Chapter 6: A Stranger With Candi

"Hello?"

"Hi, is this Candi?"

"Who?"

"Candi."

"There's no Candi here."

"Is this—?" And the voice said my phone number.

"Yes, it is," I said.

"That's strange. I got your number from Dr. Adams."

"Oh, Aidan, sure."

Carter looked at me in surprise. I was in the kitchen, talking on the wall phone next to the counter. He was sitting at the table, eating a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios. Mom was still out showing houses. She told us to get our own dinner, and all Carter ever wanted was cereal.

"Well," the voice said, "Aidan said I could call if I wanted some company."

"Sure. That would be great."

"I can pick you up at—" He named the corner. It was where my street met Church Road. "Or are you too busy?"

"No, I was just doing my homework."

My French textbook and copybook were on the kitchen table across from Carter. I'd been conjugating the verb etre when the phone rang.

The voice said: "You're really in high school?"

"That's right."

"My God. He wasn't kidding."

"No."

I was being vague, so Carter wouldn't catch on. But the vaguer I got, the harder he looked at me, like I was plotting a terrorist attack or something.

"Say ten minutes?"

"Make it fifteen. I have to change." I was only wearing my sweats.

"I'll be waiting," the voice said. The connection went dead. I hung up the phone.

"Aidan?" Carter said.

"That's what Dr. Adams told me to call him."

"Since when?"

"Since always."

"I never heard you call him that."

"That's 'cause you're always in your room looking at porn on the Internet."

"And who's Candi?"

"That's what I thought he said. He said Christie."

"Christie and Candi don't sound the same."

"There was static. I gotta go."

"Where?"

"Babysitting job."

"You told mom you gave that up."

"Just this one time. The guy said he was needed somebody right away, and Aidan gave him my number."

"Usually it's the mom who calls."

"He said his wife was busy."

I was explaining too much, and using Aidan's first name had been a mistake. But the call caught me by surprise. Aidan had only put me on the pill the week before. He said it would take like a month before it started working.

"Where do you have to go?" Carter persisted.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" And I left him with his cereal and his Batman "graphic novel" and went to my room.

My first job! Like the guy said, Aidan wasn't kidding. He was really pimping me out. This was going to be fun. But I wished he would have checked with me before he came up with the name. Candi? Ugh! It sounded so sweet, which I definitely am not.

Closing the door, I stripped naked and looked at myself in the mirror, wondering what I should wear. I never thought much about clothes before. That was Teri's department. I'd always been a tomboy and never cared much how I looked, but I was starting to.

I like how my cunt looks, for instance, since I started shaving it — clean and smooth, like a Barbie's plastic crotch. I got the idea that time we stripped Holly. I know her dad made her do it so she'd look like a little girl, and it humiliated her, but I couldn't get it out of my mind, and one night I did it in the shower, on impulse. I like the way the air feels on it, too, and how I can admire the plump red lips around my hole.

And what's wrong with looking like a little girl?

So I stood there with my fists on my hips, looking at my bald mound and my little tits, and pondering. The only sexy thing I had was my slutty cutoffs, and I couldn't wear those because Carter would see and go blabbing to mom. It was getting kind of cool out to go shaking my bare butt, anyway. Plus I figured if it turned the guy on to do it with a schoolgirl, it would turn him on more if I dressed like one. Modest but naughty was the way to go. I put on my white lamb's wool sweater with the V-neck. Pure and virginal, except I had nothing on under it. No shirt, no bra. I also got out the red tartan skirt mom made me wear to the Christmas concerts in middle school. It still fit me around the waist, but it was getting short on my legs. It let you see maybe six inches of thigh, and I had plenty of thigh left.

What made it really naughty was my white stockings, which I pulled up above my knees. I'd seen some of the older girls wear them like that at school, the sluts.

I held the skirt up, looking in the mirror, and thought about panties. Something sheer would look cool with the stockings, but I didn't have anything like that. Or wait — maybe I did. Teri, bless her, had given me a flat box full of underwear for my birthday and told me it was time to stop wearing jock straps. At the time, I'd hardly looked at them. I'd never be caught dead in this trampy crap, I thought, but now I dug the box out of my dresser drawer and pawed through it. There was pink satin, leopard spots (ugh), a lime-green something-or-other no bigger than a rubber band, a black leather bikini bottom, and — eureka. See-through white lace, with little blossoms and scalloped leg bands, the kind of thing a Vegas bride would wear under her gown. They were square, too, like short boxers, which I liked. I thought of them as a transition for me, somewhere between tomboy and goddess. They sure didn't feel tomboyish, though. They were snug, but airy, and they made me feel more naked than naked. They were like wearing sex, if you know what I mean.

I slipped into my black pumps, and for a finishing touch, I put on the gold-heart pendant my grandma gave me. A quick brush of my hair, and I was all set — another doe-eyed American girl out for some dick. Yeah, I looked sweet. Maybe Candi was the right name.

My pimple-faced prick of a brother was lurking outside my bedroom door when I came out. I nearly banged into him, and of course, his eyes went right to my nipples poking up under my sweater.

