Chapter 1

Laura Cutter was furious. Even her mother said that a twelve year old young lady who was beginning to develop like one ought to leave baseball to the boys! Can you just imagine in this day and age leaving everything to the boys just like it was 1800 or some ancient time like that! She snapped her long blond pigtails in the air like two ferocious whips as she turned on her heel and left the sand lot where the boys in the neighborhood were having a wonderful time playing baseball and wouldn't let her play! Well, she had the right to have a good time, too, didn't she? Why were all the fun things left for the boys? She liked to play hockey, or example, and what did her mother want her to do? She insisted that Laura take figure skating lessons! Of all the stupid things to do! What good are figure skating lessons? What you had to do was get the experience so that you were able to place the puck exactly where it was supposed to go. Figure skating lessons were sure a laugh when it came to doing anything useful like that! And now it seemed as if the whole world was against her playing baseball too!

"Hi, Janie," she suddenly called, seeing her pal on the way to the sand lot, coming at her in the other direction. "They won't let you play," she announced sourly. "Boys! They think they know everything!" She expected to see Janie get really angry, because she liked a good game of baseball or hockey as much as Laura did, but Janie seemed to be looking for someone.

"Hey, Laura, have you seen Mack?" Janie asked, not perturbed about the unfair conditions for girls in Hobbs Corner at all!

"I don't care if I never see him," Laura spat. "What's it to you to see a boy?"

Now Janie Farragut focused her attention on her old friend, seeing for herself that Mack Toohey was not at the sand lot.

"Well if you want to get to play with boys, you got to know how to go about doing it, Laura. You don't be stupid about it."

"Are you calling me stupid?" Laura said, blazing at her old friend, her buddy, she thought.

"Oh, naw, come off it, Laura. What I mean is these guys ain't the only guys in town, and there are other baseball games in other places."

"Where?"

"Other places I know," the dark-haired, freckle-nosed Janie whispered mysteriously. "Only you have to join the club to play."

"A baseball club?" Laura Cutter's pretty jaw dropped in surprise. Then her brow puckered. "What are you talking about?"

"That's why I'm looking for Mack Toohey," the darker girl explained. "See, to join a club, you have to be initiated and to do that, there's a number of steps, you know. Right now I'm supposed to be doing another step in my initiation."

"You mean that Mack Toohey is a member of this club?" Laura had always admired Mack Toohey. He was a real leader of the guys, and he was extra good in any sport, it seemed. He could play hockey like a Maple Leaf. The Maple Leafs were her favorite team.

"He sure is. He's the president, I think. I'm not sure. Before your initiation is finished, you don't get told very much, not even where you're going to play when you're finished."

"Why not?" Laura demanded. It sounded to her like more of male chauvinism.

"They have to be careful, of course. If you have a club, you don't let people know your secrets. If people don't pass the initiation and don't get into the club, what happens if they know all the secrets?" Laura couldn't imagine what would happen, if anything.

"I suppose it depends on the secrets," she mumbled. "Who's in the club?" she asked, still suspicious of the whole idea. She had never heard of such a thing to do with baseball!

"You can't know that either, not yet. Say, Laura, there's talk they're going to need another girl for the team. You interested?"

"You mean they have to have a certain number of girls? Why don't they just pick the best players?" Laura was perplexed and the idea certainly did nothing to allay her suspicions.

"It's up to you," the other girl said, shrugging her shoulders as though it didn't matter in the least bit whether Laura, who was supposed to be her best friend, was on her team or not! Laura could not help being incensed and then hurt. "I just have to find someone," Janie continued nonchalantly.

"What would I have to do?" Laura asked then. She could not help but recall that Mack Toohey was in this club, whatever it was.

"First you have to come to a special meeting and talk to the guys, I guess. I'd have to find out for sure," Janie explained. "What time are going home for lunch, and I'll call you."

"Can't we just go and find Mack and find out now?" Laura asked.

"If I can find Mack, we got other things to do," Janie told her mysteriously.

"Like what?" Laura asked with a penetrating stare. Since when did Janie Farragut do things secret from her best friend?

"Oh, Laura, I can't tell you. That's why I want you to join!"

"Well I don't mind going and talking about it."

"I'll call you at noon."

"Yeah, okay," Laura agreed, and they parted. Laura Cutter went home because there wasn't anything better to do, and she might just as well sit around and read comics. Janie Farragut went looking for Mack, apparently.

"First I have to ask you," said Janie later that afternoon when Laura met her for the club meeting to which she was invited, "if you'll promise not to tell anyone anything if you decide not to join. I mean, you wouldn't want me to get into trouble or anything like that!"

"Of course not!" Laura affirmed. What could Janie mean by trouble?

