Chapter 14: Unfortunate Masturbation, Part 1

I opened the front door to my parents' house without using my key. My family never locked their front door, or the back for that matter. The back yard didn't even have a fence. The reasoning was, nothing ever happened in Azle, Texas. The neighborhood was safewhite, middle-class, and filled with Evangelical Christians. My own bedroom had been built without a lock.

"I'm here," I called out.

"Sister!" my little sister, Mariah answered from her usual spota brown faux leather recliner chair. She had our mini-dachshund, Penny, clutched tightly in her arms, and a pair of headphones around her neck.

I took a deep breath and maneuvered around the piles of junk everywhere: a discarded stationary bike that had never been used, shoeboxes filled with trinkets to send to the starving, heathen children in Africa, plastic garbage bags of old childhood clothes still needing to be taken to Goodwill (and probably never would), mounds of toys for "holiday gifts." My mother was the kind of person to