Samantha Spring was immediately suspicious when the two senior girls walked over to her table in the Oakview High School cafeteria. She was only a junior, and a junior most of the other girls shunned as a matter of course. She always had the table to herself while she ate whatever semi-palatable slop the cafeteria happened to be serving. To have any other girls approach her was unheard of in its own right, but these two were not just any girls. They were Mignon Benning and Alexandria Mason, arguably the two most beautiful and popular girls in the entire school. They were part of the upper echelon, the high school elite. They normally didn't eat their lunch in the cafeteria at all, but out on the quad with the other elite.

"Hey, Samantha," Mignon said cheerfully, as if Samantha was one of her closest friends and confidents. "Can we sit here?"

Samantha hesitated, searching their faces for what the joke was. Mignon was the head cheerleader and vice president of the student council. A buxom blonde with a petite frame just made for wearing a short skirt imprinted with school colors, she radiated an air of smug superiority. Alexandria - who shunned the natural nickname of Alex - was her trusty sidekick. She was an equally beautiful brunette with small, aristocratic breasts and the sort of legs men dreamed about at night.

"Well?" Mignon chirped, raising her eyebrows.

"Why do you want to sit here?" Samantha asked warily.

"Because no one else is," she told her. "We're just being friendly. Is it a problem? We can go somewhere else if you want."

"Yeah, Samantha," Alexandria put in just as cheerfully. "It's no big or nothin'. We just thought we'd come over and say hi."

Samantha didn't trust them. Their reputations as hazers of underclassmen and derisive teasers of any girl or guy less popular then they preceded them by years. They were the ringleaders of the gossip groups that spread any and all rumors about pretty much anyone outside their little circle of elite. They were the organizers of the targeted blacklisting of any girl who didn't meet with their favor. They were also the driving force behind the rumors that had been circulating about Samantha herself since early in her freshman year - perhaps the vilest of rumors in a high school society, vile enough to make her a social outcast among even the nerds and the stoners. The word being passed - primarily by these two cheerleaders - was that Samantha was a lesbian, although that was of course not the terminology they typically used. It was reported she was often seen staring at other girls in the locker room, that she had tried to seduce several girls, and that she was having an affair with Ms. Foreman, the patently gay physical education teacher. These rumors had been circulating so long and with such assuredness that they were now taken as fact. And, as with many such rumors, there was a grain of truth buried within.

Samantha suspected that she was a lesbian. Typical of a sixteen-year-old girl dealing with feelings she did not yet understand, she still had not actually admitted that fact to herself. There were some compelling signs, of course. The most obvious and hard to deal with being the fact that she wasn't sexually attracted to boys. Looking at the football players on campus, at male actors on television, at pictures of Justin Timberlake, did nothing for her. She had no longings to touch males, to see them, to feel them, to be in a relationship with them. However, she did get a thrill out of looking at girls, out of seeing the attractive nymphs walking up and down the halls in their tight, low-riding pants and their midriff-baring shirts. She felt tingly inside when she looked at pictures of Hillary Duff or Sarah Michelle Geller. This had been true ever since she was thirteen and first started getting sexual feelings. They had always been towards the feminine sex. The biggest clue had come when she'd discovered a hidden file deep in the bowels of the family computer one day last spring. The file had been full of pornography. Whether it belonged to her father or her older brother, she knew not, but it had been full of still pictures of nude women of all shapes and sizes. She had stared at picture after picture in rapt awe, feeling her vagina getting wetter and wetter with each image that went by. Soon, she had begun rubbing herself between her legs, at first through her shorts and then under the shorts over her panties and then, realizing that she was actually masturbating for the first time, she had undressed from the waist down and really gone to work. Her first orgasm had exploded in her body shortly after - brought on by images of naked females with their legs spread, their breasts on display, their sheer femininity out for her to see.

