Chapter 1

"I GUESS YOU'VE got a choice," she said. "Either do it or head back home somehow." I frowned at the thought of returning to North Dakota anytime, let alone in the middle of winter and without any money for a bus or anything.

We'd gotten to San Francisco two months earlier on our way to Hollywood and stardom. Well, without money, we were just stuck in San Francisco.

At least we'd been a little bit smart. We'd stopped before we spent the last of the money and had been saved by that. If we'd spent the other $50 on bus tickets to Los Angeles, we'd have starved there in no time. As it was, we'd found a fleabag place to stay for $10 a week and been eating while we looked for work.

Oh, we'd found a little work but it hadn't worked out. I'd washed dishes while Amy waited tables for a night. The old Greek guy who owned the place had spent half his time pursuing Amy around whenever she'd stop in one place for more than two minutes. He had more hands than an octopus. We made sure he paid us before we left, with no intention of getting anywhere close to him again.

Anybody would think that Amy and I have a funny relationship. She's a beautiful girl but we've never really been anything at all but the best of friends. Maybe it's just that she sort of adopted me a long time ago.

It was the first day of high school she'd adopted me. I'd transferred in to the school when my parents moved to North Dakota and Amy was the first person I met. I think she felt sorry for me. I guess I'm no sort of prize. Little for my age. Not even a little bit athletic. Shy.

She'd spent all that year being my only friend and, as everyone took to their own concerns in the summer and my parents worked, my only contact with people. We got to know everything about each other.

When school started that year and we both got the same teachers, it was pretty natural that we hung with each other full time. And when her parents were killed in a car accident and they were going to send her to an orphanage, it was only natural that we left together.

"Well?" she said, exasperated with me for not making a decision. "What is it?"

It was the hardest decision I'd had to make yet and it seemed I'd had to make a lot of them in the month we'd been in San Francisco. The two girls had talked to Amy a week before for the first time and since then had gotten more friendly all the time with her. When she'd been invited to their house, I hadn't minded. But now, when they'd invited her and "her friend" to move in, it was different.

The house was really neat. A big old place in a pretty good neighborhood. It was safe. The girls all shared in providing food. And best, the place had been left to one of them by a grandmother or something so there was no rent. With just enough work to buy food when we could, we could live there forever in safety.

That meant there was only one problem. The house belonged to a girl and the girl only wanted other girls to live there with her. No boys allowed. And I'm not a girl.

That was the decision. Would I let her help me to look enough like a girl to get by at the house, were we going to starve, or were we going back to North Dakota somehow?

The way I saw it, there wasn't much choice.

"Yeah, okay," I said. Amy actually clapped her hands in glee.

She worked hard at making me female.

I wore my own underwear, except for the bra she put around me and stuffed with silky panties. She had me take a shower, something I did every morning but normally didn't at night. Then she worked real hard with my razor, trimming off all the hair on my legs, face and underarms.

It took the longest for her to do my hair. She kept giving me alternatives for the way it would be. She just didn't understand that I didn't give a damn. I just wanted it over with.

My hair had been sort of in style back at home before we left long and stringy really. I kept it tied up with a rubber band. I'd avoided getting a haircut for months before we left. Now it had been a couple of months longer and so was my hair. It was actually longer than shoulder length and longer than Amy's.

At least, after she had my hair in curlers, she went ahead and put a little makeup on my face to save effort.

While we waited for my hair to dry, she picked out a blouse and a pair of her pants for me to wear. It made me feel funny wearing only a pair of her loafers without socks. It was so female.

If that wasn't enough, she painted my fingernails. I mean she shaped them and then painted them. They looked like girl fingernails and I sort of shivered when I looked at them.

She kept giving me the same thing when I'd protest. "Do you want to go with me?" I kept having to answer that I did and she would either nod or say, "Then you've got to be a girl. We're getting there."

She gave me an old watch she'd been wearing, a little friendship ring, and a necklace. She called it a chain and, I guess, that's what it was. But it had a little bunch of circles on the end of it and I've never seen a guy wear something like that.

I thought that most everything was over and I didn't have anything to worry about any more when she left and came back with an ice cube and a needle. I couldn't believe it when she told me to just sit still and put the ice on my earlobe. When she stuck it, it still hurt but nothing like when she put one of her earrings through it.

