Chapter 2

“Why didn’t you back me up, Joy?” I asked in the darkness. I felt so betrayed by my little sister.

“I told you not to make them angry. We wouldn’t be in this situation if you had just let me flash my ta-tas at them once. You made them mad, and I didn’t want them to be mad at both of us. I had no idea you’d get punished like that, but if I changed my story, Dad would just say I was defending you because you’re my big sister.”

“How dare you not try? I would never have left you hanging, Joy.”

“I know, and I am so sorry. I will find a way to make it up to you!”

“Now that you’ve broken my trust, I don’t think I can believe you. Did you lead them to my panties? Help them steal them?”

“No, I was just as shocked as you when they were missing!” Joy seemed to be sincere. Now, I was feeling paranoid and betrayed. I imagined a conspiracy between the three of them. Joy wanted to play their dare games. I was trying to understand the motivation for getting me in trouble, though.

I tried to reason with my little sister’s motivations. I wondered how they would have even coordinated this. I’ve seen Nick and Ethan go off in the woods alone, but Joy was usually around the house with me.

“You know, if you wanted to play their dare games, you could have just done it. You didn’t have to get me in trouble.”

“I know you are angry at me, Mary. I wouldn’t get you in trouble. How would that help? I just didn’t speak up because I was afraid they would make it worse on us!”

“Worse on you. You weren’t protecting us, Joy,” I accused. “How are they going to make it worse? I had to stand in the living room almost naked, and now I don’t have ANY panties. The closest actual store is miles from here.”

“You can wear mine!”

I was angry and raised my voice. “They don’t fit, you nincompoop! Your panties would be huge on me.” I heard my mother bang on the wall and tell us to quiet down and stop using derogatory language.

It was another thing I was probably going to be in trouble for. I went to sleep raging and had horrible dreams that night.

The next day, my father told me that I was no longer supervising while he and Holly were out. “I am going to put Ethan in charge. He’s the next oldest. I know you don’t like it here. You don’t have to act out to tell me that, Pumpkin. I am sorry you had to be punished like that. Let’s not let it happen again.”

I had nothing to say to that. I felt dejected and angry.

Holly came out that morning and, after breakfast, announced that it was still going to be the BEST Christmas ever. “We are the Christmas family. Praise Jesus! We will get through these tribulations together, and Christmas time is going to be a blessing, Amen!”

Dad wasn’t devout, but he tolerated Holly’s frequent prayers and affirmations in a very positive way and encouraged us to say Amen. I went along, but I felt forced into it. I didn’t want to get further on Holly’s bad side, so it was better to just acquiesce.

“I found some of your dirty panties you didn’t throw away,” Holly said to me in a snarky fashion, as if she had just delivered a checkmate in a thrilling game of chess. I was quite relieved. “That’s right, in the dirty laundry. Make sure that everything is clean and laundered when we get back and that you have on fresh drawers. If I check again and you do not, we’ll repeat last night. No one here wants to see you showing off your chicken legs and lady parts! Most certainly not me. I swear to you, though, that we will repeat this exercise until you learn to behave without the vulgarity and bullying, young lady.”

She used the term “young lady” as if it were an insult in that context.

I had come to the conclusion by morning that Joy was innocent. She had simply clammed up in the hopes this would all go away. I didn’t think she colluded with the boys any longer. However, I knew that SOMEONE stole my panties and placed a sex toy in my drawer. That was Ethan!

Once my father’s truck disappeared, Ethan began talking about new rules.

“We have a new regime, and under my brilliant leadership, we won’t be cogs focused on boring chores,” he promised in the same Texas drawl his mother spoke in. He seems to be able to stop using it at will; it gives him a folksy quality when he wants to sound like he is just a simple country boy speaking the truth.

I expected that Ethan would eventually hang himself with his own hubris. I was inclined to be lazy today and let him fail so that my parents could blame him for the lack of things getting done. I am not the type for sabotage, but I thought that I could make things worse.

Today, one of our chores was to put up the tree. We’d decorate it later, but first, we were supposed to screw all the branches into the base. My father is a park ranger, and even though we are surrounded by the type of trees people chop down for Christmas, he is a hardcore conservationist. He prefers a fake tree for a number of reasons, but most of all, just to save one from being chopped down as a decoration to be discarded in a few months.

“I will offer you ladies a deal. We will play TRUTH OR DARE, MY WAY, THE RIGHT WAY, and not G-rated,” he said.

I said PG-rated, not G-rated, but I wasn’t interested in his deal. I believed Ethan only as far as I could throw him; I couldn’t trust any deal he offered me.

“You ladies have to do three dares each. If you can complete them, we will consider everything between us even-steven. All will be forgiven.”

Forgiven? I had done nothing wrong.