"You look hot!" he blurted out. For a second he dropped the man-of-the-house routine and sounded really impressed. Not surprising: It was the most feminine he'd ever seen me. The hormone-crazed fuck already spent his life in a state of perpetual horniness. I'll bet he felt like a total perv getting turned on by his own baby sister.

"Well, thank you, big brother," was all I could think to say. I thought his compliment got me off the hook, but he kept pressing.

"Too nice to babysit," he said. "What're you doing for real?"

"Nothing," I said.

"You got a boyfriend?" he asked, following me into the kitchen. "You meet a guy at school?"

"No," I said. "This is just a job."

Both of those statements were true.

"Then why the dress up?"

"I wanted to look nice," I said, which was also true. "Can't a girl grow up?"

"Ohhh, Krispy Kreme's got a boyfriend."

"I do not!"

To keep up the charade, I put my French text and my copybook in my blue canvas bag, like I was going to do homework while looking after a kid. (I also had some condoms Aidan gave me in there.) Carter stood at the table across from me the whole time, trying to look down my sweater. He stuck to my heels all the way to the front door.

"If mom comes home, tell her I'll be back by eight," I said.

"I'm gonna tell her a lot more than that," he said.

"Come on. Stop being a dick just this once."

"OK. Whatever."

I left him standing in the doorway. He was still there when I got to the street and looked back, staring at me like he still couldn't believe my transformation. He seemed particularly interested in my legs. I stopped at the edge of the front lawn, and, looking around to make sure there weren't any cars coming, I flipped the back of my skirt up over my ass.

That would shut him up. He wouldn't say a thing to mom if he thought he would get to see more.

Now, I know what you're thinking. This girl is out of her fucking mind. She's fourteen, and she's about to get into a car with a total stranger and go off and have sex with him. She could get raped. She could get killed. Well, I thought of that, too, but walking down the hill, in lace panties and no bra, I was more excited then I'd ever been in my life. I was tingling all over, getting hornier with every step, and greedier. I like sex, and I like money. Why not put them together?

Besides, if I hadn't gone through with it, I never would have met my Uncle Larry.

He was waiting for me when I got to the corner, sitting in his long, shiny red car with the white top, and other than the car, I didn't like what I saw. He had a fat face, first of all, and he was bald, with a fringe of dirty white hair that winged out on the sides. He had a mustache, also dirty white, and a goatee that did nothing to hide his double chin. Suddenly, being a hooker didn't seem so glamorous. I was about to bag it and go home, but it was too late. He saw me through the open passenger window.

"Candi?" he called.

I might have nodded. He leaned way over and pushed the door open a crack.

"I'm Larry. Get in."

So I did. The door was heavy as a dead horse. When I tried to close it behind me, it wouldn't catch. I had to push it out again and swing it back so it slammed, pulling with both hands on the armrest. I tucked my bag under my legs.

"Buckle up," Larry said, and he put the monster in gear.

Up close, he just got worse. He had a gut, and he was wearing a red tracksuit with white stripes down the arms and legs, and black high-top sneakers with the laces untied. The red of the tracksuit was the same as the red of the whole inside of the car — the seats and the dashboard and the steering wheel and the padding on the doors. Without the white stripes, he would have disappeared.

"You're very pretty," he said. "I love your skirt. You can tell, red is my favorite color."

"This is a cool car," I said.

It was the only compliment I could think to give him. It was obvious he cared more about the car's appearance than his own. It was immaculate.

"Sixty-three Chevrolet Impala," he said, like it meant something to me. "I don't take it out much, but this is a special occasion. I wanted to impress you."

"You did," I lied.

He put his hand on my knee while he drove, stroking the rough nylon of my stocking. I tightened up, but I managed to overcome my distaste and opened my knees a little. He stroked higher.

"How do you know Aidan?" I said.

"We went to high school together."

"And you're still friends?"

"Hard to believe, isn't it? We must seem very different to you."

"Kind of."

"Well, we are, in a lot of ways. But we do have a few things in common."

And his hand went up to my crotch. I opened my legs more. My skirt bunched up, and I could see the strip of white lace between the hard tendons inside my thighs, and my bald pink pussy mashed up against it. But Larry didn't take his eyes off the road. He didn't talk dirty, either. He just asked me about school and what my favorite subjects were and did I play any sports, and he told me about fixing up his car and going to auto shows and driving in parades with other classic car enthusiasts, and all the time he was rubbing and rubbing. He had to use both hands to turn the wheel, but when he got going straight again, he went back to feeling me up. I missed him when he was gone.

By the time we got to his house I was simmering in my juices like a Thanksgiving turkey. The lace was rough on my clitty, which was amazing. I had my hand up under my sweater, rubbing my tits, and I was dying to get out of my clothes.

He lived in the city, maybe twenty minutes from where he picked me up, on a narrow street with lots of trees, and different style houses that were smaller and closer together than they were in my neighborhood. He turned in next to a gray bungalow, and we went back along a concrete driveway with a strip of grass down the middle. There was a new-looking garage in the backyard. Larry pressed a remote clipped to the visor, and the door opened. The garage was big enough for two cars, but it was empty, except for some shelves and tools hung up in neat rows. Larry parked in the middle, so his baby sat far away from the walls.