my dad’s shed and tied it to the top frame of my bed.” The girl hitched a breath, as another girl beside her rubbed her back in support. That one act of kindness made my eyes prick with tears, then the girl carried on. “My dad had been worried about me, he told me… afterwards. He came into check on me and found me hanging. I woke up in hospital and they brought me here.” Charlotte went quiet, and the man began to speak. I didn’t listen to the rest, the burning in my chest was too much for me to take.