Carrie Minberg, Female, 16

	- Narrator, high school sophomore

	- Beige, freckled skin, 5'5, 145lbs, curly back-length dyed-blue hair

Camila, Female, 16

	- High school junior

	- Light-olive skin, 5'7, 150lbs, shoulder-length black hair with dyed-pink streaks

Michael, Male, 16

	- High school sophomore

	- Dark brown skin, 6'0, 155lbs, short very curly black hair

Hiding my relationship with Cam from my parents became a full-time job for me. I lied often about where I was going, though they knew Cam and I were close friends. I didn't want them putting the pieces together.

At some point that summer, my mother asked me about boyfriends. I lied, said I kinda like a boy but so far, we were just friends. They were classic homophobes, at least Dad was. Mom never said much on the subject, so I always assumed Dad's opinion was her opinion. They were Southern Baptists, fundamentalists with no grey between black and white. If they'd have known the truth about me and Camila, I honestly don't know what they'd have done. It wouldn't have been pleasant.

Camila and I clicked perfectly. Her confidence rubbed off on me, made me feel strong again, and it wasn't just the sex with her. It was small things. The way she looked at me when I answered her questions, the way she held me when I was feeling down, or cramping, or any of a million other things that caused my mood to swing low.

Mostly, she was a rock. Other than her mom's illness, she never showed signs that the world might break her. It is from Camila's firm but gentle handle on life that I found my own pace.

Odd, really, that she was in control of her life, her emotions, was always one to take charge, make decisions, lead when I was lost. Odd because our sex life became just the opposite.

She liked to be guided, lead, told how to do things. At first, she led me, but as I started to get comfortable between her legs, and all over her wonderful body, she began to let me take charge. She'd wait until I made it clear what I wanted. She made me tell her what I desired from her.

It wasn't roleplay or even the typical sub/dom scenarios that I've learned more about in the years since. No, it was just that she loved to let that go when we made love, that she wanted me to feel the power that came from moving her body, sending her hands to my tits, letting her know when I wanted to cum.

And it worked really well. It was a perfect fit, and exactly what I needed as I turned sixteen that summer. She was edgy, a bit 'butch' I guess, when she was in public, or even when it was just us doing something together. But in bed, oh, in bed she was a soft girl, carefree, pliant, ready to be submissive to my every desire.

I came to know her body intimately, tasted every inch of her, often. And she learned mine, even places I didn't know would feel pleasure at her touch. The two of us made two halves of a whole when we were together, and it wasn't just me believing in fairy tales again.

One evening by the neighborhood pool, just before it closed for the night, we lay side by side, not daring to hold hands but close enough to let our shoulders touch. We looked up at the orange and pink clouds slowly building over us. We talked of marriage, knowing it would never be legally recognized. But we talked about spending our lives together, having children, growing old and dying.

Camila saw life in a different way than I did, and I suppose that's how I learned so early to empathize and try to understand other viewpoints. My morose undertones had been pushed down during the months with her, but they still surfaced regularly enough for Cam to call me 'Moody Mary' from time to time. Sometimes, it was my period. Sometimes, just me being me.

She never saw the glass half empty. She saw possibilities where I often dwelled on consequences. I'd been burned, scarred in some ways, by Brown, by Henri, and it was many years, and many relationships later, before I understood just how deeply I'd taken those scars into how I reacted to other people.

Camila's mother's illness turned for the better a few weeks before school, and she made remarkable progress in a clinical trial of a new treatment.

We were snuggled on her couch when Camila told me the news. She didn't look as happy as she should have. My heart sank at what she wasn't telling me. “Cam... what is it?”

“Mom got into the second part of the trial, they want her to go in two weeks.”

“That's great! What... why isn't that great?”

“It's in Boston.”

“So she'll fly up, you'll visit her sometimes. Don't worry, Cam, it will be ok.”

“No... it's not like that. We're moving to Boston... in two weeks...”

I couldn't speak, felt numb, like my favorite thing in the world had just been stolen from me. Ripped to shreds. Painfully put down before my eyes. I whispered plaintively, “oh... no... no, please Cam... no...”

