The Protagonist Is Never in Control

Illustration by Anne LeGuern

In your first memory of him, you are four years old, and you are being suffocated.

You are under a blanket, having a pretend tea party with your best friend. She is his daughter and she is also four years old. The blanket is pale purple, made of worn fleece: those are details you remember clearly. It must have been winter, or at least late fall — chilly enough that the heat is blowing up through the floor vent, puffing up the blanket into a warm fuzzy womb.

You can hear the muffled laughter of her parents and yours. The four of them are neighbors, and best friends; he and your father have worked together for years. You hear his laugh come closer. Through the blanket, you feel his hand graze your leg. Then he pins the blanket to the ground, forcing you closer to the vent’s hot blast.

Even now, you remember it clearly: the cold bolt of fear, how the two of you struggle to knock his wrist aside. How you realize that your power is no match for his. In your memory, you can hear his laugh get louder. You understand that he knows what he is doing. And you understand that he enjoys it.

Even at four, you know what he is. He is a bad man. He is a man who likes to make little girls feel scared. And you know that he is a man who gets away with everything.

Another memory, once upon a time: your eighth birthday party, at a roller rink, the kind with UV lights and ’80s neon squiggles on the wall. Your best friend already had her birthday party there; you were so excited when your parents let you, too. The rink is oval, sprinkled with spinning dashes of light from a disco ball overhead.

At one end of the rink, there are booths for bored parents to sit in. As you and your friends skate, your parents drink diet sodas, chatting with your best friend’s mother. But your best friend’s father is on the rink, skating in laps.

You’re not a very good skater. But you are a determined one, breaking in your new rollerblades lap after lap. At one point, you skate toward the booths, waving proudly in the direction of your parents. Your mother looks up when the bad man approaches you from behind and grabs your hand. In that split second, you meet your mother’s eye.

You meekly shake your head. You beseech her with your eyes: Tell him no. Tell him no! She smiles wide and gives you two thumbs up.

The bad man grabs your hand. “I was on the varsity ice hockey team,” he declares, and accelerates. Your hand sweats; you plead with him to slow down. Gripping your hand, he skates faster and faster, and your fear is compounded by your mounting nausea. Slow down, you cry, but he doesn’t hear you, or pretends he doesn’t, as he drags you in lap after lap around the rink, your eyes blurring, your hands growing more slippery by the second. And then, speeding around one end of the oval, your hand slips away and you’re sent careening across the rink before you smash, hard, into the wall.

When you are nine, your mother divorces your father and marries the bad man. She does this even though you beg her not to. For your whole life, your mother has been your world; you can’t bear to be away from her. And she tells you, often, that you’re her best friend, too. She’ll inscribe that in the front pages of picture books she buys you: FOR EMILY, MY DAUGHTER AND MY BEST FRIEND. But now the bad man declares that your relationship isn’t healthy, and he schedules twenty minutes every day that you’re allowed to be alone with her. , he calls it, and soon she uses. They’ll lock the door behind them. And then you’ll cry, puddled on the floor, ravenous for what’s been taken from you.