6

6

STACEY

AGE FOURTEEN

“Are you sure you want to join this dance class, Stacey?”

I look up at the building from the passenger seat of my dad’s car. “Yeah. Mum would’ve wanted me to keep dancing. Can we go inside and ask if there’s space?”

Dad huffs and pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Nora is against this. She’ll be mad if I let you join. She wants you to start ballet instead.”

My smile drops. “I don’t care what Nora wants. She isn’t my mother. Why are you letting her control what I do?”

Another huff, and he turns off the engine, unclipping his seat belt. Slowly, he turns his body to face me. “Nora isn’t trying to be your mother. No one can ever replace Marie. Please be patient with her and her sons. They’re trying with you. Nora even wants to throw you a birthday party.”

“I don’t want a party. I don’t even have any friends here!” Then I grimace. “And I don’t like Christopher. He’s weird with me.”

Weird is an understatement. The guy is sick.

“He’s not. I can see how much he adores you already. You should be happy you have two big brothers to look after you.”

I fidget my hands, the words on the tip of my tongue that Christopher doesn’t treat me like a sister. It’s been months since we moved in, and he keeps sneaking into my room and watching me. He makes me keep my bathroom door unlocked, and he always puts his hand on my thigh while we eat dinner. I tried to remove his palm from my skin earlier tonight, but he twisted my fingers until they hurt.

He’s four years older than me. Eighteen and grown up. He won’t leave me alone, even though he has a really pretty girlfriend. I can hear them… doing stuff. And then he forces me to watch videos of them the next day. When I close my eyes, he threatens me to watch so I’ll apparently know what to expect when he inevitably does the same things to me.

He just wants to wait until I’m old enough. But that doesn’t stop him ordering me to touch myself the way his girlfriend does. I always refuse, not only because I have no idea how to but also because he makes me uncomfortable, and then he hits me, usually where no one can see.

A freezing shiver crawls up my spine.

“Can you move me to another bedroom?” I ask instead. “Maybe near yours?”

“Why?” Dad tilts his head. “We’ve just finished decorating your room.”

Because it’s right beside his. And we’re the only ones on the top floor. “It’s too big. I prefer smaller spaces.”

“No. You’re being ridiculous now, Stacey. We can’t move into Nora’s home and try to change things.”

“But…” I chew my lip and try not to let my voice shake. “I think Christopher is going to hurt me.” He always does, but I mean really hurt me.

For a second, I think Dad might laugh, but instead he sighs and wipes a hand down his face, removing his glasses in the process. “And why do you think that?”

“He—” I gulp, averting my eyes. “He touches me a lot. And… And he pushed his way into the shower yesterday while I was washing my hair. When I try to get dressed, he tells me to do it slowly and records me. He’s—”

I flinch as Dad slams his hand against the steering wheel. “That’s enough! Why are you saying this?”

I close my eyes, and a tear slides down my cheek. I’ve never feared my father before, and he’s never made me flinch. Yet now, I’m conscious of his hand, as if he’s going to do the same things as Christopher.

“I understand you’re having a hard time getting used to being in a new family, but you will not mess this up with your lies. Christopher is a lovely boy, and he’s just as excited as Kyle to have a little sister. You can’t make stuff like that up. How dare you? Your mother would be turning in her grave with shame if she knew the way you were acting.”

I sink my nails into my palms.

“Christopher snuck into my bed at the weekend,” I continue, needing to tell him and hoping he’ll save me from the monster. “When I told him to get out, he put his hand over my mouth and pressed his… thing against me.”

Embarrassment floods me that I’m even saying this to my dad, but he’s the only one who can protect me. If he knows his daughter is being treated in such a way, he’ll leave and never make me go back there. Mum would have already taken a knife to Christopher’s throat.

“He’s—”

“Stop,” he snaps. “Stop lying to get attention. What is going on in that warped head? I’ll book you in with CAMHS and they can deal with you.”

“I don’t need to speak to someone about my mental health. I need you to get me away from that house! Please, Dad,” I cry, my vision blurring. I try to grab his hand, but he dodges me like I’m a disease. “Please believe me. I’m so scared of him. Look – I have bruises on my back!”

