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Thalia first remembered being four years old. They were at home, her uncle was out doing whatever someone in the Navy would do at the base, and her mom was cooking. Her dad was watching TV, and she was playing with a few scraps of cardboard and yarn that she named Susan, after the lady at daycare. She was sitting on the floor next to the couch. Her dad looked at her and gave her a mean look. “Why are you playing with that trash?” “It’s Susan.” Thalia said. “It’s trash. Throw it away. You can play with your rattle.” She was four years old. She thought rattles were dumb. All they did was make noise when she shook them! So she shook her head. She knew that her dad had been hitting her before that, but she hadn’t remembered any inciting incidents before this day. Her dad stood up, ripped Susan out of her hands, and kicked her away as he walked to the kitchen trash can. Thalia rightfully burst into tears. Her dad came back, hauled her up, and slapped her on the arm. “Are you a baby?!” “N-no,” she cried, screaming as she got hit again. And the again. “Only babies scream and cry.” She didn’t remember anything after that, but she knows more probably happened. - She was six. Her dad had hit her, because she’d started crying when she’d fallen down and skinned her knees, and because her grades were horrible. She could never focus, she was sore and tired and sad. Thalia had a big purple bruise on her arm and her knees were dirty and bloody. She didn’t even have bandages. But she was going to go to bed now. Wearing her nightgown and holding a paperback book, she padded down the hall. Her mom was reading a book at the kitchen table, and Thalia approached her. “Mommy?” She sighed and looked up at Thalia, annoyed. “Yes?” “Will you read me a bedtime story?” She held up her copy of Ramona the Brave that she’d checked out from the school library. “Absolutely not,” her mom snapped. “Go to bed, Thalia.” “Just one chapter?” “You made your father angry today. That doesn’t earn you any bedtime stories.” “But I hurted myself!” “You embarrassed him in public, Thalia! You’re an awful child. You don’t get a bedtime story. Now go to bed before I throw the book and you have to buy a new one.” “I don’t have any money.” “George?” Her mom called. Her dad lumbered in promptly. “Deal with her. I’m at the end of my wits.” He smacked her across the chest again, and then both arms. “Thalia, go to bed. Now.” She went, not a tear shed in front of them, but cried herself to sleep. She didn’t want to go to school the next morning, she hurt too much. But her dad smacked her and made her get out of bed and leave. - They’d moved to New Jersey from Pennsylvania awhile ago. The teachers were nicer to her and Thalia was doing better in school. She still got hit, and it still hurt, but things were better now. She was ten, and she had a friend now. Her name was Mackenzie Linnen. She was ten too, and in the fifth grade, like her, and she wore Mickey Mouse shirts and liked dancing and playing on the monkey bars. Thalia didn’t like the monkey bars. It hurt her to hold on and she fell down and hurt more often than she completed the course. But Mackenzie was fun. She even brought toy trucks and cool sushi erasers to school. Mackenzie invited Thalia over to her house once. They played with her Hot Wheels and on the trampoline until dinner. Mackenzie had two moms, Renee and Tara. They said Thalia was sweet and precious and a great kid and smiled at her. Thalia felt weird when they did that. Not bad, but... she was a bad kid. So why were they lying? But Tara made really good zucchini chips and fruit salad, so she didn’t mind. She probably ate more that day than she did in three days at home. Which was a good thing. Because when her dad picked her up, he talked to Mackenzie’s moms for a bit, and then grabbed Thalia and stormed out. As soon as Thalia hopped in the front hall, happy, for once, and skipping, her dad shoved her forward, making her land on her face, as he slammed the door. He pried her up from the ground and shoved her against the wall a few times, then slapped her chest, her arms, her legs, and shouted at her to go to bed. The next morning, though, she didn’t go to school. Her dad took her downstairs. There wasn’t much downstairs, just some spare dishes and books... and rope, evidently, because he tied her to the wall, kicked her a few times, and told her not to move. He was gone for a long time, and then he came downstairs with Mackenzie in tow, kicking and screaming. He threw Mackenzie down the last few stairs and kicked her across the floor. She got tied up too. And then her dad kept hitting Mackenzie again and again and Thalia