Chapter 1

Anyone who knows me can tell you that I’m not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. I don’t worry about that too much, though. At fourteen, I’ll be fifteen in five weeks, I have already been turning heads for a couple of years. I’m five foot nothing and weigh ninety pounds. I just started wearing a B cup bra. Okay. I’ll admit it’s a little loose. But those puppies are still growing so I know it won’t be long before it fits. I have long blonde hair and a pretty face.

I don’t mean to suggest I’m stupid or anything. I’m glad that I’m pretty and sexy but I know I need more than that to get by. It’s just that I have to work my ass off to get Bs and Cs in school. I learn the stuff I have to learn but it doesn’t come easy to me the way that it does for some of the kids at school that brag about never cracking a book.

I may not be quick but it was pretty obvious, even to me, that my best friend Stacy suddenly had things lately that neither she nor her parents could afford to buy.

If there was a railroad in our town we would be living on the wrong side of the tracks. We live where the other poor people in our town live. It isn’t a slum or anything. But nobody we know is buying their own home. Our parents all rent the houses we live in. No one I know is starving or going to bed hungry at night. But a lot of us are just getting by. Nobody on my block has a new car or a big screen television. I don’t even know anyone who has cable or satellite.

But at least we don’t live in a big city and there aren’t any gangs. You can find drugs if you really want to. But I doubt if there’s a town in the country where you can’t do that. I know that they aren’t a big problem here. Or if they are my friends and I don’t know about it. I don’t use them and I don’t think any of my friends do.

We don’t have cell phones or iPods or any of those expensive video game players. Well, one of the kids that lives nearby has an X-box. But his dad didn’t buy it. He took it in payment for doing some work for a guy a while back. They only have like three games for it and we’ve played those to death.

My mom is a single mom. I don’t know who my dad was and if my mom knows she hasn’t shared that information with me. She works downtown at the Wal-mart, working lousy hours and making just enough to live on as long as we don’t eat much.

Stacy has a mom and dad but her dad hurt his back real bad and he can’t work now. He can hardly even walk. He’s been trying for a year to get on disability but I guess the Government is giving so much of our money to illegal aliens and an illegal war in Iraq that it can’t help out an average American who needs it.

Stacy and I spent all of our time together up until recently. Lately, though, about half the time when I go over to see her she’s off somewhere doing something. And even though we’ve been best friends since we were five she stubbornly refuses to tell me what she was doing. It’s driving me nuts that she’s keeping secrets from me now. But she insists that if she told me what she was doing I wouldn’t understand.

Is there a better way to drive your best friend crazy?!

I was curious enough about her secret activities. But then she started having things that I knew she couldn’t afford and still she wouldn’t explain. She has some nice new clothes. They were things I knew for a fact her mother wouldn’t buy for her, short skirts and sexy tops, stuff that she keeps hidden from her mom.

Then one day I went to her house to see her. Her dad yelled for me to come in when I knocked. He sent me back to her room. She was back there with a brand new iPod in her hand!

Like I said, I’m not known for my ability to solve difficult problems. But if you hit me in the head with it long enough I’m gonna figure out you’re holding a club. I knew that Stacy was getting money from somewhere and that it was not from somewhere that her parents would approve of.

But she wasn’t just keeping it from them. I could have understood that. She was keeping it from me!

I stood in her bedroom door and stared in disbelief. She got real nervous when she saw me and started to try to hide the iPod. She stopped, realizing it was too late and said, “Damn it, Sara! Come in and close the door!”

I closed her door. I stared at her in shock for a moment before I shook it off. I went over to her bed and sat down. I waited, giving her time to explain. She just sat there looking guilty.

I exclaimed, “Come on, Stacy! What the hell is going on? How are you getting this stuff?”

She put the iPod back in the box and started to stuff it under her bed. While she was doing that I asked, “Don’t you need a computer to use an iPod?”

She answered, “I’m getting one.”

She looked at me for a few long moments, waiting for me to say something.

