Chapter 3
I.
For the third time that day, I came home and had to clean myself up. I successfully avoided my father -- explaining blood -- other people's blood -- on my knuckles and clothes would be difficult. Explaining what was in the dark unlabeled bag was not something I wanted to think about.
I darted up to my room, dropped my keys, and went into the bathroom to wash up. This is the third time today I'm washing up and it's the third time today I can't believe what I just did. Running eight miles in 35 minutes and lifting a tree was one thing. Raping a man -- a boy -- was another. Beating the living shit out of two grown men who seemed quite accustomed to violence -- that was something else altogether.
I finished washing my hands and toweled them off -- not a mark on them. I had been in a fight on the lacrosse field my sophomore year. I was pretty proud of myself to not "fighting like a girl", I decked the attacker from St Mary's (who had, coincidently, also called me a "cunt") with a punch to the face. I came home that night an put my hand in a bucket of ice it hurt so bad. Not today, though.
I grabbed the black bag and went to Millie's room.
"MillieBear, big sister has returned with an answer to your bedpost problem, now you need to watch..." I paused. She wasn't there. Maybe I missed her in the bathroom as I came through the hall. No. Not there either. I looked out the back window and saw something move in the treehouse. Dad built it for me after Mom died -- she'd never let me have one even though Dad and I agreed that our backyard tree was perfect for one. Grieving widower and doting father of a little girl who'd lost her mother that he was, he went all-out on the thing. It had two rooms, a walkway around it, trap doors, skylights, crow's nest -- everything. I caught the movement again.
It was Millie.
She was with someone. I caught the other kid's short blond hair.as it passed the window.
"Oh, shit," I said and ran out of the room and down the stairs.
I'd just come out through the back door when I heard the first yell, "Millie -- stop it. I don't want to hurt you. Let me go!" from the tree house. I was across the yard in a flash and up the rope ladder and through the trap door. It was cramped -- I used to fit in there better.
I crossed to the other room and saw the boy. I recognized him -- Josh -- Josh Freeman couple of years older than her from a few doors up. He was blonde headed -- almost white hair, blue eyed, pale skinned. He was an athletic boy of all of 14 years old. Probably had a good 50lbs on Mille. She had him pinned to the floor. She had one hand on his throat and one down his pants. He had both hands on her choking arm. He was straining against it without noticeable effect.
"Millicent!" I yelled.
She was stunned. She turned and let go off the boy's throat in her shock. He took the moment to make a dash for it. He didn't get far. He'd gotten two steps and Millie was on him. She moved incredibly fast. She grabbed the hood of his sweatshirt and flung him backwards against the wall of the treehouse. He fell to the floor in a heap.
He got up and grabbed a metal baseball bat -- it was mine from Little League, but it was dented all up from hitting rocks with it. He brandished it. "You are some kind of freak," he said to Millie -- she was tearing up. He went on, "Now I'm getting out of here and telling everyone." Millie started crying. He waved the bat at me.
"Sit down, Josh," I ordered. He threatened me with the bat again, "Josh, if you swing that bat at me, I'm going to take it from you and shove it so far up your ass, the next time you burp, it will sound like you were laying down a bunt." He hesitated. Faster than he could see I stepped toward him and snatched the bat. I held it out in my hands - one hand on each end and bent the bat in half. I glared at the boy and said, "Now sit down and shut up or you're next." He sat down -- not quite believing what he just saw.
I looked at Millie and asked, "What happened?"
Millie was getting herself together, but still crying a little. "I was bored, so I went outside. I saw Josh and," she got a little tearier. "I had to..." She struggled to get it out. "I had to have it -- had to have him."
"She tricked me," Josh said.
Millie looked at me, "I knew he wouldn't come up here just for me. I mean, he's an eighth grader." I got that. It was a middle school thing. I mean a seventh grader with big jugs might break that plain, but not a sixth grader. Certainly not a sixth grader built like a ten-year-old boy as Millie was. "So I told him how, from the treehouse, you could see right into our bedroom windows," she said.
"Okay," I said.
"And I told him you'd be coming home soon," she continued.
"And?" I asked.
"I told him the first thing you do when you get home is usually get undressed." She was crying.
I looked at the boy in the chair. He was leering at me -- not at me -- at my chest. I rolled my eyes. That was pretty sneaky. "Millie," I said, I know what you're feeling -- I REALLY know what you're feeling, but you can't just trick boys into this sort of thing, and you can't just take what you want from them." As the words left my mouth, I wondered if Hell would open up and swallow me whole for my abject inequity. Fortunately, it did not.
Millie was crying, "I just need it so bad, Midge."
I hugged her. "I know MillieBear, we're going to get through this, I promise." We went back to the other room.