Ivy — Age 13

School sucks. The thought loops in my head like a scratched record as I sit at my desk in science, half-listening to the teacher drone on about chemical reactions. My seat partner, Steve, shifts in his chair, and I can feel the storm building inside me. He's a jock who, along with his buddies, makes a sport of bugging me and the other girls in our grade—always pushing boundaries, trying to get us to sleep with them or worse. I doodle in my notebook—sharp, jagged lines that mirror the anger inside me. All I know is if he touches me one more time, I'm going to do something about it.

When I'd first gotten to class, he'd already been in his seat. And as I sat down, he had leaned in close to pick up a pen, his hand brushing against my breast with a too-sweet "Oops, my bad" and a smirk. I had had to grip my binder with both hands to fight the growing impulse—the itch—to make him regret ever touching me again. It wasn't the first time he'd "accidentally" groped me, and his friends were all the same. Complaints had been made to the head of the private school I went to, but these boys came from families with sway in our small town. Nothing ever stuck.

There is no point in telling my parents. After Jameson died, my father's trips started to stretch from one week a month to almost every week, burying his grief in work and neglect. My mother, though—her grief turned into fury, a fury that turned outwards: at the driver who was speeding down our street, at Copper who'd been given away right after, at her absent husband for not fixing the gate, and especially at me. She started drinking heavily.

On what would have been our ninth birthday, she stormed into my room, reeking of wine, and smacked me hard across the face. "Why couldn't you stop him?" She had screamed. No apology—just leaving me stunned, my cheek burning from the first of many cruel touches.