Chapter 1

When I think of those years, I remember the humid evenings when the cicadas screamed, the scent of fried chicken drifting through open windows, and the way the sky stretched wide and hazy over our little town. It was a pretty place, but nothing was ever left to grow wild. The church made sure of that. Pastor Reynolds and the elders believed in rules, in discipline, in keeping people on the straight and narrow. You stepped out of line, even just a little, and you’d find yourself the subject of a Sunday sermon—or worse, a quiet meeting behind closed doors.

I was fourteen then, same as my best friend, Tobey. He was a wiry kid with a quick mouth and a knack for getting into trouble. He questioned things he shouldn’t, joked about things no one else would dare to. But I liked that about him. He made our town feel a little less small.

And then there was Lily, his sister.

She was seventeen, and even then, I knew she was something special. She had ghostly pale skin and red hair that always looked carefully brushed and neatly pinned. She was slender, graceful, and carried herself with a quiet confidence. Lily dressed modestly, always in well-kept blouses and long skirts, and she never raised her voice or sought attention. People in town respected her. The church ladies praised her for her kindness, and the other girls looked to her as an example. The boys admired her, but always from a distance, knowing she wasn’t the type to entertain foolishness.

Our town wasn’t big, but there were places that felt like their own little worlds. The church, sitting squarely in the middle of town, was the heart of everything. Sunday service was mandatory, and its looming white steeple cast a shadow over our lives in more ways than one. Then there was the library—small, dimly lit, and overseen by Miss Prudence, a woman so stern she could quiet a room just by lifting her eyebrows. The library was where Lily spent much of her time, reading thick, serious books while Tobey and I snuck comic books behind the shelves.

And, of course, there was the creek—the one place where rules seemed to loosen, if only for a while. In the summer, kids waded in the shallows, and teenagers carved their initials into the smooth bark of the old sycamores lining the bank. It felt wild, untouched, a place where you could breathe.

But my favorite place of all was our treehouse. Tobey and I had spent an entire summer building it deep in the woods, hidden from prying eyes. It was our fortress, our hideout, patched together with stolen nails and scrap wood from Tobey’s dad’s shed. We stocked it with comic books, old flashlights, and a stash of snacks we smuggled from home. Up there, high in the branches, the town and its rules felt far away. It was the one place where we could talk freely, dream big, and feel like we had control over something—anything—in a town where control was everything.

That summer, a scandal shook the town. A girl named Mary Ellen had been caught sneaking around with her boyfriend, and word got out that they had been intimate. It didn’t matter that she was only sixteen, that she had been in love, that she had nowhere else to go. The town elders made an example of her. Within a week, her family was pressured to leave, her name spoken in hushed tones, like she had never existed. I remember seeing her one last time, her face pale as her father packed up their old sedan, her eyes red from crying.

I remember thinking it was hot, seeing a girl crying like that, but I was sad that she was being driven out. That summer she had often worn dresses that were more low-cut than was normal in our town and it was a rare chance to see some boobs. I asked Tobey if he felt the same way, and he nodded.

“Every time she bent over I could see down her dress!” he told me. “It’ll suck not having her around anymore.”

One evening, late in the summer, Tobey and I were cutting through the woods near the creek when we heard voices—girls’ voices, laughing and hushed. We crept closer, crouching behind a thick tangle of brush, and peered through the leaves. There, in the fading light, Lily and her friend Clara stood at the water’s edge, slipping off their dresses, their pale figures lit up by moonlight. We stared at them.

Clara was blonde and had bigger tits than Lily, a beautiful girl, but Lily looked stunning. Her curves were perfect, her nipples small and hard. The only thing I didn’t like was that she was hairy down there. I wanted to see her slit.

The girls disappeared beneath the dark, rippling surface of the creek.

We knew we shouldn’t be there, but neither of us moved. My heart pounded, half from excitement, half from the fear of being caught. The water glowed in the moonlight, the girls’ laughter floating over it like music. We were witnessing something forbidden and magical, something far removed from Sunday sermons and town rules.

Then, Lily suddenly turned toward the shore, her head tilting as if she sensed something. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.

Tobey grabbed my arm, and we scrambled backward, trying to make as little noise as possible. A branch snapped under my foot, and for one horrible second, I was sure we were done for. But then, before Lily or Clara could reach the bank, we were gone, tearing through the trees, breathless and laughing like the fools we were.

Back at our treehouse, we compared notes about the experience.

“They were both so hot!” Tobey said excitedly. “But which one do you think is hotter? We should update the rankings board!”

Tobey and I often talked about girls. In fact in our treehouse we had a board that we’d stolen from our school’s storage building, which we used to pin up photos of the girls that we cut out of old yearbooks. We had the photos ranked top to bottom by who was hottest and we also had lists that we updated frequently ranking them by face, boobs, ass, and pussy. We had never actually see any pussies before today so the rankings were based on what we imagined.

Clara was currently second on the board, after her dark-haired sister Nicole (also top of the boobs list), followed by Connie and the only Hispanic girl in our school, Ana. Mary Ellen had been number one for a year before her family was shunned.

Until today we had never included Lily on the list even though I thought about her all the time. I just didn’t know if Tobey would be OK with talking about his sister like that.

“Let’s talk about Clara first,” I suggested.

“Sure. Great boobs, right? 9 out of 10? They’re huge. Are they bigger than Nicole’s?”

“I don’t think so. And I think the nipples are a little too big. But you’re right, they’re amazing. we should move her to the second spot on the boobs list.”

“Agreed!”

“Ass?”

“8 out 10. Too big to be perfect.”

“Agreed again! So she stays in the same spot. Pussy? I like that she was a little trimmed. Shaved would’ve been better but I don’t know if any girls here in town shave. Maybe Ana? When she was wearing that bikini last year I thought she might have.”

“Maybe. 7 out of 10, then?”

“Yeah. What about my sis?”

I hesitated for a moment, then went for it.

“I think we should move her to the top of the board.”

Tobey grinned.

“I agree, but let’s break it down.”

“Her tits are 10 out of 10. Not huge but perfect.”

“I agree.”

“Had you seen them before?”

“Just once when she was getting dressed last year. They were smaller then. Still awesome though.”

“Nice.”

“How did you like her ass?”

“10 out of 10 too.”

“And her pussy?”

“Way too hairy. I bet her slit is super cute but not like that. 6 out of 10.”