Rating: PG-13 maybe R-ish, for non-graphic descriptions of child molestation, lots of angst and sexual situations. If you're uncomfortable reading about this sort of stuff then run now and read no further.

Feedback: Please, oh please let me know what you think :) Email me at XenaWarriorPrincess4@juno.com

Disclaimer: The show Xena: Warrior Princess and all it's characters belong to MCA/Universal, Renaissance productions and his Tapertness. None of it belongs to me, no copyright infringement was intended and no money was made from this story.

Summary: General Uber about a young woman who learns to overcome a troubled past.

He is a shadowy figure from my past. Even when I try to remember carefully I can never quite see his face, though I remember his voice. I was a different person then. That whole life is a part of me now hidden away in the innermost recesses of my mind. But occasionally, at the strangest times, my train of thought does move through that dark tunnel reminding me of the past that I've worked so hard to move beyond.

As a young girl I was awkward. I was the one who always said dumb things by mistake and tripped when walking on a flat surface. As a teenager, I was the outsider. The loner. The girl who fit into no clique. I did what all "outsiders" do, I became a rebel. I smoked, I hung out with other rebels, I dated the undesirable (from a parent's point of view) boys.

My mother hated me. But what did my mother know? Nothing. She knew nothing except her social life. Her pretty, rich friends. You know the women: Highlighted, hairsprayed, immaculate hair. Perfect nails and nice teeth. Nothing to do during the day but go shopping and out to lunch. My mother wanted to be one of those women, but didn't quite cut it. So she did the next best thing, she became friends with those who were like that.

My whole life I have been the puzzle piece that never fit anywhere. I certainly didn't fit into my mother's picture. The kind of person she wanted to be would have surely had a cheerleader for a daughter. An honor roll student with shiny hair who had a name like Kelsey or Katie or Kassie. My name was none of those. My name is Rayya, my mother says my father named me. As I child I hated my name. I could never find it listed in the baby name books at the grocery store check-out line so I never knew what it meant. Finally, not very long ago, I found it listed in a book. It means 'Thirsty no more'. Now I like my name.

I think we should begin with me as a preteen. We lived in a fairly nice neighborhood typical of the suburbs. I hated it. We lived there on my mother's insisting. The women she wanted to be like lived in neighborhoods like this. He lived with us, though he and my mother weren't married. They didn't tell that around, though. In this neighborhood lived the Kelseys and Katies and Kassies. We moved to this neighborhood when I was ten, a year after he and my mother met.

I find ten is a crucial age for most girls. That is the age where you decide if you will make yourself happy or make others happy. I chose the latter. My preteen years were spent being a chameleon. My mother wanted me to be a Kelsey so I tried to be. I got my hair cut, wore skirts, and tried out for the soccer team. The Kelseys wouldn't have me. My hair wasn't quite right, my skirts were the wrong brand and I was no good at soccer.

He saw that I didn't fit in. He saw the lonely little girl. I wonder now if even then, when I was still a child, he was making his plans. I have always wondered what attracted him. Not my personality, did I even have one? My opinions matched those of whoever I was trying to be like at the moment. My body, then? At twelve I was awkward. Not really fat, certainly not thin. Built like a boy but for my small breasts. My hair was dark and too long (growing out the Kelsey cut).

Just after I turned twelve was when he started laying the ground work. My mother was hardly ever home, always at work or out with her friends. This left he and I together most afternoons, seeing as how I had no after-school activities and no friends. I came home from school just after 3pm to an empty house. He got home from work at 4:30pm. At this time I was usually done with my homework and would wander downstairs to the kitchen where he would sit, reading the paper, until he got hungry and would go see what mom had laid out for our supper.

We always talked. We would speak of a funny show that had been on TV, some story on the news, or I would tell him the antics of a dumb kid at school. Though I didn't see it then, our relationship was an odd one. We weren't at all like father and daughter, but we weren't like friends either. I suppose we were just two people with no friends and time on our hands. We were impartial to each other.

