Juicy Secrets Forbidden Tales of Lesbian Love

A brief summary of what has transpired thus far. (To get a more detailed breakdown of the earlier chapters, please see Pages From a Diary Chapter Links )

Eleven-year-old Mallory is a bright but lonely girl with strict fundamentalist Christian parents whose marriage is going through a rough patch. One day, Mal gets acquainted with a girl named Julie, who lives with her father Jason and his girlfriend Lisa. Soon, the girls become fast friends, and before very long, more than friends. Mallory has a difficult time reconciling her emerging sexuality with her faith, but soon finds her desire for Julie and her interest in sex getting the upper hand, especially once she learns to masturbate.

Meanwhile, her parents’ relationship is really starting to founder. By then, Mallory and Julie are beginning to experiment sexually, but don’t really know what they’re doing. Julie’s dad’s girlfriend Lisa finds out about their curiosity and offers advice, then the girls persuade her to undress and join them in bed. Mal and Julie have full-on sex for the first time, then Lisa gets involved. 

Soon thereafter, Mallory and Julie are confronted by a fifteen-year-old girl from their school named Megan, who tells them she recognizes their feelings for each other, admits to being gay herself, and invites them to drop by her place a few days later. Megan only wants to hang out and chat, but Mallory casually takes charge of the situation, and soon the three of them are naked and having sex.

Mallory’s mother Sharon is spending more and more nights away from the home, supposedly staying with her own mother. So she isn’t there when Mal’s father Dan collapses and nearly dies from alcohol poisoning. Only Mallory’s quick thinking and immediate response saves his life. Once Dan is taken to the hospital, Mal learns that her mom isn’t really at Grandma’s house, but out with another man.

Not long after her father is released from the hospital, Mallory is taken out on a shopping trip by her mother. During the lengthy drive, Sharon explains her side of the story, treating her daughter more like an adult than she ever has before. Mal finds herself feeling sympathetic… but then she’s startled to catch herself having sexual thoughts about her mother, and gets flustered and confused. Those thoughts won’t go away, either.

A few days later, Mallory gets an inspired notion: since their friend Megan has guessed that the girls are fucking Lisa, why not invite her over to make their threesome a quartet? The others agree, and much fun is had.

In the meantime, Mal’s mother Sharon gets a job at a senior center, and she is making plans to go back to school. Needless to say, Mal’s father is most unhappy with this development. On the other hand, Mallory is quite pleased for her mom, and takes the opportunity to get in her lap and give her playful, but subtly flirtatious kisses. Sharon soon excuses herself to take a bath, but Mal feels certain that she’s also masturbating. More then ever, Mal suspects that her mother is secretly gay.

Mal is gradually becoming more popular at school. One result is that she and Julie are invited to a sleepover with Emma and Cindy, a couple of Julie’s friends. Once the parents are asleep, the girls get into a discussion concerning masturbation, which leads to everyone getting naked and engaging in mutual touching. Emma and Cindy love it, and the four of them get together for more fun a couple of weeks later.

And now we rejoin our story, which is currently in progress. Do enjoy!

 

by Rachael Yukey

December 21st, 2006

I’m turning into a lousy diarist. It’s been over a week since I’ve written anything down, but I’m not going to beat myself up over it because I have been biz-ZEEE!

I like that. They should put it in the dictionary. Busy is what normal people do. When you’re juggling as much stuff as I am, you’re biz-ZEEE!.

See, I’ve been thinking about what separates the kids who go to A.L. from those who don’t. I wonder how much of it is actual smarts, and how much is just a drive to always be DOING. Julie and me, we don’t watch a lot of TV or play video games. We’ve always got projects, and we see them through. Me, I get obsessed with stuff. Right now I’m obsessed with my piano playing, to the point where I’m having to be really disciplined to leave time for my art.

So I guess let’s start with that stuff, since I’m playing catch-up here (not to be confused with the yucky red stuff my dad puts on his burgers, that’s catsup, or ketchup depending on what dictionary I look in!). Okay, maybe I shouldn’t try to make funnies. That came out sounding like what Lisa calls a Dad Joke. Blech.

So: art. I finalized my concept for the line drawings, got Mrs. Kenner to approve it, and I’m mostly done transferring it to the tree mushrooms. It’s spread out over four mushrooms, and the way I set it up they work by themselves, or you can arrange them a certain way and you get a panorama. It’s kind of slow going because the mushrooms aren’t an easy surface to draw on, and if I make mistakes, I can’t erase them. So I have to be really careful, but I’m getting there.

