Theresa walked with a limp, her impaired gait stemming from a childhood injury. While riding her bike, she’d been sideswiped by a delivery van, thrown into a muddy swale. Although she was lucky to be alive, her right leg suffered permanent damage and disfigurement.

Following the incident, she’d spent a lengthy convalescence in the hospital, and that was when and where she’d discovered a passion for reading.

Books showed her new worlds and offered an escape from her mundane life in middle America. Aside from occasional car accidents, there wasn’t too much happening in her idyllic little lakeside bedroom community, and while reading, sometimes her mind would drift to thoughts of traveling, visiting faraway, exotic places, or even just moving to a big city, like NYC or LA, somewhere sophisticated and cosmopolitan.

In school, Theresa rarely socialized outside of study groups. Rather, she preferred to sit quietly, reading, between classes and during lunch. On the bus, too, she’d be reading, her head always bowed to a book. Basically, she was never without a book in her hands. Books, to her, were ideal friends, in that they always had useful, amusing things to say, and they were always there when she needed them. Not to mention books never stared at her, or squinted, pointed or asked her, often sardonically, “Hey, like, what’s wrong with your leg?”

Her world had been quiet, one of books and study. Until he came along...

She’d figured he’d just transferred in from another school because she’d never seen him before, though his long, sharp face was vaguely familiar.

The new boy was tall, skinny as a scarecrow. And he looked like a misfit, a stereotypical juvenile delinquent. He wore backward baseball caps, T-shirts with pictures of serial killers, and he had an oversized steel wallet chain dangling from his baggy pants, and as he walked through the halls, the chain made a jingly sound, like keys rattling.

Strangely, he was the first boy to ever pay attention to her. Normally nobody paid attention to her. The first time she saw him in the hallway, their eyes met, and she’d quickly averted his gaze, turned her cheek.

But his gaze was unwavering. His brown eyes growing as he stared her down. To her, it felt almost as if he were a lion in the Serengeti and she was an antelope, a wounded antelope too, with how she limped. His eyes were unyielding, affixed, and blazing with a scary, animalistic glint. His eyes like an angry dog’s. His stare sending a chill down her spine. There was such an ugliness, too, in how he trained his glare. It was penetrating. Unnerving.

That first time he saw her, he made no attempt to speak with her. He just stood, leaning against his locker, brooding and glaring at her; his upper lip curled; his arms folded over his chest. Veering further to the opposite side of the hallway, she felt the cold weight of his gaze, like it was a block of ice pressed to her neck, and she wished she knew magic or something and could make herself invisible so she could just disappear.

But, unfortunately, she couldn’t make herself invisible, despite attempting a few spells from a fantasy novel she’d read. And his staring continued. His angry dog glaring growing seemingly more hostile by the day. And it’d started to feel, to her, as if he were everywhere in the school, like he was stalking her, lying in wait, ready to pounce. As if his brazen face were behind every door, his obtrusive eyes under every desk.

Even in the girls bathroom, she could sense the sting of his presence. As if he were there, staring down at her, watching her piss and shit.

Like her, he was also a loner, never sitting or talking with anyone. He’d sit alone at a nearby table in the cafeteria, during lunch, just glaring at her. He’d glare at her every day in the cafeteria, then in the hallways too. After school, as well, at the bus stop, among the knots of students, he’d be standing by his lonesome, his arms folded, his eyes just like the laser scope of a rifle, his eyes steadily locked in on her ... burning...

She didn’t quite know what to do about it. She’d always minded her business, avoided conflict. No one had ever tested her like this. Since she was enrolled in only honors classes, she didn’t mix with kids like him, and the kids like him normally bullied others, normally boys. To her, it was uncomfortable, unchartered territory.

Being an only child, she didn’t have a sister or brother to confide in, ask for help. She eventually mentioned it to her busybody mother, over an early evening pizza dinner, but her mother brushed it off, giggled and said that he “probably just had a crush on her.” Her mom encouraged her to be brave, strike up a conversation with the new boy. Maybe they could “study together.” Her mother was constantly suggesting she find more friends to “study” with.

So she took her mother’s advice, overcame her frissons of fears, her pusillanimous inclinations. That next morning, she worked up the courage and went over, between classes, to talk to him. Meekly, with minimal eye contact, she politely introduced herself to him. His answer, though, shocked her.

“I’m gonna rape you,” he told her, in a condescending voice, his thin lips curling into a sinister grin.

Taken aback, all she could mutter was “what?” and her brows knitted as a fit of nausea plaited over her, her panic collecting and hardening, as if a chunk of concrete were forming in her stomach.

“That’s right. I’m gonna fucking rape you. After school. Today. You’re getting raped.”

Then he sneered at her, turned his cheek, and calmly walked off, the chain on his baggy jeans jangling.

Paralyzed with fear, she paused among the clumps of students crisscrossing by her in the hallway, feeling like a car that’d broken down in the middle of a busy highway. Then her mind started spinning in circles. She was young, sure, but she knew what “rape” was, she knew what he meant.

But she’d long figured any rapist would be a weirdo in an old beat-up van, or a shifty-eyed freak in a trench coat, some perv lurking near the playground. She never expected the backward hat guy of ... that ... She pictured him beating her up, robbing her, maybe growing fangs and biting her like a vampire, or even killing her, hacking apart her body with a chainsaw, but not ... this...

It’s not as if she’d had much experience with boys. Actually, she possessed none. She’d never done anything with a boy. She’d never had a boyfriend. But she knew what sex was, and rape was a sort of nonconsensual sexual intercourse, she knew.

For years, she’d been reading sex scenes in books, so she was aware of sex, as a concept, as an activity, that, usually, adults and older teens did. But it was in that Sex Ed class, just recently, that she first saw graphic illustrated pictures, drawings of penises and people ... doing ... that ... and it’d totally grossed her out. Sex, to her, seemed so revolting. Like, why would people want to do that? Because it felt good? It only looked dirty and disgusting to her.

Especially penises. A penis, yuck, what a disgusting thing! A penis, to her, looked like a hideous reptile, a creepy crawler creature that was a cross between a snake and a turtle. Just the thought of that gross, hairy, slimy thing hanging from a boy’s body, that gross snake thing, ick, slithering ... inside her ... it made her shudder and feel nauseous. And this was what the delinquent wanted to do? Shove his disgusting reptile thing in between her legs? Ick!

(After first seeing a picture of a penis in the Sex Ed class, Theresa had trouble understanding how boys were even able to walk, with that snake thing hanging and dangling, between their legs. At first, she thought that there must be a shell or something it could crawl into, right? Maybe that’s what the testicle sack was for; surely, penises didn’t just flop around, down there? She wanted to ask the teacher about this but wasn’t able to muster the nerve to raise her hand.)