Determined to show me everything on my tour of the school I’d be attending come Monday, Pinky steered us down the straight path past the Armory, the Works, and Music Hall, and out into open ground. A lot of it. She threw her hands wide, gesturing expansively. “The Green.”

  The Green was a huge open field divided up into a flat grassy park area big enough to host a carnival and a bunch of athletic fields. The school buildings sat on a rise above the Green, so we could see all of it; two soccer fields, two baseball fields, and a football field. Tracks ringed the football and soccer fields, all of them with an open side facing the school and a bleacher side for spectators. There was even a . . . “Is that an obstacle course?”

  “For the J-ROTC—Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps—but PE uses it a lot, too. And there’s what we came for.” She took us down the stone steps to the Green, which wasn’t as unoccupied as Old Main. A girls’ team were kicking a ball around one of the soccer fields and a bunch of boys were running the tracks or throwing footballs around.

  “What are we . . .” I trailed off because it was obvious as Pinky headed right for the football field. She laughed and recited; “Hadley Boy, Hadley Boy, where are you going? ‘I’m going to play a game down on the Green.’ Hadley Girl, Hadley Girl, where do you wander? ‘I’m wandering on over where boys can be seen.’ Football and soccer start in the fall and dedicated Sports Club students start practicing early, so since we’re here . . . Hey! Papa!” She waved and one of the boys catching a football looked over to see us standing on the edge of the track. Tossing the ball to another boy he headed our way.

  Tall and lean in an obviously strong broad-shouldered athletic way—I could tell because he wasn’t wearing a shirt—he jogged up to stop in front of us, white teeth flashing in a face framed by tight dark curls and eyes sparkling under heavy brows.

  “There you are,” he laughed, big hands going to my waist to lift me up against him.

  “Here I am,” I laughed, wrapping my arms and legs around him as he spun us around. “Is that a pin in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?” Around us the crash of bowling balls striking and scattering pins was nearly deafening, but we heard Lois laughingly yell at us to “Get a room!” Papa laughed back, big hands under my ass molding me against him as he walked us back to the ball racks, plopping me down to perch on them at the perfect height to grind against the bulge in his jeans.

  I laughed and kissed my way along his rough square jaw, and though the noise of conversation under rumbling balls and crashing pins continued, the alley was empty except for us. “Well, this is a room,” Papa chuckled, strong hands on my now bare skin as I ground against him with only my panties between my hot and swollen vulva and the line of his penis beneath his abrasive jeans.

  “Papa, I—” Clutching his shoulders as heat and pressure at my center drove me on, I held him to me with my legs and chased my pleasure, unable to get enough friction.

  “I’ve got you, Hemingway,” he said, and he did; his big hands on my hips pulled me closer and he added his own motion, dry humping me through jeans and panties, the intensification of sensation almost unbearable.

  And I wanted to bear it as he touched me everywhere, t-shirt abrading my bare nipples and each stroke winding me tighter and taking me higher minute by minute as balls crashed into pins over the shouts of victory and cries of failure and a hundred stranger's conversations in the empty hall. “Papa, I— Papa!” A particularly loud strike in the lane right behind us crashed through me like I’d struck a wall and the tension curling inside me snapped, releasing me into ecstasy as I clung to him.

  It felt like I shook forever until finally coming down, still clinging to him in gasping relief, I dropped my head against his broad chest as he stroked my shoulders and back. Easy laughter rumbled in his chest. “A bit of a gusher, there, Hemingway.” Pulling away I looked down between us to see that my female ejaculate had flooded my panties and now dripped from the counter I sat on, staining his jeans a darker blue.

  My eyes flew to his. “I’m sorry, I do that—” and I woke up, staring at the dark ceiling of my bedroom still shivering with aftershocks. It took only a moment for the memory of the dream to crash back into me, and I covered my face with a hand.

  “Fuck!”

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuckety fuck!

  I hadn’t worn a night pad and dragged myself out of bed to wash off and change my shorts and sheets. Why was it that the one thing that hadn’t changed with me from my time as a boy at this development stage was my mortifying teenage sex-drive? I’d woken with sticky briefs often enough to do extra laundry each week back then, and nothing had changed and now I’d made the mistake of dragging Papa into my fantasies—if only his big hands and broad shoulders—while I’d ground and pillow-humped and otherwise found release this week, so now here I was with Papa in a full-blown wet-dream fantasy.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  It had started so nicely, too, just a replay of the day I met Pinky and she showed me all around Hadley. Thinking about it, I realized I’d been wearing my Hadley uniform instead of what I’d worn that day, and our conversation had for some reason involved fish, koi, her mom had a tank of them in their home. And it had been friendly and easy and then there was the Green and Papa instead of Brad and . . .