It happened so gradually that I cannot quite pick a specific time when he went from being friendly to being sexual towards me. The stories on TV or in the paper that he would talk about with me started being more sexual in nature. A prostitution ring was busted, so-and-so had been put in jail for raping a girl, things like that. He sat closer to me and made eye contact more often. Occasionally, as we sat together at the table, he would lay his hand on top of mine. I didn't like this but there wasn't much I could do about it. The days went on like this for some time until the day he first exposed himself to me. He acted like it was nothing out of the ordinary, which is perhaps what frightened me most.

Now, I wasn't the sort of girl who says that the reason she never told anyone was that she thought all men did this with little girls. I knew what he was doing was wrong. But who was I supposed to tell, my mother? She didn't like me as it was so what was she going to do if I came to her with some story that her boyfriend is making passes at me? I often wonder now what things were like between the two of them sexually. Surely things weren't so bad that he was driven to pursue a sexual relationship with a plain, unattractive child. But then if they weren't then why do it? Why not just go get a girlfriend? I will probably never know.

From exposing himself he moved on to making me touch him and ultimately to making me use my mouth on him and he using his on me. All this did not happen right away, but over the course of almost two years. I never said anything to anyone. I hated him. So much that at times it scared me. I imagined ways I could kill him and get away with it. I would have never done such a thing but to think that I could gave me some relief.

Age fifteen is when I became rebellious. I started hanging out with those types at school and made a few friends. I had two good friends, Paige and Erica. Paige and I are still in contact. My goal was to spend as little time at home as possible, so usually I could be found at one of their houses or at my current boyfriend's house after school.

It was at this time that I started having boyfriends. I guess I was loose, but not as much so as other girls I knew. I can count my partners on one hand. When I was with one of these boys is really the only time in my teenage years that I felt loved. Most of them were just after sex, but I didn't care. I could pretend that they loved me.

The reason I say 'Most of them,' is because there was one that may not have been just after sex. His name was Christian. He was transferred to my school and we began dating when I was still sixteen. I loved being around him for some reason. We would do goofy things. Like in the afternoons after school we would walk to the gas station and order spicy fries and chicken strips at the hot bar then feed them to each other with lots of ketchup. I loved doing that. On days when we didn't want chicken and fries we would go instead to the ice cream shop and get two scoops in a large waffle cone and share it. We would sit on the bench outside the ice cream place and watch people, trying to guess what they were thinking and making up funny stories about them. Mine were never as funny as his.

Things were the same with my mother's boyfriend. Maybe worse. I had finally grown a bit attractive and he loved it. He loved my breasts. At night now he would come into my room, since I was never home in the afternoons anymore. He would wait til mom was asleep and then creep down the hallway. I wondered then why he had never made me have intercourse with him. I assumed he was afraid I would get pregnant, but couldn't he just say it was one of my boyfriend's? No one would ever suspect him as the father.

I had never dated anyone as long as I had dated Christian, we had been going out over a year. He was the only male I had ever been around who made me feel good about myself. He called me 'Ray' and told me he loved the way I smiled. He didn't laugh if I tripped. Christian had an older half brother who traveled a lot, he gave Christian a key to his apartment and said we could go there to be alone. Sometimes on the weekends we would even spend the night there, but mom would always yell at me the next day when I got home.

Considering all this I shouldn't have been surprised to find out that I was pregnant. Really, I was more worried than anything. I was worried what Christian would say or do. Would he dump me? We went out for pizza Friday night. He was going out of town with his friends on Saturday to a football game so we wouldn't be together for a while. I had every intention of telling him Friday, I honestly did.

As we sat in the booth waiting on our pizza he pulled me close to him and kissed the side of my head.

"Ray, I love you, I really do."

I didn't want to ruin the evening. If I told him now and it upset him it would ruin his whole weekend. Besides, I wanted him to enjoy Saturday's game.

So I waited. I spent Saturday and Sunday trying to decide what his reaction would be. I decided I would tell him first thing Monday, at school. Then I decided I would tell him Monday afternoon when we went out for chicken strips and spicy fries with ketchup.

Monday morning came. I practiced what I would say to him that afternoon. I decided that the simplest way was the best. I would say "I found out the other day that I'm pregnant." and see what happened. When I got to school Paige and Erica were at their lockers next to mine. They looked at me expectantly.

"Are you okay?" Erica asked me.

