I prepared for battle on my unmade bed. I deployed howitzers and pillboxes on the pillow highlands, drove tanks and half-tracks from the rear lines near the footboard, into attack formation, and patiently placed every little plastic soldier in their positions on the battlefield. Some were formed up into skirmish lines behind the folds of fabric; others manned machine gun nests formed out of socks. I placed the officers carefully, so they could observe the battle through their tiny little binoculars. I knew some of these men by name… Joe, Hans, Ben, Kenny… but they were all my friends. When I was done, they awaited my orders to assault the front lines of plastic razor wire.

I looked down at the scene, proud of my accomplishment… but I was only half finished. Now I would spend hours playing out the battle slowly, leading each man to death or victory, all the while seeing the entire battle vividly in my imagination.

I’d done it that way for years and years… but this time… I felt the urge to just blast them all to bits with hand explosions and pillow bombs… causing carnage in a couple of minutes. That wasn’t like me. Something had changed.

I was growing up.

As I overlooked the battlefield, I wasn’t thinking about my men, I was thinking about Millie Danvers. Just the thought of her made my heart beat faster, and my breath catch in my throat. “Millie,” I mumbled under my breath, and then let out a sign. She was so beautiful… and so aloof. I was pretty sure she didn’t know my name. I was the new kid in school, and way too shy to talk to her. I sat behind her in Algebra 2 every weekday for the last four months, smelling her perfume and looking at the wispy little hairs on the back of her neck. She had a cute, round face, curly brown hair, and the fourth largest pair of tits in the junior class.

We were strangers to each other. But in spite of this, Millie and I had somehow formed a perplexing and exciting arrangement… a weird little private connection that neither of us acknowledged. It had started a few weeks before. One day in class I’d slouched down in my seat and my knee came to rest against something soft. I’d worn shorts that day, otherwise I might not even have noticed. It took a few seconds to realize what it was… Millie’s ass! My bare knee was nestled in between her beautiful butt cheeks. I could feel them perfectly, one round, silken cheek on either side of my kneecap. I had been watching her ass for weeks in gym class. I could hardly believe that I was actually touching her bottom! I instantly got a boner. It grew until it was pressing against the underside of my desk. I didn’t move. I just left it there, expecting at any moment for her to slide forward, putting her ass out of reach. But she didn’t move for the rest of the class. I thought she probably didn’t notice. It was heaven!

After that I began to wear shorts all the time, and every day I’d slowly slouch forward until my knee was nestled between her cheeks. She never moved away. On the third day she was wearing low cut jeans. I could feel the bare skin of her ass cheeks with my knee! She had to know my knee was there, so I was now certain that she enjoyed it too, even though she never so much as made eye contact with me. Feeling bold, I began to move my knee around. I would go side to side, slowly traversing the crack between her beautiful butt cheeks. God, I loved her ass! I wanted to touch it with my hands, to kiss it, to rub my boner back and forth across it. But I was afraid to say anything to her. If I did, she’d probably put a stop my little butt-cheek excursions. Every day after class we went back to ignoring each other entirely, while I yearned for her from afar.

Just thinking about Millie was giving me a hard on. It was so weird to be thinking these thoughts! Only a year ago I hated girls. Now I could barely think when they were around. All thanks to those pills, I guess. They’d made me grow almost a foot taller in the span of a year, and my penis, which used to be tiny and hairless, had grown large and long, wispy pubes covered my dangling balls. My penis was always getting hard at the most inopportune times. The doctor had warned me about this. It’s all a part of puberty. He knew I’d been home-schooled by Mom most of my life, and was a bit out of the loop sex-wise, so he gave me a little sex education pamphlet. It was not very thorough… it actually brought up more questions than it answered. It touched on the subject of masturbation, but didn’t explain exactly how to do it; only saying it was perfectly natural. Ever since I started school I’d been hearing all sorts of bawdy talk in the boy’s locker room, but it was like the kids were speaking a foreign language. I was to embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know what they were talking about. I just laughed along, and tried not to be noticed.

Picturing Millie’s sweet ass, I took out my cock and began to stroke it. I felt a little embarrassed to be doing this in front of my old friends, but it felt good anyway. I hadn’t figured out yet that rubbing it with some sort of lubricant felt better. I was so sensitive, that within a few minutes, the sensations got too powerful. I had to stop. That’s what always happened. I just didn’t get it. The guys at school seemed to enjoy ‘jerking off’, but I found it terribly unsatisfying and frustrating. I knew, from the pamphlet, that I was supposed to ejaculate semen, but that never seemed to happen for me. I put my cock away and tried to concentrate on my battle.