I just sat there, waiting for some kind of explanation. I watched her face. I could see that she was trying to think of some plausible explanation for something that didn’t have one. She didn’t want to tell me where she was getting the money for this stuff. So I knew it had to be something bad.

I finally said, “Stacy, we’ve been best friends for ten years. You know everything about me. Until this ... whatever this is, started I knew everything about you. What are you into, girl? Are you selling drugs?”

She rolled her eyes and said, “Of course not!”

But she didn’t say anything else. She didn’t explain.

We sat there in silence, a very uncomfortable silence, for several long minutes. I was just about to say the hell with it and leave when her brother Brian just barged in and said, “Hey sis, I’ve got your...”

He saw me and stopped. He put his hand behind his back, but not before I saw a wad of money in it.

Stacy’s head whipped around. She looked up at her brother and she looked furious.

Brian said, “Sorry,” and started to back out of the room.

I said, “Hold on a damn minute! Brian, get in here!”

Brian and Stacy looked at each other and finally Brian said, “You should tell her, Stacy. She might be interested.”

Stacy hissed loudly, “Get the fuck out of my room!”

Brian looked at her for a minute and then walked over to the bed. I was afraid he was going to hit her. He looked mad enough. Instead, he tossed the money he was carrying onto the bed between us and walked out.

I looked down and saw two twenty dollar bills on the bed. At first I was astounded that Brian would burst into Stacy’s room without knocking. And she never said a word about it! That isn’t like either of them.

But I was so distracted by the money he tossed on the bed that I all but forgot about the invasion of her privacy.

I didn’t know what she was keeping from me but whatever it was it looked like a pretty good deal! I couldn’t believe she would stumble onto some way of making so much money and not share it with me. I was really hurt.

I got up slowly. Fighting back the tears I said, “I thought you were my best friend.”

I turned and headed for the door. My heart was broken. I didn’t have much in the world. But I had my best friend, up until now. I opened the door and I was half way out when she called out, “Sara wait!”

She scrambled to her feet. I stopped, not really wanting our friendship to end like this.

She hurried over and pulled me back into the room. She hugged me and said, “I’m sorry, Sara. You are my best friend. You know that. You’re the best friend ever. That’s why I don’t want to tell you. You’re much too nice to get involved in what I’m doing. I don’t even think you could do it. But mostly I don’t want you to find out what I’m doing and hate me.”

We were both crying now. I insisted, “I could never hate you! Stacy, I’ve only got two people in my life. I have my mom and you. And I never see my mom. She’s always at work. If I didn’t have you I couldn’t stand it.”

She turned me loose and pushed me back across the small room to sit on her bed. She pulled a handful of tissue from the box on her nightstand and handed me some of them.

We both wiped our eyes and blew our noses and got ourselves under control. There was another long silence before she said, “Sara, I’m doing something bad. Not just me. There are a bunch of us.

“Well, maybe not a bunch. There’s Brian and me, Danny and Kirk and Didi, Tawney and Sharon. We’re all doing it. Brian has been doing it for a while. I started about three weeks ago.”

“Doing what?!” I asked, still exasperated by the lack of any kind of explanation.

Her face was bright red. She looked more embarrassed than I’ve ever seen her before. I was almost tempted to let her off the hook. But I couldn’t. This was too big. I didn’t know what it was but I knew it was something big.

When she still didn’t explain I asked, “Are you doing something illegal?”

She stopped to think for a moment. She seemed to be genuinely surprised by her own answer. She nodded and said, “Yeah, I guess I am. I never thought about it like that before.”

Finally she said, “You have to swear never to tell anyone else if I tell you. I mean it, Sara. You can never tell anyone ever.”

I smiled and asked, “Who would I tell, Stacy? You’re the only person I ever talk to!”

She took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. After another long pause she said, “You’re going to hate me when you find out what I’m doing.”

I shook my head violently and exclaimed, “You know I could never hate you. Stacy, I love you. You’re my best friend. I don’t have a sister or a brother. Even if I did you know I’d love you more.”

Stacy looked down at the two twenty dollar bills in her hand and quietly asked, “Remember the guy that moved into the old house near the end of Mountain Street a few months ago? You’ve seen him. You said he was creepy. You said you don’t like the way he looks at you when you walk by.”