She cried, and I cried, and together we cried over what we would lose.

All the pains I'd manage to heal, all the isolation, the fears, the stress of just being me rushed back in and I fought for breath to control it. I had a panic attack, couldn't suck in air, stopped crying I was so freaked out. My head spun, swimming in thick and depressing chains that held back any good feelings. The paramedics that took me to the hospital got my breathing under control and by the time I arrived, there wasn't much more to do.

My Dad came quickly, sat concerned as he listened to the doctor describe what had happened, what to do now. He drove me home, mostly in silence. I'd never connected with him, and sometimes I felt like he wished I wasn't around. If I had anywhere else to go, I'd have already gone there. I wanted to go to Boston. I was dying inside, knowing my best friend and lover, the only person I trusted at all, the only person who knew me well, was being taken from me.

I called Camila when I got home, told her I was ok, just very sad. We cried again on the phone, her strong disposition broken nearly as wholly as my own.

I couldn't sleep that night, couldn't dare dream. I tried to rationalize, to make it not happen. I made Rube-Goldberg plots that would keep my Cam with me. Some of them I even believed might work.

But as all things seem to do, the truth of the situation came crashing into me after only a few minutes of sleep and enough minutes in time to realize that all my plans were full of shit.

I spent every minute I could with her until she left, and it was hard. The anticipation of loss is a hard feeling to push aside, and even when she came on my fingers, or I came on her face, it was always tinged with a deep sadness that often led both of us to tears.

It wasn't fair, wasn't right, but there was nothing two sixteen-year old girls could do to change things. Her mom left on a Friday, and by Monday morning, my one true friend in the world was taken too far from me to touch.

- - -

For two weeks, we talked every day. I knew I was running up the phone bill, and I didn't care, I didn't 'give two shits' when a few weeks later my Dad exploded at the charges. I'd gotten that expression from him, and I can't describe how much I enjoyed using it on him. It took the edge off my pain, and I found that arguing with my parents, especially my Dad, gave me an outlet for my emotions.

We argued a lot right up until the start of school. I'd kept my hair blue since I liked it and Cam loved it. He thought I had gone through a faze and should hate it by then, but he was wrong, and I told him so in colorful language that he threw right back at me. He never hit me, but he never held back his anger, his punishments. Usually, it involved grounding. But I had no one to see or do things with anymore, so he started taking away things that hurt me.

Like my phone.

Three days before school, he took my phone and had my line cut off. I pleaded with him, cried at his feet, threw earth-shaking tantrums like only a miserable sixteen-year old could. Nothing worked, and I lost my only private contact with the girl I loved.

School started and things only got worse. The first day of classes, a note in my locker told me, “Welcome Back, Loose Girl,” signed by “the many, many dicks you've sucked.” The telling of my one night with Brown had grown into that, and I felt myself beginning to seriously considering dropping out of school.

I started immediately plotting to get kicked out. I was fiercely determined to stop going, and I thought the best way was to to be expelled. There had been several kids dropped from school rosters just in the year I'd been there. One for fighting, another for drinking at school, two for drugs, another for bringing bullets and a lighter. And two were caught having sex in a lockerroom.

I naturally gravitated toward the latter, but the wrench in my plan was that the only person I wanted to have sex with was almost 2,000 miles away. My tongue was talented, but not that talented.

I thought about bomb threats and turning myself in. Two weeks into classes, I seriously considered stabbing Vickie Thompson for writing 'Loose Girl' in one of my textbooks. The threat passed, and instead, the next day I filled her book bag with used tampons and pads from the lockerroom. That didn't go well, but she never knew it was me. It was one of the few laughs I had in those days.

I couldn't bring myself to do anything worthy of expulsion. Without Cam, I had no balls. My bite had left me, the support I thought I needed to do strong things was lost, and I felt lost, weak, without guts on my own.

