Chapter 1

I really got to know Mary beginning the first week after Winter Break during our senior year of High School. I had been bored for months in my AP Calculus class and had brought the new Butcher novel I had received for Christmas to read as the teacher droned on. Turns out she didn’t really appreciate my blatant inattention and I ended up in after school detention. Not all bad as I was able to read in peace there as I was the only one so sentenced and the monitor didn’t care. Mary was sitting on the floor in the gap between two banks of lockers bawling her eyes out and looking absolutely miserable when I was finally released and headed towards the parking lot.

The wild thing about Mary’s distraught appearance was that she was still the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. In person, in a magazine, or on the screen didn’t matter. She blew them all away. She always wore a knee length skirt to school as far as I could remember. Her buttoned and collared shirts never exposed the color of her bra underneath even when they were white. Both were at odds with the usual attire of the “pretty girls” in school. She gave the impression of a well put together all-girls private school student.

Not really a surprise as that was her life until the beginning of that school year. I didn’t know the particulars but I did know that she had transferred into my boring public school in September after spending her previous five years at the exclusive and expensive protestant school in town. People here took their religion seriously and also took the idea of “training up a child in the way they should go” to extremes.

At any rate, there she sat with her head resting on her knees and arms wrapped around her shins as she cried. I knew she was out of it as the polished tile floor gave a great reflected view of her inner thighs and she either didn’t notice or care. I’m kind of ashamed to admit I more than noticed. Before you get too far into calling me a cad, I also sat down next to her to see if there was anything I could do to help. I may be a total pervert but you don’t know me well enough yet to judge.

I had never been subjected to female distress like this before and wasn’t sure how or where to start so I just sat with her for a while. If you are getting the idea that I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed when it came to social interactions you would be right. Before I could figure out what to say Mary beat me to the punch.

“What are you doing here?” Mary’s voice was harsh, like she had smoked a whole pack of cigarettes one after another. She had lifted her head and was staring at me with red bleary eyes. Once again, I was taken by her beauty despite the circumstances.

“Um” I responded intelligently. I pulled myself together as well as I could before continuing. “I don’t know what happened and I don’t know if there’s anything I could do to help but if there is...”

Before I could finish my thought Mary cut me off. “There’s nothing you can do. Mrs. Brinkman made it clear that there’s nothing that anyone can do and even if there were she wouldn’t help the likes of me. Not after what my father did.” That seemed to break her once again and the sobbing that had paused when I sat down returned.

I didn’t know anything about her father or what he could have done but I did know Mrs. Brinkman. She was the college counselor at our school so I guessed it had something to do with college. Mary was in a few of my classes and seemed to be as advanced as I was in math, just in everything. Unless she did something like completely bomb the SAT, I was sure she could get into just about anywhere. Probably with a scholarship as well. All Mrs. Brinkman would have to do is point her in the right direction.

While I thought about that my mouth ran away from me as it is wont to do and spouted the first thing that floated across my peanut brain. “What did your dad do?”

Mary once again lifted her head to stare at me, this time there was a palpable sense of malice in her gaze. “My father, you know, the head pastor of the Holy Word Church.”

I uneasily looked back at Mary and confusedly repeated “head pastor? What did he do?”

“Where have you been? Everybody knows!”

I will note here that just about everyone in town did know, but I didn’t. I don’t know if it has been apparent but I’m kind of an introvert. Also, a nerd. Perhaps, a touch oblivious. Returning to the pending situation I just stared back at Mary uncomprehendingly, blinking like an owl.

Mary let out an exasperated breath and informed me “my father was arrested in July for conning millions of dollars out of old ladies in our church. My father still has millions in the bank but no one can tell if it’s really his or stolen. Those accounts in my father’s name are frozen but still count against me when it comes to college funding. Because of my father there’s no way I can afford college and no way for me to get out of this crap-ass-judgmental-town as Mrs. Brinkman was overjoyed to inform me.” Each repetition of “father” came out a little louder and with a little more rage behind it. Enough for me to realize that not only was Mary beautiful, she was scary too.

I tried to gather myself under her furious stare and did the guy thing of trying to find a solution to a problem that wasn’t mine and that I really should have stayed away from. The most I should have done, as I was told later, was sit there, listen, and agree with whatever she said. Instead, my mouth ran away from me again and, without conscious effort, opened to say “I have an idea that may help.”

