Cherry Shield (A Tod Remix)

Trigger Warning: This story depicts rape and sexual abuse of minors (ages 14 and up), including incest. If that's not something you want to read, this isn't the story for you.

"Cherry Shield" isn't my premise. Credit for it belongs to Tod, who wrote the original on StoriesOnline in 2021 (https://storiesonline.net/s/24447/cherry-shield). I read it years ago and it's one of the few premises that's stuck with me since — the "shield" itself does something rare: it's a single image that carries an entire justification in two words, precise enough that he can sell it to two teenage girls as protection, performed in front of each other, no separate lie required for each girl. Most stories need pages of rationalization to get a reader inside that logic. Tod built it into the premise itself.

I reached out to Tod directly and he generously gave me his blessing to expand on it. What follows keeps his premise, his characters, and his central device, but reworks the prose, expands the back half into its own arc, and takes the ending somewhere his original didn't go.

The idea is his. What I did with it from here is mine to answer for.

The skirt held me too tight to sit down. I found that out when I tried — the hem climbed up my thighs the second I bent my knees, and I shot back up and dragged it flat while Laine laughed at me in the mirror.

"My mom would kill me." I turned to check the back anyway. Long enough to cover my panties, cut so close there was nothing to show even when I spun, and I spun, twice, watching the hem stay down against me.

"She's not here." Laine was stepping into something just as short, except hers moved. Loose. It swung when she turned and I couldn't work out how she'd cross a room in it without the whole club seeing everything. "How's the top?"

"Loose. I like it, though." The spaghetti straps of the dusty-rose top kept sliding off the point of my shoulder. The top only reached the bottom of my ribs; below it was all bare stomach, my belly button out in the open, and above it the fabric didn't have enough of me to sit against. Laine had more. Hers was a tube of hot pink that stayed up on her chest alone, no straps, nothing holding it but her. I looked at how flat the thin cotton sat on me and wondered when mine would come in like hers. She was sixteen. I'd turned fourteen that spring, and mine had only started last year — so far there wasn't much to show.

Laine was my favorite cousin and I only got her a week a year. It was just her and her dad in that house — she never really talked about her mom, and I'd stopped asking around the time I turned ten. I'd packed for a week of the things we used to do, board games and staying up, and instead she'd spent three days teaching me how to lean into a boy's eyeline, how to blend shadow so it didn't look like a bruise, how to kiss so it counted. Everything my mom kept a year away from me, Laine handed over in an afternoon like it was nothing.

"It looks good on you." She looked me up and down the way a teacher checks your work. "Lean forward, you'd give some lucky guy a whole nipple."

Heat went up my neck and I laughed instead of covering it, which was already a thing she'd taught me. The laugh came out high. In the mirror my face did something I didn't have a word for.

"Can we really go out like this?" The giggles took a while to run down. Laine had crouched to roll a pair of black stockings up her legs, thigh-highs that stopped a hand's width under her hem so your eye went straight to the gap. I swallowed. Just standing here dressed like this had done something — the borrowed panties were damp in the middle and I pressed my thighs a little to feel it. They weren't like my panties. Red and black, lace so thin you could nearly see through it, a frill around the waist and the leg holes like they'd come out of the catalog my mom hid on the top shelf.

"Sure. Everyone dresses like this for the club." She went to the dresser and dug a card out from under her socks. "Which reminds me. You'll need this. She looks like you."

A driver's license. The girl in it had my hair color and nothing else of me. Eighteen. "I don't look eighteen."

"Doesn't matter. I know the door guys, they just need it so they can say they checked." She hooked two fingers in the air around the last words. Then she went back to her own face, laying lipstick on without a mirror, then blush, then a color on her lids, quick, like brushing her teeth.

My mom had let me start a few months ago and only out of her own bag, always too little of it, always you don't need more, you'll look strange. She was wrong. Laine finished and she didn't look strange, she looked eighteen for real, and then she patted the stool in front of the mirror and I nearly knocked it over sitting down.

"Say the rules." She tipped my chin up and started on my eyes.

I knew them. She'd made me learn them before she'd agreed to bring me at all, and when she said them the joking went out of her voice, so I'd learned them.

"Rule one. Stay with the group. Table, dance floor, bathroom, all of it."

"Right. You need to go, you tell me, we go together. You don't walk off on your own, doesn't matter who's asking." She smoothed a thumb along my brow. "Two."

"I only eat or drink what you hand me. Nothing from anybody else."

"That includes Glenn and his boys." I met Ralf a couple of days back. He was the one who'd asked us tonight — nearly eighteen, tall, and when he'd smiled at me he'd lifted one eyebrow like the two of us already had a joke going, and my stomach had dropped clean out of me. The others were coming too. Laine knew them. But the way she said Glenn's name made me go cold for a second. "Don't worry," she said, reading my face. "Glenn's harmless, I just don't want you throwing up on your first night. Save that for the second."

We both cracked up. I was still somewhere up near the ceiling about a grown-up club at all, still amazed her dad let her go, though one look at her wardrobe told you Uncle Oliver ran a looser house than mine.

"Third?"

I rolled my eyes. "Rule three. Never forget rules one and two."

"Good. That's the big one." She stepped back. "Look."

I looked and it wasn't me. The mouth was fuller, the lashes went on for a while, and the mole by my chin that I hated was just gone. I jumped up and hugged her careful, arms only, so I didn't wreck either of us.

"Okay. Go, and be quiet." She grabbed her purse and put a finger to her lips at the stairs, and that was the thing that started the fear back up, because if her dad let her go all the time, why were we creeping? The TV was on in the living room. Blue light moving on the hallway wall. We got almost to the front door.

"Where do you think you're going."

Not loud. Laine's hand came off the latch.

"Out!" She said it to the ceiling. But she stepped back from the door.

"Not without protection you're not."

"Dad." She walked toward the living room like her feet weighed something. "Alicia's here."

"All the more reason. Adriana would have my head."

Uncle Oliver was on the couch in shorts and a shirt gone tight across him, a beer held loose on his knee. His eyes started at my sandals and came up slow, both legs, the bare stretch of stomach, the top that didn't have enough of me to lie against, and stopped on my face with a corner of his mouth going up. Every inch they crossed I felt the outfit again, how little of it there was.

"We don't need your—" Laine put herself between me and him. "—cherry shield."

"Dressed like that, believe me, you do." He set the beer down. "Alicia. You cherry?"

"Um." I didn't know the word for a question. He saw that on me.

"You danced the horizontal tango. Fooled around with a boy. You a virgin." One after the other, fast, and the heat came up my neck so hard I thought it would take the makeup off.