I definitely remember him. He’s never done or said anything to me. He just makes me nervous the way he watches me whenever I walk past his house.

I nodded and looked at her curiously. What could he have to do with this?

Stacy never looked up from the money in her hands. She was almost whispering when she said, “He’s paying us to come to his house and do things, things we shouldn’t do ... bad things.

“It started with Tawney and Danny. They live a couple of houses down from him. Then he asked them if any of their friends would like to make some money, too. Now it’s the seven of us. We aren’t all there all the time. Sometimes it’s just one or two of us, sometimes more. Sometimes we, oh Jesus, Sara! I don’t want to tell you what we do.”

I believe I mentioned earlier that I’m no Albert Einstein. But it didn’t take a genius to figure out what she’s talking about. She’s having sex for money! And as soon as I realized it I exclaimed, “You’re doing it! You’re doing it for money!”

She shivered and said, “Not every time. Sometimes he just takes pictures of us. Sometimes they’re just nude pictures. Sometimes we have sex with each other and he watches and takes pictures.

“Whenever we go there one or more of us has to have sex with him before we can leave. Sometimes he has some friends over and we have to pose for them or put on a little sex show and then they all have sex with us.

“There are other times when we have to do it in front of a big ass camera and he broadcasts it to people on the internet. I guess he has a pay site. Every time we go to his house he gives us money. The more stuff we do when we go there the more money he gives us.”

I stared at her in disbelief for what must have been a minute or so before I finally had to ask, “How could you do that?!”

She shrugged. She was obviously very embarrassed. I could certainly understand why. She sounded defensive when she said, “I’m tired of being poor. I’m tired of not having the things that other kids have.”

She paused and more calmly now she said, “It isn’t so bad. You get used to it. It was hard at first. Some of the shit he makes us do is really gross. But I’ve got nice clothes now! I’ve have a cell phone and I have an iPod and I’m getting a computer.”

She finally looked up from the money in her hands. She looked me in the eyes and quietly said, “It’s worth it to me.”

I was stunned. My best friend has become a prostitute!

There was another long silence. My mind was spinning furiously with a hundred questions. I didn’t know what to ask first. I’m not sure why I started with, “What kinds of gross things?”

She looked down again. She paused for a long time and then she almost whispered, “I’ve had sex with all of them, even the girls. And now I’m having sex with Brian. They think it’s hot to see a brother and sister doing it.”

I asked, “What does he do with the pictures?”

“I don’t know. He has a big collection, thousands of them. He’s been doing this for years, long before he moved here. You can tell by his picture collection. I think he sells them on his internet website.”

“Doesn’t that bother you?” I asked.

She replied, “It did at first. But I figure that no one that buys them is going to know me or ever see me. And even if they do, what are they gonna say? They’re looking at kiddy porn. They can’t say anything.

“I don’t like the things he makes us do. I’m embarrassed. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you.

“But I like the money and nobody’s getting hurt. Well, it hurts a little sometimes. It hurt a little when he took my cherry. And one of his friends likes to fuck the girls in the ass. That hurts a little, especially the first few times. It’s embarrassing and they treat us like shit. But they pay us good.”

I still couldn’t imagine doing what she was doing. But I had another question. “What are you telling your parents about the stuff you’re buying?”

She shrugged again and said, “So far all I’ve got was some clothes. Until today, that is. I told my mom a couple of weeks ago that Brian and I are working part time at the library.

“I’m not going to tell her about the iPod. I’m going to tell her that I got the computer from a kid at school who got a new one and was going to give his old one to the thrift shop. As long as I take it out of the boxes before I bring it home she won’t know the difference.”

I suddenly remembered what she said a moment ago and I asked, “What’s it like having sex with Brian? And with other girls?!”

She actually grinned and said, “A couple of the girls are pretty good at it. We’ve even talked about getting together sometime when it’s just us girls. We’ve had some fun.

