You Let Me In - Camilla Bruce Page 0,7

and the one that was forbidden. No child should be subjected to a fate like that. It wears you so thin, is such a burden. There is shame in there too, in that sense of being wrong.

And I was always worried that Pepper-Man would hurt someone. He was a wild thing on a leash, my friend, something I ought to, but could not, control.

It was quite a mission for a very young girl. A dreadful responsibility.

I remember Mother’s pale face when yet another parent had been at our door with her crying daughter in tow. I’d seen Pepper-Man watching her one day when he walked me to school. This girl, Carol, had been out playing in the schoolyard with the sunlight illuminating her butter-colored curls. Pepper-Man paused by the wrought-iron fence and looked at her for a very long time. The hunger I saw in his gaze then worried me so much I decided I’d rather just hurt her first, before he had time to braid her a crown and sink his teeth into her neck.

I was nine then, one of my worst years. Pepper-Man had been a snarling beast all winter, dancing around me always. I fell asleep with his teeth in my throat more often than not. He took to ogling Olivia’s fresh-faced friends with hunger in his gaze, even Olivia herself, with her polished copper braids. No matter how often he tasted me, it never seemed to quench his thirst. No matter what I did to appease him—telling him how I loved him, how much his gifts meant to me—he never seemed to be satisfied. I think I screamed and thrashed and lashed at those girls just so Pepper-Man wouldn’t. He had promised he needed only me, after all. Had promised me I was his only princess. The red marks that I left on their skin were warning signs, what little pain my scratching nails, hard little fists, and teeth could inflict were really nothing in comparison to what he could do.

“How dare you?” Mother cried at me, all flushed and angry, reading another letter from my deeply concerned teacher. “How dare you ruin our reputation like that? Fighting like a street rat! They’ll think you have no manners—no manners at all!”

I was rinsing beans by the kitchen table, guided by our housekeeper Fabia’s stern hand. Pepper-Man was sitting on the kitchen counter, sprawling, more like it, long limbs extended on the clean surface; looked like a spider, gray and spindly. I didn’t give a word in reply. What was there to say?

Mother shook her head, didn’t look as angry anymore, more afraid, or sad. “This won’t end well, Cassie. Not for you, not for anyone. Just think of your brother, what this will do to him. He doesn’t react well to all this upheaval.”

I nodded once. We both already knew there was disaster in the brewing.

“You are jealous, I think,” Pepper-Man said that same night, as he folded me in his embrace. “You do not want me to taste another, you want me to have only you.”

I reddened then, beneath the covers. I didn’t want it to be true. “You’ll hurt them,” I said. “You’ll make them bleed.”

“But so, my love, do you.”

Just as I said, two peas in a pod. We were always the same, my Pepper-Man and I.

* * *

I should have been unhappy that the other girls didn’t like me, but I wasn’t. I had many other friends to occupy my time, way more entertaining than my classmates. I was seven, maybe eight, the first time Pepper-Man took me to see his kin. It was early autumn, the leaves on the trees barely tinged with yellow. It was a Saturday, I believe, since I was home from school but had not been to church and the household was preparing for a dinner that night. Mother, always the perfectionist, was on a mission to make our home as spotless as possible before the important event. In consequence, she and Fabia were tearing my room apart. They had removed all the books from my shelves, laid them out in colorful rows on the soft white carpet on the floor. Golden-haired, red-lipped heroines and dark-haired sidekicks were grinning up at me from the covers. Mother and Fabia were looking for what was hidden behind them.

“Why do you keep doing this?” my mother complained, tossing wreaths of birch and oak, jewelry of bone and fur, down on the floor by my feet. Fabia held half a robin’s