I started to really develop obsessions over some of my teachers. After all I'd lost, the closeness, the deep love, when Camila moved to Boston, I reverted, I suppose, to wanting the feelings I had for Henri. I wanted someone to pick me, to be with me, to protect me and keep me safe from myself.

I had four male teachers, all of which I looked at with hope and arousal. I was past the point of caring if anyone knew, and I went out of my way to be flirtatious any chance I got. Nothing overtly sexual, but I'd touch a hand, give a warm smile, get lost in their eyes.

It did nothing to gain me a lover, thankfully, because I'd have given in quickly had any of them opened that door. None of them did, and my fantasy world was known only to me. I masturbated a lot, thought about Camila, and even Henri at times, and I got off whenever I was feeling stressed or lonely, which was most of the time.

I suppose I had a Daddy complex, of sorts, my own father being so distant that I strongly desired some of those feelings of protection and innocent love from older men. I felt so cold to my father that I felt almost nothing when a car accident left him in critical condition. 'Nothing' in that I couldn't tell if I would be very sad if he died. I guessed I'd feel something, that my world would change again, but I couldn't find the emotional depth to feel for him what I had for Camila, or for Henri.

My dad didn't do well the first week, and my Mom began to subtly prepare for what was becoming obvious. She became strong, and for the first time in my life, I remember her becoming an organizer, a cheerleader, someone I actually admired for a change.

When it became clear my dad was going to die soon, I still felt nothing personal. I was sad, sure, I didn't want him to die. But a big part of me still felt the horrible distance between us that had always been there, the way it seemed he always avoided talking to me about anything other than my hair or his church. There was nothing there, and I suppose the sadness I felt came more from that than from my father's last days.

Mom took over everything and kept the two of us going. When I think back to that time, my father's death really was a good thing in the end. Selfishly, for me, I mean, and also for Mom. She'd always been the reserved, protected wife. Not held in chains, but perhaps in flexible bands. She never ventured beyond being a housewife, but when Dad was at that point, Mom found a reserve that I think even surprised her.

It mended a lot, going through that with her. She cried sometimes, the last week, but she got shit done, she kept us afloat, and she refused to allow me to become sullen. Or, more sullen than usual, at least. We started to talk to each other a bit.

When my dad died, she cried harder, and for a few days, she mourned him by drinking coffee alone and talking to herself. I didn't know what to do to help, but I found myself sometimes hugging her, sometimes whispering kind, soft words to her. It came so easily after what I'd experienced with Camila when her Mom was ill.

Don't mistake the warmth, the touches for anything sexual between my mother and me. My story isn't one including incest. It wasn't like that. Well, there was a cousin when I was older. I'll get to that later.

Mom and I were just a parent and child dealing with a tragedy together, and the bond we formed during that period has lasted us to this day.

Dad was gone, buried, and a couple of weeks went by before I went back to school. Everyone knew, and for a while, they left me alone. At lunch I often stared at the empty spot across from me where Camila had first come into my life. I missed her so much. I had barely talked to her in the previous few weeks. The family's resources were drained with her mother ill and out of work, and they couldn't afford the long-distance charges any more than my mother could.

We drifted apart as a result. We lost each other over those months. It still makes me cry to think about that. About what I lost with Camila. She taught me so much, made me feel so good about myself, that I... I desperately wanted her back. Nothing replaced her. No one attracted me the way she did.

But a change in schools presented me a new opportunity to shift the way I saw the world.

After my father died, my Mom had to sell our house. When I heard her tell me that, I felt light and cheerful for the first time in weeks. We could move somewhere new, some new school for me to try again.

Her dad loaned her a bit of money to help us rent a smaller place, not a ton of equity available to us. It only took a few weeks and by the holiday break during winter, we moved into a small house beside a creek. It was out a ways from town, but the thing that mattered most was that I was in a new school district. Happy butterflies danced through me as I made a million plans to be 'cool' this time.

Needless to say, I suppose, I played with myself a lot over those weeks, imagining all the fantasy boys and girls that I'd get to meet, and maybe fuck.

