In junior high, Anderson and her family move around often. After school in one particular town, she spends her time reading in a cemetery. Her father’s alcoholism worsens, and Anderson must illegally drive her drunk father home in secret.

Anderson’s father is eventually fired and excommunicated from the Church. She picks a fight with her father, leading her mother to slap her across the face: “wordless / combustion / but she was my mother / so I swallowed the lighter fluid” (46). After this incident, Anderson’s father leaves for a prolonged time.

At 13, Anderson is accosted by a boy she meets and bites him to get away. A few weeks later, Anderson’s family moves once again and she makes new friends. Through these new friends, she meets a boy, explaining the attraction by saying, “Broken children / can see each other from miles away” (52). She goes on a walk with the boy down by a creek in the woods and they throw pebbles in the river before he turns to kiss her. The kiss very quickly goes too far, and the boy forces himself on Anderson and rapes her. Anderson tries not to look at his angry face as the rape happens and feels outside of herself until he is done.