Chapter 1

Someone kept taking my stuff and I hated that. I didn't want to be at summer camp anyway. Two weeks of mosquito bites, poison ivy, and listening to a bunch of 14 and 15-year-old girls complain wasn't my idea of fun. We were all orphans, from every corner of the state, and each year some rich jerk would foot the bill for about a hundred of us to enjoy the great outdoors. Whoever the guy was, he must have felt pretty guilty about something.

There were all the usual activities you'd expect to find at summer camp. We could use the big lake for swimming or paddling our canoes around. There were classes for arts and crafts, and I'd learned how to make a leather wallet, except it had turned out sort of lopsided. We got to try our hands at archery, which was fun, and fishing, which was not. The nature hikes were okay, but I always found the campfire sing-alongs kind of annoying. I always burned my marshmallows, too.

Living in a tent sucked. None of us owned our own sleeping bags or anything, and the ones we'd been given weren't brand new. Mine smelled sort of funny and I'd get into it wondering who might have used it before me. Probably some bed wetter, I thought. We lived out of our backpacks mostly, or the small suitcases that some of the girls were stupid enough to bring. So anyone could steal anything, which was the biggest reason I hated summer camp.

As soon as I grabbed my flashlight, I knew something was wrong.

"Where's my batteries?" I asked, staring at Marisa.

She just shrugged and I didn't think she'd take them anyway, but our third tent-mate, Denise, would definitely take them. I'd caught her looking through my backpack a couple times, always with some lame excuse about needing to borrow my hairbrush or whatever. Only five days into camp and I'd already lost a brand new bottle of lotion, one of my favorite combs, half of my rubber bands, my silver toe ring, which really made me angry! And now the batteries out of my flashlight.

"Denise!" I found her near one of the fire pits, roasting a hot dog and giggling with a half-dozen other girls.

We were both fourteen, but I'd only known her since arriving at camp. She came from Spokane or someplace equally boring and right away I knew we weren't going to be friends. She had that spoiled blonde brat attitude, arriving all dressed up in brand new clothes that she couldn't ever afford to buy. None of us had a lot of money, but Denise was the sort of girl who liked to pretend and probably shoplifted everything she owned.

She tried to look better than everyone else, too. I mean, most of the girls at camp all looked about the same, which is to say typical and cute, maybe even pretty some of us, and it didn't really matter. We were camping, right? There wasn't anyone to impress for a hundred miles in any direction, but Denise spent like hours just brushing her golden hair, fussing over her clothes, and even putting on makeup! What a complete poser! Never mind that she looked like a stick with boobs, being tall and skinny, and with those fat tits of hers jiggling happily, as if anyone would care.

We were completely different that way, too. I wasn't very tall, for one thing, and my breasts were mostly just plump, pointy nipples, but at least I had some hips and a real butt. My legs didn't look like pale stilts, either. And so what if I had plain old black hair and brown eyes? I knew I was just as pretty as Denise, but the first time the girl had ever laid eyes on me, she'd sort of made a face as if she couldn't believe how ugly I looked. Like she was better than me?

"Denise!" I yelled again, and she turned around just in time to get shoved backwards. "Where's my batteries? What did you do with them?"

"Hey!" She stumbled backwards, but didn't fall down. "Are you crazy? I didn't take your stupid batteries!"

"Fight! Fight!" the girls around us were already shouting, much the way kids do at school. I guess it's just a natural reaction.

"Liar!" I spat. "You took my comb, too!"

"I just borrowed it!" Denise protested, and for the first time she didn't look to sure of herself. More girls were coming over to see what the fuss was all about and we soon faced each other in a circle of excited teenagers.

"Like you borrowed my toe ring?" I tried to shove her again, but the girl twisted out of the way and she wasn't backing down.

Denise slapped my hands away and that's when the real fight started. I had a lot of adrenalin pumping through my veins by then, but it didn't even occur to me that I should be frightened, or even nervous. I didn't have butterflies in my tummy the way I did when I got in trouble with teachers, or even Mrs. Phillips, the woman who ran the orphanage. It wasn't fight or flight for me, it was all fight, a thousand percent. I didn't even care if I lost, that's the point. The idea of winning or losing never even entered my head, which seems like it should be a little weird.

Of course, neither of us knew the first thing about fighting. We were just two girls going on instinct. I tried to grab her, but Denise turned on her heels like a matador and slapped the top of my head. That didn't hurt me at all, but it made the other girls cheer with growing urgency. I had some friends and they shouted encouragement, telling me to "kick her butt" and stuff like that. My opponent had her supporters as well, but in truth I was barely aware of anything except Denise.