It was then that she started to suspect she really might be a lesbian. This suspicion was met with a variety of conflicting emotions - sometimes horror, sometimes shame, sometimes something that approached acceptance. It was this last that was most rare. She didn't want to be a lesbian. Even though this was California, perhaps the most tolerant place in the nation for such things, tolerance was a relative thing. Her parents - both members of the First Baptist Church of Heritage and staunch right-wing conservatives - certainly would have a shitfit if they thought their only daughter was a lesbian. They would probably send her to psychiatrists and church counseling sessions. And her peers! She had already seen what the mere rumor of homosexuality was capable of doing in an upper-middle-class dominated public school.

The rumors had started during her freshman year, and out of all the stories circulated about her, there was only one that was strictly true. It had to do with the locker room before and after gym class. Immersed for the first time in an environment in which girls were actually undressing in front of her - even if it was only down to bra and panties in most cases - she had been unable to help but stare at them at times. She had thought she was being circumspect about it. But she hadn't been, or at least not circumspect enough. By the time her second semester in gym rolled around, she found herself ostracized. The other girls avoided her when it was time to change. The word that Samantha Spring liked to look at girls quickly spread throughout the whole school.

From that true rumor, the other not-so-true rumors sprung. The stories that she had tried to seduce other girls came from mere conversations she'd had with female classmates who - by virtue of being either new or uninformed - had not heard of her reputation and had chosen to talk to her. Once informed - usually by Mignon or Alexandria or one of their cohorts - that Samantha was in fact the school lesbian, the girl in question would inevitably break all contact with her and within days the rumors of how Samantha had tried to seduce her would run rampant through the school. This was something that Mignon and Alexandria were particularly good at. Samantha had heard them with her own ears more than once. Did you hear? Samantha was talking to that new girl and tried to get her to come over to her house. Uh huh. She told me herself. Samantha said her parents weren't home and she had some really hot movies they could watch. Uh huh... can you believe it?

And then there was the Ms. Foreman rumor. That one was perhaps the most damning of all and the one most believed by the majority of the student body. That Ms. Foreman was a lesbian was not in dispute. She was a shorthaired, tattooed gym teacher who drove a Subaru Forester with a rainbow sticker on the bumper. She wore earrings that consisted of two Greek female symbols overlapping each other. When coming or going to school she was known to wear baggy blue jeans, flannel shirts, and to have her wallet on a chain. Interestingly enough, Ms. Foreman was one woman who did absolutely nothing for Samantha as far as physical attractiveness went. Samantha preferred feminine looking girls - the more feminine the better. She liked girls in dressy and frilly clothing, girls showing their bellies and their boobs and the tightness of their butts. She received nothing more from looking at Ms. Foreman than she did by looking at Justin Timberlake, or at Steven Call, Mignon's hunky, dumb as a rock, quarterback of the football team boyfriend. No, the rumor had started simply because putting the confirmed lesbian and the suspected one together was a natural inclination of the rumormongers. However, when Cindy Brecken -a member of the Mignon/Alexandra inner circle - spotted Samantha coming out of Ms. Foreman's office one day before gym, the rumor took on the assuredness of fact among all that heard it. The visit had been nothing more than a friendly advice session from the older woman who had been through all of this in her own teen years to the younger one she had spotted undergoing the same trauma.

"I'm not saying you are or you aren't anything," Ms. Foreman had told her. "But, as I'm sure you're aware, the girls think you're different from them in a fundamental way and are delighting themselves in feeling superior to you because of it. Am I right?"

"I guess," Samantha had answered noncommittally, in the way of teenagers.

"All I'm trying to tell you is that - whether you are or you aren't - high school is the worst it gets. For a girl who is... you know... different in that way, there are challenges and tribulations to come - I won't pretend that there are not - but the blatant cruelty and ostracization is the worst its going to get. It will only improve from here. I just wanted to reassure you of that."

Samantha had thanked her numbly, not giving her any indication one way or the other that she had appreciated this advice, even though she really had. Ms. Foreman had made nothing that could be considered a pass at her, had not even overtly said what she was really talking about. But none of that mattered. Once Cindy Brecken saw her leaving a private meeting with the lesbian teacher and once Mignon and Alexandra got their little hands on the story, it was as good as written in stone. Ms. Foreman and Samantha were lovers. Most of the student body - and even a few of the teachers - would have bet money on it.