A few days before I was to start classes, a letter for me arrived from a place called 'Natural Law Magnet School.' I opened it. I start to feel excited as I read the words.

Ms. Carrie Minberg,

It is with great pleasure that we offer you the opportunity to join our student body for the January session. We realize this is a late notice. A late withdrawal from the sophomore class had opened a spot for another student, and you have been selected to join us this year.

The Natural Law Magnet School was one of the top high schools in the nation. How the hell had they accepted me? My grades were shit since I got to high school, I'd done nothing worthy of extra credit. Why me?

Though I wondered, I was too happy to think much about it. It simply was, and that made me very happy. Mom was excited for me, had forgot to mention that she'd applied before my freshmen year on my behalf, and I'd been rejected due to lack of space. She'd re-contacted the school to let them know I was changing schools and asked them to reconsider my application.

It didn't hurt that my dad was an alumni and donated a lot of money to keep up the football program. I didn't know that until my mom explained it, and it certainly gave a plausible reason why I got in. I still didn't care. I was going to be in a great school. I was going to be challenged. I was going to get to fuck smart kids.

I'm half joking about that last one, but only half. The thought of having all new people around me was thrilling, not scary like most people seem to experience. I hated everyone from my old school, and I could finally leave behind my 'Loose Girl' moniker.

The first day of the second semester of my sophomore year was fantastic. I had cool professors, including four women. The classes were similar to what I'd have had in the public high school, but I knew immediately that it would be very different. Even in those early days, the school had computers. Oh, not much by today's standards, but way ahead of the curve. My family had barely heard of computers by then, and they were something very distant and shrug-worthy.

I learned better quickly, and that early exposure to computers would affect my life in many ways.

A few days in, I was blending in ok. I'd made 'lunch friends' with a couple of girls, smiled at a couple of cute guys, and enjoyed not being alone all day. School was fun again, and I felt at home very quickly.

My third week was the first I really noticed Michael. He was a tall, thin black boy, sixteen like me. Friendly smile, rich, dark-brown skin, and two freckles on his cheek that made him really unique. He sat with me at lunch, was in two of my classes, and it wasn't many more days before we were tennis partners in gym.

I was very attracted to him, but I managed some reserve, some hesitation. I wanted him, wanted him to want me, sexually and emotionally, but I held myself back, unwilling to take too many chances after my past experiences.

Michael had a few characteristics that were almost feminine. He was graceful when he moved, his voice was soft, cautious. He wasn't a meathead, but he wasn't quite a nerd either. He was unique at the school, and it was both his soft charisma and his tall, dark body that began making me long for his touch.

But we hung out for weeks, and at some point he started calling me his girlfriend. I wasn't sure quite when that happened, but we'd never kissed or gone further. One day, he started holding my hand and referred to me with that term around our mutual friends.

And I did make other friends. I know, so unlike me from what I told about my freshman year. I see now how much of an aberration that time was in my life, and those months with Michael and our friends went a long way toward setting me in the right direction.

I don't know why I held off as long as I did in trying to move things further with Michael. He seemed in no rush, and in some ways, emotionally, I wasn't either. But my hormones ran strong, and I started masturbating while thinking of him, how he might taste in my mouth when he came, whether I'd let him cum inside me at least once. I imagined he was a good lover, soft and gentle, more like Henri than Brown. More like Camila.

God, I did miss her, but Michael's warm smile did wonders for healing me. The end of the semester arrived and I'd finished with all As and Bs. Michael was second in the class. Maybe he was a nerd. I just never saw it.

I had my license but no car, so Michael drove me around that summer, taking us to tennis, to movies, dinner. He never tried to kiss me first, never did more than hold my arm. I actually started to have to parallel fears: that he was gay, or that he was religious.

The first would have been a let down, but I loved him as a friend enough to want to stay close. The second, well that would mean not having sex until marriage, and I felt a long, long way from marriage then. My daydreams with Camila had been destroyed, and I'd not gotten back that feeling of anticipation for the event.

