Cut by Layla Harding Page B

He seemed to intuitively know where my boundaries were and didn’t try to cross them. Until that damn fifth month.
    He started with gentle prodding that became more insistent with each date. I finally gave in. Part of me wanted to shut him up, part of me thought it was my obligation (he had, after all, put up with so much from me and been so sweet up until then), and, let’s be honest, I was fifteen. Part of me really wanted to. I wanted to know what it was like to be touched with gentleness and affection.
    So the shirt came off, followed quickly by the bra. It was humiliating. He immediately started touching the scars and quizzing me about the fresh cut on my shoulder. He wanted to know what happened, why were there marks all over my torso? I didn’t have any good answers. I told him it was none of his business. That wasn’t good enough. I told him to take me home. That was fine with him.
    We saw each other in the hallway the following Monday. He was holding hands with some cheerleader. I took it as his way of breaking up with me. To his credit, I don’t think he ever told anyone the real reason we stopped dating. Thank God. But I learned my lesson. Three months was the limit.
    “Go to your room, Persephone. You’re grounded until you can decide to be honest with me. I can’t believe you think this is acceptable.” I wanted to argue. I wanted to cry and scream and tell her where I was at night and why. I wanted to tell her that her husband was the reason I was running off—the only guy her daughter was lying about was her own father. But what good would it do? I would be gone soon. With any luck, I would be a few blocks away in the National Place Cemetery or thousands of miles away at college. Just a few more months one way or the other, and I would escape.
    Anyway, it wasn’t like Mom would remember for more than an hour she had grounded me. Dad was due home from his trip, and she would have other things to focus on. Apparently, so would I. There would be no escaping to Ken’s. Dear God, just make it quick. Please.

    I didn’t bother closing my door—not even when I was tracing little cuts across my stomach, reopening old scars, making new ones. I heard the front door open on hash mark number five and my parents talking in Mom’s room during cuts seven through eleven. I stopped at fifteen and laid a towel over my stomach. It would soak up the blood until it clotted.
    At midnight, he was in my doorway. “So you’re still here. Mom told me she grounded you.” I stared at him. “That’s a shame.” He sat down on the edge of my bed, cupping my face in his hand.
    “I told her she was being too hard on you. Teenagers will be teenagers. You need a little bit of freedom. She just wouldn’t listen. I tried to get you out of it, honey.” When I was younger, I fell for this good cop/bad cop thing. I really thought my mother was the shrew and Dad was trying to be a good parent. If I would just let him touch me here, kiss me there then he made sure I got what I wanted. He made Mom be nicer to me, stop yelling at me all the time. Sure enough, the day after a late night visit to my room, the punishment was lifted or the new shirt I wanted would appear. Funny thing, I never enjoyed it much once I got it.
    There was one time when I was ten. Everyone I knew was getting a new gaming system for Christmas. I wanted one so badly. I begged and whined every chance I got. Mom flat out put her foot down. There was no way I was turning into some zombie sitting in front of the TV all day. She said if I asked one more time I was grounded. I was ten. Of course I asked one more time. Multiple more times, in fact. I got yelled at. I got grounded. I got told I probably wouldn’t get any Christmas presents at all. This was two weeks before Christmas and the night before Dad got home from a trip.
    When he came home his first order of business, after getting the rundown from Mom, was to come to my room. I was savvy enough to know how