“You can ask US to answer three TRUTHS, and if we do, then you will stop being such bitches to us and forgive US for whatever it is that crawled up your butts and made you unfairly treat us like douchebags.”

I couldn’t take this. It was preposterous. “So, we have to do dares while you just have to tell three lies to our questions? That hardly seems even.”

“Well, it’s TRUTH or DARE, and MY way is this: one team does DARES, and one team does TRUTHS. It’s like SHIRTS AND SKINS in basketball.”

He sounded so pretentious. I just wanted to smack his cherubic little face. I imagined he might become a televangelist when he got older—a conman with a Bible.

“How dare you suggest we would lie? You haven’t even asked us a question. Go ahead, ask me one.”

“I don’t want to play your game, Ethan.”

“Do you want to have your pants around your ankles again tonight?”

I didn’t answer him.

“See? Truth is harder than it seems. You don’t want to answer the question.”

He was such a little dickhead.

“What are the dares, Ethan?” my little sister offered.

“I haven’t decided yet. Are you playing?”

“If I play for both me and my sister, will you stop hassling us?”

“I haven’t hassled you, Joy. You’ve been nothing but nice to me. It’s your sister who has been the prima donna bitch from hell! I call her sister; she calls me Ethan. I try to be nice and offer Mary an olive branch, and she accuses me of rape!”

I never said rape, but whatever they did—it was illegal. Fuming, I told Joy not to do anything for him.

“See? That pisses me off. Joy is a big girl, and you aren’t in charge. Now, Joy, you asked me a TRUTH question, so we are already playing. The answer to your question is that you will perform SIX dares today, and I will swear not to bother the two of you again ALL Christmas.”

“What are the dares?”

“That’s another Truth, Joy! The first dare is to strip completely naked and run the entire perimeter of the property in bare feet. You have one left.”

“I want to know all SIX dares first,” Joy said.

“If you want all six dares, then that would cost six truths. I don’t see how that’s fair,” Ethan smirked and told her that was her third truth.

I wanted to scream, it was all pointless! If we had to do six dares, then he had to tell six truths. I did not know how he got the idea that his three truths equaled six dares, but logic didn’t matter here.

I knew that Ethan was just going to give us the runaround. My sister had already spent three truths for worthless answers, and Ethan was a lying snake. I had no interest in hearing his truth, and I had no interest in participating in this farce. “Don’t do it. He is going to make each dare progressively harder or impossible,” I assured my sister.

“You continue to impugn my integrity and honor, Sis; that’s just not right.” Ethan smiled at me as if he was innocent. Now I was thinking he would run for Senate when he got older. That job might suit him.

Nick stood beside Ethan and elbowed him, signaling that Ethan should cut us some slack.

“Okay, Nick here is telling me that maybe you girls are misguided, but you have the misconception that I am going to cheat. That wouldn’t get us anywhere. I’d like to keep playing this game, and if I cheat, you won’t play again, right? I will make you a deal. You show me some trust, and I’ll show you some. The TWO of you run the length of the perimeter nude, and I’ll tell you the last five dares completely. Do those, and we are square.”

I wasn’t going to trust him, but my sister begged me. “C’mon, they’ve already seen you naked, and it’s probably fun. There’s nobody around for miles.”

“You have to do it together; jog right beside each other.”

I wasn’t interested in the least. My sister already had her fuzzy sweater off and unsnapped her bra, revealing her massive tits. The boys were shocked that my sister’s boobs weren’t as perky as the bra made them appear. They hung down naturally.

“Those are some Minnesota mommy milkers,” Ethan was impressed as he ogled my sister’s strawberry-colored nipples.

My sister preened and begged me to join her. “Let’s just do it; the sooner we do it, the sooner this is over. Would you rather be naked in front of Mom and Dad, or just do this today?”

She was already peeling off her shorts.

“It won’t count unless you join her, Mary.”

“How do I know you would keep your word and leave us alone if we complete the six dares?”

“I bet you would believe I’d keep my word if I promised you that you’d be standing naked in front of our father and mother tonight, wouldn’t you?”

He countered with a threat: I had little choice. “Mom might find a little bottle of whiskey under your bed, a pack of cigarettes, maybe a dirty magazine about gay men? I can’t guarantee what she’ll discover in your closet, but it may even be the butt plug you showed me earlier today.”

I had no idea what a butt plug even was! It sounded horrible! I have to admit, I was terrified that he might plant any of these things on me, and I already had little credibility with my father to defend myself. I felt helpless and hopeless—the core of my stomach was churning.

My sister had peeled off her leggings, revealing her big butt, and a blonde patch of wispy pubic hair. She stood naked, in socks only. I begged her not to do this, but she bent over, revealing her pink anus and labia without a second thought for modesty to remove her socks. The guys laughed about how round it was.

