Asher
Iwas eager to get to group. I arrived early, excitement brewing internally, knowing I’d be seeing Lennon soon—even if it were only here.
Anything was worth it just to see those uniquely green eyes, always wide and surprised, and that messy, bleached hair that somehow looked perfect without ever meeting a brush.
It just worked for her. I bet anything would.
What I slowly learned about her was that appearances never painted a full picture of someone’s insides.
Athena was self-conscious to a devastating fault.
She had ended up in therapy after a suicide attempt—an overdose.
She admitted to the group that any other method might have altered her appearance, and she couldn’t stand the thought of others seeing the flaws she believed lived inside her.
She was beautiful, but she couldn’t see it. In that way, she reminded me of Lennon.
Lennon didn’t want to keep going on this Earth, convinced the world would be better off without her.
She couldn’t have been more wrong. My world would have been infinitely worse without her in it.
There was something about her assertiveness that put me in my place with every encounter—even during the soft, sweet moments.
I took my seat, restless and impatient, my eyes flickering again and again to the doorway, half-expecting her to be the next one through it.
Jane, Marco, and Aria filtered in. And then there she was.
I cleared my throat at the sight of her. My God. Every time felt like the first time.
Her eyes were bright, yet tinged with sadness.
She had been crying all morning; I could tell.
The rush of excitement I’d felt at seeing her dissolved into a deep, aching urge to take away whatever pain she was carrying.
She avoided my gaze as she walked in. Lennon usually didn’t care much about what she wore, but today was different.
She had on oversized, grey sweatpants—something I’d never seen her wear before—and a worn black hoodie with Korn emblazoned across the front.
It looked old and well-loved, like it had once been a favourite.
She dropped into her chair as far from me as possible, angling herself so she didn’t have to meet my eyes. What was eating at her today?
Once everyone was seated, Dana began the group. Though her voice pulled at my attention, my focus stayed fixed on Lennon.
“Alright team,” Dana said. “From what I can tell, group has been going well. Some of you have been challenged, and some of you have been given new opportunities for perspective shifts. That’s huge!”
She was enthusiastic, but it felt like there was more layered beneath her speech.
“We’re going to start addressing some underlying triggers for each of you.
Now, I know this is the gruelling part—the part where you may want to throw in the towel and call this group quits.
It will require you to step fully outside your comfort zone, but this is where real change is going to happen. Everyone still with me?”
The group nodded, a few subtle groans surfacing in acknowledgment of their unfortunate attentiveness.
Dana scanned the room, taking in our presence and reluctant willingness to participate. She seemed pleased by the attention we gave her.
“Alright, let’s just jump right in. I want you to think about a time you reached out for help. Maybe that request was met with disappointment. Maybe expectations weren’t met at all. Take a deep dive and sit with that moment—when you needed help and your needs weren’t being met.”
The room fell silent.
It was a simple question, but one that demanded we scrape away the surface and begin peeling back the layers that made us such fragile humans. My thoughts drifted immediately to my father. It was an obvious place to land. He had been a good man, but only to those who never showed weakness.
In his eyes, I was weak.
Not wanting to sink too deeply into that spiral, my gaze shifted to Lennon. There was an expression on her face I hadn’t seen before—a distant trance, as if she were lost somewhere far from the room, buried in a memory. For a reason I couldn’t quite explain, it made me uneasy.
“Lennon,” Dana said softly, trying to draw her back.
Lennon’s eyes snapped up, irritation flashing across her face at being singled out. All attention landed on her. She stayed silent, staring at Dana as if silently pleading with her to not ask.
“Is there something you’d be willing to share with the group?”
The question landed like a blade. I could see it etched across Lennon’s face—the wound she was trying to keep hidden. She glanced around at all the watchful eyes trained on her, appearing almost unfazed on the surface. But I saw her.
“I…umm, I don’t really want to share,” she said. “I feel too…um—what’s the word? Exposed?”
Without missing a beat, Dana stepped in to guide her.
“Vulnerable. And it most certainly is. But there is solace in knowing your peers are choosing to be vulnerable with you here, today. Why don’t you start with the very first thing that came to mind?
