If he didn’t want to touch me, I could accept that, but I wanted to touch him. That was never against the rules before, but it was now. All of December he didn’t let me touch him, and then I spent winter break at Aunt Brenda’s without him. Now January and February were gone, and I still wasn’t allowed to touch him. Even though he wouldn’t say it, I knew what he felt. I’d felt it enough to know. Dirty. Too dirty to touch. Too dirty to be touched. If he wouldn’t touch me, that was bearable, but to have him look away from me wasn’t. I needed him to see me.