  And what the fuck was it about coming in public places and squirting even in my fantasy? At least this time I’d only had an audience of one for that even if it had been on him.

  God, how was I going to be able to look at Papa on Monday? Back in bed, I buried my face in my pillow. Even after the release of the dream, just thinking about his stupid dimpled smile made me tingle and I wasn’t stupid; this was beyond sexual attraction. I was crushing hard on Papa. The rollercoaster ride had begun and I’d gotten on without even realizing I’d bought the ticket.

  And I’d just best-buddied him with my big reveal of what I was and what I knew, so my old tactic of just never talking to the object of my current crush, yeah, that wasn’t going to work.

  I rolled over, pillow held tight to my face like I could hide from It.

  “Fuck. What do I do?”

  *************************************

  When you can’t do anything about something, do something else; it’s not a solution, but you’re happier when you’re busy. That was wisdom I’d learned with the decades, and Saturday gave me a lot of time to work with doing that. Continuing with my epiphany-inspired resolutions from yesterday, I started the day with my new clothing choices. I'd already had a pair of cargo pants, Mom-purchased weeks ago during her first expedition, and I took it and the one I’d bought yesterday and read their labels and shopped online for a few additional colors. I already had the athletic shirts and t-shirts, and I ordered more Henleys. I’d have to go shopping for more boots, not trusting online shopping for that, but the pair I had now was good for the weekend and I could get more today.

  Dressed, I went downstairs to find Mom and get her to teach me how to do the hairstyle myself, and the makeup. The request got laughing cooperation from her, with an explanation for her humor at my sudden style-change yesterday; “It was the first time you ever picked your own look, honey,” she told me, looking proud enough to make me squirm. “I’ve been pushing styles on you for weeks trying to get you to give me a ‘No!’ or even better a ‘Yes!’ on any of them. You just haven’t cared , but when you looked in the mirror, yesterday? You liked what you saw. You lit up. Good for you, sweetheart. It’s a big step.”

  I couldn’t wear cargos or even my boots to school, but I could do the hair and the eyes every day and we spent a couple of hours of the morning in front of my vanity, Mom patiently going over the makeup steps for me and, behind my head where I couldn’t see them, teaching my fingers to move right.

  My first self-chosen Look was far from my only resolution; I also got back online on Hadley Upper’s site to login with my student ID and change one of my club choices, dropping Manners & Mannerisms for Chess Club, which also met on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Manners & Mannerisms could teach me valuable stuff, but I already knew a lot of it from my own years of employment and business ownership and I could come back to it later. It was more important, with these years I’d been given back, that I grab the chance to enjoy school and not just survive it.

  Chess had been my refuge, yes, but it had also been my one lifetime passion and when I’d dismissed the idea of Chess Club because my decades of experience would constitute cheating, I hadn’t been thinking about it right. Although I’d played in sanctioned tournaments for decades, I was far from a grand master, not even ‘expert.’ My Elo rating had hovered between 1800-1900, making me Class A, a rank I held for decades. Research had shown that it took between five and ten years of solid effort to reach my level, which meant that talented peers who'd started playing as early as eight or nine and put in the time could give me a good game.

  And good games were what scholastic chess clubs were all about.

  With a scholastically advanced school like Hadley, I was guaranteed to find at least two or three chess peers, and I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a couple of afternoon hours a week. Entering my student information on the club form, I found myself grinning just picturing the after-class club room; small with six or eight tables for the games, still, with only the movement of placed pieces, hushed with the energy of ferocious concentration. Victory or defeat marked quietly to not disturb the other players.

  That done, I texted my sisters to make sure we were still on; yesterday at our lockers I’d asked Pinky and Brain if they wanted to do something together and Pinky had jumped on the idea of laser tag, sister bonding by slaughtering middle-schoolers together. I could take the rail to the City Mall where Laser Dome had set up in one of its bigger empty retail spaces, we’d snack at the food court or find street tacos afterwards. Heading back downstairs to grab a snack to tide me over until then, I stopped on the bottom landing at a knock on the door. Had Mom or Carl ordered something?

  “I’ll get it!” I yelled and opened the door. And stood there, stunned. Tabitha Clark, my former marketing director and the woman to whom I’d sold Ross Enterprises, stood on our doorstep.

  “Ms. Clark?”

  Her eyes sharpened. “And you are?”

  “I— April. April Seever.”

  “And have we met? Because you know my face, but I don’t know yours. And if you’re a Seever, well, David never mentioned you and after all he’s said I should know all of you. Your mother is May?”

  I nodded, standing there stupidly with every other response just falling out of my head. What could I say?

  “Then I suggest you take me to her. I need to learn what’s going on and if I should involve the police.”