NORA BIRD

by Holly Rennick

AUTHOR'S NOTES

This story builds upon a passing sketch in my "Writers' Forum".  This is not a sequel, however, i.e., the protagonist does not turn out to be another sexually-confused schoolteacher.  So is this a romance story?  I do believe so!  Is it erotic?  I suppose that too.  But I'd like to think that sex isn't the only topic.  Concatenate the sex scenes with appropriate conjunctions and it's no story.  With some erotic fiction, it works.

And what's wrong with romance novellas, anyway, other than their being mostly clones?  Actually, that's my plan -- to perfect the sequence and then rewrite for Paris in the 20's, the Scottish Highlands, Wales, Greece and antebellum Savannah.  You get the idea.  I'll live in each locale while I cut and paste.  Romance, romance...

BUS RIDE

The courts had ruled the law unconstitutional, but the Negroes still sat at the back.  Nora didn't think it odd that they did; it was so they could talk to each other.  She always sat in the middle-right when she rode Bus 6 to clarinet lessons.  The right-hand side was better for seeing the styles in the store windows.  She hoped to get a pleated skirt for her birthday.  Penney's had the best, she'd hinted to Mom.

Preston and Rusty were already in high school, but everybody knew everybody a little bit.  Well, not the Negroes.

"Hi, babe."  The two plopped down, Rusty on Nora's left, Preston behind.  Preston had an acne problem for which he used flesh-toned cream.  The box said flesh tone, that is.  Rusty's sleeves were rolled up, the in-vogue cool-guy look.

"Wanna cig?"

Nora hadn't talked to older boys that much.  "I don't smoke."  She hoped she sounded casual.  "Besides, we're on the bus."

"Shoot.  Figured you were older.  Like to swim?  We go to the slough sometimes."

"My folks won't let me."  She wished she were older.

"Skinny dipping.  So don't tell 'em.  Like the Roxie?"

She wasn't going to look like a little kid.  "Sure."

"I don't mean watchin' movies."  Rusty looked to Preston for approval and then returned to his target.  "Ever sit in the back?"

She flinched.  Everybody knew what sitting in the back was about.  It wasn't any of their business, anyway.  She hadn't, but they needn't be told.  At 15, she felt brave.  "Sure," she ventured, hoping that somebody would take the seat across, her bravery already waning.

Rusty was looking at her bust, what she had of one that is, and scooted closer, closer than Nora liked.  He looked around.  "How 'bout this?" and touched her pubescent nipple through the cardigan.

Nora was taken off guard.  "Don't," jerking into the hard seat back without dissuading his pursuant grasp.  She tried to turn away, but his hand clutched harder, ignoring her swat.

He grinned back at pimple-faced Preston.  "See, she likes me," emboldened by his success.

Nora looked to the back, knowing that Negroes rarely look up.  "Please don't."

"Scrunch down," trying to maneuver Nora where a hand could roam more freely.

"Let him finger-paint you," his friend chuckled.  "I'll help," touching her shoulder.

She pushed Rusty's hand away, but he caught her wrist.  "So here's something you'll like," pushing her hand into his crotch.  "Big enough?"

He squeezed her fingers around something fat.  Nora couldn't dislodge his grip.  She'd heard about boners.  What if someone saw what she was doing!

"Well, it likes her," for his buddy.  Then he added to Nora, "So I'm going to let go and you're going to hold it."

Scared, not now knowing what to do, she obeyed.

"Come on, babe, squeeze me good," perhaps a line he'd read from a dirty book that he'd shoplifted.

She didn't do that, but her hand was still there.

"I'll miss my stop," she begged.

Rusty returned his hand on Nora's, tightened her fingers around him and forced her grip first down and then back up.  "Like that."

Nora started to cry.

As Rusty weighed his chances, a matronly lady claimed the seat in front, her grocery bag brimming with greens.  He let go and whispered, "See you again, pretty girl."

The two boys got off.

Her best friend Kara Lee could tell from Nora's eyes.  Kara Lee's brother Robin was in high school, a halfback.  Rusty and Preston got the tar beat out of them after the game, Rusty severely kicked in the groin, according to the word in the halls.  Rusty and Preston said it was too dark to identify the assailants but there were several and they were from another town.

THE HALFBACK

Robin didn't pay much attention to his sister's friends.  Three years younger was too little.  Even the mature ones weren't par with girls of his own class.  Kara Lee's friends giggled too much about nothing.  Babies.

Only when Kara Lee told him about Rusty and Preston, losers anyway in Robin's circles, did Robin give his sister's friend particular thought.  Just a bird and not a noticeable one at that.  Probably still played with dolls.  But she was Kara Lee's friend and no guy was going to bully little girls.

It was easy to find the miscreant pair smoking after the game, to cower one while he beat the other, then reversing the application.  He didn't kick Preston, a bloody nose enough for an accomplice.  Robin wasn't late to the team party and made it with Heather.  He didn't like having kicked, but was glad anyway.

It was two weeks later when the girl, Nora, passed him on the Library steps.  "Thanks."

"What for?"

"They haven't bothered me any more."

"Kara Lee told me."

"I know.  I just wanted to say thanks."  A shy smile and she darted into the building.

It was later, after dinner.  The siblings were clearing the table.  "Hey, Kara Lee?"

"Yeh?"

"Your friend, the one those guys hassled, told me thanks."

"Maybe 'cause you kicked their balls."

"Is she OK, Nora?"

"Sure.  Why?"

"Saw her at the Library.  Just curious."

Robin wasn't sure why he was curious, but the brevity of her smile stuck with him.  It wasn't the smile girls his age tossed around to be noticed.  It was more like a flash.  She'd probably be pretty when she got older.  He hoped she'd seen him make the 32-yard up-the-middle touchdown.

JUNIOR CHEERLEADER

Of course Nora wasn't a real cheerleader.  She was still in junior high and even if she were older, she'd not be popular enough, not glamorous like the real ones.

Nonetheless, after Kara Lee's brother did whatever he did to the boys who scared her, Nora was his secret cheerleader.  Robin was so fast out there on the field!  When the other team threatened, he'd be sent in and sack the quarterback.  Nora was so proud, him being her friend's brother.  He'd talked to her, even, at the Library.

Other than saying thanks at the Library, however, Nora's amorous life was reading the standard tales about young women and mysterious strangers in rural castles.  She'd seen dirty pictures at school, naked women mainly.  Her friends shared their knowledge of male behavior, anatomy and contradictions.  She'd decided she'd kiss a guy if she really liked him, but knew she was being theoretical.  Nobody had tested it, which made it safer.  As much as everybody talked about going all the way, her friends hadn't.

After the game, the cheerleaders would bustle around the stars, disseminating hugs as initial reward.  As the boys were yet in gear, the cheerleaders tended to hang against their heroes' bare elbows.  Kara Lee and Nora watched how the older girls thrust their breasts over and back across the players' arms, sometimes with enough vigor to protrude their nipples against their cheerleader sweaters. The two younger girls could also see that the tired team, still in their pounds of equipment, sometimes hardly noticed.

After the rally queens dashed back for their finale pom-pom choreography, the two younger girls would find Robin.  Kara Lee would give him a kiss, right on the lips.  Nora would just be excited to be there.

"What'dya think, Nora?" Robin once asked, not averse to a recount of 174 yards, one run in which he shook off two tackles and sprinted 44.  Nora had jumped up and down; it was so exciting.

"I think you're really good," she gushed.  She felt even a little giddy, being asked for her opinion.  By name!  Right there, still on the field!