"Of course she is," Laine said for me. "She didn't even know how to kiss a guy last week. Can we go, please? I'll take care of her." The end of it came out close to begging.

"Can't do, kiddo." The smile hadn't moved. "Assume the position. Sooner it's on, sooner you're gone."

Laine's fists shut at her sides. She stamped once, a little kid stamp, and then she walked to the arm of the couch and folded down over it, forearms on the cushion, and her short skirt slid up off the backs of her thighs until her red panties were the brightest thing in the room.

"You too, Alicia." He patted the couch arm next to his daughter. "Cherry shield, or some boy gets it and gets you in trouble."

I didn't move. I didn't understand what was happening. I just stood there.

"Just do it, it's quick," Laine said, turned sideways with her cheek on the cushion, looking up at me from down there. Whatever was in her eyes, it wasn't quick, and I think that's the only reason my legs took me over and folded me down beside her, hip to hip, my own hem going up the same way hers had.

"Lovely." From behind us. I clamped my thighs together. It didn't help. I knew the skirt wasn't covering anything. "Dressed like this you're asking a boy to fuck you." A hand landed flat on my back, on the strip of bare skin between top and skirt, and rubbed a slow circle there. "Don't worry. Once my shield's on you're safe."

The other hand took my backside, the whole thing, fingers pressing in until they hurt, and I came up onto my toes to get away and the hand on my back pushed me flat again.

"Easy. Just checking your cherry so I can protect it." Fingers hooked the waist of my panties and dragged them down my thighs, unhurried, and the air of the room touched me where nothing but water in the bath ever had. "There. Lovely." His palm moved over my bare backside like he was gentling a dog.

Then his fingers slid down off the curve of me and touched me between my legs. It was the first time a hand that wasn't mine had ever been there, and I held my breath waiting to be disgusted.

I wasn't. The touch went up my spine like a current, wrong and bright at once, and my knees drifted apart on their own to let more of it in, and I hated that they did and I didn't stop them.

To my right a sound came out of Laine. Small, into the cushion. I couldn't see behind us but I didn't have to — he had a hand on each of us, working us the same, and the second sound in the room was me. His finger ran the length of my slit, up and down the wet middle of me, close to the little spot at the top and never on it, close enough that I pushed back toward it before I caught myself.

Then he pressed in. My legs snapped shut, I got a hand under me to lift off the couch, and the hand came off my back — Laine made a thin unhappy noise the same second, robbed of it — and pinned me down again.

"Easy, easy. Finding your cherry, that's all. Won't hurt it." His finger went on into me. I'd put a finger in myself once and stopped, it was fine but it wasn't anything. This was deeper than that, past where I'd ever gone, and after the first strange stretch of it there was a place he touched that was like scratching something I hadn't known was itching, and a sound I didn't decide to make got out of me. "Good. You kept it." His finger stopped going in and went back to running me, up, down. "Now the shield goes on."

He pulled the finger out and I whimpered — actually whimpered, at losing it — and hated that too, and had no time to sit with it because it was back, over me, up and down, not pressing in now. Just my outside. That let me breathe. Up and down, and every time down it grazed the little spot and skipped off.

He was making a sound now too, above me, a low one. Then his big hand took my backside, all of it, warm. Then his other hand was on my other cheek — and Laine whimpered again for the finger gone from her.

My head was slow and hot and it took me too long to work it out. Both his hands were on me. Both of them. And the thing still going up and down my slit, wet and thick and hotter than a finger, was not his finger.

I got a knee under me to come up off the couch.

He groaned. It came up out of his chest. Something warm splashed across me, down there, and the thing jumped against me — again, again — and every time it did, that bright awful feeling shot down my legs. I stayed where I was. My legs had stopped listening to me.

"There it is. There's your shield." He stepped back off me. I lay over the couch arm and didn't move, the warm of it running down slow between my thighs. Beside me Laine was still going, low, and then her father moved back to her and finished her the same. "Pull your panties up, Alicia. Don't let the shield drip."

I stood and did it, shaking, and the wet spread across the inside of the lace and coated everything down there as the fabric settled against me. I couldn't look down. I couldn't look at Laine and I couldn't look at him. Somewhere off to the side Laine was asking to go now and her dad was saying yes, go, with a laugh in it, and then her hand had mine and she was pulling me out the door into the dark.

"Here. Use this."

Laine's voice got me to look up. We were a couple houses down already, out on the sidewalk under the streetlights, and she was holding out a paper towel. I took it and didn't know what to do with it.

"Your legs. Wipe them, or it'll look like you peed yourself." She bent and ran her own towel up the inside of her thigh, quick and practiced, and I did what she did. Only then did I see the streaks on me, a couple of them, already going tacky.

"Is this—"

"Yes." She cut me off before I could finish, like the word out loud would make it worse. "Look. My dad's a pervert." She wouldn't quite look at me when she said it. I couldn't tell if she was sorry for him or for herself or for me. "But it works, okay? It really works."

My face must have been blank, because she took a breath and kept going, and while she talked the club-Laine came back into her voice a little, the easy one I'd fallen for all week.

"One time I was with a guy. On a couch, and he was all over me — kissing me, up my top, and I was a little drunk and I loved it. I wasn't stopping him. I let him get his hand under there, I let him put my hand on his — his thing. And then he went for my panties, and—" She stopped. "And I remembered I was all sticky from Dad. And I pushed him off and I left. I'd probably not be a virgin now if I hadn't been. So it works. He's a big pervert, but—"

She didn't finish that one either.

I don't know why, but the two things together — what Uncle had done, and Laine's story on top of it — had me breathing harder than a whole afternoon of touching myself ever did. It still felt wrong. It just didn't feel as wrong as it had ten minutes ago. When I thought about his fingers, and how hot the stuff had been when it landed on me, something low in me pulled tight — the top-shelf catalog feeling, except it wasn't a picture this time, it was me. I was smiling and I hadn't decided to. Laine was smiling too, watching me.

"Felt good, didn't it," she said.

I looked at the sidewalk and a giggle got out of me. She shoved me with her shoulder, then took my arm, and we walked.

There were three boys and three girls in the car. Glenn, Pedro, and Olga, and Ralf, who came straight to me and told me I looked good, tight jeans and a black shirt and that same eyebrow. I ended up in the back beside him. Six people don't fit in a small car, so Laine sat on Pedro's lap up front, and Ralf offered me his, and I said no. My skirt was too short to work out how I'd sit on anyone without showing the whole car everything.

The bouncer was a big man who looked down at us without any face at all. Laine had to remind me to hold up the license. He took it, looked, didn't react when Laine said hi to him by name. I think he rolled his eyes putting it back in my hand. Then he waved the six of us through.