screamed, once, in horror. Her dad turned to her, face red with fury, and the next thing she knew there were strong, rough hands around her neck and she couldn’t breathe she couldn’t breathe she couldn’t He let go as she lapsed into half-consciousness, and she watched from her position collapsed on the floor as her dad went to a cabinet on the wall with a lock on it and- “Thalia. Look at Mackenzie.” There was a gun on her forehead. Her dad pulled the trigger. Everything was loud then quiet and Thalia started screaming. She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. She had never been beat up so badly in her life. She doesn’t remember too much past Mackenzie’s death, but she’s fairly certain she passed out a few times. She doesn’t know what happened to Mackenzie’s body. She was left in the basement, alone, occasionally getting hit more, with no food or entertainment. She was given two bathroom breaks a day and the rest she spent tied up. “That is what gay people deserve. Don’t ever interact with their children ever again.” Thalia never saw Renee and Tara again. - It was only a few days after being let out from the basement. She was too bruised to be ‘allowed’ to go to school, so her mom regulated her to her room while she and her dad worked all day. One morning, Thalia woke up with a crushing feeling. A feeling of guilt and defeat and nothingness and... and wanting to die. Wanting to stop breathing right then and there. She remembered a movie her mom had once watched, where a man in a clown mask had stabbed a lady in the back and she’d died. She carefully crept to the kitchen and grabbed a pair of scissors off the counter. She didn’t dare touch the knives, because she didn’t want her dad to hurt her more if she broke one. Back in her room, Thalia put the tip on the space between her shoulder blades and tried to push in. It was harder than she’d thought. She felt a pang of pain and cried out, but couldn’t get it to go in any further. She pulled it out, washed it off, and changed her shirt. She got a knife, instead, but this time she didn’t try and stab herself. She wanted to cut her skin. Maybe that’d make her pay for letting Mackenzie die. But her dad hit her on the arms a lot. She couldn’t carry heavy things at all. So he’d see if she did it on her arm, which seemed like the logical choice. Her chest, he wasn’t going to look directly at, he never had, but she felt really weird about cutting herself there. Probably because of her heart and lungs. And her stomach was too squishy, she decided. So she finally settled on her thighs, pulling down her pants and sitting on the edge of the bed. She placed the blade on her right thigh, and pushed. Blood bubbled up and she gasped. But it felt strangely comforting. She didn’t like when her dad hit her, why did she like this? But Thalia did it again. And again. Not just that day. - She was fourteen. And a half. She had a computer now, her school required it, a used iPhone of her mom’s for good measure, and she’d recently discovered the wide world of the Internet. She liked talking to people. She could be anyone, a confident and cool and popular senior boy or a mom to three beautiful girls. But when she started talking to someone who called himself Jeremy, she was Thalia. She found him... different from the random people she’d talked to. He was weird, and liked things like Pokemon and he watched Disney movies. They ended up complaining to each other, a lot, and the other would comfort them. It was an unspoken, mutual understanding, and she loved it. She started complaining about Rich, how he’d shoved her into a locker. thalia: you don’t know him but he’s awful. my dad is bad enough but he’s just a cherry on top. Jeremy didn’t know really about her dad. She had just said that her dad was ‘the worst’ and left it at that. She saw a lot of people her age complaining about their parents, so it must be okay to say that without saying that her dad hit her. The thought of saying that made her feel weird. jeremyH: wait, rich? jeremyH: is his last name Goranski? thalia: Yeah, how’d you know that? jeremyH: you go to Middleborough high then? thalia: wait, does this mean jeremyH: we go to the same school! - They met in person at lunch one day. Thalia was curled up in a corner, lunchless, buried in a blue hoodie, and crying. But when Thalia saw Jeremy for the first time finally, and he waved to her, she wiped her eyes on her sleeves and put on a brave and confident exterior. - She was still fourteen. She couldn’t see Jeremy often anymore, it was June and her dad wasn’t letting her go out much. That day had consisted of her dad hitting her a minimum of twenty times and holding a knife to her throat and not much