CHAPTER ONE

“Girl Talk”

She never listened to their conversations; they always dwelled on seemingly idiotic subjects. Lily gazed out of the window, a drawn out expression playing about her eyes. The pupils dilated and out of focus, staring at the suburban scene playing around outside in the wind.

“How much did it cost?” Mandy’s voice only slightly permeated Lily’s focus.

“About seventy-five dollars.” Lynn’s retort was just as inaudible to Lily, but the two continued on without her, sitting on her mattress.

Lily’s room was one of a kind. There would hardly be a room like it anywhere in the same town. Mismatched movie posters and photographs held to the faded plaster and paint on the walls with several layers of Scotch tape. A desk in corner of the room opposite the bed.

“I would not spend that much for self mutilation.” Mandy leaned against a small pile of pillows against the wall, her arms draped around her right knee. Her baby T-shirt only was worth wearing due to the broken air conditioner allowing the heat and humidity of early July to seep into the room. Her cargo shorts did not match her top; however, it allowed a comfortable amount of movement and cut down on the amount of summer sweat leaking from her pores.

“Oh it’s sexy.” Lynn was far different. Lynn had adorned a black tank top that was pretty much the only one in her entire wardrobe. This shirt, unlike Mandy’s, matched the thin black jean shorts that Lynn was currently wearing and the pink hair that ran across her head and down to her lower back. Fishnet stockings clung to her legs all the way to her knees. She had ripped the rest off and adorned the pieces around her wrists to show of the woven pattern easier to the rest of the world.

“I’ll bet; when’d you get it?” Mandy had been quite persistent, mainly out of interest of getting it herself.

“Friday.” Lynn was referring to the stud piercing in her tongue.

“Why?”

“Why?” Lynn repeated the question as if it was absolutely impossible that Mandy said it in the first place.

“Yes, why did you get it? You mind me asking?”

“Because Clyde likes piercings, that’s why.”

Lily blinked once.

“You do anything to keep that toy don’t you?” Mandy began to amuse herself with her questions, finding Lynn’s reaction to each one even more entertaining than the last rejoinder.

“So what?” Lynn knocked off her sneakers and sat cross legged on Lily’s king sized mattress. “I’ve been thinking of getting it done for a while now.”

“Keep telling yourself that Lynn.” Mandy knew all too well the situation between Lynn and Clyde, as she had just checked Facebook earlier that morning. The “married” status was hard to ignore. Mandy kept a small pause to herself to wander through this information before continuing, “Did it hurt.”

Lynn now was amused by Mandy’s curiosity. She felt compelled to respond with a little recollection of the event. “No. But the guy doing the job was pretty freaky though.”

Mandy was now on edge, her dreams of getting a stud as well were seemingly on the verge of being trashed by Lynn’s story. “Meaning?”

“This guy was loaded with metal and ink. He must have had five in each ear, two in his nose and about four to five in each eyebrow.” Lynn’s recalling the body artist brought him back very clearly in her mind. “He also had these big fucking muscles, like…”

As she trailed off Mandy was eager to get to the actual piercing. She hastily said, “Like what?”

“You see the X-Men movies?”

“Yea.” Mandy raised an eyebrow.

Lily blinked once.

“The guy who plays the Colossus, huge muscles.” She lightly flexed her bicep to further illustrate the image she was trying to convey.

“Okay mental picture. Go on.” Mandy was growing impatient.

Lynn flipped a few locks of pink hair out of her eyes as she continued. “Well. He’s leaning over me with this freaky smile on his face and he says ‘Don’t move, it’ll only hurt a little.’ ”

“I’m thinking it would.” Lynn threw Mandy a look of subtle loathing, as if to quietly say ‘fuck you’. Mandy clarified herself, “I mean, a needle going through your mouth.”

Lynn relaxed. This was the time to show Mandy that a bizarre body artist couldn’t unsettle her. “A little pain, and then it’s over. It takes thirty seconds to go away.” Then she reconsidered, “Maybe a minute…But it’s the way he said it. It’s like he got off on watching my tongue bleed.”

“Is the tongue the best place/” Mandy needed some confirmation that it was still a good idea.

“Besides the ears?”

Mandy nodded.

“Definitely the tongue, totally.”

“Why the tounge?” Mandy had only just considered this question. It hadn’t even occurred to her why Lynn would resort to spearing her tongue with surgical steel.

“Why? Because it feels cool.” Lynn’s eyes lit up as she leaned closer to Mandy, a twinkle in her eyes. “It lets those perverted little fucks fantasize about getting head.”

