Page 1 of Shy Girl

PROLOGUE

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I wear a pink dress,the kind that promises softness and delivers none. Its tulle is brittle and sharp, brushing against my fur like a thousand tiny teeth, a cruel lover that bites with every move. Every scratch keeps me in place, a reminder of what I am: a pet, a thing shaped for looking, for praise, for command. The bows on my pigtails pull too tight, yanking the skin and stretching my head into something neat, into something pleasing, a quiet violence made beautiful. White socks climb my legs, their frills delicate, a whisper of innocence over the bruises beneath, the ones he says shouldn’t happen if the socks are there—but they always do.

The ache is low and rhythmic, a second heartbeat in my ribs, steady and insistent, the kind of pain you get used to until it becomes part of you. Then the door bursts open, and he enters like a storm, dragging the sour stink of liquor behind him, his presence filling the room and turning the pastel air brittle. In his hands is a cake, gleaming, its pink frosting too smooth, like plastic dipped in sugar, like something that belongs on a screen, too perfect to hold.

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White piping curls at the edges in tight loops, crafted for someone better, someone not me. Across the top, in delicate cursive, it says:Happy Birthday, Shy Girl.He crouches low, sets the cake on the floor, his grin stretching too wide, his teeth sharp, a predator in party clothes. “Surprise,” he says, his voice cracking the silence like glass. A birthday. Mine. Time here doesn’t have edges; it drips and folds, days bleeding into years, into nothing at all. Birthdays doesn’t make sense to me anymore. But the cake is real, and it’s in front of me.

I lower myself, fur brushing against the stiff fabric of the dress, and crawl forward. My snout dips into the frosting, the sweetness rolling over my tongue, thick and sticky, a flood that chokes but insists on being swallowed. Beneath the pink gloss, the cake falls apart, crumbling into ash that coats my teeth, hollow sweetness that fills me with its nothing. Still, I keep going. Lick. Swallow. Lick. Swallow. His laughter cuts the air, sharp and jagged, a sound too big for the room.

“Good, isn’t it?” he says, his voice slick with liquor, his amusement curling like smoke. “You’re welcome, girl. Do you love me?”

I lift my head slowly, frosting clinging to my fur, sticky and pink, streaked like a brand. I meet his eyes and shape the only answer I’ve been taught to give. “Woof.” It comes out low, a blade cutting through the sweetness. He laughs again, fuller this time, his delight spilling out and smothering the air, the kind of laughter that doesn’t leave room for anything else. “That’s my girl,” he says, his hand heavy on my head, stroking the fur like he’s soothing a loyal animal. But his touch binds more than it soothes. His voice dips, soft but sharp, a knife wrapped in velvet. “Happy birthday,” he says. I lower

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my head again, back to the cake. The frosting clogs my throat, its sweetness sticking, refusing to let go.

Lick. Swallow. Lick. Swallow. The dress scrapes. The bows pull. The bruises pulse beneath my fur, matching the rhythm of the breaths I take without control. This is who I am now. A pet. A shape carved by someone else’s hands, a thing devoured piece by piece, until there is nothing left but obedience, the quiet, and the hurt. Until hurt is all that remains.

ONE

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I never thoughtI’d end up here, standing on the edge of a decision that feels both ridiculous and inevitable. It’s like staring at a box withDO NOT OPEN: Bad Decisions Insidestamped across the front, already knowing my hands will tear at the lid. Already knowing I’ll pry it open just to see how bad it can get.

I’m broke—not the latte-skipping, tightening-the-belt kind of broke, but the hollow, all-consuming kind. The kind of broke that eats away at your insides, makes you question the shape of your morals, smooths out the edges of what most people call acceptable. Desperation doesn’t crash down all at once; it seeps in, quiet and steady, until you’re choking on it, gulping for air. It tastes like shame. It tastes like I’m letting down not just myself but everyone who came before me, all those ancestors who clawed through history just to get me here, just to watch me drown in a mess of my own making.

But it didn’t start with money. The cracks in my life began long before that, a slow fracture widening over time. It started years ago, when my mother left. I was six. I still remember her—her hair, black and glossy like a crow’s wing, the smell of lilacs and cigarette

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smoke that lingered even after she was gone. She used to braid my hair, her hands quick and firm, pulling tight enough to make my scalp hum. Tight enough to feel like permanence, like something solid that wouldn’t come undone. But permanence wasn’t her thing.

One day, she packed a suitcase big enough to hold forever and walked out the door.

I sat on the steps, knees tucked to my chest, waiting for her to come back. I don’t know how long I waited. Long enough for the sky to darken, long enough to learn she never would.

My dad stayed, but in pieces, in fragments that didn’t add up to enough. He worked double shifts at the factory, his hands calloused and streaked with grease, his breath sour with whiskey. He wasn’t mean, just absent in ways that mattered. By ten, I was walking to the corner store to buy groceries because he wasn’t sober enough to do it. He’d shove a crumpled twenty into my hand and mutter,Knock yourself out, kid.

By twelve, I knew how to keep the lights on. I’d call the electric company myself, the numbers on the back of my dad’s credit card memorized and rolling off my tongue like a prayer. They never asked why a kid was calling, never questioned the small but mighty voice on the other end of the line. They didn’t care. As long as they got their money, the lights stayed on.

Numbers became my refuge. Clean, sharp, dependable. Numbers didn’t leave. They didn’t get drunk. They didn’t walk out with a suitcase or come home reeking of liquor. I was good at math—better than good. I built my life on it, a fortress made of equations, algorithms, sharp corners and clean lines. It was a promise: if I could just be precise enough, exact enough, maybe I could keep the chaos at bay.

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