Free The Source of All Things by Tracy Ross

teeth bite the sides of my cheeks. But with Al and the other kids watching, I had to be brave. I couldn’t turn around and tell my dad to give me some space. Instead, I steeled myself against him, clenching the back of my body into one big muscle.
    Dad either didn’t notice or chose not to say anything. He braced himself against me, squeezing his arms against the outside of my biceps. “Atta girl, sis,” he whispered. “Keep it up. You’re doing great.” The next time I shrugged my shoulders, he seemed to get the hint.
    Freed from his grasp, I lowered the gun and stamped my boots in the dirt. I resteadied the rifle and stared down the sight. Waiting until I was sure everyone in the class was watching, I pulledthe trigger. The bullet tore a hole through the tiny black dot in the center of the target.

    The next time my dad asked me to go to the gun club with him, I didn’t race outside to the jeep. By my thirteenth birthday, I had begun to feel nervous and worried in his presence. Every time I turned around, it seemed his eyes were glued to my breastbone. He told me jokes—out of earshot of my mom or Chris—that made me hate my own body. I’d come out of the shower and he’d be standing in the hallway, waiting. I’d look for my mom, hoping she was noticing the same thing I did. But Dad chose his opportunities carefully. Mom was usually out of earshot; if she wasn’t out shopping, she was cleaning the living room or parked in front of Knots Landing .
    A few months into my thirteenth year, I stood in Mom’s bathroom asking her to shave my armpits. The next day, my swim team, the Magic Valley Dolphins, had a meet, and the last thing I wanted was to show up at the swimming pool with hairy pits. The trouble was, every time I tried to shave I ended up cutting myself.
    â€œWhy don’t you ask your dad to do it?” Mom said.
    â€œI don’t want him to do it. Why can’t you do it?”
    Over the past year, my body had continued to quicken, hips spreading and breasts rising out of supple, sun-freckled skin. Now I caught Dad watching me as I pushed out my chest and looked at my reflection in the microwave door. Sometimes I could feel himpeering through the hole he’d smashed in the wall of Chris’s room during a remodeling project. He would stand as still as a statue on the other side of the three-inch-wide wall. But I could hear him breathing, and that made me want to turn into a caterpillar that had wrapped itself inside a cocoon.
    Dad had also liberated himself from merely watching. Now he was coming into my room when I was on the verge of sleeping, asking if I was feeling okay, offering to tickle my back. From the time I was little I had been a bad sleeper, so even though I was thirteen, I still liked it when either of my parents came in to soothe me as I settled in to bed. But lately, I had begun waking up in the morning with cotton in my mouth and a cobweb of bad feelings in my head. I couldn’t put my finger on the origin of the feeling, but I sensed that it had something to do with Dad.
    â€œYou know I always mess it up,” said Mom, lifting her head out from under the bathroom sink. “Have your dad do it. His razors are sharper. You’ll get a closer shave.”
    â€œBut, Mom …”
    She stuck her head out the door and shouted through her bedroom down the hall.
    â€œDon! Can you help us in here?”
    â€œ Mom . Don’t worry, I’ll figure it out.”
    â€œWhat’s the matter? You should let him help you. It’ll make him feel needed and that’d be good for him right now.”
    Mom was always dying her hair different colors, from strawberry blond to dark brown to Joan-Jett black. She was studying her roots in the mirror when Dad walked in, so she didn’t see thehorror on my face as I stood frozen next to the shower door, waiting for my dad to shave me.
    â€œTracy needs her armpits shaved