Chapter 2

School was getting ready to start up before the Gordon sisters and their cousin came to terms with the simple fact that my father just wasn't interested in doing things with them. It was comical watching those three girls making such an obvious effort to befriend my two sisters, just so they would have more opportunities to be around my father. Joan, my youngest sister was only thirteen, but Annie was seventeen or eighteen and was far too old, and had no interest, in hanging around with fourteen and fifteen year old girls. I was almost fifteen, and I had plenty of interest in hanging around with any or all of them. Ray was two years younger than I was, and proof of his interest was evident in the way his pants were always pushed out in front whenever any of those girls were near. Finally, Joan had gotten to a point where she was fed up with the Gordon's and their cousin, and she really let them have it.

"I don't want to be friends with you Shannon, or your sister, or Clara. You're all horrid people, so why don't you just leave us all alone? You act so pathetic around my father, as if he'd ever consider taking up with any of you. My mother says your mother's a cheap whore, and I think the rest of you are just as bad, if not worse. Get away from my house and just stay away from me." I'll say this much for Shannon, she took Joan's abuse and rather than strike back with comments that she could have made about my father and mother, comments that would have hurt Joan, she took Trudie's hand and the three of them left our porch and made no further efforts at befriending either of my sisters.

A few days later, after the incident with Joan on our porch, the three of them mounted their initial frontal assault on Ray and I. I'm not sure why they decided on seducing the both of us, but Ray was certainly happy to be included in on their plans. He and I were sitting in our side yard playing a game of mumbleypeg. Shannon came over to us with Trudie and Clara close behind her, and she asked us if she could play. I'd never seen a girl play games with a knife before, so I asked her if she even knew how to play. She not only knew how to play, she beat my brother and I easily, and then showed us both some knife throwing tricks that we'd never seen or heard of before. There was a game most of the boys in our neighborhood played where you threw a knife and your opponent had to stretch to it if it stayed stuck in the ground. I never saw Shannon lose when she played that game. She was also a whiz with a yo-yo, and had her own Duncan, and would make her own strings from waxed threads. She could make her yo-yo sleep for the longest time, and then, she pulled on the string and brought it back up to her palm. She was also able to whistle by making a loud, piercing, trilling sound without even using her fingers.

After we finished playing our knife games and watching Shannon's yo-yo demonstration, Trudie suggested going into the nearby woods and climbing some trees. All five of us were wearing trousers, and there were no thoughts from Ray and I that we were being lured into the privacy of the woods to be taken advantage of. Once we got into the woods and had climbed a few trees, each of us demonstrating our fearlessness and daring by climbing out on unsafe branches or going up so high that the tree started bending over from our weight, someone suggested that we gather up some rocks and twigs and little branches and dig a fire pit and make ourselves a little fire. It was difficult having a conversation with any of the three girls because they spoke a very different dialect of English from the one that we spoke and were used to. With our fire going good, the girls started trying to tell Ray and I about the differences between living in South Carolina and living in Connecticut. Ray and Trudie decided to go get some food so that we could use the fire to have a little picnic or something. They returned in about ten minutes. Ray had brought potatoes and Trudie had brought some popcorn and a wire framed popcorn basket with a long handle. The handle was about three feet long and it was metal except for the last foot where it was wooden. Ray and I cut some sticks and showed the girls how to cook the potatoes. We knew how to cook popcorn, but had never seen it done over a campfire before. We ate some of their popcorn and they tried some of our potato. Neither of us was that impresssed. Their popcorn was unsalted and they didn't use butter to flavor it. Potato wasn't as much of a diet staple down south apparently, and none of the girls liked it as much as the vegetables they had been brought up on.

"Jackie, who do you think is prettier, Clara or Trudie?" We were all crowded around the fire, adding little sticks and watching as it burned. Shannon was obviously the leader of her group, and she was entering into negotiations with me, since I was the leader between Ray and I.

"How come just Trudie and Clara? How come not you too?"

"Trudie or Clara?"

"I think you're prettier, Shannon. Trudie is always filthy, and Clara, well her boobs are so gigantic." I didn't want to let Shannon assert her dominance over the proceedings around that fire. Neither Trudie or Clara seemed offended in any way by what I had said about them. If anything, they both seemed happy about what I'd pointed out. Ray spoke up, saying that he thought Clara was the prettiest, and that her boobs looked just right to him. In truth, Clara was the prettiest, but I've always been attracted to taller, thinner, more elegant girls for some reason. I was also fascinated by her long pigtails and her fiery red hair color. It didn't hurt either that she could throw a knife, play with a yo-yo, and climb a tree without getting all scared about it.

