The cardinal was sitting on the porch rail near the door to the trailer when Melissa came home from high school. There was a dusting of white on the railing from an early spring snow shower, and it made the red bird look all the redder. “Pretty,” the bird chirped. “Pretty pretty pretty.” Melissa smiled. “You’re pretty, too,” she said to the bird as he flew away.

Inside the trailer, Melissa put down her book bag and was about to open the door to the refrigerator for a Diet Coke when the two men appeared. They were young men, dressed like in the magazine ads. “What are you doing here? What do you want?” Melissa said. “My mom’s not home yet.” Deep down she knew why the men were here and what they wanted.

“Should we knock out her teeth?” one of the men asked the other.

“If you break them off it will be all the worse,” the other man answered.

“You won’t bite then, will you?” the first man said to Melissa. “If you bite you’re dead.”

The first man started in her mouth and the other in her bottom. Melissa tried hard not to bite. It got even harder after they switched. “You’re doing fine, honey,” the man in her mouth said. “I’m going to come now.” And then he came. She choked and gagged, but the man kept coming. “That’s it,” the man said, “Swallow it all down like a good girl.” Most of it drooled out. Melissa couldn’t help it. She just hoped it was over. The man at the back kept going and then she heard him groan and he was done, too. “If your momma comes back, tell her that she still owes us,” the front man said as he buttoned his pants. Then they both left.

For a long time after that Melissa lay on the floor curled up and shivering. “Now you’ll be able to get on with the rest of your life,” she told herself, as if she were talking to someone else. “Be a big girl. Don’t whimper.”

Near nightfall the cardinal came back. “Pretty,” he said. “Pretty.” Melissa could hear it but it sounded thin and faint and far away.