She clutched at my hair, but it wasn't very long, so she ended up with the collar of my t-shirt in her fist. Denise jerked me backwards and I started losing my balance as the cotton bit into my neck. My arms flailed wildly, perhaps comically, but I got lucky and caught her right in the nose with my elbow. I felt the crunch, and then the scritch of my shirt as it finally tore. Not the collar, but the thin cotton down the back and it kept ripping as I spun awkwardly around.

Denise had a bloody nose, sort of bending over with a nasal sob and pulling my t-shirt to her face. She'd basically ripped my shirt in half, with the white cotton tearing over my right shoulder, seam and all, and then being yanked downward to expose my smallish breasts. I didn't wear a bra or anything like that. I charged her again, swinging with my fists and trying to kick the girl at the same time. She quickly forgot about her nose and tried to hold me off with her hands slapping the air like a dog paddling water.

We were pretty pathetic. Denise slapped my face a few times, but I managed to grab her hair, that thick blonde mane she was so proud of, getting a screech of pain as I tugged her head downward. She hit my arm, just inside my elbow, and I had to let go as my fingers went numb. Subconsciously, I think I really wanted to wrestle with her anyway, like get the taller girl on the ground where we'd be more evenly matched. Except I wasn't really planning anything, I just tried to hug the bent over girl, wrapping my arms around her stomach and using my weight to force her down.

That didn't work exactly as I planned, probably because I didn't weigh very much at all. Instead, Denise grabbed my thighs and maybe she planned to pick me up, but she wasn't that strong. We sort of caught our breath in that position, with her bent at the waist and trying to pull my legs out from under me, while I covered her back with my naked chest, trying to squeeze the air out of her. That had become my new plan, but it wasn't working either and the frustration only made me angrier. So I found the hem of her t-shirt and jerked backwards, kicking my legs to get free of her grasp.

I pulled her shirt inside out, all the way up her body and over the girl's head. It didn't completely trap her arms, not like I'd hoped, but Denise couldn't really see me and she struggled like crazy to get free. I just kept tugging, like trying to spin her around by her t-shirt, which probably wasn't too smart. A second later she managed to pull her head and arms free so that she faced me completely topless. I threw her t-shirt in the dirt and then decided to rip away what was left of mine. The ragged cotton was only annoying me by that time.

Actually, it all happened pretty fast. Maybe three or four minutes had passed since I'd first shoved her, and it's kind of amazing how quickly things happen in a fight. At the time, it seemed as if we'd been going at each other for hours. I'd bloodied her nose, but it wasn't broken or anything. My cheeks stung and I'd definitely have a bruise on my arm from where Denise had punched me, but neither of us had won the fight yet.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to finish it either. A couple of the camp counselors, college coeds named Polly and Michelle, had come running as soon as they heard there was trouble. They broke up the crowd of girls and one of them, Polly, grabbed me while the other pulled Denise in the opposite direction. We weren't in any real trouble, but we did get sentenced to washing dishes together for the next three days. As if that would make us friends? Yeah, right!

The one good thing to come out of my first ever fight was that I met Eva and Suzy. They didn't like Denise very much either.

Eva looked like an elf to me. She had high cheeks and a pointed chin, and vaguely oriental eyes, except they were green and her page-boy hair was platinum blonde. She definitely wasn't Chinese or anything, but all she needed were pointy ears and she could have been in Lord of the Rings. She was tall enough, but being almost sixteen, Eva wasn't such a beanpole like Denise. Actually, she had a very athletic sort of body, much like her friend.

Suzy had blonde hair as well, but more of a darker, dirty blonde that went well with her hazel eyes. She wasn't as tall as Eva, but still a lot more than my five-foot-nothing. I had to look up to meet their eyes when we talked. Suzy would turn sixteen next month, in August, and appeared even older than that. She wasn't fat, nothing of the sort, but definitely muscular with her thick legs, firm shoulders, and seriously defined biceps. I'd never seen a girl with muscles before, except maybe on television.

"Next time you fight her," Eva told me, "get her on the ground right away. Don't try and box with her or any of that, just tackle the bitch."

"Tackle her?" I giggled, but mostly because I wasn't used to all the swearing. My two newest friends didn't even seem to notice.

"Let Denise take the first swing," Suzy said. "As soon as she does, duck underneath it and wrap her up. Use those legs and don't forget to use your head."

"Yeah. Her chin's going to drop and you crank into that fucker," Eva said, sort of demonstrating as she snapped her head out and upward. "Knock her dumb ass out, Lonnie."

"Like a head butt?" I asked. "But won't that hurt me, too?"

"Nah!" She grinned and tousled my hair. "You've got a hard noggin."

"A lot harder than that slut's chin," Suzy agreed. "It's all about surprise and momentum, see? The bad thing is that if you don't get her down, she's got both hands free and you don't know what the fuck she's gonna do with them."