"Yeah...." I answered slowly, trying to figure out how they knew I was pregnant, "Why wouldn't I be?"

They looked shocked. "We just thought you would be upset." said Paige.

Erica glanced at Paige. "She must not know." she said quietly.

"Know what?" I asked, the suspense was killing me.

"Christian...." Erica started, but didn't finish.

A chill went up my spine. Oh God, something is wrong with Christian. I grabbed Erica by the shoulders. "What's wrong with Christian?! Tell me!"

Paige grabbed my arm. "Rayya, calm down. Promise me you'll be calm."

"I'm calm," I said, taking a deep breath and fighting back tears. "Now tell me."

"Saturday night, you know Christian and the guys were on the way home from the game, right?"

I nodded.

"Well, they they'd had a bit to drink. And the guy who's car they went in had a bit too much to drink. They had a wreck."

I fell back against my locker and sunk to the floor with Paige and Erica on either side of me. Burying my head in my hands I started to cry. Paige put her arm around me.

"Christian and two of the guys died, but one is still alive." she whispered.

I shook my head. "No."

"I'm sorry, Rayya." Erica patted me.

I left school. I went home to the empty house. He and mom were at work. I locked myself in my room and cried all day and night and the next morning. At lunch time I went downstairs, lay on the sofa and cried then went back to my room until the morning after that. Waking up that morning with a stomach ache, I figured I was about to start my period. I stumbled my tired, puffy-eyed, ungroomed self into the bathroom and sure enough, I had. Then I remembered that I was pregnant. Or had been.

One day and hours of hellish cramps later I passed the baby. Losing that poor, pathetic little baby is one of the worst things I have ever been through. I lost the two people I loved most in the world that week.

I rotted in my room for the next two weeks after that. The school called dozens of times to see why I hadn't been attending. My mother pounded on my door and yelled threats. I ignored everything. Finally, on a Wednesday morning, I got up and went to school. Paige and Erica were nice to me. After school I went and got a job, passing the gas station with the hot bar on the way.

I came home from work late that night. It was a month after I had gotten a job working at a bookstore. I was exhausted and stretched out on my bed after I'd had a shower. I heard the doorknob turn. He came into my room and sat on the bed next to me. I didn't acknowledge his presence, I knew why he was here. To start making up for lost time. He pulled off my pants and underwear. I tried to push him off of me, but he held my arms above my head with one hand and proceeded to do things to me that are too shameful for me to ever fully admit to anyone. I closed my eyes. I wanted to die. I wanted to die and go to heaven to be with Christian and our baby. But I didn't.

I couldn't go to sleep after he left. I lay there for six hours. When it was almost dawn I dressed and pulled my back pack out of the closet. I put three shirts and three pairs of jeans in it, then quietly went downstairs. I got a box of crackers, a box of granola bars and a pack of cookies out of the pantry then took four apples from the basket on the table and put them in my back pack. I also put two bottled waters in there. I was about to slip out the door when I felt like I had forgotten something. I thought for a minute then realized what it was. I went back to my room and rummaged through my dresser drawer till I found it. The only picture I have of me and Christian. A Polaroid that Paige took. Underneath it, on the white strip I had written 'Ray loves Christian forever'. I stuck it in my back pack and left.

I patted my pocket as I boarded the bus to make sure my money was still there. I had made $350 in the month I worked at the bookstore and had all of it with me. I took some out to pay the bus fare and took a window seat half way to the back. I was on my way to the next town. I would lay low there for a couple of days to figure out my next move. I couldn't stay there long though, incase mom looked for me.

I had a plan. I was going to look for my dad. He left when I was eight and I had not heard from him since, I had no idea where he was. But I knew his name. Charlie. I would go to the library when I got to the next town and look on the Internet or in the phone book or something. I would look for Charlie Magevney. I fell asleep thinking about this.

The bus wheezing to a halt jarred me awake. I stepped down onto the side walk and looked around. It was a big town and I had no clue where the library was so I asked someone. When I got to the library it was almost lunch time and the place was full so I quickly signed up for an Internet computer and sat there eating my granola bar trying to figure out what to do. It took my whole hour allotted on the computer but I finally found him. He lived three states away. I pulled out my bus schedule to see when the next one left.

