Her father waited until her mother had been dead for two months before he did anything.
At first she didn't know what they were doing from play, even though a sick sliding feeling in her stomach, a sense of discombobulation, nausea, pervaded her being for days afterward.
Then came the time it hurt, and she bled.
Always after being with her Dad would leave and go clean up. Then he'd be very permissive with her for several days. When he began to get grouchy, demanding things, giving orders, she knew another nighttime visit would be in the offing.
He reacted badly to boys, but encouraged her little girlfriends to come over-Amelia caught on early as to why.
That was why Bryan became her most cherished friend.
Playing chess, riding bikes, kissing...for the longest time, just kissing. Because that was all Bryan knew to do, in part. And Amelia loved him for it. She loved him for his ungainly height, his lank black hair and long legs and arms. His funny way of blurting out things as they came to his mind-as perfectly practices as Amelia was by now in keeping secrets she adored Bryan's uncomplicated lack of tact.
Best of all, she managed to keep Bryan a secret from Dad for quite a while. Bryan didn't understand why they had to meet away from her house, or why they always went to his house, why they rode around the park behind the school away from the main road, why he couldn't call her. As an adult, she wondered how she managed it, as her life since Dad's passing was so much less complex-so easy.
There was just that thing about him coming back in nightmares, a mud-covered ghoul.
It put wings to Amelia's feet as she ran.
The sun was up but the day had decided to remain overcast, and the wind had picked up as she ran down the long stretch of Carlson Avenue. Debris swept past her, sometimes in the opposite direction of the traffic. The hood on the sweatshirt flapped up in drafts, eventually she stopped at a cross street and took it off, tied it around her waist.
She looked very sexy that way, and knew it.
Goddamn Dad for that, too, she thought.
She sometimes wondered why the abuse had not made her into an empty shell of a girl, or a quivering basketcase. Many women whom she'd come to know in her early 20's who had similar stories were overweight, one was gay-they tended to actively conceal their attractiveness, their femininity-in Amelia's opinion.
She'd done the opposite.
At 13 she'd become a raging slut.
The first guy wasn't Bryan. It was a college guy her Dad had hired to paint the house-an intern from her father's radio station.
Looking back, Amelia knew it was really a kind of 'fuck you' to her Dad.
Amelia lay out for three days as the guy painted, displaying as much as she dared without just flashing him. She hated herself, in some deep place-but another part of her thrilled to the looks, and how they became more bold over time.
Thirty minutes after the guy had sat down just to chat with her, they were rolling around on her bed upstairs. She was hoping Dad would come home. He didn't, and college boy had a ride he never forgot. Especially when he sat on the edge of the bed, covered with sweat, and Amelia told him her age.
She was sure he would hit her-but he just bolted, barely remembering to get his shoes.
Running, eyes slit against the wind which was rapidly cooling the sweat on her tan belly and shoulders, Amelia smiled a tight little smile-more sincere than it looked. College boy had been like rehearsal for Bryan.
The one who mattered.
Five miles northwest of Amelia running on the long straightaway of Carlson Avenue her boyfriend Seth Pollack woke, running a hand over where Amelia should have been in bed.
He sat up with a start. She didn't normally run on this particular day. He wondered why she'd alter routine. It was unlike her.
He swung his muscular legs to the floor, rose, and headed to the bathroom, scratching his newly-shaven head. Seth was a guy whose appearance completely belied his artistic and voluble nature-a solid 5'10" with broad well-muscled shoulders, a beautifully shaped head he kept shaven to the skin and a dark goatee. He was a graphic arts major and felt he and Amelia were a great balance-she a serious-minded math major-one of only three women in the program. And the only 'hot' one, he liked to remind anyone who'd hear.
Seth switched on the light and peed, was turning to start his shower when he saw the note.
Her handwriting.
Two words.
'Going Home.'
"No..." he involuntarily backed away-"No...Amelia, no, baby..."
She was finally beginning to feel the 'burn'. She checked her landmarks. She would be a good 6 miles from campus now, with 4 more to go. Everything was so familiar still, though she'd steadfastly kept away from anything further than 2 miles south of campus for 3 years.
Home.
"Where my love lies waiting silently for me..."
The Simon and Garfunkel song ran through her head as she thought of home.
That was what the dream had told her. Now, for whatever reason, God's decree, was the time to go home.
The memories cycled through her mind as her body moved on in tandem with other random thoughts-snatches of that song, images from the terrible dream, prime numbers she spotted in license plates...a meditative state, really.
Now the rain begins to fall hard, and it seeks to cleanse her. It pools in her eyes, now milky with the early stage of decay, reflecting the shifting lights through the leaves of the poplar.
Poplars are rapidly growing trees, and there is a period in their lives when their bark has beautiful almost silken whiteness to it. She is twisted slightly with her head touching the bark on the roots that rise up out of the ground, her cheek against the smooth bark.
The thunder speaks, and there is somewhere close by the sound of a car door. Feet touch the high grass, coming toward her.
She wants, even in death, to be alone, here.
