Chapter 1

Little sisters are generally expected to be thorns in an adolescent male’s side. I’m John Ellery. Sixteen and a bit. The age has bearing on the story and the grammar and vocabulary are evidence of my scholastic abilities.

You might not know that in my home state of Louisiana, at age sixteen you can get an intermediate driver’s license. This is FREEDOM. Restrictions, like no driving between 11 PM and 5 AM without an adult, and only ONE passenger under 21 years old after 6 PM unless a family member.

You do realize that a kid with a driver’s license is going to keep Mom or Dad from having to do taxi duty for little sister who’s involved and actually adept at athletics, at least volleyball and gymnastics.

Volleyball’s a school thing. Gymnastics is on the side.

Me? Used to be pretty good at soccer. Football, you know, played with feet.

But back to the story. I got my driver’s license, intermediate though it might be, two whole days after my birthday. The parents graciously let me revel in my new-found independence by tossing me the keys to Mom’s mini-van the following Friday.

Ain’t nothing that impresses your peers like a mom-mobile.

The next week it started.

“Johnny, here’s the deal. You can drive the van to school, but after school you pick up Jeannie at middle school and bring her to gymnastics. Then you bring her home.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Tuesday.

“Johnny, Jeannie’s got a volleyball practice after school Wednesday. Pick her up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Friday I was told to take the bus to school. When I got home there was a nondescript little grey Japanese sub-compact sitting in the driveway, Dad’s Beemer and Mom’s new SUV were in the garage.

I know they’d been talking about Mom getting a new car, so I understood the sparkly new SUV. I was thinking that surely it would be of higher status than a mini-van. That left me looking at the little bug-sized sub-compact, thinking, “Naaaahhhh!”

When I walked in, Mom called me into the den where she and Dad were sitting.

Dad was smiling. “Here’s your keys.”

“Keys?”

“Yeah. That’s your car in the driveway.”

“My car?”

“Yours.” Mom smiled in assent.

“Gosh! Thanks!”

“And son,” Dad intoned, “Like everything in life, there are strings attached.”

“I thought so,” I said, still smiling. Yeah, okay, it wasn’t bright blue with a spoiler and ground effects and underlights and hopped up engine, but it WAS wheels.

“You still get to run errands for us.”

That ‘errand’ thing, that’s parent-speak for ‘provide a taxi service for your sister.’

“And we’ll put gas in it and take care of insurance.”

Not a bad deall

Made sure my schoolwork didn’t suffer, and per instruction, I’d pick up Jeannie, drop her at a destination, be there when she finished.

Then, “Johnny, why’n’cha stay and watch the volleyball game? Mom and Dad are gonna miss it. I’d kinda like to have SOMEBODY there.”

I do kind of dote on the baby sister. Yeah, she’s an over-compensated (read ‘spoiled’) brat sometimes, but she’s actually pretty easy to live with. Thirteen and a half, and has a circle of friends – several circles, actually, with school and volleyball and gymnastics.

So I complied.

Okay. I’m sixteen, right? Male. Being academically capable, that’s MY forte’ in school, that puts me outside the range of the popular guys. I’m not an athlete, gave up soccer when it started to interfere with academics, so my active sex life exists only in my head. I did all the expected things, fantasized about any of a large number of female classmates, whacked off every night and at opportune times during the day, you know. Normal guy.

But now I’m sitting in the gym bleachers watching two crews of middle school girls play volleyball. Some of them, like Jeannie, are quite athletic – slim, even a bit muscled, and there are tits. A wide range of tits, from pretty close to flat (Jeannie again) to some that did some bouncing in the exertions of the game.

Wasn’t long before I was watching the game more than my iPhone.

A couple of days later, it was gymnastics. No, not a meet. Those were on weekends and usually a family trip to wherever the meet was being held. This was just practice. I found seating next to some parents, mostly moms. One dad. He was doing something on a laptop while his daughter was doing her training.

Me? Athletic young girls. Only three of them were Jeannie’s age. Jeannie’s pretty good. Trophies and stuff good. And that ‘young’ thing? We’re talking a couple of years younger than me. Of course there’s a gulf between sixteen and twelve or thirteen. If you were to add four years to each number, the significance would be much less.

What I’m saying is that observing my sister and her cohorts was not a totally unpleasant thing. As a matter of fact, I was cheering their successes on the volleyball court at their next game.

Hey! It’s MY sister! Anything she accomplishes, is, by some measure, a reflection on me.