It cost me almost all of the money I had left to go the whole way. It would take about a week to get there with the bus stopping along the way to pick up and drop off people. I would not have to change buses till two days later so once again I took a window seat half way to the back and settled in for a long ride.

One the third day a lady boarded the bus. She sat next to me. She was about thirty-five and had a baby with her. The instant she sat down next to me with the baby I almost burst into tears. He was the sweetest little thing. I asked her how old he was and she said two months. He went to sleep and she let me hold him. Of course this made me sad because I thought of my own baby. I was the only person who ever knew my baby had existed, it was my secret. My own sad little secret.

Not much else happened on the trip after that. During one of the stopovers I went in a grocery store and bought some day old cinnamon rolls because I was out of food. They were the best thing I ever tasted.

I was there. I stood at the bus depot looking at the piece of paper with his address on it. I hadn't a clue where this street was. I went in a gas station and looked at one of the local maps they sold there. Finally I found it. He lived in the first ring of suburbs around the city, and since I was out of money I had to walk there. It was early morning when I started out and lunch time when I found the subdivision he lived in. I was nervous. I'd had a shower and changed my clothes so that made me feel a bit better. My legs hurt from too much walking. But I kept walking, checking the street signs as I did until I came to the right street. It was Saturday so he should be home.

A thousand thoughts ran through my mind as I went up to the house. Would he recognize me? Would he be happy? What if he's angry? Too late to back out now. I shifted the weight of my back pack, walked up the steps and rang the doorbell. Fear gripped me as I heard footsteps on the other side of the door. It opened to reveal a lady in her late forties. She looked kindly but curiously at me.

"Can I help you?" her brows furrowed a bit.

I felt as if I had just walked in on a family reunion or secret club meeting, somewhere I wasn't supposed to be. "Um, I'm here to see Charlie."

Her eyebrows shot up. "Oh, all right. Come in then." She stepped aside and I walked into the house as she called for Charlie.

He came out of the kitchen holding a platter of chopped vegetables, looking exactly as I remembered him only grayer. He stopped when he saw me. I took a deep breath as he looked intently at me for a few seconds. It had been almost ten years.

Finally he said, "Do I know you?" My heart fell. Tears filled my eyes, but I blinked them back.

"I'm Rayya, remember?"

He and the lady who had let me in both gasped. "How did you find me?" he asked.

"On the Internet."

"Oh, well...um, sit down, won't you?"

Just as he said that a little girl, about seven, burst in through the back door that was between the living room and the kitchen. "Daddy! Daddy! The shish-kabobs are smoking!"

He sat the platter down and looked up at me. "Excuse me a minute." he smiled.

The lady and I stood there together awkwardly for a minute until he came in the back door with bits of steak on skewers.

"Would you like to have lunch with us?" the lady asked.

I forced a smile. "Okay, thanks."

As my father sat the food on the table the girl who was about seven came back in and sat at the table with another little girl, this one I guessed to be four.

When the five of us were settled my father introduced them. "These are our daughters, Anna and Kate. And I think you've already met my wife, Carrie."

Carrie smiled at me.

I only ate one shish-kabob, even though I was starving, since I was obviously intruding on these people's lunch.

"So," my father began, "How come the visit?" he smiled, to soften the question I think.

"Um," I studied my shish-kabob as I thought. "Things at home were a bit...."

He looked alarmed. "You've run away?"

"No," I said quickly. "No, just--"

"Does your mother know you're here?"

"She doesn't care."

He didn't look very relieved.

Carrie touched my arm gently. "How have you been?" She was trying to ease the tension and I appreciated it.

"Oh, I've been...I've been okay." I smiled. What is the nice way to say 'I was molested, my boyfriend was killed then I miscarried and was raped.'? I looked up at my father "And I see you've been doing pretty good too, huh?" I said, forcing another smile.

He ruffled Anna's hair. "Yeah, I've been good." Anna laughed and squirmed.

