Page 150 of Stutter

While I felt guilty for scaring her… it sent a thrill through me. For the first time,Iwas the one protectingher.Iwas the thing that kept her safe, not the other way around.

So I asked my father to get a second opinion on my lungs, and he found a doctor who prescribed steroids to help strengthen them.

Then we got older, and she started… blossoming. It was almost overnight that she started… I don’t know, having boobs and her hips were wider and her thighs… I loved them. They reminded me of when Galvina made my cookies, and the dough spread in the oven. I even started calling her that,Cookie. She thought it was because she always stole mine but… no.

Mom started limiting her snacking when we were around thirteen. She was no longer allowed to wear skirts unless they were the uniform ones for school and when we attended events because the way her thighs jiggled was “embarrassing” to her image, she was made to wear long dresses. She was still beautiful but now it was more of a quiet, resilient beauty.

The cello became her favorite thing in the world once she mastered it. It didn’t take long. There were maybe six weeks of screeching coming from her room. Three broken cellos from when she’d get angry at it and smash it to bits. But once she got the hang of it, she really got the hang of it.

Soon we were going to her first chair recitals. Then her solo recitals.

She was incredible, spending weeks in Japan for the summer then out to Paris, London. She was gone for entire summers, no doubt being her adventurous self. Staying out of trouble. It seems she was only a hellcat here. With us.

Her rounded cheeks slimmed down, her face edgier and sharper. She walked with a stoic elegance, a quiet confidence that was so becoming of her, that she made my heart drop and kickstart every fucking morning we bumped into each other in the hallways.

Dad caught us wrestling one time when we were fourteen. Nothing major. She wanted to learn a few self-defense poses in case guys at school got handy even though she was already pretty scrappy. Cookie had me pinned to the ground, laughing when dad caught us. He sent her to her room without dinner and gave me a weird look… a knowing look.

Soon, her laughter was less heard around the mansion but when she did laugh, it was because she was at school. With her friends. With mine. And I wasn’t the only one who started noticing how gorgeous she was becoming.

My friends started noticing, and Dad’s friends did, too.

So I had to get stronger. I had to work out harder. Lift heavier. Be faster.

It was that same summer when Dad was having a meeting in his home office. I knew these men but not really. They only came around sometimes. They weren’t his usual clients. They didn’t greet us the way his clients did. They were solemn and kind of creepy.

I was doing my thing, heading to the pool, walking past his office, the door barely open enough as though someone had closed it but it didn’t latch all the way shut.

“She’s gonna be a fucking beauty, that one. I mean just look at her mother. Christ, Monroe. She got rid of the braces, growing a nice rack…” I heard and stopped in my tracks immediately.

“That she is, Prescott. But you know arrangement negotiations don’t start until she’s at least sixteen.”

Arrangement negotiations?

“And then it’s off to the highest bidder as soon as she graduates RMU. God, the one that gets to breed her…fuck.” Someone said and they all laughed, and suddenly I had to find her.

She was in the pool. A red, extremely appropriate, two-piece on, and for the first time, I was angry, (not hard) that she was walking around with something that showed so much… leg. Christ, I was mad at herlegs.

No. I was mad at those gross pricks in my dad’s office ogling an almost fifteen-year-old. And what the fuck were the ‘arrangement negotiations?’

“Raven, you should go inside up to your room.”

“Me? It’s the first nice day we’ve had inweeks,and you want me to goinside?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck you. You go inside.”

“Raven, I’m not kidding. Get away from the window. Dad’s business partners are in there staring at you through his office window like old creeps. Go inside through the sunroom. They’re watching us now. Act like you’re mad at me or something I don’t know, just get away fromthe fucking window.”

There is a small panic that crawls on her face but for the first time, she listens to me. She grabs her towel, dries off, throws it at me like she’s angry, and rushes off with her middle finger in the air. “Fuck you!”

“Fuck you right back,sis!” It’s a lame comeback but I don’t know what else to say. I’ve never been mad at her, even when I should’ve been. I threw her towel down and jumped in, ignoring the look on my father’s face as he peered at me through the window.

Later on that night, I climbed into bed with her. It had stormed so often these last few weeks it was weird sleeping without her in my arms. When I went to hold her, I felt her little body shaking.

“What’s wrong, cookie?”

“Nothing, Axel. I’m fine.”

---