But… I just stood there and stared at the battlefield. I felt sometimes like a bomb had fallen on me a year ago in that doctor’s office, but this bomb had some kind of delayed action fuse in it, which could go off at any time… but when? The suspense was killing me.

I heard a honk outside, so I looked out the window and saw a car pulling away. A tall brunette was standing on the curb, waving at the car. She turned and I saw her face. Laurie Bonner! What was Laurie Bonner doing in front of my house? I wouldn’t have been more surprised if John Wayne had been standing there instead.

Laurie was a senior at Malvado Playa High School. I recognized her because she was one of the majorettes of the Wildcat Marching Band Colorguard. The guys in the locker room called her Laurie ‘Boner’, because she was so beautiful and had such big tits and long legs. Personally, I loved her face most of all. She was one of those girls who always seemed crazy happy about everything. She had tons of energy and school spirit, and she was always laughing loudly in the lunchroom, and doing impromptu routines as she went from class to class, pantomiming that she was spinning her flag around and throwing it way up in the air and catching it. She was kind of crazy, actually. She didn’t know me, and I didn’t know her. We didn’t have a single class together. About the closest I’d ever come to her was watching her do her routines at the pep rallies, and following her around the hallways, my eyes locked on her beautiful ass.

What the heck was she doing in front of my house? And what the heck was she doing walking up to my door and ringing the doorbell?

Then I knew! Shoot! Mom had been talking about getting me a tutor for weeks. My grades were just fine, but Mom was bothered that I’d been put in the junior class instead of the senior class when she enrolled me. I guess she thought I needed to catch up. I couldn’t convince her that I was just fine being a junior. I fit in a little better. I would probably have fit in even better if they’d made me a freshman, because I was so short, and looked so young.

I cracked my bedroom door open and listened to Mom letting Laurie in.

Mom’s cheerful, but edgy voice said, “Well hello! Come in! I’m glad you could make it.”

“Oh, no problem.” I loved Laurie’s voice. It was slightly husky, probably from all the yelling she did at pep rallies and sporting events.

“Call me Diana.”

“Hi. I’m Laurie.”

“Nice to meet you, Laurie. You come highly recommended.”

“Yeah? I don’t know what they told you, but I haven’t tutored before.”

“Oh, I know. But you have very good grades. You’ve got a perfect 4.0, right?”

“Sure. I’m pretty good at school. My dad thought I’d make more money as a tutor than working at the fast food joint, so I thought I’d give it a try. I’m saving up for a car. I’m pretty sure I’ll do a good job. And if I don’t, you can fire me.” She laughed a hearty laugh. Mom didn’t laugh back. She had no sense of humor at all.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, I’m okay. So, who am I tutoring?”

As they were speaking, I’d crept out of my bedroom and down the hall until I could see the two of them reflected in the hall mirror. Mom was standing with her back to me. Laurie was leaning against the door. Mom was so nervous that she neglected to offer Laurie a seat, so the poor girl had to stand there awkwardly in the entryway, holding her heavy book bag.

“Well, Laurie, perhaps you already know my son, Billy? He’s a junior at your school.” Laurie shrugged. “No? Well, I guess that’s not surprising. He started just this year.”

“Yeah?”

“I home-schooled Billy until… I… well… until I decided to give it up last year. He should be in the senior class, but I didn’t do a very good job, so they put him in the junior class. It’s probably too late to advance him, but still…”

“He needs help?”

“Yes. I think so anyway. Billy might have a different opinion, but there’s no such thing as too much education, as far as I’m concerned. You’ll have to find out from him what he needs work on. What I did wrong… I did such a lousy job teaching him, I just don’t want to…” Suddenly Mom burst into tears. I rolled my eyes. Drama queen. “…I’m just not qualified to help him. I don’t know why I thought I could do it…”

Laurie looked at her, trying to be compassionate, but I could see in her blue-gray eyes that she thought Mom was a nutcase. “Oh, I’m sure you did the best you could. But don’t you worry. I’ll whip him into shape.”

