Growing Bravely: Jack and Maddie's Trials and Triumphs

The first day of college is always a little nerve-wracking. I can remember my first day at King’s just like it was yesterday. I was so scared I could hardly sleep the night before, but then the bus arrived and I didn’t know what to do with myself. When I finally figured out the whole orientation thing and got my room key, I looked around and realized that I didn’t know anyone else there.

Then I saw her. She was sitting by herself on the steps of one of the residence halls, looking down at the ground and biting her lip. She was a tiny little thing, shorter than me, and she was all bundled up in a sweater and hiking boots, despite the seventy-five degree weather. She had a backpack on the step beside her, but she looked like she was barely able to lift it.

I went over. “Hey, um…I don’t mean to be nosy, but are you okay?”

She looked up at me as if I had just pulled her out of a deep, dark hole, and she gave me a little smile. “Oh…um…I’m fine, I guess. I’ve just never been so far from home before…” She trailed off.

“Yeah, I know the feeling. My name’s Jack.” I stuck my hand out.

“I’m Maddie. Maddie Flanagan. It’s nice to meet you.”

“You too,” I said. “So...are you going to class today?”

Maddie shook her head. “I haven’t even registered yet.”

“You’re not? Well, maybe we can go together then?”

She smiled again. “That would be great.”

So the two of us went together to register for classes, and then we went to get our student IDs, and then we got lunch at the cafeteria. By the end of the day, we knew each other pretty well. We were both pre-med and we both lived in the same dorm, so we decided to study together and hang out whenever we could. Maddie was brilliant, but very quiet in class, and she was so shy it took her a while to make friends. As for me, I was more outgoing and had a lot of friends, but I was still kind of an introvert. I had made a lot of friends, but I didn’t know how to approach them with my problems. That’s where Maddie came in.

We started studying at the library together most days after class, and she helped me get through some of my tougher classes. I helped her navigate the social scene at school, which she was terrified of. After a while, we figured out that we were each other’s rock.

We spent so much time together that people started to think we were dating. We weren’t. We just really liked each other. We kept our relationship strictly platonic, because we didn’t want to ruin our friendship. I had had girlfriends before, but things always ended badly and I ended up hurting them. Maddie was the most important person in my life, and I didn’t want to mess that up. Still, sometimes we did hold hands or give each other quick hugs. It wasn’t anything serious, just the occasional friendly gesture. Some people thought we were actually a couple and were just being shy about it. They couldn’t have been more wrong.

It took us a while to realize it, but we were each other’s first loves. We had met each other when we were both freshmen, and we had grown closer and closer every year. We became so close that we bared our souls to each other, sharing our fears and our darkest secrets. Maddie told me that she had lusted after one of her professors when she was a freshman. He was married, but he was very attractive and charismatic, and she had developed feelings for him that she couldn’t shake. She told me that she had handled the situation the best way she knew how, by writing about it in her journal. She opened up to me about how she had gotten drunk on whiskey one night and had given her journal to the professor in an attempt to entice him into sleeping with her. She also told me that she had never told anyone that part of the story before. She thought I was the only one who understood her, and she felt safe telling me everything.

I told her that I had slept with one of my girlfriends. I wasn’t proud of what I had done, but I was glad she was the one I had told. Maddie had always supported me and given me the confidence I needed to be the person I wanted to be. She was truly a gift.

One day, I was walking home from class when a girl I had never seen before stopped me. She was standing on the sidewalk and looked like she was waiting for someone, but I didn’t recognize her. She had long black hair and big brown eyes, and she was wearing a tight white dress. She was even shorter than Maddie, but she was tan and looked like she worked out. She looked like a model. I took a double take as I passed her, and she stopped me.

“Jack…?” She sounded unsure.

“Yeah?” I turned around.

“It’s me…Maddie.”

I almost couldn’t believe it. Maddie had never worn makeup or dressed like that before, and her hair was long and straight. She looked nothing like the Maddie I used to know.

“Maddie…?” I asked.

“Yeah. You gotta help me.”

I stood there for a moment, trying to process everything. “What…what happened to you?”

She looked up at me, and there was fear in her eyes. “Can we just go somewhere and talk?”

I nodded and led her to my dorm. We sat down on my bed, and Maddie began to talk. She told me about how she had met a guy at a party her freshman year. He told her that he was a professor and that he wanted to help her get good grades. She had met him a couple times and they had gone to lunch together, but then she had stopped seeing him. She didn’t think anything of it, but then she had gotten an A on a paper that she had never written. She confronted her professor about it and he admitted that he had ghostwritten the paper for her. She was furious, but he was persistent. She told him that she wouldn’t write another paper for him, but he tried to persuade her to date him instead. He started sending her jewelry and flowers, and he invited her out to dinner. She didn’t tell me the whole story, but she told me that when she finally agreed to go out with him, he drugged her and tried to rape her. She ran away and went home to try and forget about it.

A couple weeks later, she told me, she had gotten an email from him. He was angry, and he told her that she was going to be expelled from school unless she wrote him another paper. She begged him not to do it, but he told her that he had seen her at the party and that he knew she liked him. She was confused, but she didn’t understand why he was doing this to her. She agreed to write him the paper, but she figured that if she went to his office to turn it in, she would have the courage to say no.

She went to his office and waited for him, but he never showed up. She waited for hours, but he never came. Eventually, he called her and told her that he was on his way, so she waited. He never showed up. After waiting for another half hour, Maddie got up to leave. She was just about to close the door behind her when she heard footsteps. She turned back and saw the professor walking toward her. He had a gun pointed at her. Her heart started beating faster, and she demanded to know what he wanted. He told her that he was sorry, but he had no choice. He told her that she was too beautiful to live. Then he pulled the trigger.

The last thing Maddie remembered was falling to the floor and seeing blood on her hands. She passed out and woke up in the hospital. When she woke up, she was confused and scared, but she was alive. She told the doctors that she thought she had been shot, and she was afraid that she would die. She was relieved when they told her that she had just fainted. She tried to return to school as if nothing had ever happened, but when she got back