I bled for the first time on a sweltering afternoon in July, two months before my thirteenth birthday. I was standing in the garden, picking blackberries from the tangled bushes that grew along the stone wall, when I felt a warm gush between my legs, completely unlike the slick wetness I had grown accustomed to during my private nighttime rituals. I froze. My white summer dress, thin cotton printed with little yellow flowers, was suddenly wet and sticky against my inner thigh. I reached down and my fingers came away red. Dark, thick, terrifying red.

For one wild moment I thought I was dying. Then I remembered the whispered conversations among the older girls at school, the mysterious words menstruation and monthly and the curse of Eve, spoken with rolling eyes and secretive smirks. I understood, with a jolt that went straight to my stomach, that I had crossed some invisible threshold. My body, which had been a child's body just that spring, had decided it was time to become something else entirely.