"There's a tampon thing in the bathroom again!"

Helen cringed on hearing her younger brother's horrified cry. The family was seated around the dinner table—one of the only families she knew who still ate together, six-thirty every night—and she'd been rushing to take care of her needs to make sure she had her butt on the chair in time for prayers in order to avoid her mother's evil eye. The brother had no such qualms about being on time, apparently, and must've seen her forgotten evidence.

The girl could feel her two older brothers' disgust but was even more humiliated when her father, sighing, joked, "You know, I'm going to start putting you out in the shed that time of the month like I do your mother!"

"Oh, let it be," Helen's mother laughed—laughed! as if it were nothing at all to joke about, when every time her "friend" visited, Helen lived in a state of constant anxiety until it passed. "But Helen, you do need to clean up after yourself," her mother added.

Clanking her fork onto her plate, the girl stood up a little quickly, knocking her chair backward into the wall and eliciting a scowl from her father. She nearly apologized but thought better of it, instead snatched her plate of pasta and her cup of milk and huffed off to her bedroom, where she could at least eat away from the derision of her idiot brothers.

"What's her problem?" one brother sneered after her.

"Hormones," said the other, loud enough for her to catch it.

Helen could've just screamed. Why'd she have to live in a house full of idiot males? Once she set her meal on her desk, she resisted slamming her door and instead closed it gently before plopping onto her bed. At least being the only girl meant having her own room. The boys all slept in the basement, one big space of beds and crap. She and her parents had the two bedrooms on the main floor. The house was small for six, but the one godsend was Helen's ability to shut her door and everyone else out of her life at the same time.

If only she were like Emily, who had a sister. Or Danielle, who had three step-siblings she never saw. Or even better—Joanna! An only child. That would've been beautiful.

No, she'd been cursed with brothers. Ones who didn't understand anything.

At least she had her friends.

Sitting on her mattress, Helen caught sight of her image across from her in the full-length mirror hanging on the back of her door and frowned. She didn't know what to make of herself, of what she was becoming. Thirteen, and her uniform shirts were suddenly too tight, her chest three times the size of any of the other girls'. She hated it. She hated the way some of the boys looked at her in ways they hadn't before. She hated hearing the girls complain about how lucky she was, ask what bra size she wore. She hated most of all that the rest of her was getting bigger, too, as if her entire body all of a sudden decided it wanted to fill out in solidarity with her chest. Helen had never been a waif; she'd always been on the thick side as a child. But she couldn't seem to keep up with the changes, now. One minute her skirts didn't zip, and the next her armpits were too close and sweaty. Hair was cropping up in unwanted places, and it seemed that every day was a new opportunity for awkwardness. She'd avoided the pool all summer, thinking of a million reasons both true and false to decline her friends' invitations; she wouldn't be caught dead in a swimsuit let alone alive.

Why was she so unattractive? Oh, Helen knew she wasn't the fattest; that title went to some other poor girl in her grade. At least she wasn't that girl. But otherwise, Helen didn't have much going for her. Plain fluffy brown hair; round face; wide thighs; four inches over most of the boys—all she had in her favor was the breasts, which she didn't even want.

To be small like Emily! That girl was tiny, so cute, still. Everyone called her that—cute. She was petite and charming, like a butterfly, and she fluttered here to there, landing on people for a moment, making them smile with whatever she managed to say or do. Who wasn't happy when a butterfly landed on them? Helen couldn't stand being around that girl, sometimes. She'd give anything to be like that, to have boys look at her pretty little face rather than a foot below her chin, to have them actually listen to what she might have to say (though she didn't know what that could be).

Her food was getting cold, but casting a glance toward the mound of egg noodles and cream sauce, Helen realized she'd lost her appetite. She fell back into her pillows, took an old stuffed elephant, and curled herself in a fetal position around it. Her mother had always told her she was beautiful, that God had made her exactly the person she was supposed to be, but if that were true, then why did she feel so ugly? Why would God make her into someone she hated? Was that really exactly who she was supposed to be? Because if it was . . . what hope did she have?

Funny Helen, self-effacing Helen, good girl Helen—that was how the others saw her, depending on the day. And Helen was funny; her sarcasm was a weapon she wielded to detract from her own insecurities. Laughing at herself preempted anyone else's laughter. And the good girl part? Well, that was true enough. For as much as Helen didn't understand God's decision to make her what she was, she wanted His approval, half out of honest desire for it and half out of fear of what might be if she didn't have it. Hell and damnation didn't sound particularly fun to Helen. Parents and teachers and priests had sufficiently instilled that Catholic guilt in her, convinced her that everything she did and said and even thought was watched by that unfathomable entity that had so lovingly created her and all others only to seemingly tease them with a game almost too difficult to win.

Yes, Helen tried to be a good girl. She tried. She didn't talk back, and she did all the church things she was supposed to do. In religion class she could answer all the right questions the right ways. She didn't swear or watch dirty shows or talk bad about other people. She wasn't anything like Danielle, who did all of those things.

