“Thanks for getting him,” Mom says. “Do you want to stay for dinner? We’re having mac and cheese.”
“Oh, yes, please,” I say, taking a seat at the kitchen table. Sasha looks up at me, slightly annoyed at the interruption.
“What are you working on?” I ask.
“Homework,” she responds, her tone short and clipped, like a businesswoman. “I’m going to go do it in my room.”
I watch as she stiffly packs up her books and moves to a more productive location.
“She’s sweet really,” Mom says. “She just expresses it differently.”
The three youngest of my siblings are all pretty divergent in the way they behave. None of them have a diagnosis, but it’s kind of obvious. I know Sasha’s pleased to see me really. It’s just that I’ve interrupted homework time, and that is not allowed.
I take the chance to clear the table and set it. The mac and cheese is already in the oven. I can smell it. It’s delicious. Mom likes to cook the onion first and get it all brown and kind of sweet beforeshe adds it. There will be little chunks of ham too. That’s how Mom always makes it.
“Can you get the twins?”
I go back outside. Bracken and Eternity have stripped a toy car for parts and are hitting each other with hollow plastic bits. They’re wearing matching floral dresses that were probably cute when they went on, but now have been through enough to need a full decontamination.
“Come and wash your hands,” I call out. “Dinner’s ready!”
The twins look at me. Bracken bites Eternity. Eternity kicks Bracken in the leg.
“Come and wash your hands. Now!” I put a little more bass in my tone.
The twins don’t listen. They’re spoiled as hell. Their dad feels guilty for being away so much and he never says no to them in any way, and Mom has reached the stage of motherhood where she doesn’t fight battles she doesn’t have to. Which is why Bracken is now reaching for a branch to hit Eternity with.
“Alright, dinnertime,” I tell them, swinging Bracken up into my arms.
Mom really needs help every day, but it’s hard for me to give it when I have work and school to attend to. Today, though, I’m glad to get immersed in some simple domestic chores.
I stay for dinner, I help the kids with their homework, and I wash up, and when my mom asks me if I want to just sleep over on the couch I consider it for a second. Then I think about the man who has clearly been following me, and something in my stomach tightens. What if he followed me here? I have to get out of thehouse before the end of the night. I can’t stop him from getting me, but he cannot have any access to my family.
“I’ve got to go,” I tell her. “Lock up good, okay? There’s reports of prowlers lately.”
She’s half asleep already after a long day, so I go around, check all the windows, then let myself out of the house and walk to the bus station.
I have to assume that the stalker who is hunting me wants me and only me, but the prospect of anybody else being hurt suddenly terrifies me. What if he’s dangerous in other ways?
I go home, I lock the door, and I wonder if I should bar it. He keeps coming and fucking me, and there’s nothing I seem to be able to do to stop it, either in terms of practical solutions, or even in my own resolution not to be sexually used by a masked stranger. I’ve let him do it twice. The second time, I delivered myself to him.
What the hell am I doing? Why did I fuck him that second time?
Because it was hot.
Very hot. And because it felt like it had no consequences, like I was completely out of the normal realm of life where I have to be so sensible and so responsible all the time. A random stranger breaking into my house and demanding I fuck him was very possibly the only way I was going to get laid. After Dave, I don’t have the desire to date. Not even a little bit.
But he doesn’t come.
I lie awake for what feels like hours until I fall asleep, and in the morning, I am almost surprised to wake up without having had a nocturnal visitor.
The next night is the same, and so is the one after that. I start to think that whoever it was got what he wanted here and in the library, and moved on to fuck someone else.
Great. I’ve been rejected by a sex stalker. And I can’t even be sad about it because obviously I should never have wanted to be fucked by a sex stalker anyway.
CHAPTER 4
Laura