While I did have an idea about a way Mary could earn a ton of money in a short enough time-frame to pay for college herself I really should have kept my mouth shut. My only excuse is that I was a teenage boy and even with the current drama going on a large part of my brain was still focused on the vision I saw beneath Mary’s skirt and how I wanted to see more.

My comment did focus Mary’s attention on me instead of the visions of whatever painful punishment she was picturing for her father. She softly demanded “what oh so wonderful idea have you had?”

By now I had second and even third thoughts about sharing said idea, but I couldn’t just brush her off after flapping my jaws like that. I also didn’t really want to get into it here in the hallway so I tried to stall in the hopes that she would just refuse or brush me off. “I need to do some research tonight to make sure my idea is really viable. Can you come over to my house after school tomorrow and we can go over it then?” My hope was that she would scoff, turn away, and that I would never have to really expound on my brief stint of madness. Instead, she dashed my hopes against the cliffs of despair.

“Fine” she said in that tone that all females seem to have. “Tomorrow then” she finished. She seemed to have gathered strength from the thought that at least someone was offering her a way out. Without appearing to shift her balance or prepare to move she was standing above me looking down. “Tomorrow. I’m warning you, it better be good, Dave.” There was just a touch of the emotion she had used when saying “father” behind her utterance of my name and I wanted to curl up into a ball and die. If she really showed up tomorrow, she was going to kill me.

That night I did try and think up another way, but I always ran into one insurmountable problem or another. It would take too long, or it required too much capital, or it relied on luck, or it was illegal. In the end I did look up everything I needed to for my idea to work and it really seemed like it would make money. Some of my “data” I had to guess at as the sites I looked at didn’t exactly publish their numbers but, after trying to sign up at a few places and looking at rates and traffic I had something at least.

I will admit, I didn’t sleep well and woke up a little bleary in the morning. After a cup of coffee before school it seemed like my mind was whirling a thousand miles an hour without stopping. I kept thinking about how Mary would react. What she would do to me for just the audacity to bring it up. Almost worse, I pictured what would happen if she went with it and agreed with me.

It was lunch before something jostled me from my fugue. Mary herself broke it by sitting down next to me. She was all business and without a greeting opened “I don’t know where you live and I take the bus to school.” There was no question or demand in her statement but I felt compelled to answer anyway.

“I can take you. Meet me at the student parking lot after last bell.”

“Good” she responded. Then she turned to her lunch and we didn’t speak another word until it was time to go to our next classes.

Our interactions after school went similarly. She calmly found me at the parking lot entrance and followed me to my beat-up sedan. The first words we exchanged were inside my house seated at the kitchen table when I offered her something to drink.

“Stop stalling, Dave.” She immediately called out my cowardice.

I took a deep breath and marched towards my doom. “I think you should make a website.” I tried to sound confidant but didn’t think I pulled it off.

“A website?” Now Mary was repeating what I said.

“Kind of like AllFans, if you’ve heard of it.” I could feel myself trying to cringe in my seat.

“AllFans” Mary stated slowly as if drawing out each vowel and consonant.

“It’s...”

“I know what it is!” Once again Mary cut me off. “Do you even know what you’re asking me? A preacher’s kid, doing porn!”

I wanted to sink down into the floor. I just knew that this would be all over the school on Monday and that I would never escape the pervert label. Thankfully it was still Friday and I had a whole weekend to anticipate my destruction. I was so focused on my own impending demise that I didn’t notice Mary’s expression change from disturbed to calculating.

“There’s more to this, Dave. You’re too smart to have that be the end of it. What else do you have, and tell me everything.”

I looked back at Mary and found more strength there than I had ever possessed. I gathered myself once again and went into my pitch. “My parents got me a major setup when I told them that I wanted to try and become a streamer. I have a great camera, microphone, mixer and everything needed to create a professional looking production. I started out streaming and thought I would instantly become a hit. I mean, I love games and I’m great at them. I even set up an account with the bank my mom works at to accept credit cards for all the merchandise I was sure I would sell.”

I knew I was losing Mary so I quickly moved on with what I had. “Turns out that I’m too shy in front of a camera to be a good streamer. You have to be a good performer as well as a good gamer. To try and counteract my shyness I wrote a program to change things about how I looked so that nobody could tell it was me. I hoped that would alleviate my anxiety but it didn’t have any effect.”

I could see the illumination on Mary’s face when I brought that point up. “So, all in all there’s a few parts to this idea. You could use my setup and program to create content that would be anonymous. I could create a website for you and we could use my credit card connection to collect the fees. The biggest issue is that you would have to be the one, err, performing.” I kind of ran down at the end and could feel my face burning up in an incredible blush.