The club was full to the walls. People everywhere, dancing and drinking and shouting into each other's ears, and the music was so loud I couldn't hear my own thoughts, only feel the beat land in my chest. I didn't know a single song. My feet wanted to go anyway. Laine had to grab my arm and steer me to a table where the others already were, and I think she said something about rule one, but it went into the noise and was gone.

Glenn came back with drinks. I looked at Laine before I touched the glass with the red in it.

"Cosmopolitan," she shouted in my ear. "Vodka and cranberry. Try it."

It was sweet, fruity, and if not for a little sting at the back of my throat I'd have sworn there was nothing in it. I drank half before I stopped. "It's nice!" Everyone laughed at me — she's a pro, wait till she hits tequila — and I went red and finished it fast, swallowing down the need to cough.

"Dance!" Laine hauled me out into the middle of it. My mom had paid for dance lessons once and none of it was any use here; the floor was so packed all anybody did was jump in place to the beat, shoulder to shoulder, and I stopped feeling strange about the skirt because half the girls out there wore less. It was the best I'd ever felt. Just moving, inside all that noise and all those bodies, until a song ended and Laine had to drag me back off the floor by the wrist.

I was sweating and out of breath and I grabbed the glass Glenn held out and got a big sip down before Laine snatched it away. "What are you doing?" Rule two. I'd forgotten it completely. But she wasn't mad at me, she was mad at Glenn.

"It's a margarita—" The others laughed while he tried to explain.

"Yeah, no." She put a sealed water bottle in my hand. "Water or soda for you, that's it." The guys were grinning at me like I was a little kid and I frowned, but I drank the water. The margarita had burned worse than the sweet one anyway.

"I like this song." Ralf. It had gone slow. "Can I borrow your cousin?" He asked Laine but he watched me, and I couldn't help the giggle when he did.

Laine rolled her eyes and sent us off. My knees went strange when he took my hand and walked me out. The slow songs didn't pack the floor, so there was room, which somehow made it worse — nowhere to hide how close we were. He put an arm around me and pulled me in against him. He was so big and warm my face only came up to his chest, and his smell was all around me, and my heart was going way too fast for how slow we were moving.

I was starting to settle into it when his hand drifted. It had started on my top, over the fabric. By the middle of the song it was lower, on the bare skin of my back. By the end of it his fingers were resting on the waist of my skirt. The song stopped and I was almost sad. Part of me wanted to know how far down he'd go. Part of me was scared he would.

I went to step back and a new song started, slow again, and he just kept us going without asking, his hand keeping me pinned to his chest.

I looked past his arm to see if anyone could see. They could — and nobody was looking, because everybody was doing it. Two tables over, a girl had her back to a guy with his hand up under the front of her dress, and neither of them cared who saw. Right next to us a boy had both hands full of his partner's backside, lifting her skirt with them, out in the open, in the light.

Ralf saw it the same time I did. His fingers slid down off my waistband onto my skirt, and then he turned me under his arm, and when I came back around there was no pretending — his whole hand was on my behind, holding it.

My first thought wasn't to stop him. My first thought was who's watching. And then it came back to me. Uncle's hand right there. Then his big warm thing. Then his stuff, all over me, in my panties, still there — crusted into the lace, all night, and Ralf's hand was one thin layer of fabric from finding it.

I pushed off his chest and turned, so his hand came off me, and I couldn't look up at him. I think he said sorry. I think he asked if we could keep going. Between the music and my heart going I couldn't have answered if I'd known what to say.

"How was it?"

"You dog."

"It's her first night, go easy."

Laine and the others were talking about me and all I could do was sit and drink whatever was in the glass in front of me. Another cosmopolitan, or soda, I didn't care.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to make you uncomfortable." Ralf topped my glass up. I went redder. At least he hadn't found it. At least he didn't know.

"No, I — it just surprised me," I got out.

"Well." He smiled, and my legs pressed together on their own. "I bet I could surprise you some more. If Laine ever lets you off the leash." The whole table laughed, Laine too, and I laughed with them without really being there.

The rest of the night comes back in pieces. We danced again, all of us jumping to the beat. I drank something. I laughed so hard at something I cried, and I can't tell you what it was.

"Drink this, it helps."

Laine held out a glass of something yellowish.

"What is it?"

"You don't want to know. Drink it, you'll feel better."

Most of the night before was gone. Not all of it. I knew I'd had a blast, and Laine's friends must have thought so too, because they'd already asked us out again. My head was pounding when I woke up and her drink nearly made me throw up, but it did the thing — it reminded me I had to get to the bathroom, fast.

My mom would have killed me for sleeping in those clothes. She'd have killed me for the clothes at all, but still. I didn't remember getting home. I pulled my panties down to pee and saw how stiff they were, how they stuck to me coming off. I sat there staring at them, and then I remembered what Uncle had done before we left. That's what that was. That was his — his stuff. His sperm.

I got in the shower the second I was done. Not just for that. Makeup was cracked and smeared down my face and the club had dried sour into my skin overnight. But I scrubbed between my legs and my behind harder than the rest of me, and doing that put Ralf back in my head, his hand on me, how close I'd come to letting him do more than that.

I came out feeling human. And nearly died when Laine, easy as anything, said, "Have a good one?" with a little knowing look.

The day went quick. We talked and talked about the club, Laine swearing I hadn't embarrassed myself, that yeah, Ralf liked me, for real. She gave me a hard time for drinking Glenn's margarita. But apparently I held my liquor fine, or so she said.

Two days later it was time to get ready again. The boys wanted to take us to the movies, and Laine said we had to look our best, which with Laine meant more of the same — sexy clothes, good makeup. It was my second-to-last day. She wanted to send me off having fun.

This time it was a purple tube top. It covered less than any bra I owned, less than the one bikini my mom ever let me have. It sat tight on my chest, and if not for a couple of little flowers stitched on the front my nipples would have shown right through.

"Are you sure this even fits me?" I looked smaller in it, if anything.

"Trust me, Ralf's going to love it. You're so tiny it fits you better than me."

Then the skirt. Black with a red edge, as short as the first one but tighter. My own panties wouldn't do, apparently, so Laine handed me red lace out of the catalog again, and just pulling them on set that low tingle going. The red edge of the skirt matched the red of the panties, so if I flashed anyone they wouldn't be able to tell.

"Will they even let us in the theater like this?" I was blushing and I couldn't stop grinning. I couldn't believe I was going out dressed like this. And I couldn't wait for Ralf's eyes to go down me the way they had in the car.

"Bestie, dressed like this we get in anywhere." Laine struck a pose in her own thing, a little one-piece that hugged her and pushed her chest up till it looked ready to spill. We cracked up, and then makeup, and this time there were no rules to recite, just Laine showing me blush and shadow and how to make my face look sharper without looking like a clown.

