Chapter 1

They say fact is stranger than fiction, and I’m here to tell you that’s true in spades. I learned that from Hannah, my sister.

Hannah is older than me by ten months, but a lot of people who don’t know us think we’re twins. We both have blonde hair and the same slim build our father has. Or had, back when Hannah was born. I still do but Hannah got a whole bunch of our mother’s genes, developing curves all over the place. It’s not “cool” to say out loud that your mom’s a stone fox, even when your friends comment on that. You’re expected to punch them in the shoulder. The fact is, Mom modeled for several years until she got too big up top. After she had Hannah I guess her breasts got bigger and then stayed that way. According to her you can’t be too big up top and get modeling jobs. At least other than for porn.

When puberty starts making women out of girls, there is a tendency to bring with it insecurity about how appealing they are to the opposite sex. According to top models, even the most beautiful women feel this insecurity. The odd part is that it starts long before they’re actually looking for a guy to pair up with for life. It doesn’t matter what they look like, they think they don’t look good enough to be interesting to the opposite gender. The big advertising firms are well aware of this and play on it, trying to sell women things that will “fix” them. My mom got over that, thanks to my dad. He fell in love with who she was inside, not the hot swimsuit model he got to go out with him a couple of times. And she fell in love with a man who loved her that way.

Of course that’s ancient history. Well, except for the fact that Mom still looks really good ... not that I’d admit that to anybody. And she’s pretty comfortable with how she looks, now. Her daughter, however, is not. It’s been that way for the entire six years since I was ten. Personally, I think it started when she had her first period, but since we don’t talk about that kind of thing in our family, it’s just a theory.

Anyway, whether it was because she was insecure or for other reasons, Hannah did all the things sisters do to their brothers as they grow up. Like making my life miserable. She ratted me out whenever she knew I did something against the rules. She told one of my girlfriends I was cheating on her and another one that I had an STD. That, of course, was ridiculous. She knew there was no way in the world I was sexually active. She was just trying to mess with what passed for my love life.

Not that that made any difference. I’ve never gotten a girl to let me do more than kiss her and maybe cop a feel of a boob, now and then. Truthfully, my girlfriends all know she’s full of shit. I’m a nice guy. It’s just how I was raised. When I started dating, my dad sat me down and gave me this long lecture about how women are precious and should be treated with nothing but respect. I suggested he needed to give the same speech to Hannah, except about how boys should be respected, too, and he just laughed.

Hannah, of course, feels like since she’s older she should get to boss me around. It doesn’t help that - even though we were both the same age at that time of year - because Hannah was just enough older than me, she got to start school a year before I did. So now she’ll be a senior when school starts again and I’ll just be a lowly junior. I get better grades, but that doesn’t mean diddly to anybody.

So now you can understand why, one morning, when Hannah came into my room (without knocking) and said, “Hey little brother, I need you to do something for me,” I was less than enthusiastic about doing it, even though I didn’t know yet what it was.

“No,” I said. I was trying the direct approach.

“Do it and I won’t tell Mom and Dad you lied to them about going to Kevin’s and went to the mall instead,” she said, sweetly.

Crap! How the heck did she find out about that? One of her menagerie of friends probably saw me and reported to her on my movements. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had a whole spy network out there with orders to keep a list of everything they ever saw me do. In any case, I knew better than to deny it. She’d have rock-solid evidence.

“Mom and dad aren’t here today,” I pointed out. They were gone to a wedding, one between people they’d known in college and we didn’t. That was good because I hated going to weddings.

“Do it and I won’t tell them about the mall when they get home,” she said, patiently.

“Why didn’t you tell them already?” I asked, sarcastically.

“A girl needs leverage sometimes,” she said, smiling.

I knew I was screwed. I actually thought that: “I’m screwed.” Which, by the way, is kind of ironic, as you’ll see later.

“What is it?” I groaned.

She held out her smart phone. I didn’t have one, yet. You have to be a senior in our family before you get a smart phone. She had argued that as soon as she graduated from her junior year, that made her a senior, and Mom and Dad went for it. I had argued that, by that argument I was a junior and, since they did driver’s ed in your junior year, Dad should take me out and let me have some practice driving the car...
but nobody went for that. She always gets her way.

“I need you to take some pictures of me. I want to send them to Steve.”

Steve was her boyfriend. He’s a jerk. He’s a bully, and he thinks he’s tough. But he’s just a jerk. He doesn’t mess with me because he’s into Hannah. And maybe because I have two inches and thirty pounds on him. I’m tall, like Dad.

“Go in the bathroom and take a selfie, like thousands of other stupid girls do,” I said. I waited for her to get mad at me calling her stupid.

But she didn’t.

“I am not stupid,” she said. “I want something nice, sexy, and I don’t want it to look like I’m hiding in the bathroom to do it.”

“Sexy,” I said, picking one word out of her whole little speech to highlight. “Dad would love to hear you say that.”

I still expected her to get mad. I was hoping she’d stomp off and leave me alone. But again, she didn’t. She sat down on the edge of the bed instead.

“Come on, Bobby. Please. Steve’s been looking at other girls while he’s out with me. He even said that Evelyn Morris was looking pretty hot when we saw her at the movies. I’m worried. I don’t even think I know how to be sexy.”