Robin must have felt a bit embarrassed, hogging the glory.  "Well, Stanley made me the block."

"I still think you're really good," with her quick grin.

POST GAME

The guys egged Robin to down a six-pack, but one beer was all he wanted.  Girls, checking to see if their regular guy was otherwise occupied, squeezed against him, giggling such insights as, "You've got the moves."  It was everything a halfback could want.  Robin couldn't deny Jill's attention.  She'd brought him chips, laughed at his witticisms and undid a button to announce her pressing hormonal needs.  He'd score again.

"Let's go out on the porch," Jill's invitation.  Robin followed not to the porch, but into the garden where they'd be less visible.  "The trees got reserved already," evidence of the rally squad's pre-game planning.

"Come on, Mr. Touchdown Man," Jill teased her tongue between his teeth.  He let her, even if it felt slobbery.  She led him to her remaining buttons.  She loved her breasts.  "OK, if you really want to," while she disengaged his zipper.  "Oh, God, it's big!" as if she were amazed.

In the school plays, Jill was known to strip to her bra backstage, not going to the dressing room for a costume change if speech teacher Mrs. Grule weren't around.  Robin wondered if Jill guessed that he jacked off afterwards.  Probably, the way she'd stretch it out.  And here she was now, telling him to go ahead.  Not just telling, but doing.

He was hard without thinking why.  She'd want him to work down from her top, but he was so tired.  He tugged her bra upward, but didn't bother to unhook the back.  He let her pull his face against her until he licked her nipples, but forgot to suck.  Watching her change by the prop rack seemed sexier.  Her bra, thin as it was, had at least offered some mystery.

Robin pulled off her panties and had her on the flagstones.  He figured she'd be ready and she was, but he'd have penetrated immediately in any case.  He was glad his jeans were still over his knees; the path was gritty.  He hoped she'd brushed off the place where her butt was rubbing, but he hadn't noticed.  He liked her slippery feel, but rode her roughly.  Most girls like it that way, he justified.  He liked it when they wiggled and Jill really wiggled.  She locked her heels around him, Robin not sure if to press him inward or prevent his cessation.

She moaned climax, but he wasn't convinced he'd lasted long enough.  His ejaculation felt fine, but not that much different than with Sarah or Katherine or Heather or whoever else on the squad got to him after a victory.  Sex was good for relaxing, anyway.

Robin was pleased with his conquest (if it could be called his, that is), but at the same time, hardly victorious.  Even if she'd been a virgin, so what?  She needed being screwed, just like himself.  Her orgasm was probably real because her heart was still racing, he decided.  There ought to be a payoff for her too.  He took a little time with her breasts, attention that he should have paid in foreplay.  His teammates agreed that she had the best nipples.

Some of the team bragged about not caring whom they banged, but Robin figured that it made a difference.  He'd want it to make a difference to the girl, but maybe it didn't, other than him being a starter in the offensive backfield.

Some of the guys said they hoped they knocked their girl up, as she wouldn't even know whose it was.  No girl had ever asked him to wear a condom, anyway, but they'd not do that and run the risk of becoming unpopular.  But he'd wear one anyway.  When his sister discovered sex, he'd not want some asshole knocking her up.

He helped her into her underpants and kissed her because guys always should afterwards.  He expected she'd tell the squad she came three times, she'd made his cock so hard.  Heather had boasted two orgasms in the back of her folks' station wagon with the seat folded down.  They'd just been in the front seat and had been pretty quick.

After football there'd be basketball.  Keep scoring.  He couldn't let them think he was a queer.  Did he have any life of his own?

KARA LEE

Kara Lee didn't tell her friend about how when they were little, she and her brother would play Doctor and Nurse.  Robin would venture over her camisole, alternating with his rubber spatula and tapping forefinger. "Does it hurt here?"

"A little lower, Mr. Doctor," she'd encourage.

"How 'bout here?" until he was on her panties, spatula laid aside, and she was giggling too loud.

Even then she'd insist on her turn being boss.  "On your back.  You've been in a bad accident."  She hadn't exactly known about why he squirmed when she gave him his physical, but she knew it was like why she giggled.  She'd known without being told that games played in underpants are best played upstairs.  One time he'd suddenly rolled on his stomach and after that said they really shouldn't.  It was years before she realized what she'd seen; back then she was just hurt.

Big brothers' secrets keep little sisters employed.  Kara Lee didn't exactly know with which girls her brother made out, but she knew he did.  Kids would say things at school, not about Robin, but about girls she knew he partied with.  Sometimes when a girlfriend drove him home, Kara Lee could tell from her window that they were redressing before he got out.  He had somebody's panties hidden under his old Boy Scout uniform.

When she got to high school, she'd make out a lot too.  She'd already heard where to sit in the Roxie, how you go to the bathroom afterwards to redo your blouse, that sometimes a guy will make you hold his thing.  He has to make you, though.

She'd already kissed three boys and let Jackson put his arms around her from behind.  She hoped he couldn't tell about the padding, but was glad for the foam so he couldn't tell about her nipples.  She'd told Nora about the kisses, but Kara Lee hadn't admitted getting felt.  She would, though.  She'd tell Nora how Jackson had just used one thumb at first.  She might even tell how she'd backed up against him and got her butt just right.  Jackson tried to escape, but not before she knew exactly what effect she'd had on him!

Kara Lee liked having her friend know what a popular brother she had.  It struck her as only natural that Nora would be awed.  "He's pretty much going steady," Kara Lee confirmed on hearing that Heather on the rally squad let it be known that Robin was "good at the big one, especially if you have a station wagon."  She'd heard that Ruthie said that Jill said that Robin didn't just score during the football game.  "He knows what us seniors need."

With Robin around the house, the girls would place themselves where they could monitor him.  If he came or went, they'd look for clues.  "I'll bet he's going to take Jill to the Roxie because he put on aftershave.  You can tell around his dresser.  Bet a dollar she goes into the bathroom afterwards, you know why?"

The two would sneak in to smell and look at the clothes he'd thrown on his bed.  They liked the aftershave aroma.  Robin was a better subject for speculation than boys their own age who, in large part, were basically rude, stupid or boring.  "Sometimes he runs to the bathroom in them," Kara Lee revealed, wiggling a forefinger through the fly of Robin's underpants.  Kara Lee let Nora hold them too, but Nora didn't put her finger anywhere.

Of his love life, "They kiss goodnight, and then sometimes they mess around," she'd told Nora.  "Jill's folks must have her on a 1:00 curfew, so I know when to watch."  From her window, Kara Lee had a straight view into the front seat of anything parked up the street.  "They figure the hedge protects them, but that's just from downstairs where the folks would be."

Actually, she knew rather more.

The streetlight illuminated enough of the car's interior one Saturday to tell from how Jill's head was planted, Kara Lee noted vicariously, that the two were engaged in long kisses.  His arm was up her pullover.  At that point, who was doing what to whom became confusing to Kara Lee, but at the end, Jill's skirt was high enough to show a bare buttock and Robin's pants were down enough to show thighs under Jill's straddle.  Jill bounced herself as if she was riding a horse.  Kara Lee imagined the noise inside the car, the breathing especially.  After a number of bounces, Jill stilled and rested her head on Robin's shoulder.

Kara Lee had the impression that Robin was looking into her window, but why would he do that, given that she was totally in the dark?  Her hand slipped within her panties to better feel the moisture.

Kara Lee, of course, couldn't be sure what they'd done.  She'd not seen his penis, probably hard and straight like an arrow.  Not hearing the squeak-squeak of his mattress later, however, confirmed to her that Jill had met a need.