Mom nodded, trying to stifle her sobs. Then she said, stiffly, “I’m going out tonight. Can you stay for a while? Until I get back?”

Laurie looked confused. “How long? I thought this was just for an hour.”

“No, I was hoping… maybe… until eleven?”

“Four hours? I… I guess so. You pay by the hour, you know.”

“Sure, I understand. If you can, please stay until I come home. I might be a little later than that… maybe as late as midnight… would that be okay?”

“Sure. I could use the dough.”

I realized with shock that Mom hadn’t hired me a tutor at all… Laurie was my babysitter! Mom had to go out that night to visit her sister in the hospital, who’d just woken up from an operation. It was a long drive, but she was terrified of driving in rush hour traffic. Mom never went out, but apparently she couldn’t stand the thought of leaving me home alone. Dang her! She just couldn’t face the fact that I wasn’t a kid anymore. Mom had a terrible time letting go of things.

But I calmed myself by looking at Laurie in the mirror. Mom went through her idiotic house rules, and Laurie listened with a bright expression of sweet innocence on her lovely face. She kept brushing back her long brown hair behind her ears. It was an oddly sexy habit. While Mom was giving her the important phone numbers, she glanced up and saw me staring at her in the mirror. God, her eyes were beautiful. She gave me a weird little smirk. I loved the way her lips turned up on the right side for that smirk. I could look at that smirk all day long.

If I had to have a babysitter, I was glad it was Laurie. I’d watched her at football games spinning a flag around while wearing a tight sequined outfit with a small top and short shorts, her long, straight brown hair flying around as if it were weightless. I liked looking at all those girls, but I think Laurie was my favorite. Probably because she had pretty big boobs, and they bounced around a lot as she did her moves. And she was taller than the other girls. She was almost six feet tall.

Mom called my name, so I walked into the living room.

“Billy, I have a surprise for you.” She smiled a tense smile. Her eyes were still puffy from crying. “Laurie is going to be your tutor. Or, I should say, we’re giving her a trial run tonight.” I shrugged and sat on the couch. Mom almost burst into tears again, but she grabbed her purse and said, “I’m going to the hospital now. I’ll try to be back by eleven.”

Laurie locked the door behind her, as Mom had instructed her to do. She looked out the curtain and watched Mom getting in her car and starting it up. I sat transfixed as the headlights played through the window, illuminating Laurie’s curvaceous body. Wow, Millie had nothing on this girl. I pulled a pillow onto my lap to hide the boner I felt coming on. Laurie watched Mom’s car until it went out of sight as I gawked at her body. She was wearing a fuzzy pink sweater, with a wide, loose collar. It was form fitting, and really enhanced the shape of her breasts. She was also wearing tight designer jeans, with a low waist and a decorative pattern on the legs made out of little sequins. Dang, her ass looked sweet in those jeans!

Then she turned to me, the sweet innocent expression gone from her features. She put her hands on her hips a said, “How old are you?”

I couldn’t lie. “Eighteen.”

She smirked, “No, really.”

“Really. I’m eighteen.”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “No way are you fuckin’ eighteen.”

“Well, I am.”

Suddenly her face lit up, “Oh fuck! You’re the… the kid with the, what? Late puberty thing! I heard about you! Oh shit, they said you were pale and… well, here you are!”

Dang. I didn’t want anybody to know about that. It was a bit of a shock to learn that everybody already knew my secret already. It felt weird to know that people were gossiping about me.

Laurie sat down excitedly across from me. “So freaky, dude. You look fourteen, tops!”

I sighed. “I’m eighteen. I’ll be nineteen next month. But have delayed puberty. The doctor says I’m physiologically equivalent to a fourteen or fifteen year old. But I’m really eighteen.”

She shook her head, smiling in amazement, “Weird. How about mentally?”

I had to think about that one. “I don’t know. All I know is that I’ve been alive eighteen years, so that makes me eighteen. Lots of people have delayed puberty. It usually gets caught before mine did.”

She smirked, “So, if you’re eighteen… why do you need a babysitter?”

I felt a little flash of anger, “You’re my tutor, not my babysitter.”

She laughed gaily, “Yeah. Horseshit. Your mom said your grades were fine. So you don’t really need a tutor, do you?”

She had me there. “No. I have A’s in everything except gym class. Mom thinks my grades were too poor to be made a senior, but the truth is, I asked them to make me a junior. I thought, considering the way I look, I’d fit in better as a junior.”

