Inside Out Girl by Tish Cohen

Author:Tish Cohen
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 9781554687688
Publisher: Harper Weekend
Published: 2008-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

Promiscuity Barbie

Len picked his way across the puzzle-strewn floor and informed Dr. Kate’s secretary that they were somewhat early for Olivia’s appointment. He found two seats next to the stately and oversized dollhouse—Olivia’s favorite play area—and settled himself while his daughter dropped onto the red carpet and thrust Birthday Wishes Barbie sideways into the townhouse kitchen, a perilous environment for Barbie’s exposed assets.

It seemed Barbie wasn’t long for the kitchen. Olivia pulled her away from the stove and, holding the doll upright, tried to ram her into the upstairs powder room, a room cursed with an extraordinarily low ceiling, even for a dollhouse. Every week Barbie was forced to endure the same thing—being simultaneously slammed into floor and roof in Olivia’s effort to squeeze the doll inside the stunted rooms.

The man next to Len chuckled. “Nonverbal LD?”

“How’d you guess?” said Len.

“I’ve been bringing my daughter here for eleven years. Did the same thing with her Barbies every week for six of those years. She never used to have much spatial awareness.”

“Did it improve—her spatial awareness?”

The man nodded. “Sure. Or maybe she just stopped playing with the Barbies, I can’t remember.” He laughed at his joke and checked his watch. “This isn’t our usual day here. If she doesn’t come out soon, I’ll be late getting her to music class.”

“She’s musical, your daughter?”

“It’s helped with…well, Dr. Kate recommended music therapy in addition to this.” He lowered his voice. “Kendra had a problem with a boy in the neighborhood last year. It left her, and us, traumatized. Music helps her forget.”

Len watched Olivia pull another Barbie from the bin and begin to undress her. Knowing full well it was intrusive, impertinent, he asked, “Did, uh, may I ask what happened to Kendra?”

The man frowned and tucked his magazine under his arm. “She was thirteen. He was eighteen. She had no friends her age. So when he asked her into his basement to look at his aquarium, she was thrilled.” He sighed heavily. “He forced himself on her.”

Len looked from the distraught father to Olivia and back again. “Is she…was she okay?”

“Physically.”

Len’s chest heaved with horror. It was his biggest fear.

A pretty teenage girl emerged from Dr. Kate’s inner office. Hiding behind a curtain of brown hair and a binder covered in musical notes, she nodded to her father and hurried toward the door. Her father stood up, then turned back to Len. “You’ll want to watch your little girl carefully. She’s going to turn a lot of heads in a few years. They won’t all belong to good people.”

Len stared at Olivia, watching her rip the clothes off Dr. Kate’s Barbies one by one, tossing the tiny outfits behind her on the floor. Finding the perfect guardian wasn’t going to be enough. As a teenager, she’d surely walk to and from the store by herself. There would be moments, for the rest of her life, during which she’d be entirely alone. Entirely vulnerable.

He needed to protect her from the inside out.

“Olivia, sweetheart.

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