It was Kara Lee who masturbated that night, bouncing on her pillow.  She was a cheerleader; her cushion, her brother's lap.  Her finger was straight like an arrow, but after a few moments turned pliable and delicate.  She was just 15, she admitted.

It was easy enough to tell her friend Nora that Robin made out; it was more fun adding details.  But Kara Lee wasn't sure about sharing that she'd watched him make love, Jill bouncing on him, anyway.

A WISH

Being around Kara Lee's brother sometimes made Nora giddy.  If he weren't her friend's brother, he wouldn't even know who she was.  If he weren't her friend's brother, Rusty and Preston would be trying to make her go swimming with them or sit in the back of the Roxie.  It was so awful to have touched Rusty where she did, but it wasn't her fault, Kara Lee agreed.  Nora remembered exactly how he'd made her push down and pull back up.

If the girls were making cookies, he'd try sneaking some dough and Kara Lee would make him wash the mixing bowl as payment.  He'd laugh at getting caught and comply.  Once he snuck a blob of soapsuds in Kara Lee's hair and escaped before she noticed.

Once Robin even asked Nora who were her teachers to see if he'd had them.  They agreed that Mr. Wyman never changed his sport coat and that Miss Barlow maybe had been spy against the Nazis, the way she could see out of the corner of her eye.  Nora was afraid that her story about Miss Barlow catching Bobby Ames reading a Captain Midnight comic might seem stupid to someone as old as Robin, but he laughed and laughed and said that Miss Barlow probably used secret mirrors.  Nora turned beet red, she was so pleased, and Kara Lee hugged her afterwards.

Once when the three were in the back yard, Kara Lee attacked her brother and he'd in turn lifted her by her feet to swing like a pendulum.  Her shirt fell to her armpits and she'd swung, bra exposed, until the siblings collapsed on top of each other.  Then she'd made him kiss her forehead for being so mean.  Only afterwards did she pull down her top.

"Help me get him this time," Kara Lee had beckoned, but Nora declined.  Her top was loose too, but she wasn't his sister.

Once Robin helped them cut pictures for a social studies mural out of old National Geographics.  He'd get to some of those places someday, he'd said.  "Yah, like this one," countered Kara Lee, holding up an article about birds that nest in church steeples.  "You got named for your brain size."  Nora loved the way they'd have at each other, Robin letting his little sister deliver half the punches.

Robin was so much fun to be around.  She wished she had her own brother, one like Robin, one who used aftershave.

"You sorta like Robin, right?" noted Kara Lee while the glue was drying.

It's hard to hide things from friends, Nora realized, not realizing that sometimes her blush might be hard to hide from anybody.  "I guess."

"Maybe 'cause we're little to him, we don't mess up his life," Kara Lee's assessment.

"Why'd we mess up his life?"

"Some of his girlfriends get a little pushy, I think," Kara Lee guessed, harking back to who'd being doing the directing in Jill's car.  She'd listened to see if he skipped up the stairs after he came in.  He hadn't.  Next morning, he seemed less than exuberant.  She'd have thought that having sex with a size 36 should have made him spunkier.  Kara Lee had smacked him a sister's kiss to improve his spirits and he'd smiled back.

"Oh, I see," though Nora didn't really.

"So maybe we're safer or something," concluded the sister.  "Anyway, he likes you 'cause you're my friend.  His, too."

The thought made Nora happy.  If she couldn't have her own brother, her wish sort of worked out anyway.

THE THESPIAN

What Robin lacked in dramatic persuasion, he made up in stage presence.  There were better actors for lead roles, but he was a crowd pleaser in a character part.  In the Faculty Lounge, drama coach Grule cowed her football counterpart into a practice schedule that freed Robin enough to do both.

Robin knew he had it good, missing the sideline-sitting drama rehearsals, Mrs. Grule reading his lines while he attacked tackling dummies on the turf.  Nearer opening night, he'd learn his stage blocking.

For dress rehearsals, Jill had enough boys finding backstage tasks to keep her performing.  She would shed the rest during the cast party for someone special.  Post-game football events were usually rowdy, not wild, but noisy.  Cast celebrations tended to be in living rooms, not rec rooms.  Cast parties tended to have wine, not beer.  Quieter, smaller cast parties led parents to think that thespians were better behaved.  Perhaps.  Footballers took their girls to cars or behind bushes; thespians took thespians up to a bedroom.

Jill was elsewhere.  Robin found himself with Katherine who sipped a quarter of a wine cooler and made it known that now being totally drunk, she'd lost all inhibitions.  Maybe they should find someplace quiet, like the guest room?  Joanne, whose house they were in, had signaled it was empty.

There was a towel already on the chair.  "Joanne says we have to put this under me."  When he worked her off the towel and tried to pull it back underneath, she declared, "Fuck it," then giggled, "No, I mean fuck me."  For Robin, it was better than screwing in a station wagon.

Back in the party afterwards, friends gave him a thumbs up.  Katherine shuffled between him and a knot of whispering girls the rest of the evening.  One of them gave him a thumbs up as well.  He was looking at his Timex when the one who'd given him the job-well-done sauntered over, giggling about forgetting that it wasn't 7-Up in her glass.  Maybe they could go where it's quieter?  It beats standing around here, he decided, following her panty line back down the hall.  "I gotta pee first," she'd informed him.

Kara Lee and Nora had been at the dressing room door where he'd high fived them on his way out.  He wished they'd come along, not to drink or anything (they we're just little girls), but to kick back with.  They weren't into playing roles.  That little Nora was nice.  A shy bird, one who didn't know about making passes, was OK with him.  They'd talk about the play, maybe, not about playing.

The show was several days over before he crossed paths with his young admirer.  She and his sister were on the porch.

"You were great, Robin," quick-smiled Nora.

"Runs in the family."  Robin tried to rumple Kara Lee's hair.  Attempted escape was thwarted by grabbing her around the chest.  "Hollywood, may I present..." he boomed, then turned back to Nora, as an aside.  "Mrs. Grule doesn't trust me with more lines than my fingers and toes."  He paused, looking at his foot.  "OK, now I'm to my right middle toe," and delivered a line from the play.  All three laughed.

Still trapping his striving-to-act-irate sister, Robin reached over and rumpled Nora's hair.  She let him.  "You loan me your foot and I'll get five more lines, maybe."

He pretended to suddenly realize where he was cupping his sister.  "Whoops, Hollywood.  Maybe Miss Starlet needs a couple more years."

Kara Lee giggled, not at all embarrassed.  After her brother was inside, Kara Lee touched Nora's arm.  "He likes you plenty."

Nora's scalp felt wonderful!  She supposed so did Kara Lee's bust, but then, he was her brother.

GRIDIRON BANQUET

The end-of-season banquet was a gala affair.  They'd taken District.  Getting knocked out in the first round of State was disappointing, but the team that did it went on to take second.  Robin was sure to pull in some award, awards maybe, though the committee generally tried to spread things around.

The problem, from Robin's position, was that it was a formal affair.  Whomever he asked would more-or-less have expectations for the rest of the year.  They'd be "steadies" without ever saying so.  There'd be the Christmas Dance, the Prom.  Some girls saw a suburban home and babies. If Heather, Jill, Katherine, whoever, weren't his date, they'd probably make a big deal about having giving him their everything.  Why'd there have to be these banquets!

Seeing the two girls playing Monopoly on the dining room table started him thinking.  "Need another player?"

"We already started, but if you want to start with nothing, OK."