It was still light out when we came down. I hadn't heard Uncle get home, but the TV was on. Laine didn't say anything. Now I knew why we went down quiet. He shouldn't have done it. We shouldn't be going out like this, dressed like this, sneaking — each thing came up in me on the stairs, and I put my eyes on Laine instead. The loose roll of her shoulders. The way she checked her lip in the hall mirror like the living room and the TV light weren't ten feet away. I made my shoulders go like hers and my mouth go like hers and kept my feet moving, and there was nowhere for the thoughts to land.

"Laine! Alicia! Come here!"

We both froze. We weren't even near the door. I watched Laine to see if she'd run for it. She didn't. She turned and walked back toward the living room with her head down and didn't look at me, and I don't know why but I followed.

"Dad, please. We're just going to the movies."

"All the more reason. I know what goes on in the back rows." He was already up off the couch. "Assume the position."

I don't remember deciding to. I remember being bent over the arm of the couch next to Laine again, my red panties down at my ankles, his big hand moving on my bare behind.

I knew I shouldn't want it. My body got hot anyway, faster than last time, his hand moving down toward me and me waiting for it instead of dreading it.

When his fingers finally touched me we both gave up trying to be quiet. This time I knew what was coming, so I could pay attention to it — how he'd run my lips, then find the little button and press, then leave it and go back to my lips, getting me wet and then stopping right when I chased it.

Then his thing. This time I knew it for what it was the second it touched me. I don't know how I'd thought it was his finger the first time. It was nothing like a finger. Softer, and hotter, and wet, moving up and down my crack harder than his hand had, pushing like it might go in and take the thing he kept saying he was guarding.

The first time was over in a flash. This time it went on and on.

I was breathing hard, trying to find some way not to go over, because I could feel it building and I didn't want to fall apart bent over a couch next to my cousin. He touched me and touched me.

Then he groaned and pressed his thing hard against me, right at the front of me, and I felt it — hot, spreading over me and into me. He'd aimed it right at my opening this time, and it went in a little before it ran back out and down my legs.

I grabbed Laine's hand and held it. I didn't want it. The good feeling came anyway, harder than any I could remember making by myself, and I shut my eyes and tried to be somewhere else while it went through me. I must have managed, because the next thing I knew we were out on the sidewalk again and Laine was still holding my hand.

"Don't worry. Happens to me too, sometimes." She handed me a paper towel. "Kind of jealous, honestly. He spent way more time on you than me." She laughed.

Her laugh got me every time. When she bumped me with her shoulder I couldn't help smiling, even as my face burned.

Turns out we weren't going to a theater at all. "I've got a seventy-inch at home, way better than any theater," Glenn said, picking us up. "Snacks, and the place to ourselves." Laine shot him a look. "Cheaper, comfier, better all around," he went on.

I wasn't listening to Glenn. It was just the four of us this time — Laine up front with him, me and Ralf alone in the back. My stomach dropped the second Ralf's eyes came to me and went down my outfit, slow. The thin cotton might as well not have been there when he looked like that. And some part of me wanted it gone, for him.

"You look good, Alicia." He slid over so I'd sit close. "This yours, or another of Laine's hand-me-downs?" His eyes were on the tube top like he could see straight through it. "Plenty of room today, but you can always sit on my lap if you want." A joke, I think. I giggled and didn't answer.

"Make yourselves at home, I'll get the snacks," Glenn said inside. Before I knew it Ralf had me down next to him on the couch, one arm around me, turning the TV on with the other. It really was enormous, too big for the little living room. "Guess we're sharing, babe," Glenn told Laine, coming back with popcorn. "Your cousin took the good seat." Only then did I see Ralf and I had the only couch.

"You planned that," Laine said with her sideways smile, and dropped herself into Glenn's lap in the armchair beside us. Glenn matched the smile and pulled her in, one hand going straight to her chest like it was nothing. I felt Ralf's hand move on my shoulder, down toward my own, and stop there. And wait. And I sat there breathing and waiting too.

I thought I'd never watch the movie with him that warm against my side. But somehow I got lost in it, the popcorn, whatever Ralf handed me to drink. It wasn't till the movie went quiet that a sound turned my head. Laine had her eyes shut, kissing Glenn, his hand up inside her dress on her breast. I don't know if she saw me watching. She jerked and stood up.

"Bathroom. Don't pause it for me." She fixed her dress and went.

"I gotta go too, don't wait." Glenn was up right after her, and then it was just me and Ralf and the movie.

"You don't have to be jealous," Ralf said, catching me watch them go. "You've still got me." His arm came around and pulled me in. "You ever kiss a boy?" When I turned his face was right there. I don't know if I even answered. Then his mouth was on mine and the whole room stopped.

Laine had made me practice on a pillow, told me how to move my mouth, how good it would feel. It had seemed gross and weird then. All of that was gone the second Ralf's lips were really on mine.

It was done, and I tried to breathe, and he went for another, his arms pulling me into it, and it got bigger — wet and scary, and I couldn't get air, and I wanted it to stop and I wanted it to never stop.

I don't know how he got me onto my back on the couch. I just knew I was under him with his mouth still on mine, and even if I'd wanted to stop I could barely take a breath, let alone push.

His tongue came into my mouth the same second his hand went up under my top and onto my bare chest. Both at once, both a shock, both so good it scared me. When Laine had told me what a French kiss was I'd wanted to gag. Now his tongue found its way in and played with mine and I owed my cousin an apology.

"You're really hot." I don't know if he'd said anything before that. His fingers found my nipple and did something to it I'd never felt, and I was hot, hotter than I'd ever been, and the only thing that could make it better or worse was more of him.

Somewhere under all of it I knew what he was doing. I knew it was too much and I wasn't ready. I couldn't stop. It was too good, too new. I'd touched myself a thousand times and this was a thousand times that, and all he'd done was kiss me and touch my chest, and I already knew neither of us was going to be happy stopping there.

His other hand started down over my bare stomach the second I thought it, or maybe I only thought it because it had started. I knew where it was going. The heat between my legs was calling it there. Everywhere he touched, goosebumps came up, like my whole body had turned as sensitive as the one spot I played with alone. I couldn't guess what it would be when he got there. I just knew it would be too much.

My legs came open on their own as his fingers traced down past my belly button.

Then I felt it. My panties, stuck to me, soaked — some of it mine, and some of it crusted, stiff where it had dried, from what Uncle did before we left.