"So what do you say?" Mignon asked now. "You're not gonna make us go find another place to sit, are you?"

Samantha knew she should tell them she preferred to eat alone. She knew that by doing anything else she would be setting herself up for something - either more rumors or perhaps something even crueler. Knowing what she should do and actually doing it, however, were worlds apart. Like many shy girls, like many ostracized people in general, she feared confrontation more than anything. And then there was the fact that both of them were the epitome of what she found attractive in her sex. They oozed femininity from every pore. Every article of clothing they wore served to accent it. Mignon was wearing tight, low-riding jeans and a midriff-baring spaghetti strap top that accented her bulging breasts admirably. Alexandria was wearing a denim mini-skirt that showed off those luscious legs. Samantha was undeniably attracted to them, despite their cruelty, and, like a boy in the same position, she simply couldn't turn them away.

"Sure," she heard herself saying. "Sit wherever you want."

"Thanks, Samantha," Mignon said with a passable tone of sincerity. She flashed a brief smile and then sat down across from her. Alexandria sat down next to her friend, smoothing her skirt out as she did so.

Both of them opened up designer lunch containers and began to remove their food. Samantha saw, without much surprise, that both girls were eating fresh sushi. They spent a few minutes arranging their cuts and their rice on the dishes and mixing up wasabi sauce. They then daintily removed chopsticks from holders and each took a piece, their movements nearly in unison.

"Do you want to try some of this, Samantha?" Mignon asked politely, holding out a piece of salmon. "It's, like, way better than the cafeteria food."

"Uh... no thanks," Samantha told her, still wary. She figured there would now be a remark about how she thought Samantha was into eating fishy things, but Mignon simply nodded and ate the piece herself.

The three girls ate in silence for a few minutes, Mignon and Alexandria uncharacteristically uncommunicative, as if they didn't quite know how to initiate conversation, Samantha her typical, close-mouthed self. Finally, when they were nearly done, Mignon broke the silence.

"You're pretty good at trig, aren't you, Samantha?" she asked.

"Trig? Yeah, I guess so," she answered with a slight shrug. She had three classes with Mignon and two with Alexandria. One that they all shared was trigonometry, taught by Mr. Flatman, which was the class right before lunch.

"You're like being so modest," Alexandria said. "You totally always know the answer when Flatman calls on you."

"Yeah," Mignon said. "I bet you're getting an A in trig, aren't you?"

"I guess," she said again.

"Alexandria and I like totally suck at trig, don't we Alexandria?"

"Totally," Alexandria agreed.

"It is kind of hard," Samantha allowed, even though it really wasn't, at least not for her. Mathematics with its logical order came quite naturally to her.

"We're like totally gonna bomb this mid-term tomorrow if someone doesn't help us," Mignon said.

"Totally," Alexandria agreed again.

Samantha looked up at them, understanding dawning. So that's what it was about. The two little princesses were failing trigonometry and wanted the lesbian math whiz to help them with it. After all the teasing, all the rumors, all the vile cruelty they'd inflicted upon her, they now wanted her to help them. She knew she should laugh right in their faces. But she didn't. She couldn't. Instead, she found herself asking, "What kind of help do you need?"

Mignon smiled. "We totally need some major cramming. Is there like any chance you can come over to my house after school and study with us?"

"We'd be like totally grateful," Alexandria said.

"You want me to come over to your house?" she asked.

"Yeah," Mignon said. "I'll pick you up after school and then drive you home when we're done. Will you do it, Samantha? Like tell me you will?"

"Yeah," Alexandria said. "We'd be like totally in your debt."

"Sure," she said, wondering even as the word came out of her mouth what the hell she was doing. She had played right into their hands. They thought they could be cruel to anyone they pleased, spread whatever rumor they wanted, but when they wanted something from someone they could just be nice for five minutes and get what they wanted. And Samantha had reinforced that belief by doing just that.