else. She hadn’t cried or screamed. She eventually locked herself in the bathroom, and googled the news to distract herself. She didn’t feel like talking to Jeremy at the moment. Every page of the news was covered in rainbows and happy people. “Gay Marriage Legalised In All Fifty States” was the first headline, and the rest were similar. Thalia felt excited and happy, but tried to bury that feeling. Gay was what had gotten Mackenzie killed, and people in school used it as an insult. Hell, she didn’t even know what it meant. Three hours and a butt sore from sitting on the toilet for so long, she knew the truth. She was fucking gay. She liked girls. How had she not known it before? Girls were soft and smiles and sweet and pretty. Boys weren’t. Jeremy was pretty, but not in a love way. Just in a friends way. She couldn’t ever let anyone know. Or her dad would kill her. She took a knife to her thighs in the shower and cried. -She was fifteen and at Jeremy’s house. His mom was gone and he was crying. Finally she knew the truth about his mom. She was awful, apparently. She’d hurt Jeremy with words for years and then walked out of the house and wasn’t coming back. She felt like an asshole for wanting to cry herself. She was sore and miserable and she finally knew that what her parents were doing to her was wrong. Jeremy didn’t deserve to be treated as he had been. His mom was a bitch and a monster and awful. But she deserved what her parents gave her, she knew. She was bad and awful and a disappointment. Jeremy’s mom had only said those things to Jeremy to make him feel bad because he deserved the entire world. But she deserved it. Why did Jeremy have to get hurt? Why couldn’t she be the one to take all the shit? - It was almost her sixteenth birthday and she was running she couldn’t stop running she had to keep moving and get as far away as possible. Her dad knew she was gay. He’d seen her browser history and she hadn’t remembered ever being so hurt. Even her mom was hitting her, her mom never hit her. Her dad had locked her in her room after what seemed like hours, and probably was, and she’d shoved her phone and laptop into her backpack, some clothes, and some food she’d holed up in here for whenever she wasn’t allowed to eat (at least once a week) and climbed out her second story window. And Thalia kept running. For awhile, she ran with no purpose other than to get far away. She couldn’t think and she couldn’t breathe. Eventually, she changed course and ended up at Jeremy’s house. She didn’t want to be that one bitch who ended up on your front step in pain and crying. She still hadn’t cried, actually, but she was definitely in significant pain. Jeremy answered the door and she just stood there. “My dad found out.” Jeremy had a limited amount of information about her dad. He didn’t know he killed someone once, much less that he abused her, but she’d told him she was gay once and that her dad was homophobic. So it was probably a shock to see her covered in bruises that she kept covered up. He wrapped her in a hug and she clung to him. An hour later, she still hadn’t shed a single tear, or even really explained to him what was going away. He gently prodded it all out of her. She didn’t verbalise most of it, but Jeremy got the gist of it. After a visit to the police station (they walked because Jeremy’s dad was asleep even thought it was only three in the afternoon) she tried to sleep on Jeremy’s floor (she refused to let him give up his bed) but she couldn’t sleep at all. Not for days, even when her dad was arrested. Even after her mom died suddenly in a car accident (though in her opinion that’d make her even worse of a person). She only slept when she swallowed pills and curled up on the floor. She lived and she hated it. Jeremy needed her, but she was awful. She’d deserved to die but she still lived and it wasn’t fair. So she tried to find other ways to dull the roaring pain. And at one point, that involved getting drunk off her ass and meeting a boy named Troy Selwater. He was tall and weird and drunk and she remembered they made an agreement and his dick was in her. Jeremy picked her up at two in the morning and she still felt like a piece of shit, even as drunk as she was. It wasn’t for awhile that she realised what that night had entailed. She had money, sure. She’d sold the house she and her family had lived in after her dad was convicted, she’d inherited a bit from her mom, and there was the money that her dad had to pay her. She considered giving the kid up. Or taking a pill and making it disappear. But she couldn’t. She still wasn’t okay. But now she had a goddamn kid to look after. So she was gonna have to try and be better. For Olive.