gone past? I was so confused, what was going on?
“Why did he put me in here?”
She didn’t reply. I waited, trying to focus, but I felt so weak and worst of all, I was hungry. I wanted to make a stand and for them to suffer as they had made me suffer, from the last time I went to summer camp. They made sure that after that summer, I never went back to camp ever again.
That was when I’d met him. The bad boy, Isaac, who had said that he loved me and would take care of me. I never knew what I was doing back then, with him. I was a minor and he took advantage of me.
The first time I met him was when I’d just turned thirteen and Dad had allowed me to start going to the Christian summer camp. It was fun, and I loved it, not because it was exciting but because it meant that I wasn’t around my parents.
Every year, I would go and meet new people away from Stowe Peak. I had never travelled, and even though it was only a three-hour car ride, it felt like a different world. Other campers would share experiences of vacations that they had been on. Places that I would never visit. I felt as if everyone there was from a different planet, one that I wished that I could live on. It was the only thing that I looked forward to in life. So, when Isaac, the boy from Ohio, started to talk to me, I loved it. I loved the attention, what thirteen-year-old wouldn’t love the attention of a fifteen-year-old?
Looking back it seemed childish, but at the time I only had two friends at school and the others were too scared to talk to me in case I said something to my dad.
They knew nothing about our relationship, but for some crazy reason the kids seemed to think that if they talked to the priest’s daughter, then she’d tell her dad and they’d get punished. I wasn’t that type of kid and the only person that my dad loved to punish was me.
I turned fourteen and started to think about Isaac in a different way. Not just talking, but actually wondering if someday I would be his wife. I started to fantasize about him, and going to camp was no longer about just meeting up with different kids and talking about other things besides church all day, which was all we did in our household. The idea of not being at school and hearing about the Good Lord 24/7 felt more like a curse then a blessing during the school vacations.
Mom said to Dad when I turned thirteen that he should let me go. I was happy about being away from home, but after the first summer, it felt like heaven.
When I turned fourteen, things started to change. I started my period early (in my Mom’s eyes) and as a result of it, my hormones started to go wild. I remembered the first time I’d had my period. I thought that I was dying.
Part of me was glad. The idea that I wouldn’t be under my dad’s thumb any more brought a smile to my face. When Mom explained to me that it was what was needed to make me conceive, I still didn’t get it. I was a kid, the idea of being told that bleeding every month would help me have a baby made no sense.
There was no sex education being taught in our school, thanks to Dad. He’d told Principal Hopkins that it would bring about demonic thoughts and that ignorance was a bliss when it came to children, especially the seniors. What he didn’t realize, or maybe he did and didn’t care, was that it led to more temptation. I noticed that the juniors and seniors acted differently. No longer would they smile at a girl, but their eyes would light up as if all their prayers had been answered if a girl arrived at school in a short skirt.
Everything was different at that age and, by the time we reached fifteen that was all that was on everyone’s mind.
Sex.
I never noticed it, as I was a sweet innocent fourteen-year-old being paid attention to by Isaac. He was my reason for going to camp. He was the only person that I felt was worth living for when at the end of camp that year, he kissed me. I remember the taste of his lips against mine. Not