“Do you?”

“No. I don’t fit in anywhere.”

“But you have good grades, so that proves my point. I’m your babysitter. End of discussion. I’m going to feed you, and give you a bath, and tuck you into bed, and read you a bedtime story, and kiss your widdle nose and turn out the light… unless you’re afraid of the dark.”

“I’d rather you didn’t tease me.”

She laughed like crazy. “I’m just fuckin’ with you, Billy. Hey, I don’t mind. Tutors get paid more than babysitters. I’m saving up to buy a car. My dad says he’ll pay half if I pay half.” She sat on the arm of the couch. “But that’s pretty weird of your mom, don’t you think? You’re not a troublemaker are you?” There was a twinkle in her eye. I got the impression she would have liked it if I were a troublemaker.

“No. My Mom is… a little over protective.”

“She’s a basket-case, you mean. What’s her deal?”

Man, this girl was perceptive. Nothing got past her. “She blames herself for not noticing my condition all those years. A TV repairman, of all people, was the first person to realize something was wrong. I told him I was sixteen but I looked twelve to him. He pointed it out to her so she took me to a doctor. Sure enough, I had some kind of condition that had delayed my puberty. It took a while to find the cause, but it turned out not to be anything too terrible. I started taking pills and I’ve been growing like a weed ever since. You should have seen me a year ago. I was tiny.” Of course, considering that Laurie was eight inches taller than me, I still looked pretty tiny to her. “Mom beats herself up every day for not noticing my problem.”

“So she stopped home-schooling you.”

“Yup.”

A compassionate expression crossed her face, “Wow, that must have been a real mind trip. Going from home school to straight into general pop? I bet it’s hard.”

I don’t think she was referring to the boner I was hiding it under the pillow. Yeah, that was definitely hard.

“I guess so. I don’t have any friends… yet.”

She plopped down on the couch next to me and said, “I’ll be your friend.” She stuck out her hand to me and said, “Laurie Bonner. How-de-do?”

I shook her hand. The feeling of her soft skin was electric! “Howdy, miss. I’m Billy Pantier.”

“It’s an honor to make your acquaintance, Billy Pantier,” she said with a comical bow.

I smiled. I think that was the longest conversation I’d ever had with a girl before. I’d never had any exposure to girls when I was home-schooled, so I had no idea how to talk to them, or how to deal with my raging lust for them. But something about Laurie put me at ease.

Then she said, “So, Billy Pantier, here’s the deal… It’s your choice. I can either be your tutor…” She unzipped her book bag and showed me a stack of books inside. “Or, I can be your babysitter.” She zipped the bag closed again, and looked at me expectantly with her hand still on the zipper.

“I guess… if you don’t tell anyone, I’d rather you be my babysitter.”

“Good!” She tossed her book bag toward the door and kicked off her shoes. She tucked her knees up against her chest and said, “What’s on TV?”

I was a little bit shocked and surprised that this beautiful girl was sitting on the couch with me, watching TV, but I tried not to let it show. We flipped channels and decided on a program to watch, and casually chatted for a while about this and that. Nothing important. What kind of music we liked and how stupid parents are in general. My boner went away after a while, much to my relief. It had a mind of it’s own, sometimes.

As we watched TV, she began to quiz me on my condition, so I told her what I knew, although I’d really not taken that much interest in the facts of my illness. Laurie found the medical details fascinating. She said she was planning to study medicine in college. She seemed authentically relieved to learn that the underlying condition was nothing particularly horrible, just a hormone deficiency that could be treated with pills.

After that I started getting the feeling that Laurie was anxious about something. When the sitcom we were watching ended, she got up and started snooping. She hopped around and playfully opened every drawer she could find in the living room and the adjacent den. She seemed to be looking for something, but I just watched quietly, enjoying the way her body moved. She had so much energy it was amazing just to be near her. After a while she give up on her search. She looked over at me and seemed to be trying to make up her mind about something. “Are you a snitch, Billy?”

“What?”

“Are you a tattle tale?”

“No.” I said, as firmly as I could muster. I had no idea what she was thinking, but I desperately wanted her to like me. Not that I had some kind of wild idea she’d actually be my friend at school. I knew that we could only ever be friends here in my house, but that was good enough for me.