So I faced a dilemma with Michael. Things were going great while we dated, but my hormones were boiling me toward wanting to have sex with him. I started to need it, the confirmation of how he felt about me, that he found me attractive, that he wanted me to feel good.

I made the first move. We sat in his car in my driveway after a movie. He squeezed my hand, like he always did, and instead of a peck on the cheek, I dove for his lips.

He was stiff and rubbery, but I pressed my mouth to his and leaned into his body.

Michael hesitated a few seconds, did nothing, felt like he was rejecting me. I started to pull off when his arms wrapped around me and he let himself enjoy my lips. He was actually a really great kisser. He swirled his tongue in a way I'd never felt before, and I couldn't help imagining that same tongue swirling around my clit.

We held together there a very long time. When he finally pulled back, he was panting, glassy-eyed. I was vibrating, enjoying him, wanting to do more. That's the first time he said, “I love you, Carrie.”

Not what I expected at that moment, and it threw me off. I probably loved him too, but couldn't say it. Couldn't fully admit I felt it, wasn't sure that I did, not in the same way I'd meant those words when I'd said them to Camila. I recovered, tried to let my kiss make him forget I didn't repeat his love.

He eventually pulled back again, grinning. I said, “I've wanted that a long time. Thank you...”

“Me too... me too... I love you Carrie...”

I mumbled, hoped he'd interpret it for what he wanted to hear, and when he leaned back, I took that as my cue that we were done that night. I climbed out and was soon in my bedroom, fingers in my pussy, Michael's saliva still on my lips.

- - -

From the kissing, it wasn't a big effort to have sex with Michael. I realized he was just nervous, uncertain when or if he should ask girls for more. He didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable, and so with me, he just went with whatever I did. When I kissed him, he kissed me back. When I finally tried to have sex with him, he let me.

I credit Camila for teaching me how to be aggressive sexually. It was still a long ways from the things I know now, but it gave me the confidence to move things along, to show what I wanted, and to respond to choices that, once made, helped me get what I desired.

We were on an overnight field trip to visit a wind farm a few hours away. Michael and I were seated on the same bench near the back of the bus.

We sat together, hugging, holding hands. We sat without shame as a couple. Let me tell you a bit about that. Being a mixed-race couple in Texas in the 80s was not easy for anyone. But Michael and I were very lucky to have found each other in a progressive school with students predominantly from liberal, accepting parents. So, a black boy and a white girl sitting together, holding hands, stealing kisses from each other, was no more noteworthy than any couple.

Which is to say that, of course, others made fun of us and told us to 'get a room.' It didn't faze us, it was the sort of good-natured joking that helped us to blend in. There were other couples sitting together and doing similar things, and they got their fair share of the ribbing.

We couldn't do much on the bus with several teacher and parent chaperons on board. We stayed in a set of small bunkhouses nestled in a wooded area down the road from the wind farm. The day we arrived, it was hot and most of us were sweaty and a bit miserable.

After the field classes and tour, we returned to the bunkhouses and showered in gender-specific parts of the wash area. I caught glimpses of some of my female classmates, and saw many beautiful, well-developed bodies, some with smaller, puffy tits, others large, swinging mounds. A few girls shaved their pubes, most did not, and I felt very aroused to be sneaking peaks at my naked, wet classmates in the steamy water.

Once it was dark, we were told we could walk around the cleared area but nowhere else, and after 10pm, we were expected to be in our bunks.

Michael and I snuck off into the woods around 9pm while most of the others were reading or sleeping. At least two other couples were walking around, as well, and I wondered if they, too, were thinking about fucking each other.

I don't know for sure that Michael believed we might have sex that night. I know I wanted to, and it seemed like the perfect time to be with him. We'd snagged a blanket from his bed, and together, we found a soft spot about a hundred yards into the woods where we hoped no one would see us.

We laid down quickly and kissed. My hands were the first to move and I slid them along his stomach. Michael was thin, and I'm not sure if the way his ribs were hard ridges on his chest was arousing. But he was very attractive, and despite my inability to say that I loved him, I wanted him desperately.

