When it was all over, I pushed my bike home and I pretended to be the daughter my parents knew, the straight-A student.
I remember that they had nothing but disdain for me. I remember their smells, the squareness of their faces, the weight of their bodies, the tangy smell of their sweat, the surprising strength in their limbs. They were boys who were not yet men but knew, already, how to do the damage of men. You may learn how to be the life of the party so that people are too busy laughing to focus on the elephant in the room I was 12 when I was raped by Christopher and several of his friends in an abandoned cabin in the woods where no one but those boys could hear me scream.
