Chapter 4

Harriet explained to Jack why she was not wearing panties. Jack started to overreact, but Harriet calmed him down. He entered the bus right behind his sister so that nobody could see her lack of panties. She sat next to the window and Jack took the aisle seat. Harriet sat quietly with her legs together, but not crossed, so there was no way for anybody to see her pussy.

Jack got off the bus just ahead of Harriet, and that covered her problem as she descended the steps to the ground. There was not enough wind to blow Harriet’s skirt around, so she was in no danger as they walked home. As soon as they got home, Harriet went to their bedroom to put on some panties before their mother got home. Nothing would be said of the incident in front of the parents, so Harriet figured that her privacy was preserved.

Oops, Mary cornered Harriet after supper and asked why she was not wearing any panties when she came in from school. Mary said that she had come in the front door just as Harriet reached the top of the stairs, and she could see under Harriet’s short skirt her nude bottom. Now that she was trapped, Harriet told the truth. Mary was annoyed, but said that Harriet had handled the situation very well. She also agreed with the teacher that she should keep extra panties in her locker just in case this incident happened again.

For some reason, the high school had a loose dress code that required the girls to wear skirts or dresses instead of shorts, and Harriet didn’t want to become a cause célèbre by fighting to wear shorts. Therefore, Mary suggested that Harriet wear skirts a couple of inches longer that would be sure to cover her crotch. That was an acceptable compromise as far as Harriet was concerned, so that’s where they left the problem.

Of course, this made no difference to Harriet and Jack when they went to bed. John had already arranged for a contractor to put some sound deadening into the walls, floor, and ceiling of their bedroom. The work had started, but was not yet finished. Nevertheless, John commented that it was quieter in the house already. Everybody figured that it had to be true, since John was the strongest critic of the sounds escaping from the bedroom, and they were all happy if John was.

The work went quickly because the contractor was injecting polyurethane foam into the space within the walls, etc. The foam cured quickly, so the job was supposed to be finished in three days. John could hardly wait. The foam also added considerable thermal insulation, so that was a welcome bonus.

Another problem reared its ugly head as a result of Harriet’s added self assurance. She was now attracting the attention of the male segment of the student body, and this was really beginning to peeve Jack. Both John and Mary tried to soften the blow to Jack from Harriet’s increased popularity, but he was having some trouble with accepting the fact that this was the penalty of not being able to tell people how Jack and Harriet felt about each other.

Most of the boys eventually took no for an answer, but not five seniors who were on the school football team. They considered themselves God’s gift to the female population and simply could not understand why Harriet was not thrilled to have attracted their attention. On several occasions, these boys, either singly or in groups of two to five had followed Harriet part way home and had made a nuisance of themselves. It was only the fact that Jack was with her and holding a cellphone in his hand ready to punch the button for a 911 call that kept them at bay.

At the first occurrence of this pestering, the siblings had asked their father for advice. His answer was, “Jack, I was in the Army and I learned a number of ‘dirty fighting’ techniques. Do you want me to teach them to you? I don’t guarantee that you can beat five football players at one time, but I am sure that I can teach you enough to hold your own with three.”

“That would be wonderful, and it would be even better if you could teach them to Harriet too.”

Classes in “dirty fighting” started immediately, and it was only three weeks later that the two had a chance to practice what they had learned.

One afternoon, Jack and Harriet were walking home from the bus stop when they were approached by three of the jocks who were being such a pain. One of them said to Jack, “Okay, junior, get lost. We want a private conversation with the lady.”

Both Jack and Harriet were so aggravated at the boys that they were looking for a scrap, so Jack said, “Get your sorry asses out of our sight, you stupid jocks. My sister has told all of you several times that she is not interested in any of you, and you have become pains in the ass.”

This was enough to make one of the jocks ball up his fist and try to hit Jack in the chest. Jack waited for the punch to be committed before jumping back just out of reach. When the punch had met nothing but empty air, the jock stumbled forward, and that was when Jack planted the instep of his right foot against the side of the jock’s left knee. Everybody could hear the crack when the knee broke, but that was less loud than the scream of pain from the jock.

He hit the ground and began to writhe about. Jack was ready for another attack, so he was too busy to pay any attention to the boy on the ground. However, Harriet did think to call 911 for medical help. She explained the problem to the dispatcher who sent an ambulance, but he also sent a cop because he suspected that rape was possible.

Jack was right to be ready for another attack. Both boys jumped at Jack “to teach him a lesson.” Fortunately, they got in each other’s way, and Jack was able to dodge one of the boys while concentrating his attention on the other one. The first attacker had been a defensive lineman and was very large in the waist. However, the second attacker was a safety, stronger than Jack, but not as bulked-up with extra flesh.

Jack hit him as hard as he could in the solar plexus, and that produced the expected results. The boy dumped the air he had in his lungs and bent over at the waist. Ah-ha, that was exactly what Jack was looking for. Jacks raised his knee and caught the boy in the nose and smeared it over his face. As it turned out, the broken nose was very expensive to repair, requiring three different trips to surgery to fix it, though the boy still had a distorted nose after those operations.

Jack never got a chance to fight the third boy. Harriet was wearing shoes with hard soles, as her father had recommended that she make a habit of, and she kicked the third boy in the balls with the toe of her shoe as hard as she could manage. He, too, fell to the ground totally incapable of any further acts because of the pain. He had a ruptured testicle that had to be removed, and the surgeon thought that the boy had gotten off easy.

The upshot was that three football careers were cut short, and the boys were so embarrassed that a girl and a 9^th Grade boy had bested them so easily that they changed schools. That was the end of the harassments for the rest of the school year. In fact, most boys avoided Jack and Harriet for the duration of the school year, and both siblings were happy for it.

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Dammit, whoever had stolen Harriet’s panties earlier in the year had not given up, but was still at it. However, the thefts were happening on no consistent schedule, so the culprit was very difficult to spot. Harriet had finally hit her limit in putting up with this aggravation, so she enlisted the aid of her best friend. The plan was for the two girls to take their showers at different times so that the friend could keep an eye on Harriet’s locker.