Safer This Way

Prologue

By unanimous vote, the tree cover stays! Thanks for your opinions :) First update finally done, yay :) happy ready, hope you like it!

Six years ago...

*Sang*

We learned about icky stuff in school today. The teacher called it human growth and development, but I think it was mixed up with a horror movie. All I know is that periods seem disturbingly violent m, and I was immensely grateful that the boys were in a different room than us watching another video. Whatever they saw had them just as red faced and fidgety for the rest of class that day, and we girls couldn't really bring ourselves to look at them either.

The teacher gave each of us a page of questions to take home and talk over with our mothers or whatever female presence was in our lives, the boys had to talk to their father figure. The questions went along the lines of this: when do the women in our family usually start menstruation? What are common symptoms? Where are our supplies? Do I need a bra yet? Things like that.

List in hand, and cheeks a permanent shade of fiery blush, I step off the bus with Marie in front of our house. The air is unseasonably warm for September in Southern Illinois, but that just means I get to wear my pink sundress for even longer. I love girly things like that, as well as singing and dancing and arts and crafts. Those are some of my favorite things, mainly because they used to make mommy smile.

My own smile falls as I remember how angry mommy has been the past two years, it seems nowadays like nothing I ever do is good enough...that I'm not good enough. Her and daddy are always fighting now, and she's stopped leaving the house, saying all kinds of bad things about the world outside. Nevertheless I'm excited to ask her about becoming a woman today, maybe we can even shop for a training bra this weekend, I know that'll get her happy and out of the house. My teacher said it's an important time in a girl's life so my mommy should like to be a part of that.

Just as we're walking up the driveway to our house, Marie snatches my paper before running inside. That's another thing I don't understand, we used to be so close when we were little, but now Marie seems to hate me with her whole heart.

"Mom! Sang was talking about boobs in class today!" She shouts and I frown, that's not what happened, it's not like I started a boob riot in a group of prepubescent teenagers. I may not know a lot, but I can hazard a guess that that would lead to chaos.

The moment I step into the living room, the hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and a strong sense of foreboding takes over my body. My mother and Marie stand side by side at the counter, mirror images of each other in all but their expressions, Mother is furious and Marie looks as if she's won something.

"What. Is. This?" Each of my mother's words is punctuated with a shake of my question list and I frown, can't she read it? It says it's for school right on the top.

Toying with the fraying hem of my favorite dress, I answer her quietly. "We learned human growth and development today, that was the assignment the teacher gave all the girls to talk about with our moms, I was going to ask you." A snide laugh comes from her mouth when I say this last part, and the sound sends chills down my spine.

"I don't recall giving you permission to take that class, can't have you getting any whorish ideas now can I? Why would you give it to me?" Marie smirks at me, obviously knowing more than I do about the situation.

"Ideas? And what do you mean why? You're my mommy." The response is barely out of my mouth when a sharp pain explodes across the left side of my face, leaving me completely shell-shocked. Did she just...no, she would never raise a hand to me, she loves me.