"I hope it heals up okay before tomorrow," she said as she did the second ear. I know that some guys have an earring. But nothing like these with little pearls on them. She said they were the only gold posts she had and the others might get infected.

Finally, she combed out my hair and kept fluffing it up around my head and stuff. I thought she did that for a lot longer than necessary. Then she told me to stand up and look in the mirror. I did and almost fell over backwards with my surprise.

I couldn't see myself. I mean, what I saw in the mirror was not me! That's all there was to it. It wasn't me! It was I don't know. It was someone totally different.

There was no doubt. What I saw in the mirror was a girl. Really, it was a young woman. A very pretty young woman. I looked into the face, inspecting it minutely. Finally, I looked into the eyes and that was the first time I recognized the person reflected there. The only thing.

It was sort of funny. The guy I knew myself to be was gone. That's all there was to it. But the girl I saw in the mirror was exciting. When I smiled at myself, it actually turned me on. The girl in the mirror was gorgeous.

Then it struck me as funny. The guy I'd been just a little while ago was a wimp. A loser. Maybe nice but not much of a guy. No one, anywhere would be particularly excited by him.

But this girl! This girl! This was exciting! A lot of people would be excited by this girl. A lot.

"Michelle," she said behind me as she looked over my shoulder at my reflection in the mirror. "Your name is Michelle."

"Becky told us you'd be coming," the girl said after she'd let us in the door. "My name's Jo. Short for Josephine. This is the living room." I looked around at the hodgepodge of stuffed chairs, junkyard couches, the well-worn TV, and the stereo that was now playing a heavy metal song.

I looked at the girl's bounding ass cheeks through the worn white shorts that covered them. Her bare feet padded on the hardwood floor as she led the way into a dining room and then the kitchen.

"We all take turns cooking and a couple of us clean up after meals," she said to Amy as I watched the way her heavy breasts moved inside the bandanna top she barely wore. Her blond hair was enticing as she swished her hair back and forth over her shoulders as she talked and opened and closed cabinets.

The sway of her hips was very enticing as we followed her up the stairs with our suitcases.

"This is my room," she said as she swept her spread arms around the tiny bedroom. There was just room for a dresser and the unmade bed. The top of the dresser was strewn with cosmetics, brushes, and costume jewelry. "Mary has the big room across the hall and Doris has the front bedroom. The big bathroom is over there"

She led the way up the steep stairway to the third floor. She pointed toward a closed door.

"Pat and Phil Patricia and Phillis live there. This will be your room." She opened the door and led the way in. It had a double bed and a large dresser with a fogged mirror above it. There was a rod across one corner, suspended at one end from a chain. It held a dozen hangers. The double bed was covered with a faded terricloth bedspread and had a slight swayed spot to the side away from the wall.

"There's a little bathroom up here. Just a shower and the other stuff." We nodded. It would be comfortable up here and at least we wouldn't have to worry about being thrown out for lack of money.

She turned toward the door and walked into the hall. "Come on down when you get your stuff put away. The others ought to be getting home in about an hour or so."

Amy opened the suitcase and carefully hung up her clothes. I stuffed mine, filled with my own clothes, under the bed and then helped her put the rest of her things in the dresser. It only took a few minutes.

"You want the inside or the outside?" she asked as she lay down on the bed.

"I don't care. Whatever."

"Okay. You take the inside then. It's pretty comfortable."

"This is going to be okay," I added.

"Yeah. It's nice. If the other girls are okay, I think it'll be great."

I visited the bathroom, small but adequate and clean, before returning to the bedroom.

God, Amy was appealing, laying there with her shoes kicked off, her arms behind her neck, and her eyes closed. I took my time, silently looking at her wonderful body. The tight jeans shaped to her thighs and her prominent mons. The seam between her legs split her labia and the swelled lips protruded on both sides of it through the material.

Her large breasts held up the front of her shirt in spite of gravity's work on them. Her lips were shaped to a self-satisfied smile that rose almost to her well defined cheekbones. Her blond hair spread around her face on the pillow.

She looked so beautiful and so vulnerable. I think I love her. As I looked at her, she opened her beautiful blue eyes and looked directly at me.

"Are we ready to go downstairs?" she said as she sat up and slipped her feet into her shoes again. I nodded as I watched.