“Brian isn’t so bad. He’s kinda rough. And he cums too quickly so you never get off when you do it with him. But he’s getting better about that. It was hard for me at first. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if we got along. But you know how he is. He’s an asshole and he always will be.

“Brian doesn’t seem to care. He enjoys the hell out of it. For him it’s just a chance to get laid. He doesn’t care who the girl is. The worst part is now he thinks he can fuck me any time he wants. He makes me suck his cock or fuck him every day now.

“I don’t like it. But I’m afraid to fight him. I’m afraid that mom or dad will find out if I raise a stink. It’s easier to just give in.”

“And you have to fuck that old guy too?” I asked incredulously.

She nodded and said, “Yeah. One of us always has to, or suck him off. And when his friends are there they all get off too. That’s why it’s better when there are more girls there. A couple of times I had to get five guys off. I was the only one there. Sometimes the guys have to do it too. Brian has had to suck him off a couple of times.

“He hates it, of course. But the guy pays him extra for doing it. I can always tell when the guy has made him do it. He’s all pissed off when he gets home and when he makes me fuck him or suck his cock he’s rougher on me than normal. It’s like he’s punishing me for what he had to do.”

“How often do you go over there?”

“It depends. The first week I went there twice. The next week three times. Last week I went three times but he called me on the cell phone one night and I had to sneak out and go over again one night.”

I noticed the way she said that. “Had to?” I asked.

She responded quietly, “It’s kind of like he sucks you in. At first he just takes some pictures and feels you up a little. The first time he took pictures of me undressing and then I posed for about half an hour in the nude. Then he made me sit beside him on the couch and he felt me up. I ended up beating him off. It was kind of gross but then he gave me forty bucks.

“Shit! I never had more than five bucks all at one time in my fucking life!

“I felt dirty when I left there,” she continued. “But all the way home I was thinking of the things that I could do with forty dollars. I decided that I could live with feeling a little dirty for forty dollars.”

Just then the door opened again with no knock, no warning at all. We could have been naked!

Brian came in and closed the door behind him. He looked back and forth between us and then he asked Stacy, “Did you tell her?”

Stacy gave him that furious look again and responded, “She isn’t interested!”

I looked at her and asked, “Tell me what? What am I not interested in?”

Brian gave me an evil little grin and said, “He wants us to find new girls for him. If we find one he’ll pay us fifty bucks. And if he gets to pop her cherry he’ll give us a hundred and the girl a hundred. You’re a virgin aren’t you, Sara?”

Stacy turned and hissed, “That’s none of your fucking business! Now get out of my room!”

He grinned and let her push him to the door. But before he went out he said to her, “He wants you there tomorrow right after school.”

Tomorrow is Wednesday. We planned on hanging out together after school. That creep on Mountain Street is spending more time with my best friend than I am!

Brian finally left and once more Stacy couldn’t look me in the eye.

I was stunned. I looked at her and said, “One hundred dollars?”

She shook her head violently and said, “You couldn’t handle it, Sara. You’re too nice a person. And I couldn’t stand it if you got sucked into that nasty swamp because of me.”

I replied, “You’re handling it.”

I paused and then I added, “I wouldn’t mind having things, too. I don’t like being poor anymore than you do.”

But then I stopped and wondered, “Am I really considering this?!”

Stacy grabbed my hands and squeezed them so hard that it hurt. There was a strong note of urgency in her voice when she exclaimed, “No! Sara! You’d hate it! It isn’t easy. The things that he makes us do are terrible. I ... you’re just too nice a person. Don’t even think about getting involved in this!”

I wasn’t certain who I was trying to convince when I whispered, “We could help each other. We could support each other. We could be there for each other. And if I tried it and couldn’t handle it I could always quit.”

She glanced at the door and then she said nervously, “No, Sara. He doesn’t let you quit. Once he takes those pictures he has you over a barrel. If you tell him you want out he threatens to send those pictures to people and have one of the kids hand them out at school.”

I said, “So you have to do this forever?”

She shook her head and said, “No, just until I’m sixteen. He says there’s no market for pictures of girls once they reach sixteen, or at least not with his customers. He only wants kids between the ages of fourteen and sixteen.”