Now piano. I’m having to divide my time a little. I’m working on the Chopin piece, and I’m not gonna get that one down overnight. It’s hard! I also signed up to be in one of Jason’s student bands this spring. There’ll be five bands, and each band will play four songs at the spring concert. The idea is we write one song, and play three that were recorded by other artists. Turns out that those kinds of songs are called covers. 

Jason listened to me play, and guess what? He placed me in an advanced group! “Actually, it’s THE advanced group,” he told me. “The best of the other groups stretches the definition of ‘intermediate’ to the breaking point. The kids in this one are all quite a bit older than you, but you’re just too good for the ones with kids your age.”

It’s kinda weird, because everyone in this band except me is in high school. We don’t start rehearsing until next month, but Jason brought us all together for a band meeting last week.

There are five of us. The singer is a junior named Ralph who always wears sunglasses and has long blonde hair. The drummer’s name is Katie, a super-skinny blonde who doesn’t seem to have much of an opinion about anything. The bassist is a chubby, cheerful kid by the name of Roger, and the lead guitarist is a girl called Jamie. She’s really pretty, about medium height with shoulder-length dark brown hair. They all play really well, and Ralph has what Jason calls a “scorchin’ set of pipes”.

We played together a little. None of us know the same songs, so we did what’s called a 12-bar blues jam. I was the only one unfamiliar with how that went, and the high schoolers all seemed kind of annoyed to have this little kid in their band who didn’t know anything. Nobody said it out loud, but you could feel it in the room. But when we started playing and the others found out I could follow by ear, they warmed up to me! Ralph sang a bunch of verses that sounded like they might have been pulled from more than one song, and me and Jamie took turns improvising solos.

Jamie has obviously had a lot of practice doing improv and I haven’t, but I just kind of went with scales and notes that I knew would fit over the chords, and listened to Jamie’s note choices whenever it was her turn. It started out okay, and then got better! We just kept playing that 12-bar progression over and over for like ten minutes, and at the end everyone was smiling and laughing. It. Felt. GREAT!

Then we sat down and picked songs. That was tough. I think the biggest surprise for me was how many of the kids in the band were into older music. Ralph and Roger, who as it turns out are really close friends, both like rock from the 70s and 80s. Jamie is into heavy metal. The only one who really seemed to be a fan of newer stuff is Katie.

My parents have such heavy restrictions on what I listen to that I didn’t know much. I’m pretty sure nobody in the band wants to play Christian contemporary! Ralph and Roger had put together a playlist of ideas on Ralph’s iPod, and Jamie also brought one in. So I just listened to what they had, and made my suggestions from there.

We ended up with a song from Ralph and Roger’s list called Heat of the Moment by a band called Asia. Never heard of it, but it has what Jason called a breakdown section, with some really neat stuff for me to play on the keyboard.

We picked a heavy metal song for Jamie, but not one of her initial suggestions. It was Jason who suggested that we play some power metal, because we’re a band with a keyboardist. I had no idea what power metal was, but Jamie did. It comes from Europe, and it usually has lots of keyboards, fast tempos, and big sing-songy choruses. Anyhow, the moment Jason mentioned power metal, Jamie immediately said “How about this song called Destruction Preventer? I have it here on my iPod.”

It turns out Destruction Preventer is by a group called Sonata Arctica. They’re Finnish, and are pretty popular in Europe. It’s a long song with lots for me to do, even some places where the guitar and keyboard trade solos. Jason had never heard it before, but after listening to it he loved the idea because the song is kind of “progressive” (which means it has a lot of parts besides just verse-chorus-verse), and he thought a band at our level ought to tackle something challenging. The big concern was about the vocals, which are REALLY high in some places! But when Jason brought it up, Ralph simply looked him in the eye and said, “Challenge accepted.”

We had to practically drag a suggestion out of Katie. She finally said she wanted to do a Britney Spears song called Toxic. That one I’d heard of, at least! We listened to it, and there was general approval. Roger called it a “bass player’s wet dream,” and I thought it sounded fun because there’s just a ton of stuff for me to do. We weren’t sure at first where the guitars fit in, but there were some parts Jason was pretty sure were actually played on guitars. It’s just that there were so many studio effects laid on them they kinda sounded like synthesizers. So Jamie will take those parts.

That just left the question of vocals for the Britney Spears song, since it’s a girl singer. But Ralph thinks he can pull it off.