Clobbering Robin from the start made it more fun for the girls.  They gave no quarter when he pointed out it would be more even if he were given, say, the three remaining railroads.  "Toot, toot, Charlie," ruled Nora, which seemed funny to all three.

After spending his Get out of Jail Free, he decided to see how his plan sounded.

"You two birds?"

"She's a vulture and I'm an eagle," ruled his sister.

"OK.  Here's a deal.  Since you're both midgets, you add up to one, so what if I asked if you two want to go to the Gridiron Banquet?"

"The football thing?  It's like a big deal, isn't it?"

"Sorta."

The girls were astonished, more so when Robin added, "I'd have to ask because it's two of you, a double date, I'd tell 'em."

"Date?" Nora wondered.

"Maybe it would be boring, all that football stuff.  Just an idea," Robin hastened to end the inspiration.

"We'll do it if we get to dress up and don't have to share a plate," declared Kara Lee.

The three looked at each other and beamed.  There were by now just two railroads left, but they gave them to Robin to make it fairer, since they could see that he'd never catch up anyway.

PREPARATIONS

When Robin let it be known that he'd be bringing his little sister and her friend to the banquet, his friends thought he was joking.  When they realized he wasn't, they thought he was actually pretty smart -- he'd still have most of the rally squad to screw.  The latter thought it even cute.  As the football squad vastly outnumbered the cheerleaders, none of the latter would be left at home, unfucked on such an important evening.

Coach was pleased, a star treating a little sister so nicely.  Football was about character.  Of course they wouldn't have to share a plate!  Nora's folks saw it as doing something special with Kara Lee.

The two girls couldn't believe their fortune!  For just one junior high girl alone, the banquet would have been the highest coup and the meanest message.  Asked out by a high school football player!  Sitting at a special table!  Then everyone knowing you'd lost your virginity afterwards.

With two girls, the dating implication was nil.  Kara Lee was his sister.  The girls would be together.  His classmates knew that Robin screwed girls ready for it, ("Did you hear how long he did it to Jill in the garden?  She got a sore butt!"), but he wasn't a creep.  ("Actually, you know what?  Two punks messed with a ninth-grader on the bus and Robin sent them to the hospital!")

Nora's schoolgirl crush was being silly, she recognized.  It was how she felt when Tommy once gave her a real chocolate Valentine, not one of the punch-out paper ones.  This was about a real banquet where she'd dress up and wear makeup, not about a boy.

Kara Lee made Robin promise to drive them, not have her parents to drop them off.  They'd both sit in the front seat.  Even if it weren't a date, they'd get to do it like one.

The two chose a tie for Robin that would look good with both outfits.  Kara Lee had an off-yellow taffeta dress.  Nora had her satin A-line, just worn once as a bridesmaid for her cousin's wedding.  She'd need some nylons, was all.  The fact that the "real" dates were scouring downtown for new finery escaped the younger pair.  So did the expectation of the finery ending up wadded as pillows.

They kept their bra discussion out of big brother's ears.  They agreed that showing something was part of being dressed up.  They and their friends, the flat-chested ones like themselves, anyway, thought nothing of wearing crew-necks, one downward glance revealing every bit of AA's and A's.  That wasn't sexy because they weren't dressed up.  It especially wasn't sexy if they were braless because they were still pretty flat.  Taffeta and satin made peek-a-boo part of the effect.  You didn't want guys looking down your dress, but if they did, you should look pretty.

The two ended up going to Sears together and buying underwire bras with barely any padding and seams that hardly showed.  The lady said it gave them quite nice figures and their moms paid, moms being a sure touch for daughter dress up.  Kara Lee said that it was good that Nora's straps tended to show.  They should either show or slip for best effect.

The day before the event, Kara Lee announced, "I kiss Robin goodnight all the time, but tomorrow you better too."

What Nora didn't know was that Kara Lee told her brother that it didn't matter about her, since she was his sister, but he better give Nora a goodnight kiss if he expected her not to tell the folks about some of his girlfriends.  She figured that he less she specified, the more he'd infer that she knew, the kind of thing a little sister can pull off.

BANQUET

"Like having my own brother!" thought Nora, waiting for Robin and Kara Lee to pick her up.  Mom again helped make everything straight.

Robin grinned like a fool when her mom pinned the corsage, Nora's first ever!  Kara Lee had told her he'd get them flowers, but Nora still thought he might not because this wasn't a real date.

Kara Lee sat in the middle going and Nora would get the middle coming back, they'd decided.  The best friends looked so cute to each other in their dresses that they kissed.  Pretty funny, the three realized, two girls kissing, going out with the same guy, but who cared?  Robin was still grinning like he had the entire rally squad in tow.

Nora knew that he could see that she was wearing hose.  She knew that her dress made her look taller.  She knew that he could see the fringe of her bra and how the wire part pushed her together a little bit.  Her corsage sat proudly below her shoulder, not that far from the strap she hoped Robin also saw.

Entering the banquet, the older girls made big deals of taking their date's arm.  Robin, fully in the spirit of festivity, stuck out two elbows.  Nora had walked on a boy's arm at her cousin's wedding, so she at least knew how.

Robin had warned, "You birds are as tall as high schoolers and everybody will watch how you hobble, so don't," but they'd worn heels anyway.  What would a guy know?  The hobbling part was true enough to merit the elbow.  In the crowd by the door, Nora accidentally bumped a breast into him, but figured he'd not noticed.  It really was an accident, she convinced herself.  Kara Lee had him locked against her all the time, but she was his sister.  Siblings wrestle around all the time at home, Nora decided, so he'd know everything.

Seated, she at least knew the proper way to select the silverware.  Half the team, Robin included, to her amusement, didn't.  The seating plan was player, date, player, date, but with Robin's two, Nora had a girl to her other side.  This Sarah let Nora know that Robin was her special friend, a better friend, it seemed to Nora, than was Sarah's escort.  "Robin and me like going to the lake together."  Sarah had real cleavage, not just boobs pushed together by a pokey wire.  She'd tug her top down just by passing her hand over her waist, Nora noted, whenever Robin looked her way.

After the few minutes it took Sarah to size Nora up ("Oh, I went to that school, but it seems so long ago."), the older girl seemed less in need of demonstrating superiority.  "I like your dress.  If my slip shows, promise to tell me?"  By the time for awards, Sarah was telling her younger acquaintance that when she came to high school next year, how to decorate her locker.  Nora made mental note.

As with the arm bit, the older girls made a big point of kissing their date if he won an award, "He's mine," the proclamation.  Robin, as expected, won the Offensive Back Award, and then, not unexpected, the Team Leader Award.  Both times Kara Lee gave him a big on-the-cheek smack and everyone cheered.  After the first, Kara Lee puckered a signal to Nora to do it too, but Nora chickened out when opportunity again presented.  Sarah seemed pleased at her demure, if Kara Lee didn't.

The Most Inspirational Player Award, as always, went to a flyweight who got flattened practice after practice and kept coming for more.  During the presentation, Robin made sure that Sarah noticed him pretending to pucker his lips at Nora.  Nora reddened, but then caught on that Robin was telling Sarah bye-bye.  Afterwards in the hallway, Kara Lee had it figured out.  "Big tit Sarah had to swallow more than her roast beef, right?"

Robin started laughing and then so did Nora.  She'd been in on the inside of a joke, even!  She felt sorry for Sarah, but maybe not too much.  It made it even funnier when Robin puckered up again.  "I was sort of hoping," he added, drawing out the second word, joke forgotten.

Most of the team was going to a barn party.  One of the linesmen was a farm boy whose folks had volunteered their place.  One rule was that anybody who smoked had to leave and couldn't come back.  Another rule was that anybody who vomited couldn't do it where people walked.

