Chapter 1

Life can take sudden changes in direction without warning. That’s what happened to me one night as my sister and I were watching a movie in the ‘romantic comedy’ genre.

We watch a lot of movies on Netflix. That’s because my dad bought an old farm house because it was cheap. He didn’t buy the whole farm, just the house, on a couple of acres of land, and we live eighteen miles from town. We, in this case, is my mom and dad, and me and my sister, Emma. My dad is an engineer, and he goes from project to project, all over the US, so he’s gone a lot. My mom is a nurse and works at the hospital in town. Dad had this idea that, if we owned our own acre or two, he could build our dream house. He’s working on that, and that’s great, but it will still be eighteen miles from town, you know?

Life in the wilderness for two teenagers isn’t what I’d call stimulating. I know it isn’t really a “wilderness” but it might as well be. I’m older than Emma by a year, but I’m not sixteen yet, so I can’t get my driver’s license yet. That means when both parents are gone, we are more or less trapped out in the country. Hence all the movies.

Before we came here, we lived in Korea, where Dad was working on a big project that took four years. We lived in an apartment like anybody else, and there was an American school there we went to school at. Most of the other kids’ parents were military, and they came and went, so we never really had close friends. What I learned in Korea is that the Korean culture and American cultures are so different it’s hard to make close friends that way, too. The language barrier is hard, too.

It was good to be back where people spoke English, but we were still isolated. Since Emma and I were used to that, it wasn’t as terrible as other people might have thought of it.

So, anyway, we were watching this movie and a kissing scene came on. It was a close-up and it looked like they were eating each other’s lips or something.

Emma sighed, “I wonder what that feels like.”

“You don’t know?”

She glanced at me.

“Of course not. I’ve never kissed anybody. You probably haven’t, either.”

“I kissed a girl in Korea,” I shot back.

“Oh really? Who?”

“Nancy Wilson,” I said, proudly. “It was at the Harvest Dance. We were in a dark corner where the teachers couldn’t see us and I kissed her.”

“Big whoop,” said my sister. “One kiss that lasted all of three seconds.”

“Still, it was a kiss,” I said. “You’ve really never kissed a boy?”

“When would I do that?” she asked. “I can’t go on dates. I didn’t go to the Harvest Dance because I wasn’t in high school, yet.”

“Why does it matter?” I asked. “It’s not like there are guys lining up to kiss you now.”

“Maybe they will line up to kiss me some day!” she shot back. “It would be nice if I didn’t make a fool of myself when that happens.”

“Watch and learn,” I said. I stopped the movie and rewound it. The face-eating kiss happened again.

“They’re just opening and closing their mouths,” she said. “It’s like they’re going ‘Ya, ya, ya’ while the camera moves in on them.”

“Maybe they are,” I said.

That was it for that night. I didn’t really think about it. I wasn’t allowed to date yet, either, and wouldn’t be until I was sixteen and a half and had at least straight Bs in school. That eventuality was at least eight months in the future, assuming I could make the grades.

Three days later, when we got on the bus to ride home, my sister plopped down beside me.

“I tried to kiss John Evert under the stairwell today.”

I looked at her.

“How’d that go?”

“He said my braces would probably rip his lips to shreds and he’d bleed to death.” She frowned. “I hate my braces.”

“I don’t see how they could rip his lips to shreds if they don’t rip your lips to shreds,” I said. “Maybe I’m just used to them, but when you don’t smile I can’t even tell you have them.”

“I’ll never learn to kiss,” she complained. “I’ll have these stupid braces for two more years.”

“I’m sure Dad would say you don’t need to learn to kiss for at least two more years,” I said.

She elbowed me.

We rode home and I didn’t think any more about Emma and her kissing issues.

A week after that, again on the bus home, she leaned against me and said, under her voice, “I kissed Roger Sills today.”

“You’re really worked up about this kissing business, aren’t you?” I said.

“Well?” she replied, as if it should be obvious that it was important business indeed, and anyone with a brain would recognize that.

“So,” I sighed. “How’d it go?”

“I suspect it was like when you kissed what’s-her-name at the Harvest Dance.”

“That bad, huh?”

“It was awful. I’m pretty sure he’ll never want to kiss me again.”

“And you want to kiss him again?”

“I want to kiss somebody again,” she moaned.