"Totally tight," Mignon said. "I'll meet you in the parking lot after school. You know what I drive." It was not a question. Everyone knew Mignon drove a white Volkswagen Jetta - a gift from her rich daddy upon receiving her driver's license.

"Yeah," Samantha said. "I'll see you out there."

"You're totally a lifesaver," Mignon told her.

"Totally," Alexandra agreed.

Mignon's house was not a terribly modest one. Located in a cul-de-sac within an exclusive gated community, it sat atop a bluff overlooking the eastern portion of the suburb. It was a 3100 square foot tri-level with four bedrooms, a huge family room, an office, a four-car garage and an extra large, exquisitely landscaped backyard complete with swimming pool and hot tub. Upon arriving there at 3:30 that afternoon, Samantha was given a complete tour. She also met Mignon's mother, a woman in her early forties who had once been quite striking, Samantha was sure, but who now had undergone so many plastic surgeries and enhancements that she looked almost manufactured.

After the tour and the introductions, the three girls retired to Mignon's bedroom. It was an over-large room complete with computer desk and top of the line computer system, a large screen television, and a four-poster bed done up in frilly pink. The window overlooked the swimming pool and the hot tub. An oak bookshelf in the corner was stuffed full of Teenbeat and Cosmopolitan magazines. Mignon got some extra chairs and they crowded around the desk, opening up their trigonometry books. They started studying.

Almost immediately Samantha noticed that something was not quite what it seemed. As she explained the basic concepts of trigonometry and worked out sample problems for them to see how it was done, Mignon and Alexandria hardly seemed to be paying attention. They sat quietly and respectfully, not talking to each other or doing anything overt to show their minds were wandering, but wandering was exactly what they were doing. This was not totally unexpected, of course, but what was strange was that when she gave them trig problems to figure out utilizing whatever concept she had just gone over, the two would do them perfectly each time and then thank her for helping them understand the concept.

They already know how to do all this, her mind told her. They're not failing trig at all. But was that true? Was she just imagining they weren't paying attention to her lessons? Or was she maybe a natural teacher? She didn't know, couldn't be sure either way. She had so little experience socializing in any way with anyone and especially not with rich, beautiful cheerleaders. She wondered again if this was some sort of set-up for something, some cruel joke that was in the works. But if it was, the punch line did not materialize during the study session. After two and a half hours her two students declared they were ready for the mid-term, and the study session came to an end. They drove Samantha home in Mignon's Jetta, thanked her in what seemed a sincere fashion for her help, and told her they would see her in school the next day.

"What is going on?" she asked herself as she stared at the taillights of the Jetta moving away down her street.

When they disappeared completely she went inside, saying a brief hello to her mother and throwing a few obligatory insults at her brother. She went upstairs to her room and lay down on her bed, staring up at the ceiling, trying to think things through. Before long her thoughts turned from conspiracies and cruelty to other things, like what Mignon's breasts would feel like in her hand or what Alexandria's legs would feel like rubbing against hers. Like always, she tried to fight off these blatantly homosexual images, guilt and arousal at war within her.

I'm not a lesbian, she told herself. I don't want to be a lesbian. I should be thinking of guys and dicks. But the images were insistent, powerful, even more so today when she had just been in close contact with the object of them. Before long her fingers slid down her body and unbuttoned her jeans. They probed into her white panties, finding a slit that was hot and very wet, a clit that was probing upward, demanding attention. She began to rub herself, the images of Mignon's breasts and Alexandria's legs taking explicit shape, becoming more graphic. She imagined herself kissing and licking and sucking all over their bodies, moving from one to the other, pleasuring them, having them pleasure her. The orgasm that resulted was quite powerful. The guilt she felt afterward was, too.

The next day at school it seemed to be business as usual. Mignon and Alexandria ignored her completely during the first three classes, not so much as glancing in her direction. Their usual circle of friends gathered around them and the gossiping went on just like it always had. Samantha overheard Mignon deriding Tom Stinson - a grossly overweight junior who was the butt of almost as many jokes as Samantha herself - to the delight of her giggling teenage cohorts.

