Shout

In junior high, Anderson and her family move around often. After school in one particular town, she spends her time reading in a cemetery. Her father’s alcoholism worsens, and Anderson must illegally drive her drunk father home in secret.

Anderson’s father is eventually fired and excommunicated from the Church. She picks a fight with her father, leading her mother to slap her across the face: “wordless / combustion / but she was my mother / so I swallowed the lighter fluid” (46). After this incident, Anderson’s father leaves for a prolonged time.

At 13, Anderson is accosted by a boy she meets and bites him to get away. A few weeks later, Anderson’s family moves once again and she makes new friends. Through these new friends, she meets a boy, explaining the attraction by saying, “Broken children / can see each other from miles away” (52). She goes on a walk with the boy down by a creek in the woods and they throw pebbles in the river before he turns to kiss her. The kiss very quickly goes too far, and the boy forces himself on Anderson and rapes her. Anderson tries not to look at his angry face as the rape happens and feels outside of herself until he is done. She tells no one what happened.

She then tells the story of a boy in her school who narrowly avoided being killed in a game of Russian roulette. He and his friends were playing “chicken,” as many boys do, pushing the boundaries of dangerous behavior. Anderson’s rapist dies while playing chicken and is run over by a car. She begs her father to allow her to go to the funeral. He attends alongside her, but Anderson knows the memory of her rape won’t leave her just because he is dead.

Once again, the family moves. Both her mother and father’s drinking increase in severity. Unable to cope with the trauma and stress of her rape, Anderson uses drugs to numb her pain. She calls ninth grade her “year of living stupidly” because she takes drugs and cut class with a tough group of classmates (64). Her family experiences serious financial troubles in the wake of her father’s termination from the Church, and they share a growing concern that their father might kill himself. To cope with these difficulties, Anderson drinks, likening the burn from alcohol to a concrete burn that “burns down to your bones if you don’t get help” (66). Anderson’s older voice proclaims that for all of her physical wounds, she had no idea that her trauma could be a source of pain, and there was no protocol to fix it. She hears rumors at school about other girls being assaulted but still feels alone.

A teacher recognizes Anderson’s passions for reading and studying languages and urges her to join the International Club. Anderson is also recruited by a gym teacher to join the swim team. These activities engage Anderson, allow her to make some friends, get her out of her house more often, and save her from her downward drug spirals.