Mary stared at me for much longer than I was comfortable with but at least she wasn’t hitting me. I could almost see the gears turning in her head as she thought about what I had suggested. The first thing she said was “would people really want to see me, doing that?” It was almost under her breath but my run-away mouth answered anyway.

“Hell yes!” I’m not sure where that came from. That’s not true, I knew exactly where that thought came from but I still don’t believe I actually said it.

Mary stared at me again before giving me the tiniest of nods. “I noticed a “we” in there, Dave. What do you expect to get from this. Besides obviously getting your hell yes.”

I’m going to pause here and talk about how brave I felt Mary was. The night before I had looked up what I could of her family and history. As far as I could tell she had been brought up in the most zealous, conservative, and stifling environment possible. As the preacher’s kid Mary not only had to be perfect but she had to be seen to be perfect. Cue the well-dressed model student she was. With that background Mary was contemplating taking her clothes off for men, and maybe women, to earn money to chase her dreams. It had to be incredibly frightening and she looked like she was going to do it anyway. All I can say is, respect.

“Well, I was thinking something like twenty percent.”

“Twenty percent!”

This is where I presented the results of my research. “Normally AllFans takes a cut from each person on their website. I’m not sure exactly what it is but it seems that it’s at least the same twenty percent I’m asking. I’m going to be editing, posting, and building your site. Beyond that I’m giving you free use of the software I built to mask your identity. In addition, we can run all payments through my already existing transaction setup which only takes five percent. Most credit payments taken by, err, adult sites, take about nineteen percent just to process the transactions.”

Mary sat and thought for a while before seeming to psych herself up. “Fine, fine. Let’s do this.” She squared her shoulders and pinned me with her eyes before asking, “where do you want to fuck me?” Mary’s expressive face was now challenging me. I had never heard her even gently cuss before and her question rocked me.

I just about fell out of my chair and blubbered “wait, wait. That’s not. That’s. That’s not what I. We. You.” I took a calming deep breath. “I don’t think that sex will make the most money” I managed to get out. “At least not right away. And not with me!”

Mary looked a little put out at that. “So, you weren’t just going to film yourself with me to sell online?”

“No, no” I tried to explain. “I really think you would make more with a slower, almost teasing focus. At least to start.”

“Explain.” Once again, the short, concise verbiage from Mary.

“To make enough for college I think you need to take a longer view. Customers are going to want to see you and see as much of you as they can. You’re absolutely gorgeous.” I don’t know where I got the balls to speak so frankly although it may have been that I wasn’t going to be an outcast on Monday with Mary agreeing. “You can easily give off a “girl next door” vibe as well. We should set up a progression with the videos so that people will want to come back and buy the next video and the next one after that.”

“You seem to have put a lot of thought into this.” She seemed to settle now that immediate sex was off the table and continued, “so what’s first?”

I felt a little mercenary but this was going to be a lot of work and I thought it had to be answered. “Um, is the twenty percent, ok?”

“Fine. Twenty will be fine.” I was starting to really dislike like that word fine. “What’s next.”

“First we should go up to my room and seat you in front of the camera with my program up and decide on what changes you want to use to hide your identity.”

“I don’t care about that” she said. “Those judgmental biddies around town can bluster all they want. I haven’t done anything to earn their scorn and they still lump me in with my father. Well, haven’t done anything yet” Mary grinned.

“It’s not them that I’m worried about. You don’t want some random guy walking up to you and assuming you’re easy or a prostitute just because they saw your video. Especially when you get to college. I hear drunken frat boys are stupid at the best of times.”

Mary’s eyes opened wider “you’re right. Let’s go see this magic of yours.”

I got up and led her up the stairs towards the space I shared with my sister Amy who was away at college. I opened my bedroom door for her and really took her in. She was about 5’10” with an athletic build. Her posture was excellent and her silky blond hair in a high pony-tail bobbed with each step. A light tan set off her features while her crystal-clear blue eyes were deep and expressive. It was the middle of winter so her tanned look must be innate. She had an oval face that was perfectly proportioned. Her figure was impressive with an expansive chest and a narrow waist that flared out below. What I had seen of her legs were smoothly muscled and just about mouthwatering. It was truly a shame that we were going to need to disguise some of Mary’s features but it had to be done if only for her safety.

I had brought over my sister’s chair and placed it near my desk just in case so we both could sit. The computer was already on and it was just moments before a live video of Mary’s face was on my second monitor.