My legs snapped shut and I shoved Ralf off in a panic. All of it went out of me at once, every bit of heat gone, replaced by the one thought: he can't find it. "No!" He came off me, let me sit up, cover my chest, curl into the corner of the couch.

"I'm sorry." He sat back on the far end. I couldn't look at him. I was still breathing hard, still had the taste of him, still tingling everywhere he'd been, and none of it mattered next to him finding Uncle's stuff in my panties. "Let's just — watch the rest, okay? You want another drink?"

"You okay?" We were walking back. Glenn had dropped us a few blocks short of the house. Ralf hadn't come — he'd said something about wanting to see me again — and I hadn't been able to answer him. I didn't know why. I'd loved everything we did. "I'm sorry I left you. I didn't think he'd try anything. He's a good guy, he really likes you."

"No, that's not — I think it was just too much. Too fast."

"Yeah. Glenn was the same, kissing me all through the movie and then wanting more in the bathroom." She laughed. "Don't worry. A few more nights out and you'll know exactly how to handle a guy who won't take no." I wasn't sure what she meant, but I smiled and let it go.

"I hope he doesn't hate me."

"Bestie. Ralf's crazy about you. Guys want it more when you make them work. Next time you visit, I promise he'll be waiting."

That made me smile. Ralf wanting me felt good to think about. It also reminded me I was almost out of time. I'd be gone soon, and there was no telling how long till I got to come back.

Ralf had me in his arms again, his mouth on mine, his fingers doing the amazing thing to me, and this time he wasn't going to stop. I was bent over the couch and my panties were at my knees and he was behind me. This was it. Except he couldn't, not with Uncle right there. I tried to get up and cover myself and a big hand kept me down, and it felt so good, even while he said into my ear that I was a slut and he was done with me, that he wanted nothing to do with me ever.

I woke up gasping, and I couldn't tell if it had been a good dream or a bad one, because it had been both. Then something moved in the bed behind me, and it wasn't Laine.

"Shh. You don't want to wake your cousin."

Uncle's voice went through me and I couldn't move. He was in the bed behind me. His body was against my back, his front to my back, and his hand was on my hip. Why was his hand on my hip. It slid up and took a fistful of my shirt and I came awake all the way and tried to get out from under it, and his arm clamped over my hip and held me where I was.

"Easy. Everything's fine." His breath was in my hair. "I know how you're feeling. I know what you need. That boy got you all worked up and left you there, didn't he. If it wasn't for my shield you'd have let him do the rest."

I stopped pulling. I didn't have an answer. Because he was right — being under Ralf had been the best and worst thing, and if not for the crusted mess in my panties I'd never have made him stop.

"That's it. Every girl your age is the same." His hand went back under my shirt and up my side, over the same skin Ralf's had crossed. "Full of it, ready to open your legs for the first boy who smiles. But I've got something that'll stop you handing your cherry to some greasy kid who won't even remember your name."

"No—" His fingers found my breast and I jumped, and I hated that my body did the same thing it did with Ralf. His hand was bigger and rougher and it didn't matter. Everywhere he touched, it sent that shiver down, and I could feel myself going wet against my own will.

"Don't fight it." His fingers rolled my nipple until a sound got out of me I had to swallow. "That boy already got past what I gave you on the outside. Time you had something that actually lasts." His hand left my breast and started down over my stomach, slow, hot.

I knew where it was going. It was the same place Ralf's had been headed, and this time there was nothing crusted in my panties to save me — I'd showered before bed, scrubbed all of him off. This was wrong. I should stop him. But the shield worked, even Laine said so, and I didn't want to lose it to a boy, did I — so maybe whatever Uncle meant to do would work too.

"Good girl. Relax." His hand passed my belly button and reached the top of my panties. Same as with Ralf, my legs were falling open on their own. Same as with Ralf, I could feel the wet coming.

His fingers slid under the waistband onto the top of my mound, and I bit my lips so I wouldn't make a sound, because Laine was asleep less than six feet away and I would have died before I let her hear this.

His hand went lower. When his finger touched my button, my head went white and empty and a whole new kind of feeling shot up through me.

"Better bite down on this. We don't want you waking Laine." His other arm came around my head and two fingers pushed into my mouth. It was awful and it helped — it caught the moans, and it made me hear how many I was making. "There. You like this. Don't you."

His finger worked my nub and I couldn't do anything but take it. It was nothing like when I did it. I had no say in it.

He rubbed and pressed the whole flat of his hand over me, and I think I bit down on his fingers. I wanted him to stop, and when he did stop I whimpered because I needed it back.

I could feel the good thing climbing, promising to be as big as the one over the couch.

"I think you're ready for the real thing." His hand left me and slid down my leg and took my panties with it. My body let him, lifting when he needed it to lift, however ashamed I was. He got them off, drew my top leg up, and the cool air of the room touched me where I was open. Then something behind me, and something hard and hot pushed between my thighs.

Even I could guess what it was. I went stiff. One of his hands was still over my mouth. The other held my leg up, and I was open, and I couldn't close.

Was he going to rub me with it, like at the couch. That's what I told myself while it slid along me, up toward my button, and the closer it got the less I cared what it was, because the feeling his finger had promised was coming back.

"Let's see if the shield held." His hand came back to me, his fingers joining the hot thing, spreading me, pressing in. Checking, like the first time — I wanted to tell him yes, of course I was still a virgin, but his fingers were in my mouth. His finger went in deep, deeper, and my hips jerked when it hit something far inside, and he had all of me, I couldn't even close my legs. "There it is."

I tried to say something, because his finger didn't stop.

Then a bright hard pain shot through me and froze everything good. More of it kept coming, pushing in, and it wasn't his finger — my head finally caught up — his hips came up behind me and a feeling I'd never had spread all through the middle of me.

It was him. All the way in. Stretching me open.

The pain and the wrongness of it told me he'd just taken the thing he kept saying he was guarding.

I fought. I bit his fingers, tried to scream around them, tried to twist away, and he was so much bigger than me that I went nowhere. My own body turned traitor — every move I made turned into some strange spark, him touching places I didn't know I had.

He put a hand flat on my belly to hold me still, and I got it out around his fingers: "Why—"

"Easy. The pain's already gone." His mouth was at my ear. "The rest is just the good part."

And he was right. That was the worst of it. The pain went, and the way he filled me — mashed against my button, my lips, all of it — it was like his finger was back in me and a hundred times more, like it was supposed to be there, and my body answered.

"No boy steals your cherry now. And you'll know what they're all after." Then his hips moved, and I had to bite him to keep the moan in.

It was better than his tip on me. So much better. The good thing came racing back, and however much I wanted to hate him for it, I couldn't hold onto the hate when every small move filled me up with something new.

