Page 45 of Lucifer's Redemption

For the next ten minutes, she explained how this tadpole gets into an egg, but she never mentioned how said tadpole finds the egg. She just said that the sperm penetrates the egg and cells begin to divide. I got really excited when she brought up the cellular structure and processes, explaining how the mitochondria go into overdrive as the cell divides repeatedly to create more and more cells until, finally, they form muscles, organs, and a whole baby!

Wait.I sat back in my seat.

This isn’t at all what my parents told me. The stork is supposed to bring the baby in the middle of the night. The little baby comes all swaddled and then you get to sit in bed all day and rock the baby to sleep.

My parents lied.

A sting in my chest confirmed I was right. It was the same sting as when Mom lied to me about going home and letting me come back.

They withheld information from me; they told me things that were untrue. Why couldn’t I tell they were lying when I was at home? Why do I only feel those lies now?

“That was so dry,” Ember groaned. “Get to the good stuff.” She waved her hands in a shooing motion. “Maybe Ares should teach the lesson. I bet he would be hilarious.” She snickered.

“Talking about sexual positions isnotteaching a lesson.” Athena clicked to the next slide.

I raised my hand. “What is a sexual position?”

Mariah poked her head into the room. The door was still open just in case Lilith screamed for Ember. “Did you say sexual position?”

Ember’s eyes lit up, waving frantically for Mariah to come in. “Why yes, we did. We are having the ‘birds and the bees’talk with Uriel and explaining why she gets all tingly in her ‘princess parts.’”Ember informed.

Mariah made a big ‘O’ shape with her mouth. “Her mother didn’t—?” Mariah made an O.K. symbol with her fingers and stuck her finger through. Ember laughed audibly, but Athena rolled her eyes and rubbed her forehead.

“No, she didn’t.” Ember snorted a laugh.

“Fates, what about… does she know about…” Mariah looked at me and whispered, “periods?”

“I know about periods.” I folded my arms. “They go at the end of a sentence.” Everyone in the room stared at me like my head fell off. “Right?”

“Do you bleed?” Athena approached me. “Every month do you bleed, between your legs?” I shook my head, and my eyes watered.

That sounds horrible. Why in the fluffy balls would I bleed, willingly, through my legs once a month?

“Don’t make her cry! Luci will come in here!” Ember darted to my side, rubbing my arms up and down. “It’s alright. You just don’t know what is going on sweetheart.”

Sucking my tears back up into my eyes, I gripped my dress.I already wasn’t normal, and now I was really weird.

“D-does everyone do that? Bleed near their—between their…?”

Athena clicked through to another slide that showed what a uterus was. She explained that the egg is fertilized inside our fallopian tube, where the ‘tadpole’ swims around to find it. Then it travels to our ‘womb’ where the baby grows. But if a ‘tadpole’ doesn’t come to visit the egg… then the uterus strips its lining causing a ‘period’ of bleeding.

I bit my lip while everyone continued to wait for me to say something.I’ve never had any of that, and Athena said it begins at puberty which happens around 11 to 13. I am way past that.

Swirls of information had already clogged my head. I couldn’t tell my parents were lying to me when I lived at home. Now I was absent of a period which every girl gets. I balled my fists, trying not to cry. I was frustrated and feeling an emotion I haven’t felt in a long time: anger.

Small whispers around me were drowned out by the beating of my heart. Blood rushed through my head and back down to my legs. I thought of guess after guess of why they would keep these things from me, but none made any sense.

Why keep me from everyone? Surely it wasn’t because there is evil. There is evil everywhere, and everyone else just continues with their daily lives.

Athena’s eyebrows narrowed looking at me, the pencil that was in her other hand broke in an instant. “Just take a few slow, deep breaths, Uriel.” My breath evened out as they watched me.

“Let’s get back to the lesson, shall we? We will figure this out together. Alright, Uriel?” Encouraging words surrounded me as Ember and Mariah sat on either side of me.

“To be honest, you aren’t missing much. Periods suck,” Mariah droned on. “Sometimes there is so much blood it leaks right out of your tampon and ruins your perfectly nice sparring pants and everything. Others think you are dying and run screaming because Ares would kill them for touching his wanker cleaner’s junk.”

Gasping, I fanned myself.

“I forgot to mention,” I gulped audibly. “I’m scared of blood.”

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