Quickly and quietly the next morning I slid my book inside the front of my jeans and opened the second story window and swung out onto a tree beside it, the twigs pulled at my clothes and scratched at last night’s bruises but I struggled down to the ground. I stopped only to grab an apple from one of it’s many branches before running out of the yard, running as fast as my legs would carry me. I felt his hands on me the moment I thought I was free. Stepbrothers clammy hands were clamped around my waste so tight I couldn’t breathe. Before I knew it I was on the ground, he was hovering over top of me asking me what I was doing running away from the house like that. He reached for my shirt and I knew this was it, I was his sister’s replacement, I was next. Quickly I thought back to stepsister, the way she would cry in the next room when he would come in the night, that horrible, hopeless cry. This wasn’t happening to me. The stepbrother had pulled the book out from my jeans and undone the first button. What was he doing? Why was he trying to touch my “special area” my dad told me that no one but the doctor should touch that area. With one hand over my mouth, his other sliding slowly down into my jeans the stepbrother told me that “this was my punishment for trying to run away.” I was spared for that moment by the stepmother, stepbrother’s head had spun around just as his hand had reached the top of my panties. Stepmother was calling us in for breakfast. He jumped off of me after telling me that this was “our little secret” little did I know, nothing about this was “ours”. No part of it was mine at all. I lay there after he had run through the field in the direction of the house and out of sight. I was so confused about what had happened and I couldn’t get the picture of his face out of my mind as I gathered my book and did up my pants. He had this terrible grin on his face that wouldn’t leave my mind. I held The Hardy Brothers close to my chest as I made my way up to the house as if two fictional boys would ward of any horrible stepbrothers. No such luck. I woke up in the middle of the night. He was shutting my door behind him. If I pretend to be sleeping he will just go away. He walked towards my bed sat down beside me. Just lay still and keep your eyes close, he’ll leave, he will leave. He pulled back the covers. Exposing my skinny, bare legs and my flat figure hidden by my nighty. At this point he shook me to wake me up, without thinking I opened my eyes and told me to be still and quiet. I did as he said, too afraid to do anything but what he said. Confused, I watched him, with that awful grin on his face. Again he told me to keep still and quiet and he climbed on top of me and spread my legs. As he slid his hand up underneath my nighty and into my panties I knew something was wrong but I kept quiet. He started to touch me in a place I had never been touched, it was new but not bad. It didn’t feel like much of anything until it started to hurt. I felt his fingers being pushed into me. I squirmed on the bed and tried to stop him but he kept going. By the time he had slid his own pants off I was somewhere else. In my mind I had escaped the pain and confusion. I was riding a unicorn in a beautiful field on a spring day. I couldn’t feel the pain of the first thrust. I was still five years old, just a little girl riding her unicorn. I couldn’t feel his cold clammy hands exploring my innocent flesh. In the morning he was gone. I had drifted off to sleep as he had his way with me. I woke up confused and in terrible pain. I tried to be somewhere else, I tried to find my unicorn, my field of daisies but no matter how hard I tried I was right there, a five year old girl with stained sheets, a terrible secret and lost innocence. Alice.