Page 94 of Wanna Play A Game?

It’s okay. That was just a mistake.

I climb up on the couch again, asking Tinkerbell to please help me.

I try again.

Again, nothing. I refuse to let that creeping betrayal set in and try again and again. Grandma said prayer works. Why didn’t she listen?

“California!”

I jump.

Grandma storms to the room. I know she’s mad by the way she grips the wooden spoon she uses for the pasta.

Grandma is mad a lot. I’ve come to expect it.

Her lips stretch thin over her teeth. “Did you not clear your bowl?”

My bowl? Oh! From dinner. I swallow.

Grandma looks at me like I look at my older brother when he wrecks my Lincoln Log barn. Like she hates me.

“Come here, California.”

My legs stiff, I obey, tripping over Tinker Bell. She skitters under the couch.

Grandma leans down. “Turn around.”

I look at the spoon, my heartbeat slamming through my chest. Is she going to hit me? Only my brothers hit me, and they get in trouble for it.

My hands start to sweat.

“Pull your pants down.”

I stand there, frozen. Pull my pants down? We are always hiding underwear on our clothesline so people can’t see it. It’s embarrassing to show your underwear.

“No.”

“I’m not going to tell you again.” Grandma’s voice picks up volume, and her lips curl like she smells something bad.

There is the anger again. I know this. This is comfortable. All I have to do is yell, and my heart will stop beating like a drum set inside of me.

My chest heats. “No!”

Grandma’s eyes widen in a way I haven’t seen before, like she’s trying to see any tiny move I make. Then she wraps me up in her arms so quickly that I stand there, loose for a second. This is what it feels like to be hugged at the end of each day. How it feels when she pulls me to her to kiss the top of my head.

Only it lasts for a blink, and then she sits and pulls me down with her. My stomach digs into her knee. Heat runs through my veins, and my heart starts thumping fast. Something is very wrong.

I feel her hands on my pants.

I yell and push back hard, my cheeks burning.

“Don’t fucking turn around, Cali.”

Something is not right, and I can’t see what she’s doing. I scramble and turn at my waist to see. Grandma’s face is red and…smiling. Only she isn’t happy, like when I get good grades. And her hands aren’t moving like they do when they pick out my clothes for the day.

For a moment, she looks like someone I haven’t seen before.

“Turn around, or you’ll get more!” She forces my chest back down.