Exiting, the girls could hear the players, even some of their dates, joshing about the In the Hay Award or girls getting "one good back scratching".  Sarah assured of the latter, bid adieu with the promise that Nora too would be partying heavy in a year or two.  If she had questions or anything, just ask.  Nora doubted that Sarah would remember the offer.

Brother and sister and friend knew that the barn party wasn't for a trio.  Nora had wondered if Robin might drop them and pick up somebody else to play in the hay, but he seemed uninterested in the event.  He'd had fun bringing the two, he volunteered as they headed toward the car.

Nora could already picture Sarah at the barn, her slip not showing because she'd stashed it behind the tractor.  She and Robin might themselves be heading to the party, but not really, as she was only 15.

But Nora didn't need a barn for her fantasies; her head was still swimming at being at the banquet with Kara Lee's brother, dressed up, accidentally bumping his arm.  Going out, she didn't mind holding it tighter, more like Kara Lee.  If anything, he gave her more arm to hang onto.

She wondered if maybe some people thought maybe it was Robin who pinned the corsage on her dress.  She hoped so, as Mom had to pull the fabric out to do it.  She let Robin's arm pass below the flower, her breast firm and thumping.

She hoped that somebody would notice that she was seated in the middle as they drove home.

Robin drove to Nora's house, still telling the girls how two cute chicks beat one with pompom brains.  Nora liked being called a chick.  Nora liked sitting where every time Robin shifted, she had to scoot to make room.  She loved the aftershave.

As Kara Lee had instructed, Robin came around and opened the door.  Kara Lee slipped out and then back in.  "Remember to say goodnight."

As fully intended, both friend and brother assumed she was speaking to them individually.  Where Kara Lee had never backed down was that this was going to be a real date.

Walking to her door, Nora wasn't bold enough to take Robin's arm, as Kara Lee wasn't on the other side to balance things.  But when her heels slowed her on the steps, he offered it and she at took it carefully.  When she tottered, she pulled into him until his bicep again met her chest, crossed to the middle and slid back.  She was glad Mom had bought her the pretty bra, one that satin slipped against.  She knew that she'd wanted to totter.

"It was really fun," Nora volunteered on the porch, forgetting she didn't need his arm.  If anything, she nuzzled tighter.  Before she opened the screen, they looked at each other.  If neither had moved, neither would have responded.  Just a hint of approach was all it took for the kiss that followed.

For Nora, it was instantaneous and forever.  First kisses always are.

For Robin, it was nothing and everything.  How many girls he had kissed, he wasn't sure.  Those he'd screwed, he could recall.  Nora had basically pecked and pulled back.  He was happy just feeling the little bit of her.  What would mouth-work add?  Nothing.  Nora was sweet.  He'd pounded those guys that bugged her.

Kara Lee was waiting for him in the car.  "Thanks for bringing her.  For kissing her, I mean.  It was good, wasn't it?"

His sister's insight surprised him.  "Thanks for getting her to go."

"We're not fast like cheerleaders."

"That's why I said thanks.  You get a kiss too.  It's simpler when you're 15 still."

"Wish I were 18."

Robin looked at his sibling for a moment.  "You can't tell from your window.

"She looked like a basketball being dribbled," reflected the observant one.

Kara Lee knew her brother noticed when she'd wear Dad's old shirts for pajamas.  It wasn't a big deal that her brother knew a little.  She clutched against him at the banquet to get him thinking about his other arm, she'd told herself at the time.  But it was nice for her too.  It was sexier, she thought, than in Dad's discarded button-down collar with the missing buttons.

That night Nora thought of Robin's kiss, Robin thought of tentative breasts and Kara Lee thought of wresting her brother when their folks weren't around.

Snuggled in her own bed, Kara Lee waited for the faint squeaks from Robin's before reaching down.  She and Nora had never talked about "petting the bunny", what some girls at school called it, but she wondered what the evening would have done to her best friend.

Next day, not in her dress-up dress, Nora foresaw the inevitable.  She'd be just another little sister's playmate.  Robin with his sports wouldn't have that much time to hang around the house.  They'd still chat, Nora supposed, but she wasn't that sure what they'd talk about except his teams.  Even then, she wouldn't know enough not to sound stupid.

UNIVERSITY

Four years can fly right by for a girl.  High school never seemed brief from within, but afterwards, Nora realized how quickly it went.  Her junior year, she decided to become a nurse.  Dad said she'd always have a job.  Mom noted that she'd always be told what to do; girls could be doctors, too.  Nora wasn't sure which, so took the hard classes, just in case.

As Nora and Kara Lee entered high school when Robin left for college, Nora's crush, of course, outgrew itself.  Their "double date" remained a great story, especially Kara Lee's orchestration of their goodnight kiss.  Nora still remembered walking on his arm.

More or less in cahoots with Kara Lee, she'd had her fun.  Kara Lee kissed and Nora kissed.  Kara Lee got frenched and Nora got frenched.  Kara Lee got felt up and Nora got felt up.  Kara Lee felt a guy's boner with her thigh and Nora felt a guy's boner with her thigh.  Kara Lee got dry fucked and Nora got dry fucked.  Kara Lee was first, the only difference.  Sometimes at the Roxie they'd sit close enough to signal who was to what base.  Neither girl wanted to go all the way and neither moved in the crowd that would make her.  Nora was in the band; Kara Lee, chorus.  Neither was a cheerleader.

Nora and Kara Lee decided about college separately, but together chose Nebraska.  Nora planned to see how pre-med seemed.  If it didn't suit her, she'd be on track for nursing.  Since she didn't like the idea of uniforms, perhaps she'd already decided.  Kara Lee liked Library Science, being at a neat desk and helping people find information.  Kara Lee liked Nebraska because her brother was a Cornhusker, not first string, but with lots of playing time.  The stadium held more people than lived in their entire town!

The two friends roomed together.  Next year they could move to a sorority if that was what they wanted, but neither did.  Once Nora saw Sarah, the girl she sat by at the banquet, walking on campus.  Sarah didn't recognize Nora, to the latter's relief.  A fraternity pin advertised "her twin qualifications for dating a Greek", Nora told Kara Lee.

Nora would watch Robin from the stands, one red jersey among a hundred, but she'd know by the way he stood, hand on hip.  When the announcer would say his name, she remembered being a ninth grader.  She and Kara Lee let those seated about them know whose brother the player was.

If they passed on campus, at least Robin was friendly.  He'd usually be in a crowd and maybe she wouldn't, but he'd still break away to say hi.  Three times Nora had gone with Kara Lee to his fraternity house to deliver something sent from home.  One time he'd sat with them in the front lounge and got them cocoa from the kitchen.

Once, when Nora showed him the biology book she was lugging, he said that she better be a doctor, that she was smart enough.  "Maybe a surgeon, because they don't allow high heels in the operating room."  They laughed, just like back when.  He remembers the banquet, Nora thought, blushing ninth-grade style.  It's so silly; all that happened was a tiny kiss.

Nora told Kara Lee about the high heel laugh.  "You bet he remembers," agreed her friend, recalling the squeak of Robin's bed.  He'd brought himself on so slowly that night, his sister thought, just how she'd do it were she replaying every moment.  Why hadn't her dummy brother ever asked Nora out again, even if she were just in ninth?  He'd liked her as a real person, not for her tits, like those girls he parked with.  Guys can be so stupid!  Too bad they can't see what sisters can.

