Got curious at the post you were talking about Mia when she was 13, if you want to, can you tell us more about how was living with Will in that age?🍄

Bellow the milk lies dangers (they’re just triggering themes haha but you were warned!)

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Living with Will when Mia was thirteen was different than before. She had spent three months in a summer camp, nearly obligated by law, otherwise Will could lose his guardianship (due to accusations of keeping her from socializing). There, she learned that her father wasn’t the beginning nor the end of the world. She met boys, she met girls. The universe began to open for little Mia, and she wanted to taste it. She was naturally drawn to the counselor, an older man who kept the camp in order. He stayed mostly in his cabin, but Mia liked him better than the rest of the kids. She made some friends, though. Learned how fun it was to whisper things to girls in the middle of the night, and that the darkness wasn’t only made of secondhand nightmares and silence. But she missed him. She missed the constant weight of him.

Everything changed that summer, she stopped being a child. Or he stopped treating her like one. Maybe because she grew out of her clothes, because her tongue was sharper and her body was different. She doesn’t know. Doesn’t matter. “You even smell different”, he told her the day she came back.

He kept asking, relentlessly, about everything she did, everything that happened. She told him, was used to doing so. Up until that point, that is. She told him about Ryan, the counselor. “Why? What about him made him so interesting?” he asked. She shrugged, thinking but not saying that she wished Ryan would’ve slept next to her, because he reminded her of Will.

He had to put her in school that year, just for two days of the week, in the beginning. He was furious, had been since that summer. He was sure it was a neighbor who’d done it. Called someone and had them snoop around in their life. Vanessa, the woman was. She was a social worker. Met Will and Mia on the park one time, then other times around the neighborhood. Would always try to struck up conversations. Looked at Mia with a concerned look on her face. Will was sure she was the one who got the hounds after them. “But why?” she asked, “because men do bad things to girls when they’re left alone with them.”

“Not you!” she shot back immediately and Will gave her a strange smile. Almost painful. “No, I love you”, he said.

Then, one afternoon, they were laying on the couch, both reading their books. She got bored, climbed on his lap, to get attention, to entertain herself with his face. Something harmless. Or so it seemed.

He didn’t react much so she started playing with his hair. She was distracted, absentmindedly moving to a beat inside her head, when he grabbed her by the waist and pushed her down. “Get off, you can’t do that kind of stuff, you’re not a child anymore, Mia!” he sounded angry. Annoyed even. She was hurt, and confused.

“What? Cause I’m heavy now?” she asked, naively. He just shoot her a look and went back to his book. There was no way in the world he was telling her she wasn’t welcomed in her favorite place anymore. It was so unlikely that she climbed back, hopeful and taking it as a joke. She jumped on his lap with force and he grabbed her by both arms, throwing her back beside him, and got up, exasperated. Leaving her there, discarded.

It all came back within seconds like a wave, drowning her, you will be replaced by a woman, the echoes of a voice she’d heard awhile back came rushing in.

That night, she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, naked, and noticed how her waist curved in ways it didn’t before, all the way down her back, where it lifted her bottom. How her breasts seemed more perched and she suddenly felt ashamed. She tried to scrub the feeling off of her body, but it followed her into her bed, where she felt this nauseating sensation creeping up from her inner thighs all the way to her head, like wavy unease. She wasn’t a fresh daisy anymore, his little, pure girl. She felt disgusted at herself.

The next day she decided she wasn’t going to wear shorts or skirts or dresses anymore, so she put on a big t-shirt and sweatpants.

“It’s fourty degrees, are you sick or something?” he asked, spreading butter on the toast. She didn’t answer. Didn’t know if he was still angry.

She melted away for hours in those clothes, until he found her draped on the ground.

“Why are you wearing these? Take it off. Now.” he sounded annoyed again. She really wasn’t his little angel anymore, was she? It seemed like she was starting to become a burden.

She changed, but stayed in her room all day. He called her eventually, she yelled a “yeah”, but refused to go downstairs. At some point he got yet again annoyed and went up.

“What’s the matter with you? Been calling you for ages.”

She stood by her bed, in a red, flowery dress, and covered her legs with the blanket when she hesrd him coming. He noticed.

“Are you sick?” he went to her, pressing his hand to her forehead. “What’s wrong with you? You cold?”

She hadn’t learned how to lie to him at at point yet, so she didn’t say anything. She could tell his patience was wearing thin.

“Well, get out of this room, come downstairs.”

She remembers walking to the living room like it was her funeral. Slowly, almost trembling. She sat on the couch, far away from him, almost falling out of it. Hands on both knees. Stiff, awkward.

“What’s up with you?” he asked, touching her knee, and she instinctively flinched. That caught his eye. “Mia”, a warning.

She didn’t even know what to say. Couldn’t even comprehend what it all meant at the time. Not really. She just felt awful. Just felt. Couldn’t explain, or articulate. So her body did it for her and decided to cry.

He got worried all of the sudden, what’s wrong, what’s wrong, baby?

“I’m not a baby. You said I’m not a baby anymore.”

“Mia.”

She tried to run, humiliated by her tears, but he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her back down. “What’s this about?”

She had no clue. How could she? She was just a kid. Then suddenly she wasn’t anymore. She remembers the belittling feeling of saying “you don’t me to sit on your lap anymore” through sobs.

She could hear the unspoken “oh my god…” he was letting out through his sigh. “That’s not what I…” he decided to stop talking, just scooped her up unto him. What a burden she was, how difficult she was. Because of her, who she was, the body parts she was born with, people were bothering him, investigating, snooping. Because of that, he was being suspected of hurting her. Because of who she was, her body, he was afraid to touch her. What a terrible thing she was in his life.

“I’m sorry I’m not a boy,” she told him as the tears threatened to pour again. He looked at her, confused, asked her what she was talking about.

That had been such a strange couple of days. That entire interaction, the whole thing. It left a permanent stain on her psyche. Like a haunted place in her mind.

He began to date more. She was seeing just how she’d be replaced.

“Replaced? Are you insane?” he asked when she confronted him.

“Because I’m not enough.”

“Enough? Mia. What the hell are you talking about? No one’s replacing anyone.”

“Then why are you seeing them? Why are you leaving? Why can’t you stay here like you used to?”

“So now I’m supposed to be stuck here with you all the time? I don’t deserve to have some fun, to relax? After raising you for thirteen years, I don’t get to have a life?”

That cut like paper. Thin and painful. But she didn’t even cry. That cut so deep it went straight through her body, down to her soul. She just glared at him before walking out. “Leave, then.”

He didn’t. She stayed in her room, he stayed in his. Late into the night he came into hers, laid on her bed, reeking of alcohol, held her tight, and she could feel the tears shaking from his body. “I didn’t mean what I said, I made you, I wanted you, a girl, my girl, I wanted a girl, and I chose you, I chose you to be mine, and I don’t want anything else I’m sorry I’m so sorry I’m sick and I don’t know how to protect you from my sickness”, like a river he just kept pouring words into her ear.

She turned around and wiped his tears, “you should go out, and have a life”, she tried. That made him worse, “no no nono, I don’t want to, all I want is to be here with you I don’t need anything else I want to be here but baby it’s so hard I’m so afraid all the time I’m so afraid that my sickness is going to destroy everything and I don’t want to…I don’t”, he trailed off. She held him, he held her back and something in his groggy hands and mind wandered a little too far. Affection. Desire. She thought. So she leaned into it. Afraid of being left, she leaned into it.

Living with Will at thirteen was a tangle of thorns.