I didn’t like his smile. It just made my stomach hurt more.
He grabbed my wrist and pulled my hand to him. I closed my eyes, but he told me to open them. He didn’t like it when I didn’t look at him. Sometimes, he made it hurt more if I tried to look away.
“I know you’re gonna be a teenager soon, but you’re always gonna be my little girl, Delia.”
I pressed my lips together, but I wanted to say I wasn’t his little girl. I didn’t care what a piece of paper said. He wasn’t my dad. My dad had been a good person. Art wasn’t a good person.
“Are you gettin’ attitude, darlin’?”
I shook my head. I felt like I was gonna throw up now, and if I did, it’d just make things worse.
“I think you need a little remindin’ of how good girls behave.” His grip on my wrist hurt now. “Good girls are what?”
“Quiet. Polite,” I recited the list automatically. “Smiling. Agreeable.”
He lifted my hand and kissed it. I wanted to pull away, to tell him to stop, but I couldn’t. I must not have hidden my thought good, though, because he gave me a mean look.
“You aren’t thinkin’ of doin’ somethin’ bad, are you, darlin’? Like maybe tellin’ someone about our secret?”
I shook my head, new fear spiking through me. “No. No. I won’t tell anyone.”
“That’s good. Why?”
I knew the answer to this one too. “‘Cuz it’ll make Mom mad at me because I’m supposed to obey you like you’re my father.”
“Because I am your father,” he corrected.
I never liked to say that. I didn’t know a lot, but I was old enough to know that fathers didn’t make their daughters do stuff like this. Not good dads.
“Your mom will think you’re lyin’ too, you know.” He put my hand back on his lap. “No one would believe you. And then you’d get in more trouble for lyin’. You know why?”
“Because you’re a lawyer,” I said automatically. “You can make them put me in jail, and I’ll never see Mom or Dara again.”
“Not just me,” he said. “My whole family is lawyers. We’re important people, and you should feel special I chose you.”
I didn’t feel special. I felt dirty and sad and angry. It was worse when he was hurting me, but it never went away completely.
“Now, I think you owe me an apology.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, darlin’. I want a special apology.”
I couldn’t stop myself from whimpering. He’d talked about something really bad – something special – he wanted to do to me, but I’d told him I’d be extra good if he didn’t do it. I didn’t really understand what would happen, but it couldn’t be good if it made him smile that much.
He told me what he was going to do, and it was worse than I thought, and I couldn’t stop from crying, begging him not to make me do it. That just made him mad and tell me I was being a brat. A brat was worse than a bad girl. That meant he had to punish me.
The world shifted.
I screamed.
And screamed.
I couldn’t breathe.
My pillow was suffocating me.
No one could hear me.
I was dying.
I was dying, and no one cared.
Screaming.
Dying.
Screaming.
Dying.
The world shifted.
I was on the floor, huddled in the fetal position, my hands over my mouth. My throat hurt, and I thought I might’ve been screaming for real. My body shook, and I wrapped my arms around my knees and pulled them tighter against my chest. It’d been so long since that night, but it felt like it’d just happened yesterday. I could still feel him…
“No…” I moaned the word. I wanted to close my eyes, but I knew if I did, I’d see him again.
My chest was tight, my heart painfully pounding against my ribs like it was going to come right out of my chest. Everything hurt. Logically, I knew it was me remembering the pain from that night, remembering how I’d had to tell Mom I was sick the next morning because I’d been in too much pain to go to school.
The memory hung in the back of my mind, threatening to overtake me again, to make me relive the entire night. Knowing it was still there only spiked my panic. I could taste it coating the back of my tongue.
I was going to throw up.
The thought of having to either clean up or explain a mess in my cabin was enough to get me to my