By the first day of grade twelve, I can’t handle living in this shithole town anymore. Summer: a blur of house parties, handsy boys and men, and sleepless nights. I butt my cigarette against the brown brick façade, march into the guidance counsellor’s office and say, “If I can’t finish first term, I quit.” I graduate in January.

It was almost three years ago when I went over to his house. He was a sophomore in college that already lived off campus and that was kind of cool. He was into anime and when I had been the desk manager at the dorm he had lived in the year before that was how we became friends. Kind of. 

Childhood games, such as “boys catch the girls,” taught us how to behave and what to feel about ourselves. It taught us that we are not important unless we are pursued.

It was over a year later that I realized what had happened. It may sound strange to you that I didn’t know it had. Wouldn’t you know if that kind of thing had happened to you? I wasn’t unconscious or inebriated. I remembered that evening, those moments in that room, but I didn’t realize it had happened. Because it wasn’t the kind of thing I was taught about in health class. Instead, I was taught about herpes and genital warts and obesity.