I thought about everything the girls were saying while we walked around the lake. It would take us all day, like ten hours of hiking if we didn't stop too often, but at least we had a lot of privacy. Everyone else was busy doing crafts or whatever, and I'd worried about being missed, but not too much. If I got in trouble for skipping out, it would just mean more dishwashing.

"How come you guys know so much about fighting?" I wondered.

"We like to fight," Eva replied, shrugging like it was no big deal. "Have you ever heard of catfighting?"

"Um ... Not really," I said, picturing a couple cats fighting in an alley. What did that have to do with anything?

"We're catfighters," Suzy told me. "We've been doing it ever since we moved in with Tom and Megan."

"Our fosters," Eva explained. "They're really cool."

"I don't get it," I said, joining the two girls on a rocky outcropping that overlooked the lake. We'd been walking about two hours already and I needed a break.

"A catfight is when two girls go at it," she said. "Megan used to be a professional and Tom was her trainer, but now they just train other girls."

"Like us," Suzy said.

"And they arrange fights and, you know, take care of us," Eva continued. "We make some money doing it, but mostly it's just so much fun kicking another girl's ass."

"Not a lot of money," her friend admitted. "Megan's got her pack and most of the other cats are in college or whatever."

"They make a lot of money," Eva said. "Well, some of them do. Once we get a little older and more experienced, we'll do pretty good."

"Definitely," Suzy said, smiling as she reached for Eva's hand.

They shared a look, like a serious one that couldn't be mistaken for anything but love. It honestly hadn't occurred to me that these two girls might be lesbians. Why would it? I thought about sex once in awhile, but not very much. Boys didn't really interest me a whole lot yet, and girls ... I'd never even considered such a thing. Seeing Eva and Suzy together, holding hands and then suddenly kissing right in front of me, seemed kind of weird. But I didn't feel disgusted or frightened, just interested. I'd never seen two people making out before.

"Sorry," Eva said, pink faced and smiling as she wiped some stray saliva from around her lips. "Suzy totally fucking owns me."

"Totally," the other girl agreed. "She was the first girl I ever beat, so now she's mine forever."

"Or until I kick your ass!"

"Good luck!" Suzy giggled. "You like it when I win."

"Yeah," Eva sighed, offering me a shrug. "I kinda do, but that doesn't mean I let her win."

"Megan would be totally pissed."

"She'd kick both of our asses."

I could only sit there and watch as they started making out again. After hearing them talk, I could see how Suzy was the more aggressive of the two. She liked to hold Eva by the hair, tilting the pretty blonde's face upward and feeding her a lot of tongue. They moaned and made all the soft, intimate noises that people do when they kiss. I'd never made those sounds and my tummy felt hollow as I listened to them. My breasts ached the way they sometimes do when I get my period, but that wasn't the reason. My pussy felt wet and tingly and I rubbed my hands up and down my thighs just because I couldn't sit still.

Suzy had her hand beneath Eva's t-shirt, obviously massaging the girl's much larger breasts. That looked like fun and the only reason I didn't start rubbing my own tits was because I'd have felt embarrassed playing with myself like that. What would it be like to have a girlfriend, I wondered. Would it be better than a boyfriend? I'd grown up naturally assuming I'd meet a boy and fall in love, but what if I met a girl instead? Or more to the point, what if I wanted to meet a girl instead?

Those were confusing questions for a girl barely turned fourteen and I didn't look too deep for the answers. I only knew that if Suzy wanted to kiss me like that? I'd let her do it in an instant. Eva, too. But they were pretty into each other, obviously, and I didn't even try to imagine that one of them would suddenly want to have anything to do with me. Sexually, I mean, and I felt kind of relieved. Sex was sort of scary, I thought. Or maybe I meant love, but they seemed kinda the same just then.

A while later we were walking again and neither of my two friends seemed the least bit concerned with what I'd witnessed. They kept talking about fighting, suggesting different ways I could beat Denise. I listened closely as they must have known what they were talking about, but to tell the truth, I wanted to know more about that catfighting business. I found it hard to believe that girls actually fought each other for money. I mean, sure, I'd heard of female wrestling and boxing, but this had to be a lot different than that.

"There's different rules for different fights," Suzy explained. "Usually it's pretty much anything goes, but there might be a rule about no biting or eye gouging, something like that."

"Nobody fights to death," Eva added, giggling. "It's more about submission than actually hurting someone."

"But some people definitely get hurt."

"Fuckin' right they do!" Eva agreed. "Like in a grudge match? Or especially if another girl tries to take over the pack, that can get pretty brutal sometimes."

