I wish I could label this as fiction, wish with everything in my soul that this was just another teenage novel, but it definitely is not. This is my story. I’m an eighteen your old college student, and this should be the peak of my life, but all around me is darkness. It wasn’t always this way, no. But something happened that changed my life forever, made me afraid to be in the same room with a man I don’t know, made me jump at the slightest touch, and left me to pick up the pieces of my shattered life, alone and afraid.

I used to be just your average American teenager. I was a varsity athlete, I worked at a grocery store, and I was on love with my boyfriend. I had known him since I was eleven years old, and I trusted him with my life. I would have sold my happiness to please him, and in a way, I guess you could say I did.

See, I knew my stuff. Never let a guy you don’t know take you home. Don’t take candy from strangers. Carry a rape whistle with you so you can call for help if someone jumps out of the bushes and tries something. You better use a condom if you know what’s good for you. All of these lessons had been ingrained in my brain as soon as I was old enough to understand what they meant. But my loving boyfriend would have never hurt me. Right?

Wrong.

It was our one month anniversary. We went out to dinner at a local restaurant, and spent the evening flirting and just generally being in love. We had planned to go back to his house after dinner for some romantic time alone and he was going to give me a massage, but his parents were at home, so that plan was a flop. His parents never would have allowed us to be in his bedroom alone together, for fear that we would do the abominable, so we were left to find a more private setting.

Since he had left all tools for the massage at home, we stopped at a grocery store to pick up baby oil. He jokingly picked up a box of condoms and gave me that, “Wanna try?” look. I laughed nervously and took the box from him and out it back on the shelf. After paying, we went back out to his car and he drove to a secluded are behind a swimming pool. We could hear the cars flying by on the other side of the building, but they couldn’t see or hear any noise we made. At last we were truly alone.