"That's it. You like it." His finger in my mouth stopped a long moan while his other hand went down and pressed my button. Full of him and his finger on me at once, it was almost too much. "Go on. Come for me. I want to feel it."

I don't know how I didn't draw blood on his fingers.

My whole body pulled tight and the biggest one I'd ever had tore through me, and I couldn't breathe or think or stop it even while I tried to be angry about what he was taking. It was like he was pushing pure feeling into the center of me, and it poured out everywhere, shaking me apart.

"Yeah. Just like that. God, you're tight. Here it comes—"

I heard him without understanding, my head in pieces. Then his arms crushed me to him and his thing pulsed inside me, over and over, while he groaned in my ear.

He was doing it too. Pumping it all deep into my belly.

I knew I should be scared about a baby. Sex-ed had been clear. But my body was still coming apart in his arms and I couldn't make myself care.

"So good. Nothing beats teenage pussy." He shook one last time and went slack against my back.

His breath was heavy on my neck while I tried to find my own. His finger and his thing were both still in me.

I tried to pull away. Now that the good part was gone, all of it came down on me at once. I wanted to scream, to cry, to climb out of my own skin. Tears ran off my face onto the pillow.

And he was still there, still wrapped around me. Why wouldn't he leave. He'd already taken everything. What else was there.

"Shhh. It's okay. Don't cry. It's over, and now you're really protected." His voice froze me. "You liked it, didn't you."

I wanted to say no. But his thing was still inside me, still reminding me of that feeling, so I stayed quiet and prayed he couldn't tell how hard I was blushing in the dark.

"That's fine. Your body's made for it. It'll take over the second a boy touches you. After my Laine taught you all her tricks, your cherry wasn't going to last a day out there without someone to keep it safe."

His voice was soft and I found myself listening. It was crazy. It also made a kind of sense. I still hated that he'd taken my first time. But knowing how good it felt, how far gone I'd been under Ralf, I couldn't say he was wrong.

"Next thing, you'd be carrying some greasy boy's kid, and he'd be long gone."

I froze and made a small sound. I'd forgotten it again. His thing was still in me, softer now. He'd put all of it inside. What if—

"Relax. Too late to worry now." He'd felt me tense. "Sure, you might be carrying mine. But at least you know I love you like my own. I'm not using you and tossing you out. I care about you." His hand smoothed my belly. "Your mom'll be angry. Then she'll help you, and life goes on. And you'll never forget what happens when you open your legs. That fear's going to keep you safe."

He went quiet, off somewhere that wasn't me. "No more rubbing off Laine." Half a laugh under it. "Not after feeling this."

He said it was just a scare. Just a lesson. I held onto that harder than I've ever held onto anything — because the only other thing in my head was standing in front of my mom with a belly I couldn't hide anymore, and I couldn't look straight at that, so I didn't.

He kissed the back of my head, almost gentle, and left me there in the wet spot with his stuff sliding back out of me. I lay still and listened to him settle into his own breathing, and across the little gap between the beds, Laine slept on, six feet away, and never knew.

My last evening I got dressed to go out like nothing had happened, because that was easier than the other thing.

Laine picked it all again — a little green top, the black skirt, red lace under it — and I let her turn me into somebody grown, humming, easy, no idea. She'd slept through it. She didn't know a thing, and every time she laughed at something I couldn't find the way to tell her, so I laughed too and it came out wrong and she didn't notice that either. I kept my eyes off the second bed. I couldn't look at where it happened and I couldn't look at her.

Getting ready, my mind kept going back to last night on its own. Whether it had taken. Whether there was already something starting in me while I stood in front of her mirror letting her line my eyes. I pressed my thighs together and the lace was dry and clean and that was almost worse — nothing to hide behind now, nothing crusted, just me.

We went down quiet the way we always did. The TV was on. The blue light moved on the wall. And this time my whole body knew before we reached the bottom step what the quiet was for.

"Girls. Come here."

Laine huffed and turned toward the living room the way she had every time, bored with it, sure it was the same as always. I followed her because my legs took me, and because if I stopped I'd have to say why.

"We're already late, Dad." She said it to the ceiling, dropping her purse on the chair. "Can we skip it just this once? Nobody's even going to—"

"You know the drill." He was up off the couch already, and he didn't so much as ask if we were going anywhere.

"It's cold, and it takes forever, and then I've got to clean up in the car." She was walking to the arm of the couch the whole time she complained, because that was the thing with Laine and her dad — she'd gripe the entire way through it and do it anyway. "You could at least warm your hands up first."

"Bend over, smart mouth."

She rolled her eyes so hard her whole head went with them, and folded down over the couch arm, forearms on the cushion, cheek turned toward the TV, her skirt riding up off the backs of her thighs. Ordinary. Bored. Waiting for the quick thing that always happened and was always over.

I went down beside her because I didn't know how not to. Hip to hip. My cheek on the same cushion, my face turned the same way hers was — toward the window, away from him. I couldn't see behind us. Neither of us could. We never could.

His hand started on me first, warm and flat on my bare backside, and I shut my eyes. He rubbed us both, one girl in each hand, the way he always did, and beside me Laine let out a small used-to-it sound, and for a second it was just the usual and I let myself think maybe tonight it stayed the usual.

Then his hand left Laine and both of them were on me, and I knew what that meant now. I felt him line it up. I bit down on the cushion.

He pushed into me slow and I took it, quiet, the way I'd learned last night — no scream, no fight, because there was nothing left to fight for, and because a sound would tell Laine. He used me for a minute, easy, like I was already his, like this was just a thing he did on his way past.

Beside me Laine's eyes were shut, her face turned away. She heard her cousin breathing hard into a cushion and thought it was the shield. It always sounded like this. She had no reason to think it was anything else.

He pulled out of me. I felt the couch shift as he moved behind her.

And I knew. A half-second before it could happen I knew exactly what he was going to do, because it was what he'd done to me in the dark twelve hours ago, and Laine's face was still turned toward the window, bored, waiting for the rub-and-done, and she had no idea. My mouth came open. I don't know if I meant to warn her or just to make a sound. Nothing came. I reached across the little space between us and got her hand instead, the way she'd held mine that first night, and she let me take it without knowing why, still turned away, still waiting for the ordinary thing —

Her whole body locked. Her hand crushed down on mine. "Dad—" It came out high and wrong, nothing like her club voice, a little girl's voice. She tried to come up off the couch and his hand was on the back of her neck, holding her folded over it. "Dad, that's — that's not — what are you—" and then the word broke off into a sound I'd never heard her make.

I felt it go through her hand into mine — the exact thing I'd felt in the dark twelve hours ago. Him forcing in past where the shield had ever gone.