"Like Alex," Suzy said, nodding at her blonde girlfriend. "Megan really fucked her up."

"Who's Alex?" I wondered.

"She used to be the number one girl in the Pride," Eva said. "That's like the official name for the pack, anyway she challenged Megan's leadership."

"What happened?"

"Megan beat her down in front of everybody," Suzy said. "She probably didn't mean to do it..."

"Yeah, she did," Eva snorted.

" ... but she broke one of Alex's kneecaps. Like shattered the boney part or whatever? So now Alex is going through all kinds of surgery and rehab just so she can walk around again."

"Oh." I swallowed hard. "Weren't they like friends or something?"

"Heh!" Suzy grinned at me. "Alex is Megan's daughter."

"She never should have challenged Megan anyway," Eva said. "Alex is only nineteen, she didn't have a clue."

"I guess not," I said. "What if she'd won the fight?"

"It would have become Alex's pack," she said. "Megan would have probably left, but maybe not. She would have been seriously humiliated."

"Tom would have stayed," Eva decided, and then giggled. "How weird would that be? Alexis and her own dad fucking each other?"

"Maybe that's why she challenged Megan," Suzy suggested. "I'd definitely fuck him."

"Definitely."

"You would?" I blurted, only to feel my face growing warm as they stared at me. "I mean, I thought you guys were, um..."

"Queer?" Eva asked, not offended at all.

"Yeah, we're pretty gay," Suzy said. "But it would still be nice to fuck a real cock at least once, wouldn't it?"

"Maybe." I shrugged and felt pretty stupid. I had no idea what I was talking about, obviously.

"Most of the girls in the pack are queer," Eva told me, "but only because that's how it works. The only one who can really have a husband or even a permanent boyfriend is Megan."

"Since she's the leader."

"But if she was in a pack or whatever, and had a daughter..." I was looking for more explanation than that.

"She married Tom and had Alex before she started catfighting," Suzy said. "She was one of those female body builders at first, and then she sorta got involved with the fighting."

"And then she started her own pack from scratch," Eva added. "It was just her at first and she put her ass on the line to get new members."

"What do you mean?"

"Like she'd make a bet with another pack's Mistress. If she lost, the pack would get to keep her, but if she won, then Megan would get to keep the loser."

"It's a pretty common wager," Suzy said with a shrug. "Pack members come and go all the time. Not us though, since we're in foster and everything."

"Yeah," Eva said. "Megan has to keep us until we're eighteen, so mostly we just fight other girls for practice."

"Once we're older, that's when it'll get serious."

They'd given me a lot to think about, but in truth I still couldn't quite wrap my head around everything my friends were saying. They made it sound as if the whole world revolved around this catfighting business. Like nothing else mattered. They hadn't mentioned any other subject. Not what kind of music they liked, what movies they watched, or books or ... anything. Just fighting. I almost wondered if they'd been brainwashed or something and I decided to just come out and ask them...

"Don't you guys do anything else?"

"What?" Suzy laughed at me.

"I mean besides just fighting or whatever," I said.

"We do all kinds of stuff," Eva said. "What do you think? We just beat each other up all the time?"

"We do all the same stuff you do, probably." Suzy said. "Bitch about school, hang out at the mall and wish we were someplace else."

"Sorry," I mumbled. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Yeah, you did!" Eva grinned, looking more elfin than ever. Her green eyes were twinkling. "You probably want to know about how good Suzy fucks me, huh?"

"What? No!" I protested.

"I fuck her awesomely!" Suzy boasted, showing me her tongue.

"Awesomely!" Eva giggled at her friend. "I was a total virgin until I met you."

"Until I kicked your ass, you mean."

"The loser always gets fucked," Eva told me. "Total submission, that's what it's all about. After Suzy pinned me down..."

"I made her lick my pussy first," she said. "I sat on her face and twisted her nipples until she did it right, too."

"I wasn't very good at it. I thought it would be kind of gross, you know?"

"And Megan gave me that dildo, remember?" Suzy smiled. "I popped your cherry before you even knew what was going on."

"You probably popped my cherry when you kicked me in the cunt," Eva said, making a face. "That hurt a lot."

"Sorry!" the other girl sang sweetly, and looked at me. "It was her fault anyway. Always protect yourself, especially if you're a total virgin."

"When you beat down Denise?" Eva said. "Make sure you break her, okay? It's important."

"She'll never forget you," Suzy agreed. "You'll own her after that, just like I own Eva."

"Totally," she sighed, giving the other girl her affectionate eyes.

I seriously doubted I'd ever own Denise. I wasn't even sure I wanted to, you know? I just longed to teach her a lesson that she'd always remember. Stealing is bad, and being a stuck-up poser is even worse.