Ange kisses up my neck, nibbling a little as she does so, and I know she feels me squirm.

“Why what, Phi-Phi?”

“Please don’t call me that. Just call me Philena.” We walk over to the table I was at and sit down next to each other. I set down the painting I’ve just finished and I hear her gasp. “Why did you leave? Why did you bully me? Why are you coming back?”

I blink quickly and look up at her to see her staring at the painting. I nudge her and she bites her lip and she swallows and her mouth opens a few times just to close right back up.

“Why, Ange?” I repeat a bit more firmly and her hands twist in her lap.

“Phi- Philena… I really don’t know why I left. I think I left to try and protect you, and when it didn’t work, I bullied to protect me… and, for a while, so I could pretend to be normal and deny that anything was… wrong with me.” As she says wrong, I flinch away from her, but she stutters to a start again. “You know I come from a Christian family… they don’t believe it’s a chemical thing, a brain thing, they believe it’s wrong… if I ever came out to them, I’d no longer have a family.”

“Gee, I wonder what that feels like.” Sarcasm: the best weapon in my arsenal.

She’s silent a second and I walk away a bit. Even from my post at the tree where I stand and watch her, still sitting there, I can hear the paper rustling as she turns over my sketchbook with the painting and all my drawings. I can see her eyes widen—even from here—as she flips through them. My eyes take on the flat, I-don’t-care look of when I detach myself from a situation and I lean back and watch.

Ange stares at the first drawing after the painting, the one where I have duct tape over my mouth and blood at my feet. She traces the straights and curves of my body (more straights than curves) on the paper and chews on her lip, then covers it, leaving it on the table, getting up gracefully, and walks over to me.

“Phi-Ph—” I glare at her. “—Philena… you really do need to tell someone.” My eyes roll and I wonder if she’s ever going to wake up and look around her. How could she think for one second that I want to be in this situation where I’ve been stuck at that house with that Monster for the past seven, almost eight, years of my life? If I could have, I’d have told someone when I was ten, but my own mother didn’t believe me—why would a complete stranger?

“Please, Philena. Tell someone—or I will.” Ah, there’s the true reason she came here. She doesn’t want to get back together; she just wants to scare me into fucking myself over.

“Really, Ange? Like who? Your football players? Or maybe Alexa’s a good choice. Oh, she’d have so much fun with that. How ‘bout the teachers or the principal? Oh wait- they don’t give a fuck!” She flinches, but I don’t care. I’m so done with her ‘you should tell’ and ‘I care about you’ shit. If she cared, she’d have stayed. Period.

“Don’t you think that if anybody cared about lil ol’ Philena, they’d have said something in elementary school? I’ve been walking around with awkward broken bones and random bruises for the past seven fucking years.” She’s biting her lip and I still don’t stop.

“Nobody. Cares. Why should I think you’re any different? Especially with the past two years, Evangeline.” She starts to say something, but I cut her off, picking up my crap and backing away.

“No. I’m done with your shit. Goodbye, Evangeline.”