But maybe it was for the best, she rationalized.  Had Robin taken Nora out, she wouldn't have had a clue about protecting herself.  They might have gone to the Roxie and Robin forgotten that she was little.  A sister couldn't stop things sometimes.  Ninth-graders who dated high schoolers sometimes missed their periods.

TOGA TIME

Toga Time at Robin's house was an event famous across campus.  Everybody wore sheets and garlands.  There was a punch bowl for the faculty advisor to taste (he knew to leave by 9:00) and another with the real stuff.  If a girl had no underwear, she'd hold her goblet in her left hand.  To get into the orgy room you knocked twice and then three times.  The grape eating contest was really where coeds would put a guy's balls in their mouth!  The Brother having sex with the most sorority coeds got to be the house president.  Rumors became legends.

Nora and Kara Lee knew that most of the hype was just imagination, but everybody agreed that fraternities had fuck rooms in their basements.  Some said that sororities did too, but they changed the sheets.  Nora might want to make love if she met the right guy someday, but in a room named for it?

When Robin said that they could come over in the afternoon to help decorate the Greek columns and Roman fountain, the girls were delighted.  Nobody from their dorm was going to the real party, so they'd be the experts, at least on the layout.

The pledges had spent all night draping walls, turning old bathtubs into goldfish ponds, fabricating palm branches to wave before royalty, and down the list of transformations.  There wasn't actually that much left to decorate.  Robin showed them where the Golden Harp would sit, though he admitted that it was actually broken.  No matter.  Only Brothers could touch it.

Alcohol was already flowing, anticipated debauchery exciting tractable imaginations.  As the two were leaving, having sampled the Coliseum Master's grape basket, Robin caught up.  "It gets kinda raunchy toward the end sometimes, but if you two want to come back for just the start, I'll tell the guys at the door.  You'll be OK, I promise, being my sister and everything.  But you two birds can't stay long, you gotta promise.  And stay together."

The two looked at each other.  There was no question what the last bit was about.  Robin wasn't laughing when he added it.  Nobody used the word "rape", but any girl who came knew she'd be thought to be asking for it.  There was a story that the pledges were sent to catch a girl for the Pledgemaster.

"Just wrap a sheet around what you're wearing now.  That stuff about underneath is stupid," Robin paused, goblet in hand, "for almost everybody.  Find me and don't drink anything but from the front punch bowl."  He thought some more.  "Maybe wear old sheets, though, in case somebody spills punch on you."

Afterwards, Kara Lee was a bit put off by the condescension.  She and Nora had been further than he might realize!  Like they needed to be told about the booze!  Just because they chose not to fuck around like him and his rah-rah bimbos!  They'd done the Roxie.  They'd just left the mess in the guy's pants was the only difference.

The two would be there.  The whole dorm would be waiting for their report.

BACCHUS SANS VENUS

Slipping into the melee, nobody even asked if they were invited.  Girl gatecrashers didn't seem unwanted.  Maybe the fraternity invited extra girls, Nora wondered, for their fuck room.  The sheets had seemed ridiculous when she and Kara Lee practiced in their room, but here everybody looked ridiculous.

They hadn't wanted to come too early, where they might stick out.  The music was a Four Freshmen LP, not Roman.  Nora could tell which girls were topless underneath.  Lots, actually.  One girl, smiling as if on camera, let a Roman guard squirt his wineskin on her front until the cotton clung around her nipples.

Kara Lee filled her cup from a back punch bowl, but Nora stayed with Robin's instruction.  She knew that Kara Lee wouldn't drink too much, but even still, Nora didn't want to get buzzy.  When at last they saw Robin brandishing some sort of trophy on the stair steps, he waved at them.  Nora waved back, that she was having a good time.

She knew most of the Greek Letters.  There on the banner: phi, omega, rho, nu, iota, kappa alpha, tau, epsilon.  "Fornicate," she sounded out, sophomoric even to a freshman.  Unless you wanted to get drunk, she supposed, this gala wasn't that interesting after you looked at the decorations and they'd done that in the afternoon.  Hardly anybody was just talking.  Of those who were, none were in classes she had, so what would they talk about?

Dancing appeared to be for thighing crotches.  Maybe if she knew the guy, she would, since she'd done it in high school, but she didn't really know anybody.  A blond slave got Kara Lee on the dance floor and was giving her some signals, but then another whom Nora recognized as a house officer pulled the first one aside.

"Crapola," said Kara Lee, again boyless, "I'll bet he told that I was Robin's sister.  He was getting nice and stiff."

"Two less lovers lined up for the basement," suggested Nora.

"No way.  'Bout had him right there in his toga sheet."

Emboldened guys casually touched coed's backs for bra straps.  Discerning that the two weren't ready to untoga, they moved on.

A knot of inebriants was inventing a game in which a girl would secret an olive somewhere on her person and the boys would have to locate it.  A boy would do the same for the girls.  "Ohmygod!  He's got three!" in shrieked revelry.  Kara Lee figured they could invite themselves in, females being the minority, but Nora thought better of being wholesale mauled.

A girl was telling a joke.  "So the boss says, 'Sally, you'll need to mate me at 2:55 to review the procedure for my 3:00 mating with Mrs. McGillicutty.'  And the secretary says, 'Like we're doing now, but if you want to get the contract, give her ten.'"  Lame, thought Nora, "mate" where it should have been "meet".  Maybe she missed the punch line.

Toga Time review, thought Nora: worth seeing, worth telling about, but not worth staying for.  Kara Lee had been beside her, but was now talking with some of her brother's friends.  Nora waved, let's get out of here.

Kara Lee looked around, bobbed her head in agreement, got drawn back into the conversation and finally broke free for just enough time to say, "Gotcha.  Go find Robin so he'll know."

Nora nodded, glad for purpose.  She checked the kitchen, the dining room, the porch, wherever partygoers had migrated.  Nobody seemed to know, but a girl abandoned by the fireplace thought maybe some potheads were tripping out upstairs.

Robin might do drugs, Nora supposed.  He shouldn't, but it wasn't her business.  She'd just not notice.  Up the stairs it did smell of fumes not unknown in Nora's dorm.  Several indulgers palmed their joints long enough to assess that she wasn't the law.

"Just looking for Robin," uncomfortable being there.

"Want a toke?" offered a Roman gladiator.  When she shook her head, "How 'bout a fig, then?" offering a platter.  She accepted.  He tipped his head down the hall behind.  "Round the corner a while ago."

"Thanks," stepping over his sword.

"Come on back after you find him.  Weed makes figs taste better."  She didn't do that stuff, but at least the smoker had something to do.  Plus he shared.

Turning the corridor, Nora entered a different party.

She passed a threesome, two guys and a coed.  The turbaned male was armlocking his captive from behind, trying to pour a drink down her mouth.  Her top was open, her breasts no larger than Nora's.  The other was painting her chest with what looked to be finger paint, red.  Nora couldn't tell if her twists were in provocation or in struggle, but her eyes were dulled in confusion.  Nora didn't want to know.

She pushed onward amidst bodies humping under sheets, furious as if in a race.  Others were watching, chortling, prodding.  Before she could avert her stare, Nora saw an erect penis and a girl who'd shaved her pubic hair.  She told herself that it would be normal to see such things in the medical field, but she still felt ill.

Maybe this place didn't have a fuck room where brothers could take their date for private sex.  It had a hall where they did it in public.  She wanted to run, but knew she'd falter.  She saw herself falling into the abyss, unable to push naked revelers off her.  They'd paint her front because she'd ventured around the corner.  They'd...

