Chapter 1: Shelter

Sandy was not happy about having to walk home from school. Her sixteenth birthday was last month, and she had passed her driving test the first time, but the car her parents had promised hadn’t materialized. “Things are tight right now, hon.” her dad had told her. “ We’ll get you something this summer, so you’ll have a car for your senior year.” In the meantime, she walked. She could have taken the school bus, but as a junior, riding with the freshmen and sophomores was embarrassing. The only upperclassmen on the bus were nerds and losers, and Sandy was neither of those.

Her one bit of rebellion was to take a shortcut down Carter Ave., even though her parents had urged her to avoid it and warned her about how dangerous that street was. It saved her almost ten minutes, and what her folks didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. She knew it was not a place she would want to be after dark, but at 3:30p.m it looked like most other streets in that part of town, and it was only two blocks long. There were a couple of bars, a pawn shop, a second-hand clothing store, a bus stop, a bodega, and usually a few sketchy-looking homeless people.

There was one business that bugged her. The sign in the otherwise blacked-out window read ‘Sex Store.’ A smaller sign described the contents inside as ‘Hard to Find Magazines, Videos, and Sex Toys.’ In bold letters, a smaller sign on the door stated, ‘Adults Only, Must be 18 to Enter’, which further frustrated her. Sandy wondered more and more each time she passed the mysterious shop; what made it an ‘Adults Only ‘ place? Why were the magazines hard to find? And, just what the heck were ‘sex toys’ anyway? She could easily solve all those mysteries in half an hour or so of internet browsing, but in 1985 that was not an option. Sandy considered herself mature enough to handle whatever awaited inside. The plucky young girl wasn’t some naive, innocent teen. She and her former boyfriend Brad had advanced to mutual masturbation, what Brad called ‘stinky finger,’ before they broke up. And she and her best friend Megan had experimented with many things during their sleepovers. So, it wasn’t like she was ignorant about sex. Or so she thought.

As frustrating as it was, Sandy would probably have been okay with passing by that mysterious business for the rest of the school year. Then, as she was heading home one April afternoon, she saw a typical Florida thunderstorm developing. Sandy didn’t mind a little rain, but since she had had a close call with lightning at a soccer tournament last Fall, she was leery of lightning. She headed down Carter Ave. as fast as possible with her heavy backpack. Suddenly, a bright light flashed in front of her followed almost instantly by a loud boom of thunder. It caused her to panic. She tried to go into the bodega for shelter, but it was closed, with an ‘Out of Business’ sign on the door. Another nearby strike forced her to seek the only available shelter - the ‘adults only’ store. She didn’t care if she got yelled at or even if someone tried to force her out, she just wanted someplace to wait out the worst of the storm.

The determined teen pushed open the door and stepped inside. The first thing she saw was a rack of magazines with pictures of erect penises, gaping vulvas, and men and women doing things that Sandy had only heard about from Megan, her more experienced and sophisticated friend. In those first few seconds, she learned what ‘adult only’ meant. Still, she was more interested and fascinated than shocked.

Before she could go further into the store, the clerk, a large man with wild hair and a scruffy grey beard, started yelling at her. “Hey, what are you doing? Get out! No minors. Can’t you read?” He began to come around the counter, and Sandy was afraid he would forcibly push her back into the raging weather. The thunder was still roaring, and the rain was coming down in sheets. “I’m just getting away from the storm. I’ll just stare at the door until it stops. Don’t make me go back out there.”

When the clerk got close to her, Sandy regretted her attire. It had only been a couple of years earlier that girls had been allowed to wear shorts at her school, and she took full advantage of it. She knew her best physical attributes were her long, lean, legs, the product of playing competitive soccer for six years. The shorts she was wearing this fateful day were the shortest she had, just barely permissible by the school rules. She had enjoyed seeing boys staring at her that day, but having the seedy clerk ogling her made her uncomfortable.

The clerk was torn. It was part of his job to keep kids out of the store, but he knew it was dangerous outside. Besides, the tall, blonde teenager with the ponytail and delicious legs was special, like one of the girls in his favorite girlie mag, ‘Teeny Tarts’. His sense of duty won out, and he reached over her to open the door, reluctantly ready to shove the intruder out. That’s when a door in the back of the store opened, and someone came out, a man more attractive than the scruffy clerk. “What’s going on, Jerry?” he asked.

“This kid just barged in, boss. I’m trying to get her out.”

“Take it easy,” the other man said. “It’s dangerous out there.” He turned to Sandy and said, “So, just getting out of the rain, sweetie?”

“Yes, sir,” she said, trying not to show her interest in what else was inside the store as she looked over his shoulder. “I’m gone as soon as I can. Sorry if I broke the rules.”

“That’s all right, hon. So, just how old are you anyway? I’m guessing you’re not eighteen.”

“I was sixteen last month,” she told him, immediately regretting it. She wished she had lied to him. What was he going to do, check her ID? Well, yeah, she told herself, he probably would. She knew that if she tried to go into a bar and buy a drink, that would happen, so why not here?

“Jerry,” the boss said, “lock the door. We don’t want anybody coming in and finding an underage girl here. What’s your name, sweetie?”

“Sandy,” she said, “Sandy Carter.”

“Cute name, for a cute girl. Well, Sandy, welcome to The Sex Store. I’m Steve, and I own this joint. And since you’re here, and you’ve already seen some of what kind of merchandise we have, and you haven’t screamed or fainted, how about a tour?”