So that was that. We’re all going to learn the songs during Christmas break, and we’re also supposed to try coming up with riffs and ideas that we’ll use to write a song of our own at the first rehearsal. I’ve been doing most of that at Julie’s house, because Jason has a good sound system that helps me really hear the parts (which I’m learning by ear), and he also has a GREAT synthesizer so I can actually find sounds that match the recording. It’s fun. I’m really getting into music lately, and think maybe it’s what I want to do with my life.

One cool thing that happened at the band meeting was Jamie hugged me on the way out. I said before that she’s pretty, but that’s not quite right. She’s actually smoking hot! My face was mashed into her boobs when Jamie held me, and I got a little high on that.

“Can’t wait to make the rock with you, little sister,” she said. Then she hugged Julie. I forgot to mention it, but Julie is attending all the band meetings so she can practice mixing sound on the jam sessions. She is, after all, going to be sound engineer for the spring concert.

After everyone else was gone, Julie nudged me. “WOW. Did you feel how awesome her tits are?!”

“Oh, I might have noticed,” I answered with a grin.

Who knows, maybe we can get something going with her! I’m not sure what it is exactly, but there’s something about Jamie that makes me think she might like girls. Okay, she’s a lot older than me and Julie, but so is Megan… and Lisa, of course. Not to mention my mother!.

Speaking of Mom, I had a chat with Julie and Megan about her, just a few days after I made my last diary entry. The last time we talked about Mom was after I eavesdropped on her masturbating the day of our trip to Alexandria. Our discussion today was even more interesting. We were in Megan’s little basement domain, sprawled out on the big wraparound couch.

After I’d finished spilling my guts, Megan fixed me with a sly little smile. “This whole incest angle has you hotter than a snake on the beach at noon, doesn’t it?”

My cheeks grew hot. I hate the way I blush, so I stared down at my hands.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop,” said Megan, giving me a light shove. “You think you’re the only one who thinks like that? Go look up incest porn on the internet. It’s fucking everywhere! You’re not alone, believe me.”

I forced myself to meet her gaze. “No kidding?”

“No shit. Remind me to show you this one website that I really like. Oh, and here’s a fun fact. I’ve diddled myself more than once thinking about getting freaky with my mom. Not that the Queen of Hetero Sanctimoniousness would ever stoop to something as vile as lesbian sex, especially with her own daughter. But it sounds to me like you might have a shot.”

My heart skipped a beat. “You really think so?”

“Don’t you? Jesus, kid. You climb in your mom’s lap and kiss her neck a little, then she flees to the bathroom and frigs herself off in the tub. Do I need to draw you a picture?”

I looked at Julie. We were snuggled up with our arms around each other, but she hadn’t spoken for a while. “What do you think?” I asked her.

Julie met my eyes. Her face was solemn. “You sound like you want to go for it.”

“Not without you,” I said, understanding where her head was at. “I won’t break my promise. Not ever.”

She smiled, and relief flooded through me. It was a real smile, the patented Julie Hansen Happy Face that lights up the whole room. “If you can get your mom naked and in bed,” she said, “I’ll make an exception. On one condition, that is.”

I smiled back at her, knowing where this was going. “What condition?”

“That you get me in on the action as soon as possible!”

We came together in a hungry kiss. Megan was right; this was getting me so hot I couldn’t see straight! I could tell Julie was turned on, too. I grabbed her ass, and she kissed me even harder.

We were so into our tongue action that we didn’t notice Megan getting to her feet. Suddenly she was looming over us, hands on her hips. Breaking our kiss, we looked up at her.

“Dirty little girls,” she said, shaking her head. Her face was the picture of pinched disapproval. “I know what you two have been up to. SO naughty. Does Mommy have to spank?”

I felt a delighted smile coming on, but managed to force it back. “Is Mommy mad?” I said, putting a frightened quiver in my voice.

“It’s dirty!” Megan snapped. I actually flinched a little. She was really laying it on thick!

Julie pulled away from me, curling herself into a ball. “Oh, Mommy… PLEASE don’t be mad!” she wailed. I could hear a giggle hiding behind her words.

Megan grabbed my wrist, roughly hauling me to my feet. “You get up here with her!” she hissed at Julie.

Julie hastily scrambled to her feet, keeping her head bowed low. “Are you going to punish us?” I whispered. I sure hope so! I thought.

“What you’ve been doing is filthy,” Megan growled in a low, deadly voice. She punctuated the last word with a swat to my backside. It stung just a little, but my panties, which had already been damp, were quickly becoming drenched.

“Girls playing sex games with other girls… it’s disgusting!” she went on, this time smacking Julie’s ass. Julie moaned. Her eyes were glazed.