Mandy was not expecting that, even from Lynn, who dwelled quite frequently on the subject of sex. “Gross.”

“Oh you like it.” Lynn was trying to convince herself more than trying to convince Mandy.

“Not even a little bit.” Mandy put her arms around her stomach, as if to say without words that the conversation was over. Lynn strengthened her resolve.

Lily blinked twice. Through her daze, Lily had begun to focus more on Lynn and Mandy’s conversation as it went from a chat about piercings and mutated into sex. And this was one conversation that Lily didn’t feel like having.

“You think it’s bad that guys jerk off to your body?” Mandy nodded slightly and Lynn pressed on. “That’s a complement.”

“I think it’s nasty. You think it’s fun or sexy to suck a guy’s dick?”

Lynn looked straight into Mandy’s eyes, a broad smile accompanying her answer, “Yes.”

“Then you and I have very different definitions on what fun is.” Mandy threw Lynn a look of slight disgust. Mandy felt that there was nothing more degrading to a girl than to be at the mercy of some asshole shoving a ridiculous piece of flesh deep in her throat until it went rigid. Though she had only sucked two so far, she could never stand the taste of a guy’s semen.

Jake Collins had taken her behind the back at the bowling alley when she was thirteen, ran his tongue up and down her neck, pushed her to her knees and pulled out his junk. Mandy had seen pornography by now and she knew what he wanted from her. She did as she had seen in countless videos and pictures and when he finally blew his load, she realized how disgusting it was. It was as if someone had mixed melted butter, salt, lemon juice and thrown a little white food coloring on it and dumped it into her mouth. After she spat the revolting secretion out, Jake went on to take her virginity.

Lily blinked once and turned around, a small smile playing across her face. “Just shut up Lynn. Keep your fucked up thoughts to yourself.”

Lynn jumped a little, Lily interjecting herself into the conversation was something that she had not expected. However, she was now on the defensive, trying to justify why she believed what she believed. “Lily you think that you don't like it when people stare at you? Undressing you with their eyes?”

This is what Lily had retreated to for a friend. Lynn Maxwell was more than just some silly girl with a gothic overtone to her appearance and an overabundance of eyeliner painted around her eyes. Pansexuality could barely describe this lanky teenager. Lynn liked it all and she told everyone. Clyde might be holding her leash, but Lynn took off her collar quite often to venture out when he wasn’t enough.

Lily cocked up an eyebrow and grinned. “Lynn you’re a little nymph, aren’t you?”

“Not exactly.” Again, Lynn was trying to convince herself, more than trying to convince her two friends.

Mandy chimed in with a retort before Lily took in a breath to respond. “I think you are.”

Lynn glanced back and forth between Mandy and Lily, as if she were a mouse trapped between two cats. Lacking a adequate response, Lynn simply replied, “How would you two know?”

Lily was all ready with an answer to this long before the words slid their way from Lynn’s mouth. “Lynn, you always talk about it. Things like that should stay in your head. I don't need to know which of the nine guys at our lunch table you knocked pelvises with.”

Percy, Russell, Zach, Owen and Vern were five of those nine that have claimed that they had, in some way, done the final deed to Lynn. Only Percy had any authenticity in this however.

Lynn sat up straight, defending her pride against such attacks to her lust and held up a finger to Lily. “Hey, at least I’m honest.”

Lily chortled as Mandy replied, “Sounds more like porn than honesty to me.”

Lynn was done. She had given up trying to sway the minds of her friends. All the conversation had done was succeeding in working her up. Now she missed Clyde even more. And that familiar aching between her legs began to steadily grow. Urges were urges to Lynn, and if it continued to grow at a steady pace, then Lynn would have excuse herself to the bathroom to rectify her situation in the only way she knew how. And masturbation was something that Lynn held close to her heart. It was one of her most prized activities and she made an effort to retire to a secluded space and act on her urges at least three to four times a day.

Mandy held sex or anything involved as something to relish, but not revel in. It was true that sex was something that Mandy would never give up, her many expensive toys hidden under her bed at home was a testament to this fact. Control was a huge factor with Mandy’s self play, unlike Lynn. Mandy never understood why, but in truth, it became important after she walked in on Lynn and Kristal Grant eating each other out in a stall in the school bathroom. Mandy didn’t run away, she didn’t tell them to stop; she did not say anything. She sat quietly in the adjacent stall and listened to the groans, moans, fast breathing and small squelching sounds echo around the tiled room. After that, she knew that privacy was something to be treasured; she didn’t want anyone else knowing what she did alone or with someone else.

Lily had Julian.