Imagine yourself as a young girl. A kindergartner, quiet in class and rowdy during recess. Imagine yourself with wispy brown hair, a small frame, and a carefree personality. While you do have friends that are girls, you mostly spend recess with a group of boys, because they’re fun. You’re so adamantly against doing anything remotely “girly.” Being girly isn’t fun. Being girly means being weak and boring, so you spend your recesses with the boys, playing pirates on the playground and tag in the grass field.

The boys like you, and you like them. They’re your friends. You’re the only girl who plays with the boys, but that doesn’t seem to matter. You just play together. You all have the same scraped knees and chipped fingernails. You have a scar on your right palm from when you were dared to climb the fence at the edge of the field. You made it higher than all the boys, only falling when the skin between your pinky and ring finger caught on the top barbs. You didn’t even cry. Not until the blood started spurting out and pooling in your cupped hands.

Come the second grade, the atmosphere of recess is decidedly different. Maybe it’s because you’ve grown used to being separated in activities by teachers. Or perhaps you’ve begun to notice how men and women on TV and in the movies act differently toward each other. So, you spend more time with other girls. You all play your own pretending games, creating elaborate stories about witches and magic dragons. You’re still friends with the boys, but it’s not the same. You don’t understand why, but you don’t pay much attention to it either.

One day at recess, you’re all playing tag, boys and girls together. You squeal as you dodge the tagger. The sound of your combined joy carries across the grass field, running wild under the sun.

You feel the shift in mood before it happens; you see a glint in one boy’s eyes, hear a change in another’s laughter. They suddenly corral you and two other girls against the chain link fence at the edge of the field. Laughing, they pin you to the fence like spiders sticking flies to a web. You laugh as well, your teeth clenched into what you believe is a smile. You attempt to wiggle your arms out of their grasps. You’re confused, thinking it’s all just a joke, but dread creeps into your stomach when their grip tightens around your wrists.

The boys take up a chant: “Girlfriends for sale! Girlfriends for sale!”

You’re only second graders, eight or nine years old. You’ve been an officiant at a playground wedding, but you know nothing of real romantic relationships. The prospect of dating has never even crossed your mind, and now you’re a “girlfriend for sale.” You’re not scared—at least, you don’t think you are. But you’re shaking as much as the links of the fence; your heart is tight in your chest, just like the time you almost fell out of the tree in your backyard. Something is wrong; you know this isn’t right, that this isn’t what it means to be a girlfriend. But if it’s wrong, why is it happening?

Three minutes later, it’s over. The boys eventually let you go, the novelty of the moment tarnished by the lack of attention from others and the huddled silence of you and the other girls. They tell you it was all a joke, running off without another word. In the following days, it becomes clear that the incident hasn’t changed much between any of you.

Still, something lingers. You tell your parents what happened. In the past, they’ve told you to tell them if anyone ever touches you “inappropriately,” and you think this might apply. But when you tell them, they don’t seem too concerned. All that stands out to you is them saying it means that the boy who pinned you to the fence likes you. You scoff at this, roll your eyes at their patronizing smiles.

The memory sticks with you, though, emerging at the strangest times: During your brother’s tee ball game when you have to retrieve a ball from beyond a chain link fence, the branches of bushes brushing against you like searching hands. When you see a boy and a girl talking on the TV, his hand pressed against the locker behind her, the girl cowering beneath his looming frame. A day far in the future when a boy you desperately want to be friends with takes your hand without asking.