He snatches my wrist when I try to pull my top up at the back to show him. “Stop it!”

Tears soak my cheeks now, the collar of my top drenched as my body shakes. “I promise I’m not lying. I’m not making this up. He told me he’d take my virginity one day and that I’m already his. He has pictures of me on his phone! Please. Please believe me!”

“You disgust me,” he sneers. “We didn’t raise you this way. Moving to Scotland is already changing you.”

I sniffle, my heart racing in my chest. “Please, just look at his phone. Please. You need to believe me! If you don’t help me, I’ll run away.”

“Get out of the damn car,” he demands, throwing his door open and muttering under his breath, “Fucking teenage girls and their hormones.”

I exit the car and rush to the pavement, trying to catch up to him marching towards the dance studio. “Please believe me, Dad. Check his phone. I’ll even try to record him to show you. He stands at the foot of my bed and touches himself nearly every night. Please!”

He stops abruptly and turns, nearly causing me to smack into him. He glares at me. “One more word and I mean it. Christopher is a good kid. He’s in a relationship and has been since he was fifteen. He already has a job offer from a top-end cybersecurity company even though he isn’t out of uni. You throwing around accusations like that will only ruin his future. You do that, and I will never forgive you. Neither will my wife. Do you understand?”

I hate the way he says “wife”. Mum was his wife.

“But I want you to protect me and—”

“Cut the attention-seeking. Do you understand?”

I lower my head and nod once as a truck pulls up beside us. “Okay.”

“Good. Now,” he says, plastering a smile on his face, “let’s get you back into dancing to clear that head of yours. No more lies. And no more trying to ruin someone’s credibility because you can’t handle not being the centre of attention by being the only child. You. Will. Stop.”

If my dad doesn’t believe me, then no one will. I’m trapped. I’m trapped with a brother who wants to hurt me.

“Hold the door!” a girl’s voice calls from behind us, and I turn around to see her running from a car. She quickly spins and waves. “Thanks for dropping me off, Jason! Sorry I spilled ketchup on your seat!”

The guy, who looks to be in his mid-twenties, waves back. “It’s fine. I’ll pick you up at nine, sis.”

“Okay. Love you! Bye, Kade!”

I hear a muttered, “Fuck off.”

The driver reverses out of the space. It’s then I see a boy in the passenger seat. He’s wearing a hoodie and looks about my age, his dark hair scooped back in a cap.

When he glances up and says something to the driver, I frown at him – he’s lighting a cigarette, which the older one grabs and tosses out the window.

The girl with long blonde hair barrels towards us, asking my dad to keep the door open again. “Hi,” she says when she stops beside me, a little taller than I am. “Are you here for the aerial hoop class?”

She’s very pretty. She looks like Christopher’s girlfriend but a lot younger. I think she might be American, but she also sounds a little Scottish.

And I realise I’m staring.

“Oh, no,” I reply, wiping under my eyes and hoping I don’t look like a disaster. “Just dancing.”

She scrunches her nose. “You have good shoulders. I bet you’d be good at hoop. Why don’t you try it? Dance class doesn’t start for another hour. I’ll show you around. My name is Luciella, but you can call me Lu.”

I glance at my dad. Aerial sports aren’t technically dancing, and I’ve never done them before. I did trampolining for a year before my mum got sick and I had to stop. Would he allow me? There’s a picture on the door of a stick person on a pole, and another one of a dancer. I didn’t tell him about that part of the studio when Kyle and I found it on Google.

“Can I?” I ask Dad. “It’s kind of the same as dancing.” I think. “I can do two classes?”

He fakes a grin at the girl instead of me. “Sure. She can fill in all the paperwork, and I’ll pick her up in two hours.”

And then he places his hand on my shoulder and firmly squeezes. It makes me flinch and stiffen my shoulders. Christopher does the same thing to me. And then one word comes out, the same one my insane stepbrother says to me whenever I leave the house.

“Behave.”