Chapter 5

I slammed my bedroom door in my rush and threw myself face-down on my down covers. I felt too shocked to bawl, like I really wanted to do, and just lay there with my face hidden. I heard Alex say, next door, in a remarkably calm tone, that his younger sister had just gotten home (if they didn’t see me on the way in, Alex usually like to pretend to his partners that they were alone in the house) and that maybe they should wrap things up. The valedictorian didn’t seem to mind too much; I’d seen her a couple times at school, and she’d even been my tutor last semester, so I knew how nice she was. Out of all of Alex’s partners, I thought she would probably make the best girlfriend.

Not that I’d live to ever meet any girlfriends he had. He was going to murder me, then disown me, then spit on my grave. Or maybe piss on it. I buried myself farther into my pillow, miserable, vividly imagining what the next several weeks or months would probably look like: Alex wouldn’t even look at me. If I spoke to him, he’d pretend I didn’t exist. After a time, if he did ever look at me again, he would glare—disgusted, shocked, violated by my actions. He would never want to comfort me again, like he had after I’d popped my cherry, or even talk to me, or walk down to the docks with me like we did every Saturday morning. I’d lost my only real family simply because I was stupid enough to polish my pearl right outside his door. ‘Oh god,’ I moaned wretchedly, and that was when the tears began to well up. My very best friend was gone from me. Or—what if, God forbid, he told Da? We’d never gone to our single neglectful parent to solve any spat between us. We’d always solved such things between ourselves—but this was no mere sibling spat, no fight over which channel to watch on telly. I was pretty sure that what I’d done was literally a criminal offense that could land me in juvie, or something.

The front door to our flat closed. I was pretty sure Alex had left, too—I would, if something like that had happened to me—but I stayed where I was, not crying hard, but letting the big fat tears roll slowly over my face, turned onto my back now, staring vacantly at the ceiling. I was perfectly content to lie there and wallow in my own gloom for the next several eons, but there was a gentle knock at my door. I didn’t answer it, not feeling like I had a right to tell him to go away after what I’d done, but I rolled onto my side facing the wall, away from the door.

‘Dottie?’ his voice didn’t sound angry, but it was hard to tell—maybe it was that calm, cold kind of anger, the kind that’s scarier than drop-down drag-out shouting. ‘I’m coming in,’ he finished, and my door opened, and then closed. I had my curtain drawn, so it was quite dark in there. I didn’t move a muscle, not even when Alex sat on my bed behind me.

‘Dottie.’

When I didn’t reply, he gave a little sigh and said, ‘We should talk about ... what just happened.’

I still didn’t say anything. Alex laid a hand on my shoulder, and I jerked away in shock as if he’d burnt me, scrambling away from him in an instant so I was sitting with my back to the wall, knees pulled up to my chest.

‘What is it?’ Alex looked confused at my reaction. I shook my head wildly back and forth.

‘I can’t believe that you even want to touch me!’ I said, eyes filling with tears. ‘How can you even look at me?’

This time it was Alex’s turn not to answer. He reached into the pocket of his trousers and put something on the bed between us. It was my discarded knickers—purple, printed with yellow emoji happy faces. ‘You forgot these.’

Horrified—I’d drawn my knees up to my chest without panties on, which meant that my cooch was probably on display—I snatched the knickers up and smoothed my legs down, eyes down. Still, it felt rude not to say anything, since this was not the reaction I’d expected from him at all, so I mumbled, ‘Ta.’

‘You’re welcome. What’s going on, Dottie? We should discuss this.’

‘I don’t want to,’ I said petulantly, although I had no right to decide that, considering. ‘I think it seems perfectly obvious what was going on and you’ll probably hate me for the rest of eternity.’

‘Now’s not the time for any confusion,’ Alex said. ‘Let’s qualify, here, and I’ll be the one to decide if I hate you or not. OK?’

‘OK,’ I agreed in a sigh, not able to look him in the eye.

‘What were you doing outside my door?’

‘I was ... I was touching myself.’

‘Were you listening to me and Elsie?’

This was harder to admit to, although it was beyond me as to why. I stared at my bare feet for a full thirty seconds before whispering, barely audible, ‘Yes.’

‘Did you think it was hot?’

This caught me off guard; off guard enough that I looked up and met his eyes in surprise. It was the first time I’d looked at him full in the face since he’d come into my room. I saw no anger there—in fact, his expression was almost—thoughtful.

‘Yes, it was hot,’ I admitted, my mind flitting back to the images I’d been conjuring listening to their moans and grunts. With a startled tingle I realized I had imagined myself, almost without consciously realizing it, on the receiving end of my brother’s lust. In my head, when I had listened to them, when I had touched myself, always, I had always seen my brother—and not just because it was him having the sex in the room, because it’d been that way when I’d been masturbating all alone, too. That was when it really hit me. I couldn’t seem to find any release unless it was Alex in my head. I wanted, had wanted for years, for my brother to fuck me.