Even during fourth period, the trigonometry class they'd allegedly needed so much help in, the two girls continued to pretend Samantha wasn't even there. While waiting for Mr. Flatman to pass out the midterm exams they talked to each other and to two of the impossibly handsome college prep boys that sat behind them, giggling frequently and using the word "totally" and "like" at least once in every sentence. Samantha mentally shrugged her shoulders, still wondering what the whole studying bit had been about. It seemed she was never going to find out.

The midterms were dropped on their desks and they went to work. Samantha, typically for math exams, was the first one finished. Mignon and Alexandria were near the last to turn in their papers but neither seemed particularly worried. Neither so much as glanced at her as they returned to their desk.

The bell rang and everyone filed out for lunch. Samantha walked alone to the cafeteria, paid for her tray of tepid, meatless spaghetti, and walked over to an isolated table near the back of the room, just like normal. She had no more than put the first bite into her mouth when Mignon and Alexandria showed up, happy smiles on their faces.

"Hey, Sam," Mignon said, plopping her lunch down and grabbing a seat without bothering to wait for an invite.

"How's it goin', Sam?" Alexandria echoed, sitting next to Mignon.

"Uh... hi," she said carefully, looking from one to the other, wondering what this was about now. Why so friendly after all the ignoring?

"I'm like totally stoked about that trig midterm," Mignon said as she opened up her lunch and began arranging yet another serving of sushi. "I totally rocked on it."

"Me too," Alexandria said, opening up her sushi. "Totally."

"We want to like thank you for helping us study," Mignon told her. "We would've totally bombed if you hadn't."

"Totally bombed," Alexandria agreed. "We owe you one."

"Uh... well... I was... uh, glad to help," Samantha said. "I'm glad you did well on it."

"I got an idea," Mignon said brightly, as if something had just occurred to her. She turned to Alexandria. "How about we invite Sam over tonight? There's like enough to go around, isn't there?"

Alexandria seemed to consider this for a few seconds. "Yeah," she finally said. "There's more than enough. Let's do it."

"Invite me over where?" Samantha said carefully, instantly wary. Was this the bomb she had been expecting to drop on her?

"To my house," Mignon said, lowering her voice a little. "My parents are like totally going out of town tonight. And Alexandria scored a big-ass bottle of hurricanes. We're gonna have like a sleepover. Watch movies and get drunk. You up for it?"

"You want me to... to come over to your house?" Samantha asked.

"And drink hurricanes with us," Alexandria said. "They're like totally the bomb. Rum and pineapple juice and orange juice. They don't even taste like booze at all. They go down totally smooth."

"Totally," Mignon agreed. "What do you say? Sound like fun?"

"Uh... well, I don't know. Who else is going to be there?"

"No one," Mignon assured her. "Just Alexandria and I, and you if you want. I haven't even told anyone my parents are like out of town. They'd totally show up uninvited and trash the house and I'd get so busted."

"It'll be so fun, Sam," Alexandria said. "I got like five total chick flicks we can watch. Say you'll come."

"Well..." she said slowly, hesitantly. She knew she should say no. Her instincts were telling her this had to be some kind of a set-up, that there had to be more than met the eye here. But the irrational part of her mind was telling her to disregard her instincts. A sleepover! With the two most beautiful girls in school! The very thought was enough to send a flood of moisture to her vagina. Of course she knew nothing would happen - nor did she really want anything to happen - but just the thought of being alone with Mignon and Alexandria, alone where they would be drinking, getting intoxicated, maybe even... even... undressing?

"You simply have to come," Mignon told her. "We insist, don't we, Alexandria?"

"Totally," Alexandria agreed. "You sooo have to come, Sam."

"Okay," she blurted. "As long as my mom says its okay."

"You're the bomb, Sam," Mignon said.

"Totally the bomb," Alexandria agreed.

Her mom had no problem with giving her permission for a sleepover. On the contrary, Michelle Spring seemed glad that her reclusive daughter finally seemed to be making some friends. She told her to have fun and to stay out of trouble, and that was that. Not another word was said about it.