Turning to escape, Nora stumbled around a threesome - a boy and two girls, one still more-or-less a Cleopatra, the other in half-slip and bra.

Nora froze.  The boy was Robin.

"Romeo, where are thou," the semi naked one was orating, her cheek on Robin's lap.  All three seemed to be smashed, alcohol or marijuana, Nora wouldn't know which.  "My Romeo!" purred the mouth to the bulge under his toga.  Cleopatra was waving a pair of boxers for the hall's perusal, evidence of their progress.

The determined girl saw Nora, "His name is really Robbie."  Her hand was under the sheet, stroking.  "And this is my little Romeo.  Maybe it needs a little kiss or something?"

Robin's eyes spoke less of intoxication than of slurred humiliation.

The seductress pulled the sheet enough to see his matted pubic hair.  Had someone poured a drink on him too, Nora wondered.  The vamp exposed his penis, not erect, but large, and wagged it.  "Oh, Juliet," she spoke its lines.  "Let down your hair," confusing classic with fairy tale.

"Just shoot the asshole and we'll find a harder one," suggested the other.  "Anybody think football guy can hit the wall?" competing for an audience.

"Nora?"  Robin looked straight at her.

"Who's she?" asked the dressed one, dropping the underpants as she would a soiled rag.

"I'm his sister and you leave him the fuck alone," Nora declared without realizing that she'd used the "f" word and she wasn't his sister.

The one making Robin erect raised her head, "Well he never said no," then added in petulant explanation, "It's not our fault he can't hold his booze worth shit."

"Nora?" Robin gagged.

Had these girls no shame, Nora wondered?  "Just let him vomit."

The two left, the one in just underwear straightening her hair.

"Kara Lee wouldn't have let them fuck you out here."  She doubted that Robin understood, but he pulled the sheet over his middle.

A girl behind Nora was climaxing, spread legged and grim faced beneath a fat boy.  Her face was flushed, but her breasts were pale.  The entourage had pulled off their cover to watch his testicles.  "She's in Home Ec, so we're making her a mommy," a less-fat boy declared.

An inebriant clasped Nora's calf, but Nora shook him off.  She'd not stumble.  The disgust of a freshman girl sent copulating upper-classmen scooting out of her path.

On her way out, Nora passed the finger-painted girl huddled against the wall.  From the side, Nora at first couldn't tell if she was in panties or if it was paint smeared on her hip.  It was paint.  Nora tossed the coed her sheet.  "Get out of here before they find their friends."

Bus 6 came to her memory.  She stood the shivering coed, wrapped her in the sheet and led her downstairs.  The paint made the sheet stick to the girl's flesh.  Helping somebody helped Nora feel less ill.

The bored girl by the fireplace said the painted one was a Tri Delt and she'd be glad for the excuse to help her to her sorority.  Nora heard her say, "Fuck you" to the boys by the door when they objected that she'd given the drunk one somebody else's shoes.

Nora was crying when she pulled Kara Lee away.  "They were going to make him have sex right there in the hall."

Kara Lee wanted to go back and get the girls, but Nora said no.  Robin had seen her and she didn't want to see him.

Back in the dorm, the two reported a few aspects of Toga Time, but without the enthusiasm the other girls expected.  A few girls seemed to already know the rest.

WALKING TO HISTORY

Nora figured she'd see no more of Robin.  Kara Lee had seen him in the Union, but siblings have to work things out.  Nora didn't have anything to say, anyway.  Probably that girl getting painted wanted them to bring their friends.  Probably the Home Ec girl wasn't being raped; it was the guy she was engaged to.  Probably Nora had just wrecked things for Robin in his fraternity, crying at a party she shouldn't have even been to.  He probably had sex all the time with lots of sorority girls and she'd messed it up.  Probably she should be a nurse because he'd said doctor.

Kara Lee didn't bug her about it.  If anything, Kara Lee tried to be nicer.  She'd held Nora's hand when they'd walked home.

So back to the books.

On Friday, however, Kara Lee announced, "Got your mittens?"

"Huhh?"

"For the game.  It's going to be freezing."

"Gotta study."

"Nora, that's stupid.  It's Robin, right?"

"Maybe."

"He says thanks."

"Oh."

"Like when you told him thanks.  You evened it up, maybe."

"Oh."

"We won't see him after the game.  They have State Cops around the field."

The Huskers lost, Robin adding but 23 yards to total.  Life in Nebraska isn't accustomed to such Saturdays.

On Wednesday, Kara Lee caught Nora before chemistry lecture.  "Be here on the steps by the bike rack.  When you get out."

"What for?"

"Because I said so."

Robin was standing by the bicycles.  "Hi, Nora," looking at her loafers.

"Sorry about the game."

He grimaced, glad for the delay.  "Wish that's how Coach put it."  He looked around.  "Walk you to your next class?" and turned toward History of Western Civ without waiting for agreement.

How does he know where, Nora asked herself?

"I told Kara Lee to tell you thanks, but she said I had to."

"OK."

"She said she wanted to bust those two, but you didn't.  That's the difference, me and you."

"You did it because I wasn't experienced."

Robin stopped walking.  "So why bother about me?  I can look out for myself."

She thought a moment.  "Kind of a joke date back then, I guess.  Me all dressed up.  Puppy love, we'll call it."  Better left at that.  Nora smiled for just a moment, her ninth-grade flash.

"You were the prettiest one," Robin added without enough time to fabricate an untruth.

"Hanging on your arm was a big enough deal for me."

Robin recalled, "Me too.  It was more than you just being pretty, though."  They crossed at the crosswalk.  "They had a party afterwards that I didn't want you to go to."

"We knew.  In a barn."

"I didn't go."

"That once."  Nora swallowed the bitter taste of togas.  The two were at History already.

"The way you saw me..."  Robin stalled.

"It doesn't matter," Nora lied.

"Makes me see myself."

Nora reflected.  "Your choice, Robin."

"I chose wrong," he admitted.  "Maybe there was a reason that once," he tried, but couldn't continue.  They stood a moment.  "So Nora?  This is pretty weird, just an idea, I guess."

"What?"

"You two go with me to the Cornhusker Banquet.  Coach already said I could.  He likes the idea of having little sisters there and everything."

"So I'm not your little sister."

"That's my point.  Maybe that's about the reason."

"I don't know," but she took his arm as the steps to the Lecture Hall were steep.  Could he feel her heart beat?  "Maybe we're busy or something."

"Kara Lee said you'd wear matching red scarves, even if she hates the color."

CORNHUSKER BANQUET

Kara Lee and Nora were seated on the same sides of Robin as when they were 15.  It seemed to be the same menu, roast beef being traditional to football players.  Differences included not a padded bra, not three in the front seat (Kara Lee slipped in the back), garish red scarves and no heels.  Both took an arm anyway.

Nora couldn't tell, but Kara Lee could -- Robin was happier tonight than after any score he'd ever made.

Another difference for Nora was sitting next to a potential donor who liked her neckline.  He'd seemed surprised when Nora said pre-med, but then justified that he supported football because Nebraska was top-notch in academics.  She should be a hand surgeon because she'd have the fine-motor skill for fixing tendons.  Afterwards, Kara Lee noted how the benefactors were seated beside pretty coeds.  The players likely to drop out after the bowl game were parked further away.

There was no after-party.  Nora figured that in college, everybody probably just went to an apartment, a motel, a fuck room, if you like, and had sex without getting hay in their clothes.  It wasn't her issue.

The three drove back to the dorm.  In the turnaround, Kara Lee leaned over the seat and planted a lipsticky smack on her brother's cheek.  "One date every four years makes it maybe a dozen more before we die," she cheerfully calculated.  Then to Nora, "That's my goodnight kiss to him," emphasizing the "my".