That night, when we gathered to watch TV again, my sister was in her pajamas. They were actual pajamas, with a button-up top and long pants. They were Korean, made of soft flannel, and they were the knockoff version of Hello Kitty. Hello Kitty is Japanese, and Koreans still hate the Japanese from World War Two, so if the Japanese come up with something that will sell, the Koreans copy it and make it their own.

Anyway, when Emma walked in and plopped down, I happened to be watching her chest. It wasn’t on purpose, or anything. That’s just where my eyes decided to look. Her boobs bounced under the flannel and I had this sudden epiphany that my little (girl) sister was all grown up! She had boobs! And they weren’t just little swells that a training bra could tame. They were big enough to shake and shimmy when she moved.

I assumed she wasn’t wearing a bra. If I was a girl, I wouldn’t wear a bra unless somebody forced me to, and certainly not to bed. But I’m not a girl, so maybe I don’t get it.

Dad was gone on a trip and Mom was at work, so it was just Emma and me again. Those breasts were kind of fascinating, once I noticed them. In fact, Emma, herself, was kind of fascinating, once I noticed that she was a young woman, and not just a girl anymore.

“What?” came her voice.

I jerked as I realized I’d been staring at her.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just noticed you’re kind of growing up and I was surprised.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I’m growing up. What does that mean?”

I was flustered. I don’t know why I was flustered, but I blurted something that, had I not been flustered, I’m sure I wouldn’t have blurted.

“Tits!” I blurted. “You have tits!”

“Bobby!” she said, censure heavy in her voice. “They’re called breasts, not tits, and I’ve had them for years.”

“Of course,” I said. “Sorry.” I didn’t want to continue this conversation.

“Why were you looking at my breasts?” she asked. She did want to continue the conversation for some reason.

“I just happened to be looking at them when you sat down, and they bounced around,” I said. That sounded like a reasonable explanation to me.

“You happened to be staring at my boobs when I sat down?”

“They’re breasts, not boobs,” I said.

“Not the same thing at all,” she said. “Why were you staring at my boobs when I sat down?”

“I wasn’t staring at them,” I groaned. “I happened to be looking at them just as you sat down. They bobbed around under your PJs and it made me think of something, that’s all.”

“What did it make you think of?” She would not let this die.

“It made me wonder if you were wearing a bra or not, and then I thought probably not, because if I was a girl I’d never wear one unless somebody made me and certainly not to bed. That’s exactly what I thought, okay?”

“Breasts need support,” she said. “That’s what bras are for. If you don’t wear a bra, your breasts hurt and that’s no fun.”

“Do they hurt in bed at night?” I asked, acidly.

“No, of course not. I don’t wear a bra to bed.”

“Well, there you go,” I said. “You aren’t wearing a bra and your boobs bounced around when you sat down and I happened to notice it. That’s all it was. Don’t make a federal case out of it!”

“I’m not making a federal case out of it. You were staring at me and I wondered why, so I asked. That’s all I did.” She grinned. “I get it. I’ve watched you running on the treadmill and your junk flops all over the place.” She grinned some more.

I made a mental note to wear my jockeys under my running shorts from now on. I normally don’t wear underwear. It’s just one more layer I have to get through before I can pee and I read an article that said guys who wear tight underwear have lower sperm counts. So I don’t usually wear anything under my running shorts. We all used the treadmill for exercise if it was too cold to go outside.

I let it drop and turned the TV on.

“Let’s watch another movie with kissing in it,” said my sister. “I want to study it some more.”

“If you want to study it, you need to do it,” I teased. I knew she didn’t have any options to do “homework” on this subject. It was mean, but I was miffed at her.

“Who am I going to do it with?” she asked. “You?”

“Yeah, right,” I laughed. “I can just see that. We’d end up puking instead of kissing.”

“Maybe,” she said. She was distracted, clicking through the offerings on Netflix. “What’s this?” she asked.

There was a picture of some Asians on the thumbnail. It was called Cinderella and the Four Knights. She clicked on it to show the synopsis.

“It’s Korean,” she said.

When we were in Korea my mother had watched some Korean dramas, which is what they call them instead of soap operas. On Netflix they had English subtitles, which you had to have to know what was going on. Unless you could understand Hangul, which is what they speak over there. She thought they were fun because the translations were obviously off a bit. For example, an actor would ask a question, which got translated normally. Then another actor would go “Humph,” just one syllable, but the translation would be something like “I don’t think so” or “I didn’t ask him because I didn’t think it was important.” Then there would be these long set of spoken lines and the translation would be “No” or “Thank you.” Mom had tried harder than the rest of us to learn Hangul, but the subtitles weren’t that much help. I did learn ten ways to say “Thank you,” though each one had to be said in just the right context. When Mom watched, it was inevitable that we watched some of it, too. It wasn’t much help to me, either.

