Growing up, I had a very very bestest friend. We lived down the road from each other, and consequently spent all our time at each others' houses, as friends are wont to do.
We had regular sleepovers and play dates and watched movies and played with our dolls and just generally had a good, girly time.
Childhood Friend had a brother who was, if I remember correctly, 2 - 3 years older than us. He was rather like an annoying bug in the background of our friendship, which I'm assuming is what older brothers do.
When I was 10, I started to grow boobs. I found it completely mortifying, as I was the only girl in my year to get them. It was horrible, even though they were just tiny little bee-sting swellings on my chest, as I got teased for it quite a bit.
When I was around 12 years old, CF had a party at her house, which I obviously attended, since we were joined at the hip. Duh. I slept over at her house that night. As I always did, I slept on a mattress on the floor next to her bed.
I don't know why I woke up that night, but I did. I'm not sure if there was a noise, or my subconcious knew something was off, but all of a sudden, I was startled to a wary wakefulness. I couldn't see anything, as it was dark, but somehow I sensed tension. My heart was thrumming in my throat as my eyes uselessly darted this way and that, trying to find something in the blackness of the room.
A few minutes went by, and when nothing happened, I started to relax. And then a hand was on my chest.
I froze. I couldn't move. My heart started hammering at the walls of my chest, as if to try and escape whatever was happening and about to happen.
The Hand fumbled around at the space between my breasts. At the time I had no idea what it was trying to achieve, but I now realise that it was trying to find the clasp of the bra that I had been wearing that day. It clasped in the front, something I was proud of as I felt it made me more adult.
Being that I was going to sleep, I didn't wear a bra. Something The Hand soon realised when it couldn't feel a small, hard plastic object under my nightie. I must've made a sound, or moved, because suddenly I was seeing light through my eyelids. The Hand had brought a torch with, and must've thought I'd woken up. I feigned sleep, hoping that whatever it was, was over and The Hand would leave.
It didn't.
After a few seconds of light, the torch snapped off. And The Hand enveloped one of my breasts.
At that point, I snapped out of my frozen terror, and folded my arms across my chest, knocking The Hand off, and startling it away.
I don't remember hearing The Hand leaving, or how long it took me to fall asleep that night. I remember CF's incredulousness when I told her about it the next day. It could only have been her brother, we figured, as why would her Dad do something like that? My suspicions were only deepened when her brother was awfully nice to us that morning. Whenever we made eye-contact, his face and eyes had this "I'm-sorry-don't-tell-I'm-sorry" expression.
CF told her Mom. And the next time I was over, CF's Mom called me into her bedroom, spoke frantically at me and pushed a typed letter in my face, ostensibly written by The Hand/brother. Once I'd read the obviously dictated admission of guilt, she ripped it up, and call him into the room. He slunk in, and mumbled an apology to his feet, and slunk out again. And she made me promise not to tell.
And I tried not to tell. I really did. But after a few days, I couldn't keep this gnawing creature in my gut to myself anymore, and I told my Mom. I'm not sure what she said to CF's Mom on the phone, but that was pretty much the end of visits after that.
Strangely, before I was aware of the body's natural leaning towards asymmetry, I assumed that the reason why one breast was smaller than the other was because it was touched by The Hand, and that somehow hindered it's growth. The things kids believe...
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