After the event – game, or practice – Jeannie and I often stopped by a hamburger joint for a drink. Sometimes we had one of her friends with us. Driver’s license restrictions limited us to only one passenger who’s not a family member after 6 PM. Usually on these trips I was in the front of the car by myself, two teen girls in the back seat, giggling and exchanging conversations I couldn’t make out. When we dropped off the other girl, Jeannie would get in front with me for the ride home.

“Reena thinks you’re hot.” Shock.

“Huh?”

“You know. Reena.”

“Yeah, I know Reena.” She’s mixed race – half oriental, willowy, black hair, exotic eyes. She was one of the gymnastics bunch.

“She says you’re hot. I told her that you were my brother, and ‘hot’ wasn’t part of your being.”

“Thank you for your support,” I replied. “Why are you telling me this, anyway?”

“So you can protect yourself.”

“Protect myself? Maybe what I need is a thirteen-year-old girlfriend.”

“No, you don’t.” With certain air of authority. “She’s scatter-brained.” ‘Scatter-brained’ was a Dadism and he says he inherited it from his dad.

“Maybe I’m not looking for intellectual engagement.”

“You’re better than that.”

Even with my own wheels, my social life didn’t take a big spike. I often grabbed a school buddy for a movie or a trip to the mall, which was also a movie venue. I even got an occasional girl to go on one of these adventures, hoping that maybe something serious would develop, but it never did.

But it wasn’t a BAD life.

Big brother duties, though.

“Johnny, can you go get Jeannie from Reena’s?”

“Sure Mom.”

Jeannie had done yet another sleepover at Reena’s house. They rotated, sometimes just one of her friends, sometimes two or three.

So today I dressed, jeans, sweatshirt, sneakers, hopped in my car, buzzed over to Reena’s house, and knocked.

Got Reena and Jeannie at the door.

Now that I know what to look for, yeah, Reena’s giving me her very best ‘look’. Since Jeannie jumped to hug me, Reena saw it as an opening, so I hugged her, too. She was just a little bit clingy, but she let me go before I protested. Jeannie noticed, though.

In the car she said, “NOW do you believe me?”

“Okay, that was slightly obvious.”

“What’re you gonna do about it?”

“Nothing. That’s a way to get into a lot of trouble. Guys who mess with thirteen-year-old girls can end up in jail.”

“That’s what I meant. You’re smarter than that. But she’d ... I don’t think she even knows what it’s all about, but she thinks you’re hot and if you wanted to, she’d do anything you wanted.”

“Not the basis for a stable relationship,” I said. “Have to sneak...”

“She asked me to have her over to spend the night, so you ‘n’ her could...”

“Oh, lord...” I sighed. “I’d have to go sleep in the garage or something...”

“You’d have sex with Reena in the GARAGE?!?”

“I’m not planning on having sex with Reena anywhere.”

She giggled. “I think it’s funny ... You’re my big brother and you’re trying to be decent...”

“I’m trying not to go to jail or get killed by Reena’s dad...”

Giggle. “That, too ... but you know it’s happening all the time ... people havin’ sex...”

“I know.”

“Besides, I don’t think Reena would be good for you.”

“Why not? Willing, interested...”

“Curious, flighty...”

“What’s Dad say? Maybe not Missus Right, just Mizz Right Now?”

“Are you really like that?”

“No...” I admitted.

She looked at me with an expression I didn’t quite parse. “No, you’re really not.”

So, anyway, my life was pretty good, almost normal for a mid-range teen boy.

Jeannie’s? She hit her fourteenth birthday. She didn’t go crazy in her ideas for a celebration. Simple. Slumber party – her, three of her closest friends, including Reena, who I am not more aware of.

Friday night. Jeannie’s room was modified by the addition of a big inflatable mattress, part of the household’s emergency preparedness stash, because four of them wouldn’t fit on Jeannie’s terribly cute single bed with the frilly bedclothes. The king air mattress would hold the four of them.

The kitchen was stocked with an inventory of specified snacks and drinks and Mom and Dad issued rules – sound level and warnings against destructive activities, and Jeannie and crew were turned loose for the evening.

Driving rules of my license put a stop to “Let’s get Johnny to take us somewhere.”

So the revelry was contained to Jeannie’s room, with occasional excursions to the bathroom, sometimes as a group, sometimes individually.

Across the hall from me.

My door stayed closed.

I half expected an incursion from Reena sometime during the evening, or even late at night.