Last night I couldn't see it. This time I turned my head, and I could.

He had Laine by the hips, working himself into her a little at a time, and she was too small to take it any way but hard. I watched the stretch of her around him, watched him have to push for every bit, each time he gained a little her whole body flinching sideways into mine. There was a smear of something on him, dark in the low light.

She made a sound on every breath now, and it wasn't the used-to-it shield sound. It was pain — and under the pain, the other thing, starting whether she wanted it or not.

"Shh. Easy, baby." His voice was calm, that soft careful voice, while she shook on the end of him. "Same as your cousin got last night. Feel that? That's the new shield." His hips drew back and drove in and her body jolted into my side. "The old one wore off you a long time ago. Rubbing it on the outside — that stopped working the first time some boy got you drunk enough. This one goes where they can't wash it off. This one they can't get past."

She turned her face to me then — the first time either of us had ever looked back — and found me right beside her, my hand in hers, my eyes already running over.

I watched it go across her face all at once. Last night. The bed. Why I hadn't been able to look at her all evening. That I'd known, coming down the stairs, and come down anyway.

"You—" It broke out of her on the end of a thrust that rocked her forward onto me. "You knew—"

I couldn't answer. There was no answer to give her. Her father kept driving into her, again, again, the couch groaning under the both of us, and whatever else she wanted to say to me he shoved back out of her before it could come, until there was nothing left but the sounds.

And some traitor part of me was still lit from my own turn a minute before, still slick with him, and every time he shoved into Laine her hip ground into mine and it reached that place, and I hated it, hated that even this could get in there. I held onto her hand and I didn't let go and I couldn't tell anymore which of us was shaking worse.

Then her cries changed. I heard it happen — the pain going under, that other sound coming up in its place, the one I'd made last night no matter how little I wanted to. Her eyes were still on me and they went wide and wet, like her own body had crossed over to his side and left her behind.

"There it is." He'd felt it too, the give in her. "There's my girl. Your body always knew what it was for."

Then his hands went white on her hips. He pushed all the way up into her and held there, his whole back going rigid, and Laine gasped like the air had been knocked clean out of her.

"Here it comes — here's your shield —"

He ground himself deeper, and I felt it come through her hand into mine. The pulse of it, the same beat I'd felt inside myself in the dark. Him emptying into her, deep, pumping it up into her belly, while she made a small broken sound and shook against my side.

He stayed in her all the way through it, petting the small of her back, working the last of it in. "There. Now you're really protected." His breath was ragged over the both of us. "You're going to be full of your daddy all night. You'll stand up and feel it start running out of you, feel it in there every time you move, and you'll remember, and no greasy little boy is getting anywhere near it."

He drew back out of her, slow, and I watched him come out — watched the mess of it, him and her and one thin thread of pink, begin to slide down the inside of her thigh.

"That's the real shield. That's the one that lasts."

Laine's hand was still locked in mine. She hadn't looked away from me once, and there was nothing in her face I could fix.

He didn't send us out.

"Nobody's going anywhere tonight." He said it easy, tucking himself back into his shorts while Laine hung over the arm of the couch with her legs shaking under her. "Look at the state of the two of you. No club's ready for that. Should've done this the first night instead of bothering with the outside version." He almost smiled. "And let's quit calling it a shield. We're past that." He tipped his head at the stairs. "Go clean yourselves up. I'll be up in a while."

Laine couldn't stand straight. I got an arm around her and took her up the stairs a step at a time, her whole weight leaning into me the entire climb — Laine, who'd dressed me and drilled me and pulled me around by the wrist all week. My hands were shaking worse holding her up than they had all night under him.

I sat her on the edge of the tub. She still wouldn't look at me. Her thighs were streaked to the knee, and when she let them fall open to get at herself there was more of it than I was ready for. It slid out of her in a slow thick rope every time she shifted — his, too much of it to believe one person had put it there — and under it a thin red that was hers, smeared and still welling where he'd torn her open. She didn't close after him. She stayed parted and swollen, gaping the littlest bit, like her body had forgotten how to shut. The shield had never left her looking like this. I could see where he'd been. I could see how far he'd gone.

She reached for the toilet paper the way she must have a hundred nights — quick, practiced, the same hands that had passed me a paper towel on the sidewalk our first night out. She wadded it up and pressed it to herself, and it soaked through in a second, red and useless. She pulled off more. That went too. She kept tearing at the roll like she could get out ahead of it, faster and faster, and she couldn't — it just kept coming, more of him than any of it could touch, exactly like he'd said it would. Then her hands stopped on their own.

I took the soaked wad out of them and dropped it in the bowl, then wet a washcloth and did it for her, because her hands had quit. She flinched when I touched her, then went still and let me — the same still she'd gone for him. The tap ran. Down below us the TV came back on.

"It was always just the outside." Her voice came out low and wrecked. "Always. All this time I thought I had it figured. I thought I knew where it stopped." She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and didn't finish.

I rinsed the cloth. The water went pink and I kept going.

"We're not going out," she said finally, to the floor, like somebody had to say it. As if either of us could have.

We were still in there — her leaning on me, the cloth gone cold in my hand — when his weight came up the stairs.

He filled the bathroom doorway and looked the two of us over, in no hurry about any of it. Then he took the back of Laine's neck in one hand and the back of mine in the other and walked us out ahead of him like that, across the landing and into his room. He sat us down on the edge of the big bed and left us there while he got his shorts off, and then he moved us where he wanted us on it — me up against the headboard, Laine laid flat in the middle — unhurried, like he was setting the table for himself.

He started with Laine.

He put her on her back this time — no cushion to hide her face in, no window to stare out of — and knelt between his daughter's knees where every bit of it was in front of me.

"Dad, not again. Please. I can't—" It didn't slow him at all. She was crying without any sound now, tears sliding back into her hair, and she opened for him anyway.

That was the thing I couldn't stop looking at. Her hands pushed at his chest and her thighs fell apart in the same motion, her body taking his side against her. He pressed into her slow, and her back came up off the mattress, and the moan that got out of her she caught behind both hands — ashamed of it, ashamed I was right there watching her father sink into her, watching her hips lift to bring him deeper.

"Watch your cousin, Alicia." He didn't even turn his head. "See how she knows what to do? You're the same."

So I watched.

I watched him work in and out of Laine until the crying and the other sound ran together and she couldn't keep them apart. Until her hips quit fighting and went with him. Hating it and needing it in the same motion.

He didn't finish. He worked her slow and steady, in no rush at all, talking over his shoulder while he did it, like he was walking me through a chore.

"There's two halves to it, and this is the near one." His hand was wet to the wrist where the two of them met. "Right now she's carrying more of me than she could towel out if she scrubbed till noon, and there's more coming. It runs out of her all night. Down her legs, into whatever little skirt she picks."

