Bottled up

By Kylie T.

This book, Speak, takes place in a normal setting in high school with a girl named Melinda who gets raped. Melinda has no friends and her parents are extremely oblivious to how she feels. Melinda masks her feelings for so long until the end of the book. I think when cases like these happen girls and boys live in fear, being scared and alone. Throughout her high school year she struggles with keeping everything to herself, bottled up and is having hard time finding friends. The truth hasn't hit the surface at school and no one likes Melinda.

In the summer Melinda had a handful of friends who all went to a party one night in the summer, everyone got drunk and Melinda so happened to walk around and into the woods. In the woods is when it all happened. She was forced to have sex with boy from her high school. After the incident in the woods she didn't what to do. She was scared. She went back to the house that held the party and called the cops. When the cops came everyone at the party knew she called. Everyone thought she ruined the party and even her best friend took everyone else's side and decided to hate her as much as everyone at school.

In the journey Melinda had to face a rollercoaster of emotions. Tired, alone, lost and numb. She ate lunch alone at school and became good friends with her art teacher. The first person she opened to about her incident. Her teacher had room big enough to have a secret spot away from everyone at school. Melinda enjoyed this room more than anything. She was free. Free to express her feelings in art. The teacher saw that in her. At first Melinda got a lot of critique on her art work that wasn't good. Until after the teacher told her to start using emotion in her work. After that she bloomed to becoming an amazing artist.

Andy the person who raped her, found Melinda's secret spot. By the time he does he's already dating Melinda's ex best friend. After Melinda finding she has the right feeling to tell her. Her name is Rachel. She told Rachel directly that her boyfriend raped her and of course Rachel was in denial because Andy was her new boyfriend and everyone thought he was hot. I think that's why she was so in denial she didn't want to lose her popular boyfriend. In my own opinion I think that's sad.

Andy finds Melinda's favorite spot and attacks her because the the school is finding out he actually did rape her. Melinda being a strong girl she breaks a piece of a mirror and goes at it. She then sprays his eyes. After Andy being injured and Melinda screaming a group of lacrosse girls go running to her help her out. They all give an extremely hard hand on Andy and push him away from Melinda. This is when everyone stopped hating her and believed her.

In the end I almost lost faith in humanity because if someone were tell me they got raped by my boyfriend I wouldn't not believe it. Rape is a huge thing that I'm against and I'm extremely happy with the ending. Everyone started to protect her after she opened up to her ex best friend. This showed me that the people in the book actually do have a human in them.