"I told the guys you had a sense of honor and weren't any tattle tale," Janie smiled, sighing with relief.

"I sure do!" Laura agreed, wondering now why she would be called upon to use it.

They had several blocks to walk before turning into a really beautiful house on the outskirts of Hobbs Corner. Laura thought it was the DePow house, but she wasn't sure. Ernest DePow was a former mayor of the town, and the family was the wealthiest in the whole county, her father often said.

"Hey, won't we get caught in here?" Laura asked nervously. Already Janie had left the path that led to the front door and was leading her pal over the lawns. Laura was not accustomed to walking on such beautiful lawns. The only one she knew that looked anywhere near as beautiful was in the park and it was covered with signs that warned people not to walk on it.

"So what if we do? Peter has a right to play with kids," Janie told her.

"Who's Peter?"

"Peter DePow. He lives here, and he's in the club," Janie told her importantly. "He goes to private school," she then explained, suddenly feeling guilty for enjoying her sense of importance in knowing Peter DePow.

The two girls reached the rear of the house, and Janie led Laura on into the trees that started to dot the yard sparsely and then became more numerous as the land began to rise into the hills that backed the property. Suddenly, Janie stopped.

"Here we are!" she announced. Before indicating where they were, she enjoyed the startled look on her friend's face as she looked around herself, hunting for the clubhouse that Janie had told her to expect. "Up there!" she laughed gaily at last. She pointed straight up, and sure enough, there was the bottom of a good sized tree house that had been constructed in the branches of two trees, not one. The trees were sturdy old red maples, their gray bark folded around them like the folds of clothing.

"What strange looking trees," Laura noted. Gosh, the wealthy people had everything, she couldn't help thinking. But she looked up at the tree house with a strangely beating heart. She never had paid much attention to the DePows or talk about them, and she had not realized there was a boy in the family. There was not only a kid in the family, a lover of baseball like herself, she thought, shakily, but she, Laura Cutter, was going to meet him and... and play with him... and maybe be in the very same club!

"Never mind the trees," Janie said impatiently. "We may be a little late. Hurry up."

"Hurry up what?" Laura asked. Janie had changed something wicked, Laura was thinking. She was getting so impatient and preoccupied! Could it be this club that was such a bad influence on her friend? If that was the case, maybe Laura should think twice about joining, even if it did have important guys like Mack Toohey and Peter DePow in it!

"Climb up," Janie ordered, and for the first time, Laura noticed the rope ladder that was only partially visible, lying folded on a low limb. She took it down.

"You go first," she said to Janie. "Why me? I never been here before."

The truth was that Janie Farragut had no idea what they would find at the top of the ladder. She never knew for sure, and she wanted to climb up behind her friend so that Laura could not run away if she didn't like what she saw.

"It's the rules of my initiation," Janie told Laura. "I have to be polite and let you go first," she explained lamely.

Laura snorted. She looked at her friend with a laugh in her blue eyes. Imagine Janie having to be polite! Well, maybe there was something to being polite when you were sitting around waiting for your turn at bat and it might not come because some dumb kid on your team was a lousy player and would sure as hell strike out. Then there were times when you got mad at the umpire and had to be sure you didn't start a fist fight and get put out of the game. Maybe practicing politeness was supposed to stop things like that. Oh, well. She started to climb the rope ladder. She tried to master the climb so she wouldn't look awkward, but it was hard getting the rungs of the ladder to stay away from the tree trunk so she could manage a good foot hold, at least very fast. By the time she reached the top, she could not help feeling embarrassed and her face was hot, probably red. Maybe no one would notice.

No one even looked at her when she reached the top. There were two boys, Mack Toohey with his dark curly hair and brown eyes. Boy, you had to watch out for that guy on the ice. She wanted to greet him, but was confused by his lack of attention. He and another boy with carrot red hair and a lot more freckles than Janie had were busy talking about something. So she turned self-consciously and looked back down the ladder.

"You coming, Janie?" she asked so the stupid boys wouldn't think she had to depend on them to say hello. She would show them she had plenty of other interests, the least of which was saying hello to a couple of guys, especially stuck-ups like Mack and whoever he was talking to. Maybe it was Peter DePow. That would explain why he was so stuck-up.

When Janie finally came up, the first thing they did was get introduced. Then Laura softened. After all, the boys were very likely as self-conscious as she was. Either that or it was just another rule of politeness not to talk to someone until you were introduced. Laura didn't know much about that. Still, Mack knew her, she thought, even though they had never really talked to each other.

The next thing they did was play cards, and the first thing she knew, she was learning how to play poker. She wanted to ask about the club, but as far as she knew this was kind of a meeting and maybe this was what you did at meetings. That wasn't too bad. But she would really like to know about the sports. Yet, Janie had said that until after the initiation, she would not be told very much at all and that it would be useless to ask questions.

