Summer of Salt

by Katrina Leno

I knew that he would use that gun, because that is what small, scared men did: they used things more powerful than themselves to make up the difference. They hid behind weapons of mass destruction: big guns and bigger bombs. They were small, small, small—

What was my sister wearing the night she was raped? How much had my sister had to drink the night she was raped? How many guys had my sister previously had sex with? Because—again, out of a fairy tale—they realized that none of those things mattered. Because there was nothing in a girl’s history that might negate her right to choose what happens to her body.