"She gets out on a floor full of boys and the first one who leans in close smells it on her. Sees it shining down her thighs under the lights while she dances. Knows some man already had her, and takes his hands right back. No boy wants another man's leavings."

His hand slid up and spread flat over Laine's belly. "That's the near half. The far half you grow. Put a baby in a girl and every punk who'd get her drunk and take his turn looks once and walks off. They don't want one that's already caught. A belly on her is the best fence a father ever built, and it keeps the mutts out of the yard for good." He patted her stomach like there was already something under it to mind. "Both of you. Give it a few months and you'll both be showing, and it won't matter what you wear or where you go."

Then he reached over and pulled me in by the arm.

He worked us both after that, a hand on each, going from her to me and back like we were two of the same thing. He set me down on him and made the moving my job — my knees in the mattress, my hands flat on his chest — and after a minute I was the one rocking, the sounds climbing out of my own throat with nobody holding them there. That was the shame of it. Laine lay beside us with her arm over her eyes, and I couldn't look at her either.

When it finally caught up with him he was back inside Laine. I felt him lock up, heard the sound go out of him — the first of it going into her — and then he wrenched out mid-spurt, a hot rope of it striping up her belly, and hauled me down onto him and drove up so deep I felt every pulse of the rest land inside me. Hers striped across her. The rest of it he put as far up in me as he could reach. Laine's hand found mine while it happened.

"There." He stayed in me, in no hurry to leave, his breath ragged. "Now neither one of you goes home empty."

I stayed where he'd put me and let it go where it went. That was the worst of the whole night — not that he made me, but that by the end he didn't have to.

He let us go when it was almost light. Laine and I gave up on our own beds and stayed curled into his, both of us sore, both of us running him slow into his sheets.

She got my hand under the blanket and held on. For a long time neither of us said anything.

Then, so quiet I felt it more than heard it: "I didn't know he'd do that to you." Her breath hitched. "Last night. I swear I didn't know he ever — I thought it was just the shield. I thought it stopped where it always stopped." She pressed her forehead to my shoulder. "I brought you here. I put the clothes on you. I—"

"Don't," I said. It was the only word I had, and it came out wrong too.

Her hand let go of mine, moved under the blanket, and settled flat over her own stomach, right where his had been. She found my other hand a second later and pulled it there too, over hers, over the place he'd patted like he already owned whatever was under it.

"You feel anything?" Her voice had gone strange.

"It's been like ten minutes." I meant it to come out normal and it didn't.

"I know." Her thumb moved under mine, small circles, back and forth. "I keep checking anyway."

Under both our palms I could still feel him, slick and warm, working its way wherever it was going to go. Neither of us moved our hands off it. We just lay there breathing too careful in the dark, like letting go might change something he'd already started.

"He's my dad." She said it flat, like testing whether it was still true, like saying it plain might make it stop being one. "If it caught, it'd be his. My own dad's."

I tried to work out what that made me — what it made whatever might be starting in me, from the same man, his blood and mine already tangled up somewhere above us on a family tree I didn't want to look at — and the thought just spun and wouldn't land anywhere. I gave up on it before it finished.

"What if it did," I said. I didn't mean to say it out loud.

She didn't answer right away. When she did, her voice had shrunk down small — nothing like the girl who'd known every bouncer's name three nights ago. "Then I guess we'd both know soon. Both his, either way."

"He's not stopping after tonight." Her hand went still under mine. "There's going to be a next time. And a time after that." A short breath went out of her, more air than sound. "And I'm not going to stop him next time either. I don't even know if I could anymore."

I didn't say anything back. There wasn't a way to that didn't sound like relief. I only knew I hated feeling it at all — hated that some small part of me was already glad for the bus tomorrow — so I put my other hand flat on my own stomach too, like matching her would even it out.

I didn't tell her it was okay. She'd have known I was lying, and there was nothing left to say that his hand on both our bellies hadn't already said for him.

In the morning Uncle was in the kitchen like it was any other day, same shorts, pouring his coffee. I stood in the hall working out how I'd get through the room. I didn't have to work it out. Laine went in ahead of me.

She didn't have her club voice, and she didn't have the huffy one either. He said her name and she came. He told her to eat something before the drive and she sat down and ate it. On his way past he laid his hand flat on the back of her neck — the same hand, the same hold he'd used to keep her folded over the couch — and she went still under it. She didn't pull away. She didn't gripe. Her shoulders came down and her chin dropped, and she let the hand sit there as long as he wanted it there.

When he lifted it away her head followed it the smallest bit before she caught herself. She looked at me looking, and turned her face away fast. That was the only flash of the old Laine I got all morning.

She walked me to the door with her eyes down.

"Don't be sad. We'll see each other soon."

Laine hugged me at the bus, pretending she wasn't crying. I hugged her back. It hurt to go and I was glad to go, both at once. Up close she smelled like her shampoo and under it like him, and I knew I did too. She didn't say anything about last night or this morning. Neither did I. There wasn't a way to.

"Sure," I said. "That'd be nice."

She didn't tell me she'd make Ralf wait. She didn't mention him at all. She just held on a second too long, gripping the back of my shirt like I was the one holding her up. Whatever she'd been — the grown-up cousin who knew the bouncers and the rules and how to handle a boy who wouldn't take no — it wasn't in her arms anymore. We were the same thing now. Maybe I was even a little ahead. I'd had mine a night first.

On the bus I put my forehead on the cold glass and let it all run back through me. My mom would be at the station. I'd have to hug her and let her measure me out too little makeup and never, ever tell her. I thought about what was still inside me, deep where he'd put it, and whether it had caught, and I made myself stop.

And then, because my mind wanted anywhere else to go, it went home. To Danny, who did lawns two streets over and had to be seventeen at least, who'd looked at me a beat too long the day he caught me watching him work with his shirt off. I'd thought I only imagined it. Maybe I hadn't. My body knew things now it hadn't known a week ago. It would take over the second a boy touched me — Uncle said so, and he'd been right about everything else.

I could find out if what they taught me still worked.

I waited for it to feel wrong. The bus went three more stops, and it never did.

Somewhere under all of it, the whole ride, was Laine. I tried to leave her back at the house the way I was leaving everything else, and she wouldn't stay there. Not on the bus with me — back in that house, with him not stopping, filling her again and again until what he'd promised took root and started to show. I already knew how she'd look, months down the line: that same hot pink tube top from our first night out, stretched tight now over a belly she couldn't hide anymore, one hand resting low against it the way his always did.

The bus kept going. I didn't look away from the window again.