“The first thing I suggest is to change your hair and eye colors. It’s an easy change that has a dramatic effect on your appearance. We can try most any combination. What do you want to start with?”

Mary seemed to really study herself in the monitor and didn’t respond for a while. When she did it was to throw the whole thing back at me. “You have been thinking about this, right?”

“Um, yes?”

“And you are the target audience, right?”

“Yes.”

“Show me what you would pick and tell me why.”

“Ahh, ok. I can do that.” I quickly made some selections in my program and Mary’s blond darkened to an auburn, almost burnished copper color. Her eyes similarly darkened to a warm hazel with a hidden touch of green. Gently tanned skin lightened a bit more and a spread of freckles sprouted on her face. “If we are going to go with the “girl next door” idea I think this would work best. How you look right now would actually be best but we need to change things. The idea is to look like someone they may know, or know of. Not the ultra-contrast of jet-black hair with ice blue eyes or anything like that.”

Mary looked at her updated avatar and kind of twisted in her seat. The mirrored actions of the avatar seemed to have mesmerized her and she made all kinds of different facial expressions into the camera. Eventually she turned to me and said, “this is amazing. Your computer can do this right away, as I’m sitting here?”

“Yeah, real time adjustments.”

“It all looks so real too.” She nodded towards the screen, “that’s a real person but it isn’t me.”

“That’s the idea.”

She seemed to brighten for the first time since I found her crying the afternoon before. “Ok, I feel better about this. I can do it.” She looked around at my obviously male bedroom and asked, “do we record now? Here?”

“No way” I answered. “Amy is away but her room is still set up and doesn’t have World of Warsong posters on the wall. We want a space that looks like a girl’s bedroom, not this. I’ll set everything up there and we can try tomorrow.”

“Whew, a whole day to think about it” Mary whispered to herself. “You seem to be taking over the role of director as well as IT and have a plan. How should I prepare? I’ve seen some porn, do I have to, ahem, shave?”

“Ahh, no. Not right away anyway and even then, I think it should be your decision. For tomorrow I was thinking you wouldn’t even take anything off. We want to build up the tease remember?”

Now Mary looked confused. “What, exactly, do you expect me to be doing?”

“Ahh, I pictured...” I stumbled over myself. “I thought you could maybe be wearing a tank top and loose shorts. Running shorts perhaps. You would be reading, sitting up in bed and then progress from there. You wouldn’t remove your clothes at all.”

Mary still looked unconvinced. “Where do you come in?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. I’m not letting anyone else know what we’re doing. Whom else would it be?”

“No, no, no. You would be by yourself.”

After a pause Mary sputtered, “you want me to masturbate?”

“Yes? You seem to think that’s somehow worse? Isn’t it better because there isn’t anyone else?”

Mary shook her head, “Fine. I don’t think you know what you’re asking but I can do this.”

We agreed on 10:00 am for me to pick her up again and then sat in silence. There was an ocean’s worth of things to say and at the same time, nothing left to say at all. I stood up and guided Mary to the other door in my room that led to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom between my room and Amy’s. I showed her the exceptionally girly room my sister decorated. The focus was the queen size bed. It was covered in an ivory duvet with random wildflowers stitched in here and there. The pillows had matching cases with frilly lace edges that I knew would dig into my neck if I were to try and use them. Mary examined the room and seemed to approve so we left through Amy’s door to the hall.

There wasn’t much conversation as I drove Mary home, both of us lost in our thoughts and wondering what the new day would bring. I had a lot of work to do when I got home. Between setting up Amy’s room as an impromptu studio and creating a website my evening was full. Thankfully the bank had an extension I could just plug into the site that would collect payment info directly and securely. I did consider myself a computer geek but I was in no way up to securing a database of credit cards.

Luckily the layout of our house and my parent’s habitual behavior would help in this our new business. My sister and I shared the truncated second story of the house. We each had a bedroom and the shared bath along with another shared space that had a couch and TV. My parent’s bedroom was situated in the part of the ground floor that was a single story and they had long abandoned even coming upstairs once Amy and I proved that we would keep it clean.

It was well past midnight when I felt things were as prepared as they could be and must have been another hour or two before I managed to fall asleep. I woke up late and just as groggy as I had the day before. I had to scurry around in a rush to make it to Mary’s on time. Instead of the tank-top and shorts I was expecting she was in her usual uniform of skirt and buttoned shirt. She did have her backpack with her though and I assumed she had her costume there.