“I see a little brown on there,” Ethan teased.

My sister blushed but didn’t stand up. He lied, her butt was clean!

“If I do this, and you betray me again, it’s war! This is it. After this, I promise you, you’ll regret crossing me again,” I threatened. I wasn’t going to send my sister out in the cold alone. Ethan had made clear the dare wouldn’t count unless we did it together, and they had already seen me bottomless.

I had no panties on, so stripping off my bottoms was pretty easy.

“Your pussy won’t freeze out there, Chewbacca,” Ethan ridiculed my large patch of thick, black, pubic hair. I didn’t have a razor or any interest in trimming myself. However, being called Chewbacca was incredibly humiliating on a cellular level. I felt it in every pore of my body.

“C’mon, hurry up,” Nick clapped his hands and smiled.

“I can’t believe you are with him on this, Nick,” I said tersely.

“It’s just a harmless dare, Sis. Nobody will see. Just run the edges of the property and come back.”

“The other dares better not be impossible,” I said as I removed my top. I didn’t have on a bra; I didn’t need one. Despite my age, my tits hadn’t developed beyond small puffy nubs.

“I feel like we should make them do TWO laps, Nick. We are getting swindled out of watching one set of boobs bounce up and down!” Ethan laughed.

“Yeah, but Joy makes up for it and evens it out,” Nick joked.

My sister was already jogging in place to get her blood pumping.

“Good idea, Joy! It’s chilly out there. Get nice and warmed up, take your time, and off you go when you are ready!!”

I knew it was a bad idea before I undressed. Still, I wouldn’t abandon my sister like she abandoned me, only to find out that Nick and Ethan had yet another condition that they felt was unfulfilled.

I brought my knees up high and started running in place. “Please let us bring shoes. It’s going to be cold out there,” I begged.

“Nope, just dash and hop, dash and hop, Sis,” Ethan patted me on my BOTTOM as he guided me to the door. He opened the door wide and said, “One quick lap, ladies!”

“I can’t believe we are doing this,” Joy smiled as her breath became visible in the winter air. The cold hit me so hard that I felt like my titties were going to freeze, and my butt was so frosty. Stepping in snow was painful—the only way to deal with it was to dash lightly and hop so quickly that my feet barely had time to register the temperature.

“I can’t believe we trusted them! They are going to betray us, Joy!” I told her.

“We had two choices. We could refuse and KNOW they would get us in trouble, or we could play the game and be nice, and maybe they won’t,” my sister said. That was a point I hadn’t considered, and I thanked her for that.

It didn’t make the jog any easier. On some levels, it was exhilarating to streak out in the cold. I won’t kid you there. The pure country air, crisp and refreshing in my lungs, and the adrenaline pumping through my system as I dashed naked were all incredibly thrilling.

Joy’s tits bounced as she ran, and her big butt cheeks clapped together while she giggled mischievously. I have to admit, the fact that she wasn’t scared made me less apprehensive about what we were about to do. I found myself smiling as I jogged next to her, or sometimes behind her. Joy’s laugh and smile can light up a room; I hoped it would keep us a little warmer for this crazy run we were going to do for Ethan.

I fully expected the boys to tease us and probably go back on their deal, but right now I was focused on just completing the dare. Otherwise, my sister would have done nothing, and we had to try something. It was stupid, naïve, and probably dangerous but we were doing it anyway. It was too late to turn back now.

I’ve always thought of flashers and streakers as disgusting perverts who liked to whip out their penises at bus stops. However, we were doing something else entirely. I felt like a young deer dashing through the woods away from the wicked hunters, and there was nothing perverted or sexual about my nudity.

Streaking through our yard was undoubtedly taboo; I knew I’d get in trouble if caught. There was something exciting imagining I MIGHT get caught, but probably wouldn’t. We lived very remotely, off of Highway 23, in a trailer on a mostly open lot of 8 acres surrounded by trees on all sides.

We also had a rundown old shed filled with rusty tools and old broken-down machines. We hadn’t gone inside since we arrived.

The occasional truck or car passes by: timber haulers, 18-wheelers, or tourists visiting Kabetogama State Park where my dad works. It’s not an exciting place to live. A massive copse of trees provided a natural barrier between our house and the highway. The driveway curves around those trees, and the trailer it set far enough back to provide some privacy and shield us from the road noise.

Possibly, the timing of our run would coincide with a passing trucker. However, they usually traveled pretty fast between Orr and the timber mills. There were a few homes along the highway, but there no gas stations, stop signs, or traffic lights. It seemed doubtful anyone on this road might even notice our two lily-white teenage butts flashing them from the snowy woods, so long as we kept moving.