Samantha, however, remained on pins and needles the entire afternoon. Mignon had told her she would pick her up about 7:00. While waiting for that magic hour to roll around, her mind went through a constant turmoil, seeming to pull her in several different directions. Were they setting her up for something? That was her primary concern. She could not allow herself to forget the cruelty those two girls were capable of inflicting upon others, that they had already inflicted upon her. Did she really believe they had changed their colors? That they had suddenly decided to like someone they had always degraded and teased and tortured? No, she had to admit, that was hardly likely. But on the other hand, maybe they had? Wasn't that possible? Maybe they really had changed their ways and this was a way of atoning for past sins. That wasn't impossible, was it?

She realized she was rationalizing things, twisting her perceptions and thoughts around so she would be able to justify going to the sleepover. As for why she was going to such great lengths, why she was willing to take such a chance, the answer to that caused her even more turmoil. She tried to tell herself that it was simply because she craved friendship. Circumstances had made her a loner and she wanted to break out of that cycle. Becoming friends with the two most popular girls in school seemed a significant step towards that goal. But she knew, deep down, that it wasn't the answer, that it wasn't why she was risking what seemed a certain humiliation. She was powerfully attracted to the two girls, infatuated with them in a way she had never really experienced before. Confronting this attraction, however, meant at least partially admitting what she most feared: that she really was a lesbian, that this attraction she felt for members of her own sex really was something that wasn't just a phase or an aberration or teenaged confusion.

She really thought she would have called and cancelled just to avoid that particular mind battle. There was only one problem. Mignon had never given her a phone number. Nor had Alexandria. And wouldn't it be rude to cancel when they actually showed up to pick her up? Yes, she thought so, this time not realizing the rationalization had gone through without her noticing it.

When the white Jetta showed up outside at 7:00 that evening, she told her mother goodbye and carried her small duffel bag out with her.

"Bye, Sammy," her mother called cheerfully after her. "Have fun."

"I'll try," she said softly. "I'll try."

Mignon and Alexandria were bubbly and friendly on the drive over to Mignon's house. They talked and joked freely with Samantha, treating her exactly like one of their inner circle of friends. They gossiped about several people with typical cruelty, sharing alleged anecdotes about one of the school nerds and one of the stoners with Samantha. And strangely enough, this made Samantha feel a little better. She had never been on the inside of the gossip circle before and found it refreshing that someone else was being talked about for once.

When they arrived, Mignon parked her Jetta in the garage instead of the driveway. They entered the large, empty house through the garage door, Alexandria pausing to get her own duffel bag out of the trunk. Mignon immediately trooped through the house and made sure all of the blinds were closed and all of the doors were securely locked.

"Remember," she told Samantha and Alexandria, "we're not really here. No one answers the phone or the doorbell until tomorrow morning."

"Totally," Alexandria said.

"Uh... totally," Samantha put in, earning a smile from both of her companions.

"Let's do some hurricanes," Mignon said happily. She went over to a kitchen cupboard and pulled out three water tumblers.

While Mignon filled the glasses with ice from the refrigerator, Alexandria opened her duffel and pulled out a gallon bottle filled with a bright, unnaturally blue liquid. She set it down on the counter and opened the lid. When Mignon set the glasses down before her, she poured each one full. She then passed them around.

Samantha took hers and looked at it doubtfully. She had very little experience with alcohol. The only time she had really drank before had been when she and her cousin Marty had gotten into her uncle's tequila one day about a year before and had experimented with making margaritas. She had ended up puking her guts out in the toilet a few hours later and both of them had been grounded for a month.

"Drink up," Mignon said, seeing her hesitation. "You've gotten drunk before, haven't you?"

"Of course," Samantha replied, managing to inject just the right amount of indignation in her tone. "I've just never... uh... had a hurricane before."

"It's totally the bomb," Alexandria encouraged. "Try it."

Slowly, cautiously, she put the glass to her lips and took a sip. To her surprise it tasted very good. It was sweet, and the alcohol taste was nothing more than a faint undertone. "It's good," she said, taking a larger drink.