When she thought that life could not get worse, it did. Nessie moved to Mississippi into the white house. At thirteen and a new school, life became complicated. She started her period, her stepdad taught her how to use and insert tampons. She realized she needed to start shaving, her stepdad insisted sitting in the bathroom to teach her how to shave. When it came to dating, her stepdad explained boys and the effective (and powerful) use of sex. When it came to anything that a mother should teach, her stepdad taught her instead. It wasn’t a sweet duty of a father figure, but the sadistic yearnings of a man who loved little girls. At that age, she didn’t understand what was happening at first. She thought it was normal. Randall would not allow her to bathe without him watching, “to make sure she cleaned herself thoroughly”, he would never allow her to close her bedroom door or the closet door. Many times, she went to sleep in clothing, and woke up without clothing.

The white house was old. It smelled of mildew and moth balls. The paint peeled on the outside and the wallpaper peeled on the inside. It was often filled with smoke from drugs and smoke from cigarettes. The ceiling was yellowing and no one would stand close to Nessie at school because she smelled so bad. The windows were thick and made of old decaying molded wood. The doors creaked and had old fashioned skeleton key locks. The splintering wooden floors moaned with every step someone took in the house.

As time progressed and Nessie grew a year in age, her angry stepfather and broken mother situation had only gotten worse. Fighting and abuse had become normal long ago, screaming, blood, finding clumps of hair. Nessie cooked dinner every night. She became accustomed to doing the laundry, helping her brother with homework, cleaning the bathrooms, taking out the trash, and feeding her pet iguana. She spent everyday on eggshells, quiet as a mouse, saying yes sir, no sir, and following the path of least resistance to protect herself. On any given day, her stepdad would slap her, push her down on the ground, spit on her, kick her. She would stay down, withdrawn into her mind thinking about how a plant grows, thinking about escaping to a better place, thinking about her real father and where he was…and what he was doing. She sat obediently and watched as her stepfather choked her mother and punched her and hurt her. Randall expected at this point for Nessie to watch without crying. It was a source of joy for him to have the power. And so she did. At night, she started closing her door to her bedroom and blocking the key hole in the door with paper. If she didn’t get reprimanded for it, by morning, the paper would be missing, and her clothes she fell asleep in were mysteriously missing. She suspected that she had the weirdest sleeping habit to always take her clothes off and never remember doing it. Years later, her stepfather confessed that he watched her change through the hole and cracked doors while jacking off, and that he drugged her many nights to touch her, take pictures, and fondle her in her sleep. He begged for forgiveness, but as an adult at this revelation, she had no words.

One day, Nessie snapped. She had met a guy at school who made her feel special and wanted. After seven months of dating, she gave up her virginity on the floor of her closet. Ten minutes later, he left, and she never heard from him again. At school, he spread rumors about her and pretended she never existed. And she snapped. That night, when her drunk stepdad had made his way home, her mom and her had spit into his dinner food, which was all together a common occurrence. He found out. He tried to hit her mom, and Nessie stepped in and pushed him. Randall lost it and started punching Nessie, at fourteen, in the head multiple times. Blood started to pour out of her left ear (to this day she has trouble hearing) and she escaped and stumbled out. She hid in the bushes trying to keep from screaming out from the pain. They couldn’t find her. She had no where to go and came back on her own. Her stepfather started jacking off on her in the living room after her mother had gone to bed and around this time, Nessie became an alcoholic. She ran away from home a lot, she was always at parties, she drank, drank, drank. She would drink at school, bring vodka in a Sprite bottle straight into class. She took pills, anything she could find. And she thrived in a drunken state for months. Her mother and her became desperate to escape. One Day. Randall slammed the heavy wooded window frame down onto her Iguana, crushing the lizard with such force that its head exploded and the eyeballs exploded and internal pieces of her beloved pet splashed across the floor and window sill.  So Nessie decided to poison herself. And she did. She laid out on the front porch, staring up at the sun as the alcohol and pills kicked in.

She was saved by a blonde guy with blue eyes, who loved her. Her boyfriend at the time. They met in class when he was throwing skittles at the teacher while her back was turned. Nessie, a straight-A student, would giggle, he was so cute. He was a skateboarder and loved Nirvana and Marilyn Manson as much as she. He was the Tate to her Violet. He had his own dysfunctional life but his escape was her and her escape was him. He showed up just in time to save her life.

Nessie and her “Tate” ran away together after he stole his dad’s van. They hid in the woods for days, he would leave and bring back food and water as she recovered from the drugs and made it through the withdrawals. He sung to her, played his guitar, and played with her hair and would lay with her for hours.

Nessie realized this couldn’t be permanent. A big decision was about to be made to save her life.