I was silent for a minute and then, under my breath I said, “That’s awful!”

She shrugged and said, “It really isn’t so bad, if you’re the right kind of girl. Most of that stuff is just hard the first time or two that you do it. Some of it is actually kind of fun. In fact, the more I do it the more exciting some things are. I don’t like that I can’t quit. Still, I’m getting what I wanted out of it.

“But not you, Sara! You aren’t like me. You’re ... nice. I couldn’t stand it if you went there and he changed that about you.”

It was getting late and I was supposed to be home. But my mother won’t be home until midnight and we don’t have a phone so she won’t know. My mom and I are close. I hate lying to her or keeping secrets from her. But the odds are that I won’t have to tell her any lies. In fact, the odds are that because of her schedule I won’t even see her until Saturday.

I was surprised when I realized that Stacy and I were still holding hands. I squeezed her hands and said, “Tell me about it. I want to know what it’s like.”

She looked at me for a few seconds before she asked, “Tell you about what? What do you mean you want to know what it’s like? What are you talking about? Sara, you can’t be considering it!”

I instantly replied, “NO! Oh god no. I just wonder what it’s like to undress for a man. What’s it like to do what he tells you and not be able to say no? What is his ... what’s it like to touch his ... you know! What’s it like to put it in your mouth? What was it like to lose your virginity? Oh god, Stacy! There are a thousand questions you could answer for me!”

She laughed quietly and I asked indignantly, “What? What’s so funny?”

She leaned forward and said, “If you really want to know what it’s like I can go get Brian. He’d love to answer your questions for you!”

I actually considered her offer for a moment before she put the heel of her hand on my forehead and nearly pushed me off the bed.

She exclaimed, “Sara! Jerk! That was a joke!”

I smiled and said, “I’ve never seen a boy’s ... cock.”

I shivered just from saying the word. But then I said, “You saw your brother’s when you were growing up. I don’t have a brother.”

She laughed and said, “Until a couple of weeks ago I hadn’t seen it since he was about five. I was four and I don’t really remember it. Besides, it isn’t the same. Trust me.”

She obviously wasn’t going to answer my questions about what a boy’s dick is like so I asked, “How did you get into this?”

She replied, “Brian was in it before me. He was doing it for a month before I got in. But he didn’t get me in. He didn’t want me in. I’m not sure why. The horny bastard was always trying to catch me naked or in my underwear, the little pervert. I would have thought that he would want me in it.

“But it was Didi that recruited me. I was walking home from school with her a few weeks ago when her cell phone rang. I was astonished that she had a cell phone and I asked her where she got it.

“She told me she got it from a guy that gives her money to do things. She said that he had just called her and asked her to come over. I walked with her. It was on the way home anyway. On the way she told me a little about it, not much. Enough to get me interested.

“When we got to his house I begged her to let me talk to him. It wasn’t hard to convince her. She wanted the extra hundred dollars. I went in with her and she introduced me. The guy was creepy but I didn’t care. I already knew I wanted the money and I already knew I’d do whatever it took to get it.

“I was sick to death of being one of the have-nots at school. I see the things that the other kids have and it seems so unfair to me that I have to go without. They turn in papers that they do on their computers and I turn in handwritten papers that no computer has checked for errors. The way I saw it I was already getting fucked. At least if I did it at his house I might get a few orgasms out of it.”

“Did you?” I asked.

She blushed and said, “Almost every time. Sometimes I have a lot of them.”

“What was it like that first time?” I asked.

“Do you mean that day, the first day?”

I nodded.

“It was just him and Didi and me,” she responded. “First we talked and he told me what would be expected of me. He even showed me some of the dirty pictures that he took.”

She shivered as she remembered the details of that first afternoon. She looked into my eyes to see how I was taking it so far before she said, “I guess I’ve always had a kind of dirty mind because I thought some of those pictures were pretty hot. But then I saw a picture with Brian in it and I thought, ‘That son of a bitch!’ He was coming over here and getting paid and he never said a word to me about it.

