August 8, 1998

  Age 11**

  My father always loved his belt.

  I was always on the other end of it. He hit me for anything—laughing, walking too loud, talking too much, eating first, sleeping in, staring too long, breathing, existing. After my older brother died, he told me once that I was just a placeholder. A stand-in until he got another, better son.

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  My mother never stopped him. She was too afraid. She never said it out loud, but I knew she was relieved that I took the blows instead of her.

  At night, she would tell me stories. Not fairy tales—stories about a superhero named Captain AllStar. He saved people from burning buildings, rescued children from monsters, all that noble, shining stuff. But he had a nemesis: Bloodvex.

  Bloodvex kidnapped women and children, hung them upside down, slit their throats, and drained them. Men were stuffed into wooden crates and thrown into the lake to drown. Captain AllStar always arrived in time to save someone… but not everyone.

  It was a strange story to tell an eleven-year-old.

  Stranger still that she’d say:

  “You could be just like Captain AllStar one day.”

  But she never understood.

  The one who interested me wasn’t the hero.

  It was Bloodvex.