Trouble

“I want to start off small,” Liam admitted, shifting uncomfortably in his place on the couch, probably remembering our last encounter on the piece of furniture, “but I don’t really know how.”

“You can’t start off small,” I mumbled. My eyes were firmly fixed on the floor, my arms crossed in front of my chest, absolutely refusing to glance up at him for a second. All my senses were hyper-aware of anything he did, and my stomach was preparing itself for emptying at any second. “Because there’s only one thing you want to know.”

“No, there are two,” he admitted. “So maybe I’ll start with the less sensitive topic first: Alejo told me not to come over on Thursday night because you’re going to be out, and he said it casually, but I could see how scared he was in his eyes. What was that all about?”

I shook my head. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?!”

“Because it’s sensitive and gang-related and not for you,” I replied swiftly. “Look, I’ll talk to you, but I’m not talking about that.”

“You’re just making me more freaked out about the whole thing. Sol, I know that you’re secretive, but…tell me seriously, is your life in danger here?”

“Of course,” I responded without hesitation. “Of course my life’s in danger. My life is in danger just by living. Same with every other human being on the planet. Meteors fall from space, cars crash, knives slip off the counter, people trip and fall. People’s lives can be ended in the blink of an eye, and there’s nothing anyone can do to avoid it. If their time is up, it’s up.”

“You know what I mean, Soledad. Don’t patronize me like I’m a child,” he demanded angrily.

But I didn’t want him to know about the operation. He couldn’t know about the operation. Even Alejo had enough common sense to keep from relaying that information to the pretty boy band member, and if he did, then anyone did.

So I changed the subject and spewed out without thinking, “I’ll tell you why I panicked when you tried to…take our kissing further.”

Liam’s brown eyes clouded over for a second before he blinked. “I’m sorry that I took it too far.”

“It’s not your fault,” I insisted. “Other girls could have loved that. They would have gotten turned on, done…” I let out a long breath and tried to shove out the traumatizing thought again. “I guess I should start from the beginning.”

“That’s usually the best place to start,” he agreed.

After shooting him a look for his sarcasm, I started to tell my story. “When I was seven, Esperanza and I went to this daycare a few blocks away, ran in a couple’s basement. Almost all the kids in the neighborhood used to go, since they understood our financial situations and were really lenient about payment.

“So I’d been going for a couple weeks when I was playing with Alejo, building a tower with bricks or some other dumb shit that little kids do because they’re easily entertained. And this big man, with dark eyes that looked like these…” I stopped, trying to figure out exactly which words I wanted to use. Recalling exactly what he looked like was painful, but I had already started telling Liam, and I wasn’t about to stop then. The story would definitely distract him from the thing that he really couldn’t know. “They were like these black holes, you know? Totally vacant and distant, not a speck of emotion.

“But anyway, he said, ‘Soledad, I need you to come with me. You’ve been a bad girl.’

“I remember looking over at Alejo, who just shrugged and went back to playing blocks. But I figured I was okay as he led me toward the back room, which I’d never seen before, because I thought I could just plead my case and tell him that I hadn’t done anything wrong. I was a good girl. I’d always been a good girl.”

I glanced up at Liam, just briefly, and he already looked horrified. Before I even told him what had happened. He had already figured everything out, just like Alejo. But either way, I kept going, since I wanted Liam to know just exactly who he was trying to get involved with.

“So we stepped into the dark room, and the man turned on a light switch so we could see. The entire place was empty, not a lick of furniture or anything. I figured that it just made for better punishment, that I had to stand and stare at the wall, unable to use absolutely anything to entertain myself.

“I opened my mouth to say something to him, to assure him that I’d been good, just like always, but he shook his head. ‘Take off your clothes,’ he said in a hoarse voice. ‘This is what happens to bad girls.’

“I remember looking up at him like he was crazy. Why was I taking off my clothes? This wasn’t a bathroom. There was no bath waiting. I wasn’t changing. Why should I have to take off my clothes?”

“Sol, you don’t have to tell me this,” Liam expressed in a pained voice. “I understand.”

“No. You don’t,” I replied coldly. “But once he threatened to tell my mother about what I’d done, I did as he said, pulling down my pants and taking off my shirt, throwing them on the floor. It was cold in the room, so incredibly cold, and I was already starting to shiver.

“He called me useless and came over, shoving down my underwear, scolding me and saying that when he said clothes, he meant all my clothes.”

“Sol,” Liam whimpered, but I just shook my head.

“Once I was naked, he got this little smile on his face. This cold, sick smile that still haunts my dreams. And then, ever so slowly, he leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. It was short, but it was absolutely horrific. I’d never been so disgusted in my life, until he continued to touch me in places no one ever had, fingering me, kissing me all over.

“I cried and cried and cried, begging for my mother to come save me, and he never did anything to stop me. I was too secluded, too far away from the other kids. No one would hear my pleas. No one would save me.”

“Soledad,” Liam interrupted once again, leaning over and taking my hand in his. I finally looked up at him and saw that he was crying real, true tears. I was destroying him, and yet I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t. I’d never told anyone my story before, and I felt uncomfortable leaving the end of the story hanging.

“But the worst part,” I breathed, feeling my entire body start to shake at the retrieval of the memories, “was that he did it every day after school for three months, until mamá pulled us out because she lost her job and wouldn’t be able to pay for the care at all. Every day. Every day, I’d been a bad girl that deserved to be punished, to stand naked in front of him, to have him touch me in no way any little girl should ever be touched.

“And look at me now! I can’t even let you make a move on me because it sends me into a panic attack. After you left…I was a mess. I’m still a mess. I always will be a mess. Because of what that fucking pedophile did to me.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell your mom?” Liam insisted. “She could have taken you to see a counselor or something, gotten him arrested. Why did you just sit there and take it?”

“I couldn’t. When it first started happening, I didn’t want her to have to find a new place to leave us for the day. I knew that we didn’t have the money for a real after-school program, and she wouldn’t be able to find a new place for us. And after, it was too late. It would be a he-said, she-said sort of thing, since I never saw another kid get pulled into the back room to get punished. I always kept a special eye on Esperanza, made sure she stuck by my side, that the man never even spoke to her.” I shook my head, realizing I was digressing, and went back to the original subject. “And I couldn’t get tested, since he never raped me. There was no semen to be found in me, so it would just come up negative. As for therapy, that was totally out of the question. We don’t have money to spend on frivolous things like that.”

“Frivolous?” Liam repeated back to me in shock. “Sol, look at what this has done to you! You’re traumatized. You’ll never be able to make love to anyone because the second they touched you, you’d go back to that place.”

“Maybe not, though,” I whispered, wringing my hands together. “Maybe they just couldn’t…use their fingers. But I don’t need to have sex to survive. I don’t need kids.”

Liam shook his head in disappointment. “If you didn’t have kids, that would just be the world’s worst tragedy. The way you take care of Claudia and Marisol, you were made to have children. You’d be such an excellent mother.”

“Then maybe I could adopt,” I sighed. “I don’t know. But that’s why I freaked out, and I’m sorry that you had to deal with such a nutcase. And I’m so sorry that I slapped you. I just…I was in a completely irrational state, and it was the first thing that popped into my mind.”

“It’s alright,” he assured me.

“It’s not alright,” I argued. “It was awful of me. I was horrified at myself after I did it.”

“No, really. It’s alright.”

I glared at him shortly before he gave me a small smile and said, “You could have shot me instead.”