"Well, I don't like you Jackie, so Trudie or Clara?" She moved a little to the side so that she was closer to Ray than to me. Shannon was at least five or six inches taller than Ray. I was embarrassed that she had chosen Ray over me. Just to spite Ray, I then picked Clara. Ray, who has been a boob man his entire life, looked wistful when I sidled up next to Clara. Wistful or not, he moved even closer to Shannon, but I knew that Trudie would have been his second choice after Clara. "Trudie, you shoo on home girl, nobody picked you."

"I won't do it Shannon. It wasn't fair how you did it. Let's do it again so we all get a fair chance." Trudie was looking at Ray the whole time she was speaking to her sister.

"Fine, then. How do you want to do it?" Shannon seemed conciliatory towards her sister, and less in charge than before.

"Each of us girls go stand behind a different tree. Then the boys can come see us one at a time, and after that they can decide who to keep company with. It isn't fair to pick just on looks. After they come talk to us then they can pick and the one not picked has to go home."

"Sure, that would work out fine for you because you don't care which one picks you. If that's how you want to do it, then I guess I just don't care. You go pick your tree first then." Trudie went and stood behind a big maple, twenty feet away from the fire. Clara smiled at me and walked over behind a skinny white birch sapling, not more than four inches thick around. Shannon looked around carefully, apparently thinking that whichever tree she picked would be an importent decision. She finally settled on another maple, almost fifty feet from our little clearing. After she had disappeared behind her tree, Shannon called out that they were ready for Ray and I to commence with our visiting. Ray made a beeline straight over to Clara, and I could hear the two of them talking softly together, and listened as Clara giggled at almost everything that Ray said to her. I decided to go over to Trudie's tree, mostly to hear what it was that she thought would change either Ray's or my mind about who we would pick. She must have known that she wasn't first or second on my list, since I'd made it abundently clear to the three of them.

"Hi Jackie. You should pick me you know. Shannon's too bossy. It'd serve her right too if she's the one who got sent back home."

"Maybe I would pick you if you ever were clean. I don't know how you can stand being dirty all of the time. Doesn't your skin itch from it?" She just looked at me and shook her head no. "Why should I pick you anyway, over those other two I mean?" She looked up at me, I was about a foot taller than her, and she took my hand and turned it so that my palm was facing up and then she started scratching it with her finger, right in the center of my palm. I had no idea then what that was supposed to mean, and pulled my hand away and went back towards the fire. Ray was still in conversation with Clara, but I approached the two of them and told him to go visit with one of the others. He then headed over to Trudie's tree. I talked with Clara for a few minutes, but she didn't giggle or carry on when I talked with her. She was pretty quiet most of the time anyway. Ray, in the meanwhile, had Trudie all giggly and the two of them were well hidden in back of that big maple. I told Clara to wait where she was at, and walked all of the way over to see Shannon. She had sat down with her back against the tree and she didn't look too happy to see me. "Shannon, don't you think you're too old for my brother? He's only twelve you know?"

"It doesn't matter, he's cute, just like your daddy, only a different cute than him."

"I'm not cute? Is that what you're saying to me?"

"You're okay I guess, but just not my type. You're too dark and you're skinny too."

"So what, you're skinny and you have freckles all over your whole body. I bet you have a million freckles, and you don't even have any tits yet."

"Good, so why don't you pick Clara or Trudie and leave your brother for me? If you told him to pick me he would."

"Ray likes the big tits, not me. I'm going back to my house. You three can fight over Ray, and just leave me out of it." I turned and walked out of the woods and back to my house. I saw girls better looking than all three of those girls every single Saturday at the Griswold Hotel, in the summer, and lots more that were better looking, every school day during the rest of the time. I didn't need to pick any of them. I had been sitting on my porch for less than ten minutes when Ray and the girls got back. They'd all stood around watching Ray pee on the fire to make sure it wouldn't start a bigger fire in the woods. Ray told me he'd covered everything with dirt too, so that it wouldn't start back up again. I'd forgotten about the fire and decided to run back there and make sure that it was really put out for good. Everything looked okay to me, but I took out my dick and pissed on it too, just to be certain. I had finished and was putting it back in my pants when I heard the girls giggling behind me and then I heard Trudie say: