Clickity clack, I’m not coming back.

“It’s not you,” she said, during our first call. “It’s me.” Like she was breaking up with me. “It’s always been my dream to live in a house on the beach with palm trees. And be with someone who’s home more often than not.” And someone half her age — she didn’t mention that.

Snap. My father flipping his phone shut.

Snap, snap, snickity snap. We don’t need her, shut her trap.

Twelve years old is more than old enough, he said. You’re old enough to babysit. We’ll manage. Let her have her palm trees.

And then he was off to work, before I was even dressed to go out and wait for the school bus.

Beep. His car started with a flick of his button.

Click. The garage door opened. Off he drove.

Click. I shut the door to the house.

The walls of our house were beige then. Sable, my mother called them. Sable, she would say, picking up a crystal hourglass she had, tawny, sandy, sandy dune, sparkling in the sun of June, turning it upside down on the table by the window where the afternoon sun spilled in, watching every grain drift down.

The doorknob turns. The door slams open. I only see the arm of the guard and then my father comes back in. He sits down. I wait for him to talk but he doesn’t even say anything, just sighs. I’m not going to be the one who says anything. I’m not going to open my mouth and let that beige flood down my throat and invade my body.

It’s hard to keep track of time in here. Every day is like the other. I’ve been to court twice already. They cuff me and shackle me. Strip search me when I come back. Like I’m a common criminal. My hands keep sweating. I don’t know why. I’m not nervous or anything. Sergei said he’d tell them, and I know they’ll drop the charges. I don’t know why it’s taking them so long to check out his story.

I told him, when we were waiting there by the pond for the police to come, if he didn’t say it, if he tried to blame me, I would tell them where his grow op was, his big marijuana patch, and they’d take his house away and then his grandmother, the old wrinkled babushka that he worships, would have nowhere to live and they’d stick her in a nursing home. They always confiscate drug property, don’t they? I said I’d tell them he forced me to have sex with him even though it’s not true. I told him if he really loved me, if he wanted to prove his love, then he would be a man and say he did it — true love is about proving your love.

I mean, he has to take responsibility, and I’m not beyond forcing him to. I told it all to the police, what happened to his ex-girlfriend. They went over and over the story with me, and I told them the same thing every time. You didn’t help him? they asked. You didn’t drown her? I started to cry then. How could they think I would do that? She fell in the pond. I couldn’t reach her. It was too deep.