Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas

didn’t have to live in that cold theater anymore with so little to
eat.”
She looks off for a moment, her smile falling. I know my
mother was young when she married my father. I hear people
whisper when they find out she has an eleven-year-old son.
“And then one night,” she continues, “a big, black car
came to get me. I was told to dress in my prettiest costume,
they did my hair and makeup, and I left the theater. I was taken
to his house, outside of Moscow, and he asked me to dance for
him.” Her face lights up again, and she dives in, whispering
as if it’s some secret. “And I did. I twirled and leaped and
danced under the chandeliers on the marble floors of the hall,
feeling like I was in a dream. He let me eat cake and drink
champagne.”
One finger of her hand trails down the center of my torso,
and then all of her fingers fan out across my stomach, making
the little hairs on my body stand up. That feels good.
“And when I fell asleep,” she says, watching her hand
caress me, “I couldn’t remember how I’d gotten to the bed. To
his bed.” She stares off, lost in the memory. “I’m not sure
when I woke up. Maybe I’d only been asleep for a moment, but
when I opened my eyes, he was pulling my costume down…
baring my little body…and ripping off my tights and slippers.”
I freeze, listening to her and surprised but not surprised,
either. I haven’t heard this before.
But my father does awful things.
“I started to cry,” she tells me, “scared and screaming
when he kissed me all over and bit my body so hard, and when
he pulled down my panties and shoved himself inside me, I…”
She breathes hard, still locked on the images in her head. “I
liked it, Damon. I liked it.”
I know what she’s talking about. What he was doing to her.
I’ve seen it before.
But she was thirteen. Her ballet studio in town had girls
who were thirteen. I can’t imagine any of them…