As we walked down the final set of stairs, the door burst open and three chattering girls came through it. The black haired girl in a short skirt and red blouse looked up at us.

"Hi, Amy. This must be your friend?" she said. The other two girls looked up at us as well.

"Hi, Doris," Amy said. "My friend. Michelle."

"Nice to meet you, Michelle. This is Pat and Phil." I looked at the two brunettes one strikingly pretty and petite, the other not nearly so pretty or well dressed. Both smiled prettily at us and stepped forward.

There was a flurry of greetings before they led the way into the living room and fell into chairs. The black haired girl sat in one of the stuffed chairs with her legs spread and flopped her head back on the back of it.

"How was work?" someone asked as Amy and I found an open place to sit on one of the couches.

"Fine," Doris said and the other two girls reflected that statement.

"Pat and Phil are salesgirls at the boutique in the mall," Jo said for our benefit. "Doris works for a law office. Merrill, Merrill, Stock, and Paul." All the girls, I could see, were older than Amy and I, with Phil, the plainest of the group, the oldest. Probably in her late 20's.

The door opened again and shut quickly.

"Hi everybody," a voice said. I looked around at the most stunningly beautiful woman I've ever seen. Her dark hair was pulled back at the side of her gorgeous face into a tight bun at the back of her head. Her eyes were dark and luminous, her lips shiny red and pouting. Her body was long and lithe, perfect for the very short skirt and fluffy blouse she wore. She had the longest legs I think I've ever seen and, maybe, the flattest chest. A perfect model's shape and look.

"Hi Mary," everyone echoed before she found a seat near me.

"You must be Amy," she said, leaning across me to shake Amy's hand.

"This is Michelle," Amy said after she'd nodded at her name.

"Michelle," the girl said. "We heard about you. Did Jo get you set up in your room okay?" We said yes and that it was very nice.

"I don't know what we can contribute," Amy said then.

"Oh, don't worry too much," Mary said. "Everyone seems to find something. Jo sort of takes care of the house. Pat and Phil bring in some food money from the store and make nice clothes available to us at wholesale. Doris gives us legal advice and, sometimes, some dates with the lawyers." She smiled at that.

"Are you a model?" I asked, sure I was right.

"Uh huh. Just some local advertising stuff now but maybe some day I'll hit it big. Who knows." She shifted. "What do you do?"

I shrugged. "We just got here a couple of months ago. We've done a couple of odd jobs, but that's about all. Mostly we've just been going broke."

"You're from Nebraska or something?" Doris asked.

"North Dakota. That's worse." Everyone laughed with us.

"What's in North Dakota?" one asked.

"Nothing at all," Amy said. "That's why we're here." There was another round of laughter.

"Parents? Friends?" Jo asked.

"Huh uh. My parents are separated. My mom can't afford to feed me and my brothers too. My dad left for parts unknown," I answered.

"My parents were killed," Amy said then. "We never had many friends but each other." Everyone seemed to understand that.

"What did you do before?" Phil asked pointedly.

"We just went to school," Amy said.

"You ought to apply to the mall," Pat said. "They're always looking for cute girls to work in the shops and all the stores share the applications."

"Okay," Mary said. "Who's turn is it to cook tonight?" Everyone looked at her and smiled.

"Yours," Jo said with a grin.

"Oh, shit," Mary said then. "I hoped you'd forgotten. Well, okay." She heaved herself upright with a tired effort and started for the door.

"Somebody turn on the news," Doris said. I got up and walked through the doorway into the dining room and then to the kitchen. Mary had her head in the refrigerator but looked around the door as I entered.

"Can I help?" I asked.

"You bet," she said. "I'm a shitty cook and I hate to do it."

"I'm pretty good," I said. I was. I'd been cooking at home quite a bit before we left. "What is there?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "Looks like some hot dogs. And some potatoes. And some cans of shit over there in the cupboard."

I opened the cupboard and saw a good supply of canned fruits and vegetables and chose a couple of cans of corn.

"You want to open those, I'll put some hot dogs on. Is there any cornmeal and some canned chili?"

"Yeah," she said. "Up there." She pulled out a couple of cans of chili from a cupboard nearer her while I got the box of cornmeal. With her help, fifteen minutes later we had cornbread in the oven, chili warming on the stove, corn in a pot, and hot dogs in boiling water.

