Chapter 1: In the Beginning

It all started with the letter.

No, that’s not quite true. It actually started in the shower.

I guess a little background is in order here. You see, my mom died from pancreatic cancer when I was thirteen. That left my engineer father and me as bachelors. Fast forward to this past May. I’m now eighteen and will be entering my senior year of high school this fall. I was held back in first grade because I missed a good part of the year with mono, so I was a year older than most of my fellow classmates.

Three years ago, my Dad met someone special, and now, he and Crystal are currently on their honeymoon.

Before they left, Dad explained that, on their return, we would be moving to Crystal’s house because it was both newer and larger.

For the record, Crystal has four daughters, Peyton, Ashley, Emily, and Madison. I had met the girls several times over the course of my Dad’s courtship of their mom, but it was usually for dinner or some event like Madison’s dance recital (boring) or the twins’ spring orchestra concert (also boring). They even came to one of my basketball games when we made it to regionals, but I had never spent any real time with them.

So while I knew them, I didn’t know them well. And having been an only child, I had no idea how I felt about suddenly having four step-sisters. I mean, I was not all that comfortable with girls.

You see, about the time I was old enough to become interested in girls, my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. So I never really spent a lot of time around girls. And after she passed away, I didn’t date at all. About then my Dad started dating Crystal, I think to encourage me to get out more. So finally, I asked Lisa to the Junior/Senior Prom. I ended up losing my virginity that night, but it turned out to be my only date with her for two reasons.

One, right after prom, was when my Dad announced that he and Crystal were getting married. And two, as soon as they returned from the honeymoon, we were moving into her house.

Now don’t get me wrong, I was glad that my Dad had found someone. However, I was not exactly thrilled about giving up my old room, my old neighborhood, and starting my senior year of high school at a totally new school. But they decided it would be easier to just move two guys than uprooting five women.

“Look. It won’t be that long until you’ll be in a dorm somewhere,” my aeronautical engineering Dad tried to logically console me. I tried hard not to laugh as I knew that was still over a year away.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the shower.

So, I guess it actually started when my new, almost-fourteen year old stepsister, Madison, saw me stepping out of the shower the first day my father and I moved into my new stepmother’s home.

Our moving in was sort of a major deal for a house full of five women. My new stepmother, Crystal, had to remove all of her home office/craft room stuff out of the unused bedroom in order to make room for me. But the interesting part was the bedroom came with a jack-n-jill bathroom. You know, the kind that’s situated between two bedrooms with a door going into each bedroom. And the bedrooms’ occupants shared it. So I now shared a bathroom with my youngest stepsister, Madison, while Peyton shared a similar arrangement with the twins in the other two bedrooms across the hall.

So, after the wedding, and the honeymoon, Dad decided that we would just move ourselves. It was less than twelve miles and it just made sense to his engineering logical mind.

“It’s the most practical solution. Why should I pay somebody else to move us when I’m in good condition myself and I have a strong, eighteen year old son? Besides, I know we’ll be more careful with our things than a bunch of strangers would be!” he told me.

So he rented a truck, a furniture dolly, some pads and bought a bunch of boxes and put me to work packing while they left on their honeymoon.

As soon as they returned, he decided it was time, so on a hot summer day near the first of June, we moved our stuff to Crystal’s house. Let me tell you, moving in the heat of early summer is for the birds! Not to mention the waste of a perfectly good day of summer vacation. But back to my story.

After moving all our stuff into Crystal’s house, naturally I smelled like a gym-rat from all the sweat, so I headed upstairs to try out the shower in my new shared bathroom. And that was where I made my first mistake.

How was I to know that you were supposed to notify the occupant of the other bedroom before tying up the bathroom? I had never shared a bathroom before. Much less had a sister. My second mistake followed closely behind the first. I mean, I had no idea you were supposed to lock the other bedroom’s access door before you stripped down to get in the shower.

So you can imagine my surprise when I finally stepped out of the shower and began looking around for the towel that Crystal had said was in here.

“Oh my gosh!” Madison shrieked. “You’re HUGE!”

I grabbed for the towel with one hand while trying to cover my genitals with my other hand. But I quickly figured out that it was a losing battle because somehow, in my panic, I had inadvertently knocked my towel to the bathroom floor.

“What are you doing in here?” I cried out in surprise.

“You didn’t tell me you were going to take a shower!” she snapped back. “Besides ... you didn’t lock the door.”

I knew my logical thinking father would probably say something like, “Oh well. Live and learn,” when he heard about it. But I wasn’t too sure what my new stepmother was going to say about it.

“I gotta go tell my sisters!” Madison called out as she scampered out of the bathroom.

“Oh Great!” I thought to myself. “I guess I’m gonna find out pretty soon what she thinks.”

I was standing at the sink, brushing my teeth, when suddenly there was a great disturbance in the force. Or mainly in the bathroom, as Madison and her three sisters suddenly all crowded into the small space with me.