Wow. I was shocked. It wasn’t so much what she’d said, but that she’d said it at all. She was actually trying to explain herself to me. me, the brother she wouldn’t normally give the time of day to! Still, doing just about anything for her could turn out badly, especially if her expectations were not realized. I tried a different approach.

“I think you’re worrying for nothing. You’re plenty sexy,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said, as if I’d simply complimented her choice of fingernail polish. “But you’re my brother. You have to say things like that. I’m still worried I might be losing him.”

“Who are you?” I asked, amazement filling my voice.

“I’m your sister, you dork,” she said.

“No you’re not,” I replied. “My sister would never talk to me like this.”

“Who else am I supposed to talk to?” she groaned. “I can’t just go up to Mom and tell her I don’t feel sexy and casually ask her how I can turn that around. And that’s definitely not something you bring up with your friends, unless you want to be the joke of the week.”

Her mention of the menagerie caused a thought to flicker through my mind that I was being set up for something. This was some kind of prank. But the look on her face was really strange, not like she expected somebody to rush into the room and start yelling about how I thought my sister was sexy or something.

“Does that really bother you?” I asked.

She slumped. She was either the best actress I’d ever seen, or really worked up about this.

“Sometimes,” she sighed. “I know Mom says I shouldn’t worry about how I look, but sometimes I can’t help but think about it. I see all my friends or some girl like Evelyn Morris and I feel like I’m not as pretty as them. I worry Steve will dump me for a sexier girl.”

“Okay,” I said. “That’s just ridiculous. And I’m not saying that because I have to. Being your brother has nothing to do with it. I might be related to you, but I’m not blind. You’re twice as good looking as Evelyn Morris. Second, Steve’s a jerk and you could do way better than him. He wouldn’t be dumping you, he’d be setting you free.”

“I don’t want to be free,” she said. “I’m a senior, and senior girls who don’t have a boyfriend are losers.”

I groaned.

“That’s ridiculous, too. Come on, Hannah. I know you have a brain. Use it. Is Tanya Clarke a loser?” Tanya was a cheerleader and very popular. She not only didn’t have a boyfriend, she didn’t even date. She told everybody she was waiting until she got to college where there would be some men who dont think it’s funny to fart in public. She actually said that! She did go out in groups, but never hung with any particular guy.

“She’s the idiot, not me,” said Hannah. “She could have guys fighting over her if she wanted to.”

“Why is it so important for guys to fight over you?” I asked.

“Because then you know you’re cute,” she said.

I had an epiphany. There were pictures of Mom on the walls in Dad’s library. It was just a bedroom that he was using as a home office, but he called it his library. These were pictures from her modeling days and they were of her in all kinds of situations. Like in one she was standing on the hood of a race car with a trophy in her hands. She was wearing a bikini in that one. There were half a dozen of her on a runway, modeling clothes. I remember there being a bunch of them of her in her underwear, too, when I was younger, but they disappeared after Dad caught me staring at one of them one time. I was thirteen at the time.

I’d seen Hannah staring at those pictures too, and each time she did that she said, “Mom’s so pretty!”

“Hannah,” I said. “Mom was a model. She had makeup people and wardrobe people and they made her look like she did. But she’s just as pretty now as she was then. You are too. You’re worrying about stupid stuff. Don’t waste your time. If Steve doesn’t appreciate you then you’d be better off without him.”

What she wasn’t telling me was that Steve had been putting pressure on her to loosen up and “do things”. What he meant was get naked in the back seat of his car and spread her legs. He had hinted that if she didn’t, another girl would. He was full of himself like that. What he was full of in reality was shit.

“Bobby, will you do this for me or not?” she asked.

It was obvious she wasn’t going to give up. I guess I caved.

“Okay. If you want sexy pictures, I’m your man,” I said. “I’ve stared at thousands of them.”

That last part slipped out.

“I know you have, you pervert,” she said. She said it gently, though.

“One should not call another a pervert when one wishes for the other to take slutty pictures of her,” I said.

“I don’t want slutty. I want sexy,” she said. She held out the phone. “And I like Steve, so stop saying that about him.”

I thought about it.

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it ... but not for Steve.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll take them, but they’re for you, so you can see how good you look. If you decide to let that twerp look at them that’s your business, but I’m taking them for you.”

She tilted her head and examined me.

“I know I’ve treated you like I didn’t like you, but that’s not true.”

“Of course it’s true. You did treat me like you didn’t like me,” I said.

“What I meant is I always knew you were a good guy.”

“Then why try to make girls think I’m a low-life?”

“It’s what sisters are supposed to do,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

“And where did you get this nugget of wisdom?”

“Oh, around, I guess,” she said. “I’m sorry. I won’t treat you like that anymore.”

“Come on,” I said, sitting up. “Who are you really? What planet do you come from? Why did you choose my sister’s body to take over?”

“Ha - ha,” she said. “Please?”

“If this is some kind of joke...” I warned.

“It isn’t. I promise.”

Which is how we ended up in the back yard by a line of Forsythia bushes along the fence. They’d been bright yellow, but the blossoms were gone now and they were a deep green shade. Hannah stood in front of them and struck a pose. She looked good. That was all there was to it. I already knew that, of course. She’d been cute as we were growing up. All my aunts had taken pains to point that out. Not that I had thought about that then, but I did notice when the front of her shirts wasn’t flat anymore, and her butt got bigger. I didn’t think my interest in her boobs and butt was a bad thing. I noticed every girl’s breasts, and I liked a butt that had filled out and got round.