After a couple minutes, just to assure they were gone I grabbed Andy and held him to my chest. Quiet as possible, I opened the door and looked all around. It seemed that the creatures left. "Matthew?" I yelled out, waiting for a response. "Yeah?" Someone yelled. I ran twords the voice and found him in the kitchen. "Oh my God are you alright!" I screamed as I hugged him for a long time. "Yeah, I'm fine. They scratched my back though." I turned him around and lifted up his shirt. "Shit Matthew! This is bad, this is really bad." "Stitch it up! We can't let mom and dad know our they'll think we can't fend for ourselves." "We can't Matthew!" I argued back with him. "But do you want them to know that!" I shook my head and told Andy to go get mom's sewing kit.

When he came back I took out a needle, and pulled out the thread. Slowly, I sunk the needle into his skin. He didn't move a muscle. Andy watched in fear and he had tears in his eyes. "Tht looks like it hurts Matty." Matthew grabbed twords Andy behind him and held him under his arm. "Don't worry buddy it's alright." Andy nodded and then backed away from Matthew again, watching me stitch his back up. It was nearly four o'clock. I knotted the stitches and put the sewing kit on the counter top just as mom's car pulled into the driveway. When she ran in she looked scared, "What happened to your room!" She screamed at me. "Sorry. I threw something up there and it just...Broke, you know?" She looked at me odd, probably wondering what the Hell it was I could have thrown to crash my ceiling.

She hugged us all and started making dinner. When father came home he didn't say a word about the roof. He justlooked at me with pure hate and walked past, kissing Andy and shaking hands with Matthew. It doesn't bother me. It doesn't bother me that he doesn't love me. Don't let it bother you Tobbi... Don't let it bother you. I rubbed away the tears that were starting to form in my eyes. My father looked at me or a second, one breif second I'll never forget without that smile in his eyes. When he realized he was looking at me, he stopped. "Mom. I'll be up in my room." Before she could answer, I ran upstairs and jumped face down on my bed. I thought for a moment about everything that had happened today and covered my mouth to bite my hand. I kept biting until my hand went numb and mom called me down for dinner. I didn't want dinner, I wanted to sit in my bed the rest of my life and starve to death.

Instead, I picked up my plate and ate in the living room instead. Matthew and Andy came to join me, I was surprised but not overwhelmed. Matthew let a cry of pain escape his mouth when he rested his back on the couch. "Watch it. You don't want to rip out your stitches." Matthew just looked at me like I was an idiot. I poured my food on his plate and headed back up to my room. I walked to the cushions on my window seal and reached in the drawer under them. I pulled out my heart-shaped box and  opened it. A tear rolled down my face as I looked at the picture of my father laughing with me when I was five and he had my hair cut like a boys so he could pretend he had all sons. As I got older and developed girl qualities, it wasn't so easy for him to say I was a son. He had four sons...and I was expected to be the fifth but I failed.

I'm sorry daddy, I'm sorry. I let the tears keep coming until I heard a tap on my window. I stood up, alert and ready to hurt soemone. It was Jackson. I opened the window and leaned on the window seal. "What do you want?" "I want to come in please?" "And rape me again? I think not." I tried o shut the window but Jackson stopped me, "No, please. Listen to me. Will you please let me in so we can talk? I swear I won't touch you." Hesitently, I let him in. "Thank you, I was about to fall." "Yeah..." I sat on my bed and motioned for him to sit with me. "I just wanted you to know how sorry I was for that day. I was drung and, and I didn't know what I was doing. I'm so sorry you had to go through that Tobbious." I nodded and he grabbed my hand, I jerked away and smacked him. "Please Tobbi, can you ever forgive me? I will do, whatever you want as long as I get your forgiveness. But first, I've got something to confess..." "What?" I felt the temperature raise in the room as he got closer to my neck. "I love you."

I froze as he pressed his lips to my neck and kissed down my shoulders. When I finally managed to move away, I grabbed him by the throat and held him against my bed post. "You said you wouldn't touch me and now you try to do what you didn last summer?" "I- I thought you liked it you didn't say anyhing!" "Get the Hell out of my sight!" I screamed as I threw him off the bed and he stumbled out of the window.