Chapter 1

Wade drove behind his parents in his own truck, shielding his head when necessary with callused hands when they hit a particularly good bump in the dirt road. They had everything AND the kitchen sink stuffed into both their Vista Cruiser and his truck because they were moving to goodness only knows where in a tiny Alberta town.

‘Village,’ his mother had called it, encouragingly; as if that made it sound quaintly appealing, as if ‘village’ would charm the socks right off him.

Wade didn’t mind the move overmuch. It was just the beginning of summer, and he’d moved around plenty with his parents before. They never truly settled somewhere. For a few years at a time, the family would stay in one place, and Wade’s mother would say, ‘This is it. This is where we settle,’ with something akin to hope, and his father would agree. But something was always off ... his father usually found a job he liked better in a different place, and his mother, who probably hadn’t actively been thinking about a change herself, was always up for a switch of scene, and soon found herself a vocation in the next place they stayed. They were the artist types both; but often neither worked such jobs, even though the work they sought and found was always interesting and unusual. Wade’s father had once managed a tarot-card reader’s appointment book, and during that same chapter in their lives his mother had simultaneously worked as an exotic dancer and co-managed an organic, hemp-incorporating restaurant.

Wade glanced ruefully at his gas gauge. It was running dangerously low, even for him--his truck had been known to run on fumes for hours.

He caught his mother’s signal from the driver’s side of the Vista Cruiser just out of the corner of his eye. It was a hand with four fingers up.

‘Four more clicks,’ Wade murmured to himself. He was certain they’d make it.

The house was just on the outskirts of the village of Trensten, as close a cross, and as far removed municipal and rural can be when they mesh. The rest was surrounded by farm country to the East and woods just behind the house in the West, extending farther than anyone could see. To the North was the rest of Trensten, with the hub of the small place about a mile down crude, but well cared for, dirt roads. The South was a hybrid of the East and West.

It was a little scrappy. The realtor HAD, as any honest-to-goodness realtor worth his salt would, mentioned its slight tatter. He’d also mentioned that it hadn’t been lived in for over seven years--not by people, anyway. There was another house directly next door to the South, and then the rest got swallowed up by nature. House to the North were a good walk away, but you could still see them.

Wade was glad to find the house generally bare of rodents inside. There was some evidence of their comings and goings, but it didn’t seem recent and would be easy enough to clean up.

The front door brought them into a moderate living room space, led them through a kitchen, and upstairs to the bathrooms and three bedrooms. His parents would claim two of the three, using one as a sleeping area and the other for their collective studio/study area. Since they got the most room, they let Wade choose which room he wanted for himself first. He chose the room with windows looking out on their neighbours’ house. As he set his suitcases down, he noticed a girl sitting in the window in the house across from his. It was even level with his room, and he could see into the room perfectly. The girl smiled warmly and waved, and he waved back. Then she disappeared into somewhere in the room.

Unpacking would be easy. He didn’t have much to his name.

The neighbour girl rearranged her room a lot. Wade was amused yet puzzled to look out his window into her room and see that the furniture had been dragged into different positions yet again. Her bed was now facing the window against the opposite wall and no longer under the window frame, where it had been previously. Now she could see the window straight in front of her from bed, if she wanted to. Before that, he hadn’t even been able to see any evidence of a bed in her room.

Evidently she had forgotten that people lived next door again now, as the house his family now lived in had stood vacant for several years, and having people next door must take some getting used to, he reasoned. That or she didn’t care who saw her naked body when she dropped a bath towel or changed for bed.

Wade had not meant to see her, or to spy--the first time, he’d simply glanced outside while tuning his guitar that night and seen a flash of bare, tanned skin in the adjacent window. Immediately his curiosity was piqued, and he leaned closer to the window through half-closed curtains.

The only thing Wade saw of the neighbour girl that night was her breasts. They were tanned and round and voluptuous, but not huge--he thought they were perfect. Wade could almost feel them in his hands as he looked at her, could feel the soft, malleable flesh in his palms tipped with raspberry-coloured nipples which hardened against his touch, hardened as they were now--he guessed that her room was chilly, but preferred to imagine they were erect from arousal.

They were the first breasts he’d seen in ‘real life.’ Somehow knowing that they belonged to a real person, someone Wade could maybe meet and talk to and maybe do more with, made seeing them all the more exciting and erotic. Then the girl found the nightshirt she wanted, slipped it over her head and climbed into bed, and the moment was gone. Wade shut his curtains quickly, heart hammering and slightly flushed. He was only a little surprised to find himself hard beneath his jeans. But he made short work of that, cutting back the gasp that finished him. He imagined spurting onto her breasts and came surprisingly quickly.

The shout seemed to be only a few feet from him, and Wade nearly smashed his head on the oil pan of his truck as he sat up. Barely missing it, he ducked out from under the vehicle, wiping oily hands on already soiled jeans. He was sure he looked a mess, covered everywhere in sweat, oil, and transmission fluid.

In his disorientation, Wade hadn’t realized that the shout hadn’t been for him. A woman was standing on the back porch of the house next door, about twenty feet away from where his truck was parked.