Page 2 of Of Heathens & Havoc

I stop talking, my face burning with shame as sentences from the past dart through my mind—my brother’s defense, the juvenile attorney, scraps from the argument I overheard the night my parents thought I was sleeping, before Mom took me away.

A harmless game.

Just horsing around.

Boys being boys.

“Because that proved that you had power over them too,” the priest says quietly when I don’t continue.

I shiver at how astute that comment is, how blunt.

Was that why?

“Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe it was just the excitement, this tension that had been building for a few years. Whatever it was, they were older and stronger than us, and eventually, they got the door open and came storming in. We ran, and there was this… This feeling, Father. Terrifying and… Andthrilling.My brother caught my friend and pinned her on her bed, and I knewshe let him because she thought he was cute. The neighbor had our other friend, and her brother was trying to catch me. I had a little crush on him, but I was embarrassed about it, and terrified he’d catch me. I think some part of me knew that if he did, everything would change in the Quint.”

I close my eyes, pressing my knees together and leaning my head back on the smooth wall of the confessional.

“Did he catch you?” asks the priest, his voice low and intense, not helping make sense of the confusing feelings I’ve struggled with for the past six years.

“Yes,” I whisper.

We sit in silence for a long minute. I can hear him breathing, can hear a slight rustle of his robes as he moves. I’m tempted to peak through the partition, to try to make out his face, his profile or age, so I’ll be able to pick him out from the other professors at Thorncrown when classes start. I don’t even know if I’ll have any of his classes, though. And if I do… I don’t want to know.

“Did you want him to?” he asks at last.

“Yes,” I admit. Saying it aloud makes a bubble of wild laughter want to rise up and spill out my mouth, but I hold it back. I’ve never said that before, and the burden lifts slightly, enough for me to go on. “We fell down, and he was tickling me—they were all tickling us, we were fighting them and shrieking with… I don’t know what it was. Triumph or delight or fear. All of it. We were being rowdy, as my parents would say. The air turned electric, like some part of us knew anything was possible, that we were doing something daring and dangerous but not quite crossing the line.”

I stop and take a shaky breath. “And then he did. He had me pinned on the floor, and he—he…”

My throat tightens and my fingers tremble around the cross. “Suddenly I could feel that he was… you know…Hard.”

I have to force the word out, the old shame burned down deep into my bones. “Our eyes met, and something passed between us, and it was like, he knew that I knew, and he didn’t like that. That’s when it changed, even if the others were still playing for another minute. I tried to get away, but he held me tighter, and there was this cruelty in his eyes now. He pulled down the front of his sweatpants, and then he was—he rubbed it against my stomach. I wasn’t laughing anymore. I’d never even seen one, but I knew what it was. I don’t know how, Father. Maybe when I was too little to remember, I saw my brother. But it wasn’t that. It was what he was doing, how it felt…”

“How you felt.”

I nod, even though he can’t see me.

“Yes,” I whisper. “I was scared. The fun had been sucked from the room like a vacuum. My friend shrieked, and I looked up, and they were watching. Her and my brother. She screamed she was going to tell her mom, and her brother just laughed and said, ‘No, you won’t.’ And then the others were watching, too. The neighbor pulled the other girl up from the floor, and they just stood there… Maybe they made a comment like he’d gone too far, but they didn’t make him stop. The movement he was doing made my shirt ride up, and he was against my bare skin. He was rubbing against my belly faster, and there was this wild look in his eyes, like… Something feral.”

I shudder, pressing my knees together.Take this sin away…

The priest doesn’t tell me to go on, doesn’t pry. He just lets me get my rapid breathing under control, giving me the time I need until I’m ready.

“And then my brother, the brother I’d idolized since I was adopted when I was three, who’d liked to play a game called ‘orphanage’ even though I’d been adopted out of foster care… He must have read a book or seen some movie, because he’d lineme up with all the stuffed animals my parents got for me, and then he’d pick me. Even after he bought me a teddy bear with his own allowance money, he still wanted me. He always picked me, Father. Every single time. I don’t know how to describe how that made me feel.”

“It must have felt good.”

“Yes, but more than that,” I say. “It made me feel special. Wanted. Reassured. After the first couple times, I knew he’d pick me, but I still loved to play. I loved waiting with my teddy bears for him to look at me, to smile and say, ‘This one’s perfect.’ To be chosen. I guess even at that age, I somehow knew my birth parents hadn’t wanted me. I’d already lived there for a year, with my new family, before they adopted me. But it was—him—who made me feel like… Like I was there on purpose. He never changed his mind, not even if he was mad at me. Sometimes he’d refuse to play the game, but he never played and then rejected me when he was mad. He made me believe he’d never abandon me.”

I’m crying now, and I have to stop and wipe my eyes and collect myself.

“When you’re ready,” the Father says gently.

“Right,” I say with a little laugh. “This isn’t about that. It’s about what he said. He said…”

My breath hitches.

I repeat Saint’s words in a whisper. “Check out her little tits.”

---