You can let your voice guide you—or you can stop there if that’s all you have. ”
The look on Lennon’s face held irritation—maybe fear, too. She cleared her throat and fixed her gaze on the floor, gathering the courage to reveal the secrets she maybe never allowed herself to speak aloud.
“My mom,” she began. “My mom came to mind, because every time I needed help, she was never fucking there…”
She stalled, but no one interrupted. The room went still, every person attuned to her because we could feel it building. The eerie silence that followed her words was thick and expectant.
She let out another exhausted breath. “I needed her so fucking badly. They were there, and I told them to stop—but they didn’t stop.
I told her about it. I cried for her help.
I screamed at the top of my lungs. And she just looked at me with disgust.” Her voice cracked.
“Then she left. She just fucking left me there. I was alone with those animals while they mauled me.”
Her words tumbled faster now. “I needed her. I needed someone to care about me. But no one fucking cared. No one cared. No one cares.”
She was on the edge of hysteria, tears streaming down her face, uncontrolled and heavy. It was the first time I felt like I was seeing the parts of her she kept buried—the pieces she had locked deep down inside the depths of her soul.
Her breathing turned ragged, each inhale uneven. Her eyes were wide, the realization settling in of just how much she had revealed. She had only alluded to fragments of the trauma she endured—things she had buried so deeply for so long that she may have forgotten they were even there.
Then her eyes found mine.
That impossible green—bright, alive, almost violent in its intensity—met my gaze, like a world of photosynthesis unfolding right before my very own eyes. Before I could fully absorb it, she looked away.
* * *
The group ran longer than usual, everyone given the opportunity to share. None of their stories stayed with me the way Lennon’s did. The sorrow that clung to her features lingered, something I knew would haunt me for the rest of my days.
A scrape of metal chairs against the floor caught my attention as I watched Lennon slip out of the room, her movements careful, an attempt to go unnoticed. I hoisted myself up from my chair—awkward and rushed—and chased after her.
“Hey,” I called out, and as I approached her from behind, I leaned in slightly and said, “Little siren, we can’t keep meeting like this.”
Whipping around, Lennon lunged at me, “You know what, Asher, not everything is cute, and funny, and adorable. You can quit trying to act like nothing is fucking happening, as if you didn’t just hear the fucking sob story about how three men raped me!”
I lifted my hands in surrender—not confrontational, but open. The way someone did when they wanted to be a safe person for another.
“Lennon, I can’t even begin to imagine the kind of resilience it takes to get out of bed every day and come somewhere like this,” I said softly. “To talk about the things you’ve had to survive. I honestly can’t.”
She looked startled by my response, as if she had been bracing herself for an outburst instead.
“Lennon,” I added, my voice quieter now, “none of that changes anything for me.”
Her expression shifted from disbelief to confusion. “What do you mean none of it changes anything for you?”
Now it was my turn to look confused. “I mean that I care about you. I like you. I’m enamoured by you—if that wasn’t already obvious. And nothing that was just shared in that group is going to change that. Nothing you tell me ever will.”
She turned her back, alarmed by my confession, and started to walk away.
“Don’t walk away, Lennon,” I pleaded.
As I started to follow her, she came to an abrupt stop and whipped around, flinging her hair over her shoulders. Her eyes burned with fury, with disdain for everything I’d said.
“Don’t you ever fucking tell me what to do,” she snapped. “And don’t you ever dare say that you’re falling for me. There is nothing to fall for. I’m a carcass—rotting. I’m dying, Asher. I’m fucking dying!”
I whispered, because it was the only way I knew to soften the impact. “Little siren, we’re all dying. Let me in, talk to me. Let it out, you can take it out on me.”
“You don’t know a fucking thing about what pain looks like,” she shot back.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be me—and you never will.
You’ll never understand what I had to endure just to fucking survive.
So no, I’m not going to let you in and sing some bullshit Kumbaya song just so that you can feel good about yourself. ”
Her rage was palpable, seeping from her very pores.
I could tell then that pushing her wasn’t what she needed—not today. So I stepped aside, silently letting her know I wouldn’t stand in the way of whatever she needed to do to find a shred of peace.