I guess that was the year that it changed.

Before, it had always been: Yes, my dad is mean and sometimes hits my brother and spits on me. Why are you looking at me funny? Is that not normal?

But that year, it changed. More specifically: that year in health class it changed.

Our health class was nothing that wasn't to be expected in a public school in a mediocre town in Iowa. Basically, they stuffed all of us girls into a classroom that I'm pretty sure was once a janitorial closet and smelled like cat pee, and then had our grossly overweight PE teacher teach us how to put on condoms using a banana that was probably bigger then the combined you-know-whats of the entirety of the boys 8th grade class.

"Just like puttin' on pantyhose, girls," our PE teacher said.

The condoms, I mean.

But I'm getting of topic, aren't I?

Anyways, in between that and forced conversations about the dreaded p-word, they also made us read. Not only Bboks from the 1970s called "You and Your Sexuality: Your Guide to Getting It On" (I'm dead serious), we also had to read all this crap on mental health and stress and peer pressure and parents mistreating their kids.

And at first I was like, uh-huh, all right, get on with it, I really want this period to be over because the cat pee smell is really giving me a headache, but then I actually started thinking about what they were saying. And then it was like:

Well.

Crap.

Why does that sound familiar?

And so I did pretty much the only thing I knew how: I researched it. That first day in the computer lab with the Wikipedia page was only the beginning. Everyday for about a month afterwords I would spend the whole lunch period in there, reading physcological affects, causes, types, stories, therapy treatments, and anything else I could get my hands on via Google.

I know. It was sick and creepy and weird.

And it wasn't like I didn't already know what child abuse was. I wasn't that much of an idiot. Dr. Phil would probably say that it was my subconcious trying to release the built up anxiety and inner anger I had over the whole situation.

I would tell him to piss off. If I wanted to get off pent up anxiety, I would go kick a wall or something.

But it did make me feel better, in this messed up kind of way. Reading about it online, where it was all so clean and precise and neat (This is what it is. This is what happens. This is what you do to get help.) made it feel so much more managable. And though I had pretty much accepted it by then, reading the articles with the big words that I could barely understand made it seem so unattached from what was actually happening, that it was easy to believe that this wasn't my life I was actually reading about.

And when Google started giving me some sites with questionable content (what Weiner dogs have to do with child abuse, I'll never know, but you'de be surprised by how many times they came up), that was when I turned to the books.

My mom was a librarian back then. I don't know why. All she did was tell kids to "Shhhh!" all day for minimal wage.

Anyways, it turned out that the books were a big mistake.

Because, I mean, I totally feel for all of those beautiful girls with scars all over their bodies whose father hits them Every. Single. Night. And starves them so that they have model-worthy bodies, but at the same time they won't tell their incredibly hot male best friend about it because they're too ashamed.

I really do. Feel for them, I mean.

But honestly... If you're too "ashamed" to tell anybody about it, then it couldn't be that bad. In fact, I would have killed (not really, but done something really drastic) to have my father hit me.

Yes, that sounds screwed up, but do you know why?

Because you're a sick masochist who secretly likes getting attention from-

No. Because I would have been out of there so fast. One call to 911, child services, anything, and I would have been out of there.

But it wasn't like that.

I never came to school with bruises on my face.

My step-father never called me ugly.

He never raped me or starved me.

But, oh my God, sometimes it felt just as bad.

He had this horrible, horrible laugh. Sometimes he would look at me, I mean, really look at me, all up and down in a creepy way that felt really dirty, then he would make this disgusted face like I wasn't good enough and then he would start to laugh.

He would do random things, like stick a broom over our doorway and say that it was so nobody could come in and hurt us. Except that was totally stupid, because the broom was on the inside, and so it wasn't even doing anything, but when I tried to move it to go outside he said "HEY!" really loudly and it scared me so bad because I thought he was going to hurt me and I didn't want to die from a stupid old broom, but then he didn't do anything but pick it up and throw it across the room so that it hit a window and then dropped to the floor.

And then he laughed.

Or l'd come up to him, try to get him to sign one of my papers for school, and I remember one time he took it and he bit one side of the paper in his mouth and then with the other hand he took it and ripped it all the way down. And then I watched as he tore it up into confetti and then he sprinkled it over me, so it got stuck all in my hair.

"Only an A, Bailey? You tryin' to impress your dear old pops with only an A? Try again, sweetheart."

And then he laughed and laughed and laughed. It was more of a screech, really, and it hurt my ears and made this horrible feeling boil in my stomach.

And then there was always what happened when I sometimes tried to talk around him. He would spit. On me. A big wad that dripped down my shirt, and I would freeze mid sentence and stare at him horrified, and he would stare at the stain on my clothes, and then you know what he did?

He laughed.

Cause it was just so damn funny.

It came to the point, where all of this little things made it so that it was like a game between the two of us. Whenever I was around him I tried to stay invisible. I didn't know what would tick him off. It was like I was always holding my breath, stepping around the land mine.

All the same, what was he really doing wrong? Nothing. He laughed a lot. Isn't laughing a good thing? Just thinking back at all the things that happened, they seemed so stupid. Almost funny. Nothing that he could really get in trouble for.

Except with Ian.

He hit Ian.

I didn't want to think about that.

We left when I was sixteen.

One day I came into my room and found him going through my top dresser drawer, picking up all of my underwear and bras and fingering them, holding them up delicately one by one before dropping them back. That was when I knew we really had to go, because I SO did not feel like having my step-father's child.

I never thought about the month leading up to before we left, and I wasn't going to start now. It made me feel sick.

And right now, what I really needed was a pint of Ben and Jerry's Rocky Road, not some bullcrap about my step-father running through my head.

It was around three in the morning. I had woken up exhausted, my pathetic crying jag having exhausted me, but I couldn't fall back to sleep.

Ian said he had called my mother from Iowa, begged her to take him back. He said he had changed. He said he had gotten help. He said he still loved her, and he wanted to make amends with me and Ian.

And the worst part? Ian believed him.

Even worse? My mother used my college funds to fly him here and get him an apartment.

So he was here.

Screw you, mother.

Not even US here, or Washington here, but here here, as in-

"God dammit-"

. Screeeek.

"-cking bushes. Bailey? Are you-"

Grooooan. Snap.

"Ow! Jesus! Bailey-"

And apparently, Seth was here here as well. And was currently sopping wet, and prying open my window.