“We have to wash the sin off you,” said Megan. “You’re both disgusting and dirty, and you need to be cleansed. Into the bathroom. NOW!”

Placing a hand on each of our shoulders, she shoved us towards the hallway. “Move!”

I grabbed Julie’s hand and got my feet in gear. “Come on,” I said. The husky tremor in my voice wasn’t a put-on. I was so aroused, I could barely get the words out. “Let’s go before she beats us to death.”

We got down the hall to the bathroom, Megan prodding and threatening from behind. “Get those nasty clothes off,” she ordered. I started to pull my t-shirt over my head, and she swatted my butt again. “Hurry up!” she snarled. I stripped as fast as I could, watching Julie do the same out of the corner of my eye. Megan was also disrobing, but more slowly.

Finally we were all naked, me and Julie standing side by side. Megan was glaring at us imperiously, hands on her hips.

“Get in the shower,” she snapped.

I think I mentioned Megan’s shower before. It’s huge, big enough for four or five adults, and it has four nozzles with detachable heads. Megan had mentioned using them for fun before, but we never got around to trying it. She got the water running from all four nozzles, then reached up with both hands, taking two of them down at once, thrusting them into our hands.

“Hose all that filth off each other,” she ordered. Her voice was husky now. “May it cleanse your polluted minds in the process.”

Julie and I began spraying each other down, neither of us speaking. When the spray hit my chest, splattering every which way as it teased my nipples, I whimpered. I needed to get off so fucking bad! I aimed my nozzle at Julie’s chest and she went up on her toes, sucking in her breath. Megan was holding a third nozzle, slowly moving it across her own chest. Her eyes were half-closed, her breathing ragged.

Julie moved closer to me, reaching around to spray my back. I did the same to her, taking an extra step so we were pressed together. We imitated each other’s movements, going slowly up the back, then down again. I went a little lower, aiming the warm stream of water down the crack of her ass. Julie began moving her hips back and forth like she was fucking. I could hear her breath in my ear, rapid and fluttery. She teased my butt crack with her nozzle, and I moaned, “Oh, God…”.

When we parted, I went straight in for the kill, aiming the spray directly between her legs. Julie gasped, spread her feet apart, went up on tiptoe and spread her pussy lips open with the hand that wasn’t holding the nozzle. The stream of water from her nozzle hit my pussy, and I did just about the same thing as Julie: set my feet wide apart while holding my cunt open. It felt so amazing that I almost fell to my knees. Holy. Crap.

Julie and I stood a couple of feet apart, battering each other’s clits with streams of hot water. She was making high-pitched squealing sounds, and I was unleashing a full-throated moan with each surge of pleasure. Megan was off to the side, nozzle in hand, spraying her own clit.

When Julie came, her whole body quivered. She bounced up onto her toes, then down, then up again. She did it three or four times, making those same squeaky noises all the while. By then, I guess she couldn’t take any more, cause she pushed the nozzle to one side.

Julie slumped against me, draping her free arm over my shoulder as she continued to spray my pussy. A particularly strong wave hit me, and a choked cry broke from my lips as I dropped the nozzle to the tiled floor.

A series of sharp screams came from my left, and I turned just in time to see Megan coming. She was doubled over, one arm supporting herself against the wall as the other kept the spray directed towards her cunt.

That was the last straw for me. I came with a shout that must have shook the walls.

A little later we were sprawled on the wraparound once more, only now we were nude.  We’d toweled off, but our hair was still damp.

“Mal, you should come out to your mom,” Megan suddenly said. We’d been silent for the past ten minutes or so, and her words came as a surprise.

“Wait… are you serious?” I said.

“Yeah! Tell her straight-out that you’re into girls. She already knows you play with yourself, so you’ve kind of cracked the gate open a little bit. The next shock won’t be as big as the first, y’know?”

I thought about that for a bit. “I dunno. Mom’s come a long way, but she’s still sticking to scripture. The Bible can’t make up its mind about masturbating, but it’s pretty up front about being gay. It’s in the book of Leviticus, I think.”

Megan smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Leviticus talks about men having sex with other men—it doesn’t say anything about women with women. I’m thinking of the New Testament, the book of Romans. ‘Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion’. “Romans 1:26, if I remember right. And stop looking at me like that, you guys. I only stopped going to church a year ago, and I had to memorize Bible verses, same as you do, Mal.”

Julie, whose head was in my lap, shifted a little to look at Megan. “I love the way that comes across,” she said. “You know… like it’s even worse when women do it.”