Turning away from her reflection in the mirror, Helen rolled toward her window. Still hugging her stuffie, she thought of how long she'd known Danielle. It'd been ten years, since pre-K3, since their very first foray into school at Holy Infant, and Helen was certain that their early beginnings were the only reason they were friends, now. Thank goodness for that, though—to not be Danielle's friend was to be a target of her particular brand of viciousness. Helen understood (even if she didn't quite know she understood) that had it not been for their history, she herself would likely be on Danielle's mockery radar. Their friendship had seen plenty of ups and downs, with the downs mostly related to remarks on Helen's figure or what Danielle perceived as her sanctimoniousness, but the two of them always managed to get along in the end (largely due to Helen's fear that if she didn't "forgive those who trespass against" her, a certain someone in the sky wouldn't do the same for her).

A soft knock alerted Helen to her mother's presence, but the girl didn't even turn as the woman opened the door. "Honey?"

"I'm fine."

Pressure on the end of her mattress told Helen her mother didn't believe her.

"I don't want to talk right now," the girl pressed, her words muffled by the stuffed animal.

Her mother sighed as if speaking to her daughter were a chore. "Helen, you have to learn to ignore your brothers. They're—they're just men. Men don't understand female struggles."

Helen's face warmed. She didn't want to talk about "female struggles" with anyone, but her anger got the best of her and she flopped over and sat up. "Why don't you just tell them to shut up?"

"Oh, honey." Rather than scold her daughter, the woman gave her a look that expressed something Helen couldn't quite decipher—hints of . . . discomfort? pity?—and yet it was delivered with a smile. Embarrassment washed over Helen as she realized what was about to happen, but she couldn't stop her mother from saying, "I think it's time we had the talk."

The talk? Helen knew what that meant. She'd heard so many versions of talks from the girls at school, from random things she'd caught on television. "Mom—"

"Do you know how babies are born, Helen?"

"Yes, of course I do!" the girl rushed to respond.

Her mother narrowed one eye and, glancing down at the comforter as she twisted it with her fingers, asked, "And . . . and you know how they're . . . conceived?"

Mortified, Helen flushed beet red and flung herself back onto the bed, refusing to look at her mother. "Oh my gosh, mom! I'm thirteen!"

"So . . . does that mean you do? I think we should—"

"No! I know everything already. I—we talked about it at school."

"You did? But I pulled you out of those classes—"

"There was one day you missed, all right? Just trust me. I know."

There was an uncomfortable pause. Then the woman asked quietly, "Do you want to turn around and talk to me?"

"No."

Placing a hand on her daughter's shoulder, Helen's mother tired once more. "Honey, you need to understand the importance of saving yourself for your God-intended husband. Sexual purity—"

"Mom!" Helen flipped about again. "I don't want to talk about it!"

Her mother went tight-lipped, suppressed whatever else she'd wanted to say, and after a heavy moment, tersely replied, "All right. Just remember I'm here if you have any questions." Her body tightened as she rose. She picked up the plate and cup on Helen's desk and exhaled loudly as she left the room. "Thank goodness your father is responsible for the boys!"

Helen stewed in her mother's awkward wake, then slipped off her bed and shut the door. She didn't like arguing with her mother and knew she'd have to go apologize at some point, but all of it was so humiliating! And oh, she'd lied a little, too. She'd have to mention that in confession on Sunday. Her mother definitely had pulled her out of the entire sex-ed program, complaining to the principal that that sort of material didn't belong in Catholic schools (if she'd wanted to corrupt her child, she'd have sent her to the public school! her daughter had heard her snapping at someone on the telephone). Helen hadn't accidentally attended any of the classes, which her peers had told her were all about not doing it, anyway. But she knew the gist of how babies were made and came out without taking a class. She'd soaked up enough tidbits over the years to put a few things together, to realize what went where. Nothing had ever made Helen consider being a celibate nun as much as discovering sex. The whole thing just seemed so . . . so gross. How Danielle and Joanna could talk about boys so flippantly was a mystery to her. She joined in their chats only when she felt she had to, in order to preserve the image that she knew what they were talking about and obviously agreed.

That mirror caught her image in it again when she shut her door. Once more, Helen was faced with herself, her frumpy body in its tight-in-the-wrong-places clothes. To her mother's credit, the woman had taken her shopping, tried to find things Helen felt comfortable wearing, but the truth was that Helen didn't feel comfortable in any bits of fabric because her body itself was the problem.

Locking the door, the girl slowly slipped out of her shorts, pulled her T-shirt over her head, and stood and stared at herself in her bra and underwear. It was a singular form of torture, scrutinizing the way her stomach rolled, pushed out almost as far as her still-unfamiliar breasts, how her thighs touched all the way down to her knees. Intense loathing rippled through her, causing her nose to burn. At least she wasn't the fattest girl in class. Thank God for that small mercy. But why couldn't He have made her petite and pretty, like Emily? That was the only sort of talk Helen wanted to have with her mother—an honest one, the truth: God hadn't made her like Emily because she didn't deserve to look that way. That was the truth. And it made Helen so sad and jealous she wanted to die.

Small and thin and cute—she'd kill to look like that.