Chapter 1

Mary and I talked every day for the first few weeks after we got home. Sometime in September, her parents got their phone bill, and my parents got ours as well. Needless to say, Mom and Dad were not pleased with a phone bill that was almost five hundred dollars. They knew I was talking to her, but they didn’t know that every time Mary called me, I called her right back. We were limited to thirty minutes a call. We thought that if we each called, that was an hour. Thirty minutes was never enough, not even close.

“Samuel!” Dad roared up the stairs. “Get down here right now!”

Oh shit!

“What did you do?” Sara looked at me with wide, panicked eyes.

“I don’t know, but Dad sounds pissed,” I answered her, my voice suddenly shaky.

“Not in five minutes, not in a second, right now or you’re going to get it, Sam! Do you hear me?” Dad yelled when I didn’t run downstairs right away.

I set down my controller and hurried downstairs to see Dad pacing and Mom sitting at the table.

“Explain this!” Dad said, shoving this month’s phone bill into my hands.

I didn’t know what it was at first, it was just a folded-up letter. I turned it over, scanned the page and my eyes went wide with surprise. Four hundred eighty-seven dollars and fourteen cents. I looked to Mom who was watching me with pleading eyes. I then shifted to look at my dad, whose hands were folded across his chest.

“We told you that you could talk to Mary for only thirty minutes at a time,” Mom said, drawing my attention back to her. “Even if you talked to her for forty minutes every other day, the bill wouldn’t have been that high, Sam. The bill is almost five hundred dollars, five hundred! This is not what we all agreed on. Mary’s Mom and Dad agreed to the plan for the two of you to keep in touch. I have half a mind to tell you that you can no longer call her, if you are going to be doing this every month, abusing our trust. Your father and I need an explanation. Now.”

“I was only talking to her for thirty minutes,” I pleaded, but the look Mom gave me and the sudden step forward Dad took spurred me on to talk a bit more. “It’s true, I swear! We only talked for thirty minutes when I called her.”

“According to this, you talked to her for an hour, every single night!” Mom told me, shaking what looked like three or four pages of phone records that came with the bill every month.

“She called me first, and then when her thirty minutes were up, I would call her right back,” I raced to tell them before they assumed anything else.

“You did what?” Dad asked, which was more of a statement than a question.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was going to be so expensive. If I—”

“Yes, you did, Sam. Don’t give me that,” Mom cut me off. “We told you and Sara for that matter. We know she is talking to Amy too when you call Mary. We did tell you about long-distance calls before we agreed to all this.”

“You are going to pay this, all of it!” Dad told me.

“I don’t have that much money! How can I pay that? I only have forty-two dollars. That’s it,” I whined.

“Sara, get your little butt down here, pronto!” Dad called up the stairs to where Sara was probably hiding in my room.

“Coming Dad!” I heard Sara’s muffled reply from upstairs instantly.

The thumping of Sara’s feet and she hurried down the stairs warned us of her coming arrival before we could see her. Sara came running to the room where I was standing. Mom was leaning back in her chair and Dad was still standing like a sentinel.

“What’s going on, Dad?” Sara asked quickly.

“This!” Dad took the phone bill from me and thrust it into Sara’s hands.

“Holy—” Sara gasped.

“Exactly!” Dad cut her off. “Care to explain this?”

“Sam and Mary—”

“Don’t give your mom and me that crap. We know you have been talking to Amy too.”

“Not that much, I swear!” Sara answered, her eyes defiant but worried.

“That right there,” Mom indicated the bill Sara was holding, “Is unacceptable.”

“You and Sam are going to have to pay for that,” Dad said matter-of-factly.

“What, how? I don’t have five hundred dollars!” Sara exclaimed.

“Then you two are going to work it off, plain and simple.”

“But—” Sara tried to answer but was cut off by Dad.

“Not buts, young lady. You will do it, or you won’t be able to use the phone.”

“Mom!” Sara pleaded to Mom, thinking she would help.

“Don’t give me that look, young lady,” Mom said, brokering no argument. “You made your bed, you, and Sam both. Now you have to lie in it.”

Sara turned to me and gave me a look that I can only describe as pure, unrestrained, evil. I shied away and didn’t meet her eyes. This was my fault, I knew it, but at the very moment, I didn’t have the backbone to admit it.

“It’s getting late,” Dad announced, his posture loosening slightly, but it was obvious to anyone with eyes that he was still upset. “Tomorrow, I expect a plan on how you two are going to pay that bill.”

“Go on up to bed, hurry up,” Mom said and stood up, yawned, and shooed us up the stairs towards our rooms.

I wasn’t surprised at all when Sara went into her room and shut her door hard. Not quite slamming it, that would have drawn Mom and Dad’s ire even more, but the message she was putting out was clear. I closed my door and sat down on the floor between the two discarded Nintendo controllers that were still on the floor.

How in the hell am I going to earn five hundred dollars! I didn’t have a single idea that made sense. Working for Grandpa at camp made sense, but Mom and Dad knew that would be more fun on the weekends than work. Maybe I can go sack groceries at Hinky Dinky. There are kids my age doing that. Thinking about that prospect, it would take forever to make enough money there. I needed to think of something else, something to make money, faster.

I was sitting there long enough to jump and feel stiff when Sara opened my door and poked her head in.

“Can I come in?” Sara asked quietly, and I nodded. “Have you thought of anything we can do to pay Mom and Dad back?”

“Not really, besides getting a job at the Hinky Dinky sacking groceries.”

“No!” Sara replied, shaking her head quickly. “We need something better than that. You know how much money we need right?”

“Of course, I do, I just don’t know how to get it.”

“You know Mom and Dad are not going to let us talk to Mary and Amy until we get the money, right?”

“I know, hopefully Mary’s parents will still let her call us. Even if we can’t call her and Amy like we promised. She is going to be really sad when I tell her I can’t call anymore.”

“She didn’t call tonight, so I wouldn’t bet on it,” Sara said with reluctance in her voice.

“I think I have an idea,” I told her, not quite sure if it would work, or if Dad would allow it.

“What are you thinking?”

“Do you trust me?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I will tell you tomorrow morning at breakfast. I think it will work.”

“Are you sure?” Sara asked, her hesitancy obvious. “I don’t want Dad even more mad at us.”

“If he says yes, it will work.” I tried to give her a reassuring smile. “We will have to work hard, but I think it’s our best option, honestly.”

“Okay, let’s get some sleep. I’m tired.”

“Are you going to sleep in here ... or go back to your bed?”

“What do you think?” she replied quickly, and I smiled and scrambled up into my bed and held the covers up inviting her to join me.

Sara climbed in and joined me under the covers. Her warm body snuggled up against mine. She was positioned with her back towards me, and she laid on her side. Her firm, round ass was pressed against my groin, but there was nothing sexual about it. I wormed an arm under her head and wrapped the other around her waist and held her close to me. Her long hair was always in my face when I held her like this, but she loved it and I did too, even if her hair drove me crazy and tickled my nose in the middle of the night, causing me to wake up.