I finished my shish-kabob, thanked them for the lovely lunch and visit then, graciously as I could, left. How dumb could I be? He had his whole, perfect little life there, of course he didn't want me butting in. If he had done a little dance as I walked out the door it wouldn't have been more obvious that he was glad to see me gone. I felt so terrible, not only had I come all this way for nothing but I had interfered in Charlie's life. I was also broke, hungry, cold and had nowhere to go. Good job Rayya.

After four days I was starving. My cinnamon rolls were long gone. I had walked as far as possible to get away from my father's house and tried to forget any of that ever happened. My face burned with embarrassment every time I thought of it. As I had been walking an older lady pulled over and asked if I needed a ride. Since she was older and a woman I accepted. I asked her to take me to the library. I was getting used to these libraries.

They had nice, comfy couches and chairs at the library where homeless people often slept till closing time. I slept there during the day and went down the street to the 24-hour Wal-Mart at night, until the library opened again. After four days my stomached ached from hungriness.

On the fifth morning, cold, tired and soaked with rain, I went into a little diner and sat in the back. If I couldn't eat I could at least watch other people eat. I felt like the most worthless, inadequate just turned eighteen year old in the world. I started to cry. There were a few other people in the diner, but I was in the back and they didn't notice me. Half an hour later a man walked in. He was an older man, about sixty and grandfatherly. He smiled and chatted with the lady at the counter, before he went to sit down. That's when he noticed me. He walked over to my booth and asked if he could sit down. I stared at him for a second, wondering what the hell he wanted, then nodded. He asked when the last time I had anything to eat was and I told him. When the waitress came over to take his order he ordered coffee and said whatever I wanted too. I ordered waffles, bacon, scrambled eggs, french toast and orange juice. The man smiled.

He told me his name was Theodore, but to call him Ted, and he was a pastor at a local church. I ate as he told me this. He asked why I was so upset. The whole story poured out of me. My mother's boyfriend, Christian, my father, the whole thing. He drank his coffee and listened attentively. When I got done telling him all this I sat back and looked at my empty plate, it was the first time in weeks I had felt full.

Ted was sympathetic. We talked for a while. He wasn't judgmental like most adults are. He asked if there was anything he could do and I said there wasn't. I thanked him for my breakfast as he stood to leave. He reached into his pocket and handed me his card and a $100 bill. I was speechless.

"Take this, it will help you get back on your feet. If you ever need anything, you know where I am." Ted smiled.

I stared at the money in my hand. "It's too much, I can't take this."

"It's a gift." He left.

Things got better after that. I used his money to get a room at the YWCA and found a job. I didn't like living in the same town as my father, afraid I would run into them somewhere and have another awkward situation on my hands so after about a year I saved up enough for an apartment in another city. I took my GED, landed a job as a manager at a department store and here I am. I have had a lot of trouble with depression, but how could I not when I'm surrounded by happy couples and babies all day at work? I'm bad about thinking 'What if?'. What if I had gone ahead and told Christian I was pregnant on Friday night? Would he have stayed in town that Saturday? Would he have been glad? Would he have wanted us to be a family? Would we have gotten married?

I go to a counselor twice a week and that's helped me a lot. She says I've come a long way. I didn't really think I had until recently, when I started seeing a guy from work. My first boyfriend since Christian. My counselor says it's important for me not to withdraw and Steve has helped me a lot in that way.

I've also made some friends here. There's a blonde girl at work who's pesky but nice, she hangs around me a lot. She and I are becoming friends. She's one of the only people who can make me smile when I feel bad.

Paige wrote to me today. I found her letter when I went to mail a Christmas card to Ted. She says that my mother's boyfriend died last week of a sudden heart attack and my mother is distraught over it. Good. Paige also says that her own boyfriend has proposed to her and that they will be getting married this spring. She wants me to be a bridesmaid.

Today Steve and I are going to pick up a little girl named Kelli. We volunteer for a mentoring program. They pair us up with a child who's in foster care and once a week we take them and do something fun. They chose Kelli for us because she was sexually abused by her parents and they think talking to someone who's been through it will be good for her. Kelli's very sweet and shy, she's ten with long dark hair and sparkling green eyes. Steve and I are going to take her to a movie and then to eat chicken strips and spicy fries with lots of ketchup.

The End

© Ophelia, November 2000