My name is Lacey Jones and I was raped. Harsh words to start my story, I know, but they got your attention, didn’t they? It’s been almost 8 years after the fact. Sometimes I look back and I still can’t believe what I lived through. What a human being can survive, what a person’s psyche can survive is amazing. What I survived.

            I was born in small town USA, no where special. I was raised by two loving, devoted, and religious parents, in a loving and religious house hold, probably not unlike your own. Painfully normal in every way, your typical girl next door I suppose. Dirty brown hair, hazel eyes, pale, some called me beautiful but of course I never saw it. My peer group never accepted me because I was bookish and quiet; I could always be found with my nose stuck in the latest fiction or horror novel I found. I never had many friends but I didn’t mind, I like the quiet.

            However I did have one friend that I always trusted and looked up to. He was a big brother to me, a friend, and a mentor. Jimmy Blane was your usual outcast boy, short, scrawny, dark hair and eyes that could capture your soul with a wink. When he smiled the world faded away. That was my best friend, the person I told all my secrets to and cried to about my petty and silly girlhood traumas. We met at a winter camp one year, he was a counselor’s aid, I was a student, he was a few years older than me, dark and handsome with a kind smile and those dark eyes that could make you melt. I knew him a year before it happened.

            He used to come visit me at home after school a lot. He’d help me with my studies and we’d just talk for hours about nothing. Those were the best times of my life back then. I was always looking forward to his next visit. Sure my parents were paranoid, worried about their little girl spending time with an older guy, but he proved them wrong after a while. A true gentleman, never going beyond the usual hug or cuddle, never even thinking to take advantage of a naïve preteen.