It was as much a date as the one before, anyway.  She didn't dislike Robin or anything.  He was her best friend's brother.  She'd just come along on a whim.  Anybody would have wanted to go to the banquet.  He had his life; she had hers.

But she still turned toward Robin a little, enough, she hoped, to not look like she'd forgotten that other banquet.

Little sister interrupted.  "Time for me to say goodnight.  You two are about four years behind.  So Nora, tell him where you went to high school.  And Robin, tell her that you know about electrical transformers or something."  Kara Lee hopped out triumphant.  She didn't need physical evidence.

They watched her till she was through the double door.

"I mean, maybe things are different," ventured Robin, still watching.

"Maybe.  I was in the band," Nora heard her voice racing for a diversion, "and got to co-direct part of a march at graduation.  And I did lights for the plays."

Robin turned.  "Sophomore year, I quick kicked against Oklahoma and they didn't have a clue.  40 yards and it rolled another 15."

"Is that good?"

For Robin, their kiss was nothing and everything.  It was nothing because she was out the door before he could catch her.  It was everything, because everything was before them.

For Nora, their kiss was instantaneous and forever.  First kisses, second time around, always are.

Kara Lee was pretending to be already asleep in case Nora didn't want to talk, so Nora had to also pretend and shake her.  As soon as they quit pretending, they sat on Kara Lee's bed, knees touching.

"He kissed me!"

"Duhh."

"For real, I mean!"

"Like I'm not three pages ahead of him?  You too, maybe, turtle dove."

"We didn't do anything else," Nora not doubting Kara Lee about the pages ahead.

"Duhh."

"You think?"

"Until it's right for you.  I almost saw his cock once, you know?"

"Pervert!  Not that."

"Well you got to see it when those two got him naked at that party."

"He wasn't all the way naked."

"When I got to be the nurse, sometimes I'd poke it, but, like I said, you saw it."  She turned serious.  "About love?  Sometimes it just takes a few years for the obvious to get that way to guys.  That's why half brains, I mean halfbacks, need sisters."  She brightened up.  "Back then, I thought it was because he had to pee really bad."

CHRISTMAS BREAK

Robin had never waited for much as his sister saw it, but she deemed that Nora's first time shouldn't be in a back seat, on a blanket in some freezing park or at some scummy motel.  Robin happened to remember a big four-poster bed in the basement of his fraternity.  They could have it all night because he was a senior, confirming what everyone said about fraternities.  Not that way, advised Kara Lee, though she agreed that the old double switcheroo, how a dormie stayed out till the next morning, would have been a snap.

It was Kara Lee who decided on waiting till Christmas when they'd all be home.  Roomies know each other's periods like their own and that worked out like the Pope advised.  Not revealing that Nora knew how to dry fuck, Kara Lee advised her brother to employ the intervening weeks to little-by-little guide her along the path.  "Don't go giving her the cross-chest carry right away, how you bully me like a big meanie."

"My Boy Scout lifesaving merit badge said, Reach, Throw, Row, and Go," brother flashed back with sister.

"Oh.  Help!  Help!  I'm... blub, blub!" flinging up her elbows so he'd reach underneath the way he'd always known she liked.

She likewise suggested to Nora that she not surrender too easily.  "Genetically small like ours, their per-inch price goes up.  Let him show you how he earned his walking-old-ladies-across-the-street merit badge a bunch of times.  Or was it walking-such-innocent-girls-to-the-gorilla-banquet one?"

The lovebirds could prove it on Kara Lee's own bed, she offered.  Robin's had too much of a squeak, she'd told them both, probably more with the weight of two than just him working alone.  Little sisters miss few opportunities to reinforce their leadership.

Christmas break, Nora came over to spend the night.  "Just like when we were in junior high," Kara Lee told her mother.  "We have our dolls, even," not mentioning the extra sheets.  Nora wasn't sure about which nightgown, but Kara Lee said that her robin-egg blue was perfect because he was Robin.  "Anyway, you won't wear it for long."

Kara Lee told her friend Nora the story about when she was about nine and fell off her bicycle and scraped her knee.  Robin knew exactly what to do from first aid in Scouts.  What she remembered best, though, was how gentle he'd been, holding her hand so it wouldn't hurt.  He'd be that gentle.

Kara Lee slipped into an old shirt of her dad's and went to fetch her brother after their folks were asleep.  She told Nora that she'd make Robin wait 5 minutes because it would be good for him.  Little sisters know these things.

She made it 10 for good measure, hushing his mouth with one forefinger and painting a swab of aftershave on his cheek with the other.  Rather than pointing him to her door, however, she backed him against the wall and held his palm to her breast until his fingers engaged her nipple on their own volition.  Little sisters like it too.

His erection, taut within his pajamas, caught between her legs, cotton the only obstacle between thrust and parted thighs.  She let him reciprocate, unspoken and physical.  Little sisters can't deny that part either.

"Robin," her eyes spoke silently, "She loves you.  That's the reason."  Kara Lee knew he'd realized in Nora what he'd never found in lesser girls.  And she knew her own arousal was such that if backed onto his bed, she'd wantonly succumb.  She couldn't tell him whom to choose.  Little sisters can't decide for big brothers.

The siblings made love without coupling, without orgasm.  Little sisters can love their brothers that much.

Then she kissed him, another kind of moisture.  He was ready for Nora.  Nora was ready for him.  Little sisters instruct without words.

After Kara Lee and her brother exchanged rooms, Kara Lee heard the squeaks from her own bed.  She'd been the first to do about everything that she and her best friend did.  Nora needed to be first with this one, though.  The squeaks cadenced slowly for the longest time before the final sprint.  Then the quiet.  She'd told Nora to hold him motionless afterwards to let him feel her contractions.  Little sisters realize the power of stillness.

Kara Lee knew that Nora and Robin were holding hands under the breakfast table.  Nora's little smile kept popping out at moments as odd as, "Pass the Cornflakes, will you?"  Robin's eyes hardly left her friend.  He didn't look like a Cornhusker halfback.  He didn't look like a regular-old-sleepy-in-the-morning brother.  He'd found his nest.

DONALDSON AND VANDERPOOL, PC

Nora's in practice now, Donaldson and Vanderpool, PC, Hand and Extremity Surgeons.  "I can't help you play the clarinet better, but we'll do our best so you can play it like before," Dr. Vanderpool tells her patients, most who need a moment to see the point.

Her partner, Mathew Donaldson, MD, is African American.  Though they didn't know each other in their formative years, they both rode Bus 6 Wednesday afternoons.  Small world.  Woodwinds never worked out for her, just as boxing never got Mathew where his dad had hoped.  So they fix peoples' hands instead.

Big things happen like integrating the buses.  Big things happen like love.

Nora and Robin haven't missed the Cornhuskers at home in 17 years.  Because of the disposable income associated with her profession, they fly on the Husker charter to bowl games.

Kara Lee always stays with Nora and Robin when she's in Lincoln, but that's not often.  As she tells her brother, "I screw the Democrats every day.  We two just love each other another way, right?"  She works for the Republican National Committee.

THE END

****

Holly on the Web

Wherever you found this story on the web, thank you to the server.  My problem is that I've no systematic way to update the various servers.  As literary errors (or just poor word usages) are made known to me, I'll repair that which is salvageable on http://www.asstr.org/~Holly_Rennick.  If you take the time to read me, don't wade through an early version.
  
You can contact me via the site's message form.

Holly
