My Thirteenth Birthday

No matter how much I try, I can’t forget my thirteenth birthday. It has been a decade but this memory is still fresh in my head. My birthday coincides with the Seattle temple’s anniversary so that day I did celebrate, as I do every year, with my family and friends in the temple. But I honestly don’t remember how I celebrated that day. Those happy memories are overclouded and darkened by what else happened that day.

That morning, I received a message from Vinay to pick me up from where he usually does- in  my neighborhood, just across from my school bus stop. I can’t tell you how many times in the years after that period in my life I stood in the very same spot, with tears streaming down my face and fury in my chest as hot as fire. I screamed at that stupid girl who got into that car and let the man drive her thirty miles away from her home. I mourned over her like a mother would a lost child. It was almost as if I believed that if I stood there even four or five years later, somewhere in a parallel dimension it would stop me from opening the door to his car that day and all the other days.

I was there when Vinay’s car arrived. When we got on the highway, Vinay asked me to look in the back seat. I turned my body to look. Behind my seat was a pink Victoria’s Secret bag. My cheeks burned. I knew what these bags usually meant though I had never shopped there before. I stretched and grabbed the bag. Inside was a small plastic box with delicious-looking chocolate cake and a matching purple-colored pair of bra and panties.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“Your birthday” he responded and I couldn’t think of a response.

I proceeded to open the box of cake to eat it but he quickly stopped me.

“Wait, wait, wait!” He cried. “Wait until we get home!” I closed the box, thinking that he didn’t want me to make a mess in the car.

But in his apartment, he instructed me to change my underwear. I went into his bathroom and put on the undergarments. I stared at my body in the mirror but strictly avoiding my own eyes. My still-triangular and pre-pubescent breasts were hidden behind the cups of the bra and the panties barely hung on my uncurving hips. I wasn’t sure what he was expecting but surely this was not how any model I saw on the internet looked.

He shouted from the next room, “Come out quickly”

I hesitated at the door. Months back, I had given in to this ruse that Vinay was playing. That this was some sort of forbidden relationship and actually I was really mature for my age. Maybe it just easier for me to believe him and go along with it than to actually confront what I felt. Maybe I was too innocent. But this moment I felt the most unwilling to proceed outside. This moment I wanted to take it all back. I wanted to go back home and go to sleep. Forever.

Vinay shouted again. I turned the knob and walked outside. His eyes devoured me. A grin spread across his face.

“You look beautiful” he said to me and for a moment my apprehension diminished slightly. He had put the chocolate cake on a plate. He proceeded to feed me a bite of it with his hands. I opened my mouth and took the morsel of cake inside. Then he pulled me close to him and kissed me, forcing his tongue down my mouth and taking the piece of cake into his.

Vinay enjoyed the rest of the cake that day in a similar way.

I felt dead by the time I came home. I was exhausted and nauseous. I sat under the shower for about an hour, probably until the first layers of my skin washed away but I still couldn’t feel clean. After my shower, I fell fast asleep but to my horror- I was able to wake up again.