“Let’s see if Koreans kiss,” she said.

She clicked on it and started fast forwarding through. I gathered, from the snatches of subtitles I saw, that it was about four guys who all had the same father, but different mothers. They were rich heirs, which is a pretty common plot for Korean soap operas. The girl came from a family where she was the outcast, hence the Cinderella reference. The guys didn’t like each other but all four of them were involved with the girl, somehow. Emma was going too fast for me to really get what was going on, but it looked like this girl ended up living with the four heirs in a modern mansion for some reason. She was really cute and I resolved to watch the whole thing, later, just so I could see more of her. Anyway, it got to a kissing sequence and Emma stopped it, backed it up, and played it in normal time.

All they did was touch lips. I mean they literally just put their lips barely together, and then just froze. They didn’t even pucker. No face-eating here.

“I could do that much,” said Emma.

There were a few more kissing sequences, but they were all really tame in the same way. She clicked away from that movie, which annoyed me, because the Korean girl in that one was hot, hot, hot! Emma found an American movie that had a hot girl in it, too, so I didn’t care.

The kissing in that one was hot.

We were both teens, and teens have overflows of hormones. That is what I blame for what happened next.

My sister looked over at me and said, “Maybe we should try it together. I mean what could it hurt?”

“Really?”

What amazed me was that the idea of kissing my sister didn’t seem so ... stomach-turning ... after all. That’s those hormones I was talking about.

“Like you said, at its worst, we’ll just throw up.”

We stood up, facing each other awkwardly. I admit I was very aware she was naked under her pajamas. At least I thought she was. I put my hands on her waist and she put hers on my shoulders. We leaned in and brushed lips. Her eyes were closed. I know this because mine were open.

We leaned away and she opened her eyes.

“That seemed like a Korean kiss,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Maybe if we hug tighter,” she said.

She slid her hands behind me and pulled me against her. Her soft breasts crushed against my chest and, somehow, my hands ended up on her butt. The kiss lasted fifteen seconds or so, and this time, my eyes were closed. I took a deep breath through my nose as she stepped back. My hands slid past her hips to hang at my sides.

Her smile was contagious. “Not bad at all! What did you think? Were my braces awful?”

I smiled my agreement and said, quite truthfully, that I hadn’t even noticed her braces. I did not tell her it had caused my penis to start getting thick.

“Yeah, that was a lot better than the first,” she said. “Definitely better.”

Two days later after we got home from school Emma invited me to go back to kissing lessons.

We stood facing each other then I put my hands on her cheeks and pulled her close, like one of the kisses we’d seen on the movie. Her lips parted slightly just as our mouths met. I moved my hands to her hair and she held my waist. We didn’t hold our bodies against each other, this time, but the kiss was a whole lot longer and better than what we had done before.

When I pulled away from her, her eyes were bright as she critiqued “I think we are doing better.” I didn’t answer her, I just put my mouth on her again and held her a little closer as my lips slipped on hers. We kissed maybe 30 seconds, the longest yet then I let her go. Emma licked her lips, then ran the tip of her tongue across the rack covering her teeth.

“How do my braces feel?” she asked.

“I don’t remember,” I said. “I don’t really notice them when we kiss.”

“Good.” She smiled. “Now, kiss me again, and this time do it like you’re not my brother.”

I put my hands on her waist and my mouth on hers. We started out with pursed lips, which squashed, and then slid them across each other’s. Finally she flicked her tongue out and touched my lips with the tip.

She pulled back and laughed. “Ha! Much better.” She raised one eyebrow. “Kissing you doesn’t make me want to puke at all! Who knew?”

She wasn’t finished. We played at French kissing, without getting into it hot and heavy. After doing more kissing that started to feel like we were making out, we stopped. We had learned to kiss, we were ready for other boys and girls. I don’t know what she felt when we were doing it but there at the last, I got sort of turned on. My prick got heavy and my nuts tickled while I held her but I sure as hell didn’t tell her that. One thing I notice for sure, though. When a girl has on a bra, her boobs feel different pressed against you than when she doesn’t. I mean you can’t help but feel it. I didn’t notice her braces at all, but I sure noticed the firmness that bra caused.