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parents would feel awful about it for the rest of their lives. But nothing happened. I made it home safely. And though the front door was still locked, the back was now open.

Two
    I started stealing Mrs. Vuoso’s tampons. She kept them in a clear glass jar on the back of the toilet, the same kind that held tongue depressors at the doctor’s. I was careful to take only one or two a week, so she wouldn’t notice. I slipped them in my jeans pocket, then hid them behind the Comet under my bathroom sink when I got home. The only time Daddy had ever looked there was when he’d had to clean my bathroom for me the night he locked me out. I’d come home to find the toilet smelling fresh, along with the damp carpet surrounding it. All the mushy toilet paper had been picked up, and the plunger was gone. Daddy was in his room with the door shut, but I could see that his light was still on. He didn’t come out to yell at me, and he didn’t come out to welcome me home. The next morning at breakfast, all he said was, “Please pass the sugar,” and I did.
    By the time my second period came in October, I had enough tampons to last the whole cycle. They were bigger than the ones the lady janitor had given me, and at first it was kind of hard to get one in, but I just kept pushing and it worked. I bought more pads with my babysitting money, but since I wasn’t really using them, I chose the cheaper kind. “See?” Daddy said, as we stood in the feminine hygiene aisle at the drugstore. “It’s a different story when it’s your own money.” I agreed with him about this, and it made me feel good. Anytime Daddy thought he knew something when he really didn’t made me feel good.
    I never flushed the tampons anymore. Not even at school, where the toilets were more powerful. Instead, I wrapped them in tissue paper and threw them in the trash, like they were maxi-pads. At school, there were little metal boxes stuck to the side of the stalls that you were supposed to use, and I loved looking inside them. Sometimes they were empty, but other times there was stuff I hadn’t put in there. I began looking at all the other girls in school, trying to figure out who was getting her period besides me.
    There was hardly any blood at the end of my period, but I used a tampon anyway. Then, when I went to pull the string out, it broke. It was the worst feeling in the world, standing there in the girls’ lavatory and looking at both ends of it. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t reach more than one finger inside myself, I knew that. There just wasn’t room. Instead, I sat on the toilet and pushed, like I was trying to poop. Nothing came out.
    I felt scared for the rest of the day. I worried that without the string, the tampon would disappear inside me. Plus, I knew there was a disease you could get if you wore one too long. When I got home, I tried to take my own temperature, but I couldn’t read the thermometer. At the Vuosos’, I asked Zack to feel my forehead, but he said, “I’m not touching you.” I tried feeling my own forehead, but it was like trying to smell your own breath. Everything seemed fine.
    I thought my only hope was looking at Playboy, since whenever I did that, my underwear got kind of wet. It seemed like if there was enough moisture in the tampon, it would eventually slide out. That afternoon, I pressed my legs together harder than ever. I looked at all my favorite centerfolds over and over again, especially the ones where the women were smiling. I liked to think that even though they were naked and a man was taking their picture, they weren’t afraid.
    There was one photo I especially liked, of a woman in a golf cart with her shirt open. She was laughing and happy and didn’t seem to realize that she was on a golf course where anyone could see her breasts. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be her. To be out in public and