Megan snorted. “I know, right? ‘Even the women.’ Oh my God, things have gotten so bad, the chicks are starting to get freaky with each other!”

We got laughing, and that was good… the vibe had been taking a turn that was too serious for my liking. Then I sobered. “Mom still believes it, though,” I said. “I feel like her faith isn’t as strong as it was, so maybe there’s hope. But I’ll have to go slow and be careful.”

“Start planting seeds,” said Megan. “Mention how nice women look when you see them. If that goes okay, get more suggestive. Like somebody’s hips look good in tight jeans, or something.”

“I can do that,” I said. “Sounds like a good idea.”

Megan was studying the ceiling. “I’ll tell you what I think,” she said after a long pause. “I think it’s going to be easier than you expect. Because you’ll be taking your mom in a direction she wants to go in.”

I wasn’t sure how to reply to that, so I kept quiet. We snuggled for a little while after that, then I had to get back home. Mom and Dad still aren’t talking, and the mood was so dark that I went straight to my room after dinner.

***

I managed to wrangle my way into Mom’s shopping trip to Alexandria a couple of days later, and I did what Megan said, pointing out women in the mall and saying things like “Isn’t she pretty, Mom?” or “What do you think of the skirt that lady is wearing?”

Mom seemed a little surprised at first, but then she got into it, replying with things like “Yes, she is pretty, Mallory,” or “I do like that skirt on her.” And once or twice, did I catch her eyeballing a cute girl’s butt as she walked past, or checking out the tits of a woman wearing a tight sweater? I’m pretty sure I did.

That evening, while I was in my room working on my art project, Mom and Dad had a real wowser of a fight. Dad’s mostly just been making himself scarce whenever she starts talking about school, but this time instead of escaping to his shop he laid into her, giving her a whole long spiel on mortal sin and a wife’s duty to obey her husband. Mom stayed calm at first, simply saying that if he intended to make her feel guilty about wanting a life of her own, she couldn’t stay with him anymore. That’s when things REALLY got out of hand.

I have to think this is headed straight for divorce court. Mom really laid it out this time; she’ll leave if Dad doesn’t accept what she’s doing. And Dad made it pretty clear that he’s not going to let this go.

I don’t think it’s even about scripture anymore; it’s Dad’s pride. He’s supposed to be the head of the household, because that’s how the Bible says Christian families work. And now his wife won’t do what he tells her, and that’s doing a number on his ego. Honestly, it’s kind of pitiful. It makes me sad for him, but angry, too.

I’m mostly caught up here, but I saved the most exciting bit for last. Yesterday was the first day of Christmas vacation. Julie and I got together with Cindy and Emma at Emma’s house, when her parents were out for the afternoon. That was the day we progressed from kissing and petting to a full-on lesbian foursome. By the time we were done, everyone there had tasted everyone else’s pussies, and our bodies were limp with exhaustion.

I got one big surprise: Emma’s a squirter! I was eating her out and fingerfucking her, when all of a sudden her thighs tightened up on my neck so hard I thought I was going to pass out, she screamed loud enough that they could probably hear it in the next county, and she came all over my face!

Emma was super-embarrassed, almost crying, but I assured her I loved it, and she was totally delicious. I even made a point of trying to lap up every drop. By the time it was over Cindy and Julie were licking it off my face, with Emma lounging back, gone from feeling ashamed to looking like the cat that ate the canary. Merry Christmas to us!

Seriously, I can’t tell you how great it is to be part of a group of close friends. Getting to fuck those friends is the most awesome bonus imaginable.

I expect to be totally busy during the week leading up to Christmas, so I might not have much time to write. But never fear, whoever ends up reading this a hundred years or so from now! I’ll get caught up.

 

December 26th, 2006

I’m at Grandma’s house. No, I didn’t bring the diary with me. What with the stuff I’ve been writing lately, taking it out of my room seems WAY too risky. Instead, I’m scribbling this down in one of the notebooks from my backpack, and when I get home I’ll copy it into the diary.

There’s really not much to catch up on since my last entry. Christmas Eve, Julie invited me to go for a drive and look at the Christmas lights in Wadena with her, Jason and Lisa, and my parents let me go. They know as well as I do that we’re going to have much of a family Christmas this year. So I got to go for a nice drive with the Hansons.

Lisa was so bubbly and joyful that she could barely sit still, and I soon found out why: Jason proposed to her! He actually got down on his knees and gave her a ring. Of course, she told him yes. They’re going to get married in the middle of January, then have a short honeymoon before Jason starts paramedic school.