One of the surprising things that happened though was how Pete DePow, for that's who the redhead turned out to be, seemed to deliberately keep his leg pressed against hers under the card table. Laura had never had anything like that happen to her before, and at first she was uncomfortable. But Pete smiled at her very warmly, and finally she began to tingle until she reached the point where she didn't want him to take his leg away, It was very strange. And very nice. In fact, he was a terrific guy, she decided. If only he would get around to the sports things, too, everything would be perfect.

By the time Mack Toohey and Janie had disappeared down the rope ladder, Laura even forgot to wonder where they were going and why. Pete DePow had her complete attention. He was very impressive and sounded just like a movie star when he spoke. Every word sounded smooth as the note of a song. She could not imagine what it was he found so attractive about her. She began to suspect that maybe there really was no club and that Pete had simply asked Janie or Mack or whoever it was he knew to introduce him to Laura. She wanted very much to ask him if he had seen her somewhere before and where that could be, but she somehow couldn't get the words out of her constricted throat. Just think of Pete DePow being interested in Laura Cutter. If it had been any other boy she knew who had shown this kind of romantic interest, she would have scoffed. She'd rather play baseball any day!

"I hear you like to play baseball," he finally said after the others had left. He asked her if she wouldn't like to sit down on the big pillows on the floor in the corner of the large tree house. Automatically she agreed to move to the pillow even though it meant losing contact with his knee. However, when they were on the pillows, he put his arm around her and pressed his leg the length of hers.

"I... uh... I like a good game," she said uncertainly.

"Yeah, Janie says you're very good," he said, looking into her blue eyes intently. His eyes were a lovely gray green, she saw. He was squeezing her a little and she was sure her face must be flushing by now. She felt hot and her heart was beating like a trip-hammer. "We play baseball," he said, smiling as though baseball were just a little difficult to think about right now.

"That's what I thought," she said, but she was having trouble caring, too. Why?

"We have a little initiation," he whispered. "And for you, part of that's getting to know the coach. That's me. Okay?" What did he mean?

And then abruptly, as she tried to nod her head 'yes, ' he put his arms completely around her and drew her tight against him. First he kissed her just gently, softly, but then he kissed her harder and she felt her lips being opened. Oh, she had heard of this kind of kiss. It was supposed to be when you really liked someone a lot. Could it be that Pete DePow liked her that much? She could not help herself and she opened her lips almost eagerly to accept his probing wet tongue. Their tongues met and tasted one another, exchanging an incredible kiss. Pete's hands were restless on her back and shoulders now, moving back and forth, up and down, around and over her little white button-down blouse.

Laura Cutter felt something very new. It was an almost overwhelming surge of desire at this nearness to a boy, especially Pete, the intoxicating boy odor in a relationship that she had never before known. His kisses were eliciting a full and total response inside the would-be ball player, and when his moving hands gradually worked their way around to lightly entering the front of her blouse, the buttons seeming to pop out of the button holes as if he willed them to, and lightly caressed the beginning mounds of her new tits, she didn't know whether this was the time to stop him or not. Her mother had said something about not letting a boy go too far, but what did that mean? And the closeness she felt to this new friend right now seemed to transcend any parental warning or concern.

And so Pete began to caress her newly ripening titties in earnest then as his eager tongue probed wetly in and out of her opened mouth. Gosh, his gentle touch felt so good on her! Unaware of her own response, she wrapped her fingers in his carrot-red curls, kissing him even more passionately, and then his fingers had dipped inside her undershirt, which her mother insisted she wear if she wouldn't wear a brassiere. The contact of his hand on her naked flesh thrilled the twelve year old more than she could ever have imagined. Oh, she had overheard a lot of talk among certain girls around school, and she had always pretended that she wasn't listening. Now she was glad she had. She suspected that it was less frightening to know that these strange and thrilling sensations were common to others. Before she knew it, she was allowing him to unbutton her blouse and to slip the garment down over her shoulders. And then his deft fingers had worked her undershirt up under her arm pits so that she felt a cool rush of air against her now-erect nipples as her still firm, not yet very large tits were fully exposed to Pete's hungry gaze.

Gently with his palm he began to stroke her naked, just blossoming tits, rolling his hands over her newly forming mounds before bringing them up to massage the hardened nipples. Taking the taut pink buds between thumb and forefinger, he tweaked them into a quivering rigidity. Laura moaned with increasing fervor as Pete's caresses wrung soft cries of delight from her throat. Little shivers of arousal began to course through her, and she had felt a warm wetness up between her legs seeping from her excitedly throbbing cunt. She was sure glad she had heard the girls talk about that or it would have frightened her to death!