I slipped off his shirt and he let me unbutton and unzip his pants. He didn't seem too nervous, his hands moving softly over my head. I pulled out his penis and immediately took him into my mouth.

One of the things I loved most about Michael was that he never seemed to match stereotypes. He was a black boy, but his penis was small. He was a male, but his charisma was almost feminine. He might have been a nerd, but I never saw him cracking a book outside of school. He defied my preconceptions, and I loved that about him.

I'll say now and probably again, I love all penises. Each is different, they have distinct tastes, shapes, lengths, widths, colors. Some were better at hitting my G-spot, others fit better in my mouth, or in my ass, or between my breasts. Sucking in Michael's cock, which was no bigger than four or four-and-a-half inches, I felt myself enjoying the way he felt in my mouth.

I could take him fully, my lips against his groin. I can't really describe how powerful I felt, how wonderful it was to have Michael's length fully inside me. I just wanted to suck him all night. He moaned as I blew him, his hips rising from time to time to meet me. He whispered, “its coming... better stop...”

I don't know if I was prepared to do that, but somehow I made myself pull off his penis. I realized quickly that he didn't want to cum so soon. He'd only been in my mouth a couple of minutes. Michael didn't move, and for the thousandth time I wondered if he was a virgin. We'd never talked about it, never seemed like a topic to bring up. But I wondered and realized I didn't care. I was enjoying him, and I rose over him to kiss him.

I'd come prepared and pulled a condom out of my pocket. I opened it, remembered a kindness that Henri had taught me, “do you want this, Michael?”

“Yes.”

That was all I needed. I rolled the condom over his small, hard cock, and settled myself over his body. His penis slipped into my vagina and I felt myself melt into the sensations I loved with a boy I was almost in love with.

I rode him slowly, but he didn't last long. Less than a minute inside me had him ejaculating into the condom. I enjoyed it, really, though I didn't orgasm. His cock softened quickly inside me, and I jumped off before the condom was lost in my hole.

Michael leaned up panting, and I felt pangs of fear that things were going to be just like with Henri, my pleasure not important. Instead, he kissed me, ran his hands over my body, let me know he wasn't wanting to stop. He laid over me, lips on mine, his hands caressing my breasts and warming my body.

He stayed there for a long time, and I felt the need to guide his movements. I took his wrist gently and slid his hand down between my thighs. His warm fingers slid easily through my wetness. I guided him into my vagina, one finger slipping inside. I held his palm against my clit, my nub throbbing against his hand.

Michael started to get the rhythm, my body shredding my fears and firing up with pleasure. I came hard on his fingers, shivering euphoria shuddering through me. I tried my best to stay quiet, but it was not easy. I had to make Michael pause as I grew sensitive quickly.

I think he considered going down on me, hesitated, then rolled next to me and held me as I leaned over my shoulder to kiss him.

It started to get cool as a cold front began to roll in. Rain was pinging down by the time we retook our clothes and snuck back toward the bunkhouses.

He kissed me one last time and I tried to get in without anyone hearing.

If any of my three bunkmates were aware that I came in, smelling of sex, blissful and very happy with myself, none of them said so. It had felt good moving Michael to the things I wanted to do, not waiting anymore for him to make the first move. He'd let me fuck him and I loved riding his cock. I wanted him to go down on me, to feel him behind me, penetrating my vagina doggy-style. But I was a bit sated, after months without sex.

I lay awake a long time and wondered about my feelings for Michael. I supposed that I loved him, but I recognized my resistance even if I couldn't name what held it in place. He was my best friend, my lover now, intelligent, kind, and sexy, but something held me back.

I didn't sink too deep in that as I reflected on having sex with Michael for the first time. It wasn't the best fuck I'd ever had, but far, far from the worst. I knew we'd get better together, the way Camila and I had. I thought about my former love and let her memory float in my mind for a while. Maybe I tried to let her go, maybe I couldn't do it. I think, now, years later, that part of me still held on to Camila, and that was the barrier I needed to break before I could feel the same way for Michael.