“I figured if my rotten brother could do it then why the hell not! But to be honest, I think I made my mind up before we ever got to his house. I wanted the money.

“I didn’t even have to think about it. I told him that I wanted to do it.

“He smiled when I told him I wanted to be one of them. But he didn’t just say okay, get undressed and let’s fuck. He played hard to get. He acted like I had to convince him that I really wanted it before he’d accept me.

“He said that he had to ask me some questions first. I had to tell him how old I was. When I told him I was fourteen he was happy about that. I had to assure him that I was still a virgin and he warned me that he would check. I had to promise to come whenever he needed me but he said that he wouldn’t interfere with school or get me in trouble with my parents. And I had to promise to do whatever he told me to do. Not just while I was at his house. Anytime.

“He also warned me that I would do things that I probably never imagined, and that I would do those things with people besides him. He didn’t go into detail about that but he made it clear there would be other men that I’d have to have sex with and that I couldn’t say no. He made it clear that I would also be having sex with other girls. But I doubt if I would have cared about anything he told me by the time we got that far. He turned out to be very talented at sucking me in. I guess he’s had a lot of practice at making kids think that they want what he’s offering.

“He was very good at making me feel like I had to talk him into letting him screw me. I have to admit that it was hard to concentrate. I was nervous about what I was about to do. But all through that first conversation he was holding a one hundred dollar bill in his hand.

“I heard him talking. I understood what he was saying. But none of that mattered. I stared at that hundred dollar bill and I wanted it so badly. I knew I was hooked.

“He didn’t give me the money that day, though. He showed it to me. He held it just out of my reach and said that he was not going to take my cherry that day. But if I came back the next day he would take my cherry and give me the hundred.”

“He got his camera out and he ordered me to undress. I don’t know if I was more embarrassed because I was undressing in front of a man for the first time or because Didi was watching. But I did it. I took all of my clothes off and then he pulled me over to the couch and I sat down beside him while he made Didi undress.

“As soon as she was naked he gave her the camera and she took pictures while he felt me up for a while and kissed me like I was his girlfriend. He checked to make sure I was still a virgin. That was embarrassing! He made me spread my legs wide and actually hold my ... my pussy open so he could see my hymen.”

She shivered as she remembered the experience.

“Then he taught me how to beat his meat. I never touched a guy’s thing before, of course. It was so weird. It was bigger than I expected. It was harder than I expected. It felt like there was a bone in it. There was a clear liquid oozing out of the tip. Every time his dick throbbed more of it came out.

“He showed me how to hold it and how to move my hand to make him feel good. It was a lot of work and it took a lot longer than I thought it would. It was really gross. I got that stuff all over my hand and then he started breathing hard and moaning and his cum shot out of the end. It went all over the place!

“After he shot his cum all over my hand and his belly he made Didi give him back the camera. He took more pictures while she was ordered to come over and lick his cock and my hand clean.

“I almost puked! But she never even changed her expression. She got down on her knees. I was still holding his messy dick in my hand. She didn’t even seem to mind! She leaned over and licked his stuff off of my hand. She pulled my hand off of his dick and licked my palm clean. Then she licked his dick and his belly and a few drops she found on his thighs until it was all gone.

“I sat there staring her the whole time wondering how could she do that and not get sick!

“When she finished he gave me forty dollars and told me to come over after school the next day.

“I rushed home after that. I was so excited I could hardly breathe. I went to my room and sat there staring at the hand I beat him off with and at the money and thinking about what I had just done.

“Do you know what I did then? I lay on my back and masturbated! Jesus, Sara! When he sent me home without fucking me I was honest to god disappointed! I could have wrung my panties out when I got home.”

I had a thousand more questions. But we were out of time. There was a tap on the door and Stacy’s mother came in. Stacy’s mom is beautiful and funny. I’ve always liked her. Everyone likes her. She’s been like a second mother to me over the last few years. But in the last year since her husband hurt his back she looks like she has aged ten years. It was disturbing to see her. The hard work and the stress of living on only her income were killing her.