As I put things together, I watched her beautiful long legs as she bent over, knelt down, and otherwise worked to help. As I stirred things, she leaned against a cupboard and smoked a cigarette as she talked. I found out more about the living arrangement and the likes and dislikes of the other girls from Mary. She claimed that she liked having everyone around and that the place was really dull when even one room was empty.

The timer I'd set dinged and I took the steaming cornbread out of the oven. Then we dished up the corn, hot dogs, and chili, carrying it to the table in the dining room. Pat was there, just finishing setting the table. She disappeared into the living room and said, "Soup's on!" There was a stampede of girls into the room then.

We passed the bowls of food around with every person doing something different with the hot dogs, cornbread and chili. Some put chili on the hot dogs. Some but chili on the cornbread. And some put them all together. Only Jo didn't like hot dogs and passed on that part of the meal. Everyone ate like they hadn't in weeks. I was pleased.

co "We have Michelle to thank for this," Mary said. "You all know that if I'd done it, it would have been hot dogs and buns and that's it." Everyone agreed with her, chiding her lack of expertise in the kitchen pleasantly. "From now on, I don't go near the kitchen unless Michelle is with me." Everyone agree loudly.

Mary went back into the kitchen and reappeared with a large package of Oreos. "I baked these last night," she said and everyone played like she really had.

Phil and Pat cleared the table and washed the dishes while the rest of us went into the living room and watched television. They returned to join us in about another 15 minutes.

Everyone congratulated me on the meal, though it was a simple one made from the things we'd found available in the kitchen. They also took the opportunity to chide Mary on her lack of skills whenever they could. Amy looked a little out of sorts.

"I can cook, too," she said finally.

"As well as Michelle?" Mary asked. She nodded. "All in favor of Amy cooking tomorrow night, raise your hand." It was unanimous. There was at least an element of avoidance from everyone in the vote but Amy still seemed pleased.

Amy and I went up to the room when the 10 o'clock news came on, neither of us interested in what was happening in the world. We were exhausted from our move.

"Here," she said, handing me a heavy nightgown as she rooted around in the dresser drawer for a baby doll nightgown for herself. "Never can tell who might come in. You'd better wear the bra, too." I agreed and slid into the nightgown before climbing into bed. Just as I did, there was a knock on the door.

Amy opened it to allow Mary to come in.

"Thanks for rescuing me, Michelle," she said with a smile. "I just wanted to welcome you both. I think you'll enjoy living here with us."

We thanked her and she returned to the still open door.

"Do you think we could really get a job at the mall?" Amy asked.

"I'm sure Pat and Phil can help you to make applications. There's a pretty good chance anyway. They are always looking for girls. If you're not too picky about the pay."

"We just want to contribute something," I said as I lay under the covers, leaning on one elbow.

"Well, don't worry too much about it. Just doing some things around here will be enough for a while. Maybe you could even take over the cooking if you don't find some work. I'll give you a few bucks in the morning to buy some groceries for the next couple of days."

"That'd be fine," I said as she left and Amy closed the door behind her.

Amy turned the lights out before she crawled into the bed next to me, laying on her side, facing away from me.

"We've got to get you some more clothes," she whispered. "We'll have to do with mine for a while but that can't last. I think you'd better find a way to get rid of your jockey shorts tomorrow, too. Maybe we can afford to get you some underwear that will hold you that aren't too expensive."

I agreed. It got quiet then for quite a while as I thought about the day. Amy turned toward me and put her hand on my stomach under the covers.

"You know, I think Pat and Phil are lovers," she said.

"Lesbians?" I asked, startled.

"Uh huh. They probably think we are, too."

"Really? Why?"

"Because of the way you look at me."

"How do I look at you? I mean "

"Like you like me. A lot."

"I do!" I stammered.

"Of course. But it could be misinterpreted." I thought about it for a while then turned and put my hand on her side. She hadn't moved hers from my stomach until I turned.

"Would that be bad?" I asked. She started to say something. "Would it be bad if we were lovers?" That wasn't what she'd started to answer, I thought. She didn't say anything.

"I like you as a girl," she said without explanation. Then she turned away from me again and allowed me to think about what she'd said. I didn't know how to interpret it. I fell asleep thinking.