Page 19 of Voracious

“He’s—”

“Stop,” he snaps. “Stop lying to get attention. What is going on in that warped head? I’ll book you in withCAMHSand they can deal with you.”

“I don’t need to speak to someone about my mental health. I need you to get me away from that house! Please, Dad,” I cry, my vision blurring. I try to grab his hand, but he dodges me like I’m a disease. “Please believe me. I’m so scared of him. Look – I have bruises on my back!”

He snatches my wrist when I try to pull my top up at the back to show him. “Stop it!”

Tears soak my cheeks now, the collar of my top drenched as my body shakes. “I promise I’m not lying. I’m not making this up. He told me he’d take my virginity one day and that I’m already his. He has pictures of me on his phone! Please. Please believe me!”

“You disgust me,” he sneers. “We didn’t raise you this way. Moving to Scotland is already changing you.”

I sniffle, my heart racing in my chest. “Please, just look at his phone. Please. You need to believe me! If you don’t help me, I’ll run away.”

“Get out of the damn car,” he demands, throwing his door open and muttering under his breath, “Fucking teenage girls and their hormones.”

I exit the car and rush to the pavement, trying to catch up to him marching towards the dance studio. “Please believe me, Dad. Check his phone. I’ll even try to record him to show you. He stands at the foot of my bed and touches himself nearly every night. Please!”

He stops abruptly and turns, nearly causing me to smack into him. He glares at me. “One more word and I mean it. Christopher is a good kid. He’s in a relationship and has been since he was fifteen. He already has a job offer from a top-endcybersecuritycompany even though he isn’t out of uni. You throwing around accusations like that will only ruin his future. You do that, and I will never forgive you. Neither will my wife. Do you understand?”

I hate the way he says “wife”. Mum was his wife.

“But I want you to protect me and—”

“Cut the attention-seeking. Do you understand?”

I lower my head and nod once as a truck pulls up beside us. “Okay.”

“Good. Now,” he says, plastering a smile on his face, “let’s get you back into dancing to clear that head of yours. No more lies. And no more trying to ruin someone’s credibility because you can’t handle not being thecentreof attention by being the only child. You. Will. Stop.”

If my dad doesn’t believe me, then no one will. I’m trapped. I’m trapped with a brother who wants to hurt me.

“Hold the door!” a girl’s voice calls from behind us, and I turn around to see her running from a car. She quickly spins and waves. “Thanks for dropping me off, Jason! Sorry I spilled ketchup on your seat!”

The guy, who looks to be in his mid-twenties, waves back. “It’s fine. I’ll pick you up at nine, sis.”

“Okay. Love you! Bye,Kade!”

I hear a muttered, “Fuck off.”

The driver reverses out of the space. It’s then I see a boy in the passenger seat. He’s wearing ahoodieand looks about my age, his dark hair scooped back in a cap.

When he glances up and says something to the driver, I frown at him – he’s lighting a cigarette, which the older one grabs and tosses out the window.

The girl with long blonde hair barrels towards us, asking my dad to keep the door open again. “Hi,” she says when she stops beside me, a little taller than I am. “Are you here for the aerial hoop class?”

She’s very pretty. She looks like Christopher’s girlfriend but a lot younger. I think she might be American, but she also sounds a little Scottish.

And IrealiseI’m staring.

“Oh, no,” I reply, wiping under my eyes and hoping I don’t look like a disaster. “Just dancing.”

She scrunches her nose. “You have good shoulders. I bet you’d be good at hoop. Why don’t you try it? Dance class doesn’t start for another hour. I’ll show you around. My name isLuciella, but you can call me Lu.”

I glance at my dad. Aerial sports aren’t technically dancing, and I’ve never done them before. I did trampolining for a year before my mum got sick and I had to stop. Would he allow me? There’s a picture on the door of a stick person on a pole, and another one of a dancer. I didn’t tell him about that part of the studio when Kyle and I found it on Google.

“Can I?” I ask Dad. “It’s kind of the same as dancing.” I think. “I can do two classes?”

He fakes a grin at the girl instead of me. “Sure. She can fill in all the paperwork, and I’ll pick her up in two hours.”

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