Page 162 of Everything Under the Sun

He laid back down. “Did you really want to try that, knowing that it’s painful?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Why?”

“Well, I just wondered if men prefer that.”

“You mean you wondered if that’s what I prefer.”

I shrugged. He’d guessed it spot-on.

“No,” he told me. “I think most men are perfectly happy with old-fashioned sex—some feel lucky to get it at all.” He paused. “But that girl, Petra, she was…well, she was different from you.”

“In what way?”

“In every way,” he said promptly. “We’ve talked about this before—Look, what Private Brock did to her was degrading.”

I just looked at him, waiting for him to explain.

He sighed. I could tell that everything about this conversation made him uncomfortable.

“He never would’ve loved her,” he explained, “or treated her with any kind of respect. He used her because he knew she would’ve done anything because of the situation she was in.”

“So then sex back there is degrading?” I asked.

He shifted uncomfortably again. “No. Just what he did to her.”

I stared off at the wall, picturing Petra again, remembering how quickly she changed from a kind, motherly young woman, to a dangerous one ready to jab a pencil in my throat.

“I feel bad for her,” I said. “Do you think someone like Petra, who has fallen so far, can ever turn their life around? Can anyone turn back anymore?”

ATTICUS

I swallowed, recalling how far I had fallen.

“I hope so,” I answered, thinking of Evelyn.

Sometimes I wondered if because I’d left, because I was no longer there for Evelyn the way she was for me, if she lost herself. And I thought of Peter. Did he become a cruel and heartless piece of shit like the rest of the men in Lexington City?

“I hope so…” I repeated.

Thais laid her head back down on my chest; her long hair warmed me like a blanket in an already stifling day, but I didn’t care.

THAIS

I thought more about Petra, and about all the girls who were taken to the city with me; I remembered each of their nameless faces. I hope they’re still alive, I thought. I hoped with all my heart they could find someone special like I had, who could get them out of that terrible place. Someone who would love them and protect them and—Something occurred then, and I felt ashamed that I’d never thought of it before: why women needed someone to love and protect them at all. Why did I naturally think that way? Because women have been oppressed and demoralized and viewed the subordinates of men since humans crawled their way out of the primordial sludge.

Something needed to change—no, everything needed to change. I didn’t want to live in a world like that. Why did men still rule the world, anyway? What gave them the right to treat women like meat and slaves and baby factories? It angered me the more I thought about it—it infuriated me.

I turned to Atticus.

“I would like to learn how to defend myself,” I said.

He glanced over.

“My father taught my sister and me some things,” I went on. “I know some defensive moves—not that they’ve done me any good so far, being captured and all—but I would like to know how to use a weapon. I can shoot and I know how to load a gun and even to clean one, but it might be better to learn to use a knife, seeing as how ammunition is so rare.”

“Your father never taught you to use a knife?” Atticus asked.

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