“Not only that,” Lisa said in her most proper voice, “we might as well have the honeymoon before I’m too pregnant to enjoy it.” Her tone might have been ladylike, but the glint in her eyes sure wasn’t!

We got back with an hour to spare before it was time for me to go home. So Julie and I went upstairs to her room, got naked, and made very quiet love.

My parents surprised the hell out of me yesterday by giving me a KEYBOARD for Christmas! A really nice one, too! I don’t know where they got the money, but I was so, SO grateful. I’ll probably still use Jason’s for the spring concert, because it’s a professional model that costs thousands of dollars, but this will make it so much easier to practice. Jason was impressed when I told him what model it was; he said it’s not a pro-level unit, but it’s easily good enough to gig with for someone just getting started. That’s awesome!

I always spend the day after Christmas with Grandma, and it’s always fun. We ate junk food and had a big dinner and watched a bunch of Christmas movies.

I feel like I’m sitting on a… damn it, I don’t have my thesaurus. The edge of something. Hang on, let me think. Precipice, that’s it. And this Christmas vacation feels like the turning point.

It’s not just a feeling, you know. Mom and Dad’s marriage is falling apart. Both Mom and Jason are going to school early next year. Lisa’s going to have a baby. And I’m seriously considering coming out to my mother. It’s a lot to think about.

I feel like I need to end this entry with something big and ominous sounding. This is the first day of the rest of my life! Something like that. Or maybe I should stop being a dork and go to bed.

 

January 2nd, 2007

Oh God, it really happened. Mom moved out. There was another big fight a couple of days after Christmas, and Mom made some phone calls. The financial aid package she’s getting includes a living expenses allotment that’ll be enough for her to get an apartment and keep food on the table, as long as she’s legally separated. So she filed for separation. She’s staying with Grandma for the moment, but I guess she has her apartment lined up and will be moving there in two weeks.

I’m just… God. I don’t even know what to think. For now they tell me I’m going to be living with her half the time and Dad the other half, but nobody even wants to talk about the long term.

I’ve thought a million times over the past few months that it would be for the best if Mom and Dad split up, but now that it’s happened for real I just hurt all over. I realize now that what I really wanted was for both of them to get their act together so we could be a nice, normal family again.

I want to scream. I want to throw up. I want to go crawl in a hole and pull it over myself, but all I can manage is to hide in my blankets. Fuck them. Fuck them both.

 

January 7th, 2007

I just got off the phone with Julie. It’s a good thing Dad’s in his shop, so I’m alone in the house and didn’t have to watch my mouth. It was…

Okay, I’m rambling. I’m rambling because I don’t want to talk about what’s actually going on. While I was still on the phone, I turned the TV news on, way down low so I could still talk to Julie. Sure enough, I got to see what happened on the news while Julie was telling me about it.

Here’s the deal. Julie has twin cousins in Bronning. That’s about four hours northeast of here, up in the pine forest. Moose, iron mines, wolves, lumberjacks, all that stuff. It’s a town about the same size as ours. These are Jason’s sister’s kids, twin girls about a year younger than Julie and me. Antoinette and Annamarie Hastings are their names, and they’re both missing.

The girls were left at home with an older cousin on their dad’s side watching them, and now they’re gone. Nobody knows where, but the lady on TV just said that if children aren’t found within forty-eight hours, they have like a ninety-five percent chance of being dead. They’ve been gone since yesterday evening… almost twenty-four hours already.

Julie told me she doesn’t know her cousins all that well; she sees them maybe a couple times a year. But you wouldn’t know it to talk to her. She’s beside herself. The whole time we were on the phone, she was crying and couldn’t stop.

Jason is driving up to Bronning to be there for his sister, and Julie’s not sure how long he’ll be away. She wanted to go with him, but Jason wouldn’t let her. He said there’s nothing she can do, she doesn’t need to be around a bad scene like that, and we go back to school tomorrow anyway.

What could be worse than something like this? It makes my parents’ separation seem like a minor nuisance. I’ve never met these girls, never even heard of them until today, but my guts are just twisted in knots. And even though I don’t believe in God anymore, I’m praying right now. Here it is, on paper in case whatever’s out there is hard of hearing tonight.

If there’s any kind of a God out there, anywhere, deliver those two girls back safe and sound. Do that, and then give me your commands in some way I can understand. I’ll do it, no matter what. Please and thank you, okay?

On to Chapter Twenty-One!