by Mark McCann
(11/23/05)

Jillybean had always been my favorite in the neighborhood. She was part of the second wave of kids on our block: primarily girls about five years younger than the first wave.

Jill always stood out among the other girls. She possessed a glow of mischief, wild red hair and a perpetually skinned knee. Anytime there were butterflies to chase or a new species of bug to inspect Jill could be found darting through my mom's rose bed, swinging her white net wildly, or crawling on her hands and knees coaxing some unsuspecting insect into a jar.

Jillybean came by her nickname after I received Mexican Jumping Beans from a visiting aunt. The endless movement of the small brown nuggets reminded me of Jill and her constant blur of motion. The first time I called her Jillybean she smiled at me funny, punched me in the thigh and sprinted through a hole in the fence just big enough for her.

That same summer she took to calling me Spike. I never could figure out how she turned Sean into Spike but she was the only one who could get away with it. If anyone else called me Spike, I held them down and punched them in the shoulder until they yelled "Mother Mary Berry," the neighborhood equivalent of "Uncle."

When the other girls began to comb their hair straight and dress for boys, Jill was more interested in climbing trees and riding her bike through the nearby woods. I imagine that being the resident tomboy was sometimes difficult for her. While we boys -- the first wave of kids in our neighborhood -- were running through the woods clad only in loin-cloths salvaged from a rag barrel and shooting at squirrels with homemade bows and arrows, Jill was either ignored or became the lost heroine that "the renegades" tied to a tree and quickly forgot. She cheerfully endured this treatment in order to be accepted as one of us.

I was nice to her because she tried so hard to fit in and, in fact, could run the woodland trails better than Matt, the husky kid from the next block over who had asthma.

When I started high school, ecology became my all-consuming interest. The forest behind our house was a tangle of ivy, blackberries and assorted introduced species that had run amok. I set about clearing the invasive greenery and replanting the good. Every weekend and most afternoons, for almost two years, I crashed around the dense woodlands nearby. At some point, Jill showed up and offered to assist me in my quest to rid the forest of all things foreign.

When friends my age came to help they usually saw the skinny little girl with pigtails as a pest, with her incessant questions and discoveries of "ancient artifacts" that were mostly junk discarded years earlier by the local farmers. Once she found a piece of plastic with a hole in it. I laced a piece of broken shoestring through it and told her it was precious ambergris as I placed it around her neck.

She smiled when she pressed the newfound treasure to her chest.

Rain or shine, I could count on Jill to show up. One afternoon she burst through the ferns at a dead run and tumbled down a slippery slope only to land in a pile at my feet. Rubbing her head she giggled and told me she had "planned that." She was one tough kid.

By the time high school ended, girls replaced ecology as my all-consuming interest, so I saw little of Jillybean. That fall, I picked a college halfway across the country and left without a look back.

I pushed myself to complete my schooling with few breaks, and after three full years and one quarter I returned home for good. Upon my arrival, I was disappointed to see heavy equipment nearby scratching at the earth, leaving angry red scars in the native clay. My first Saturday home, I trekked into my familiar woods to assess the recent damage. I pushed through the ferns and brush and found, to my surprise, that only a few of the foreign plants had made a resurgence. I bent over to pull out a stray piece of ivy.

A female voice echoed from the thicket of Indian plum by the creek.

"Hey! These are my woods. Don't pick anything!"

I squinted but couldn't make out the form in the darkness of the woods.

"Shut up! I live here!" I barked.

"That doesn't give you the right to come in here and..."

A figure burst out of the thicket and headed straight towards me quickly before tripping over a downed tree.

"Shit!"

I couldn't keep myself from laughing as I walked towards the muddy prostrate body. I was still laughing when I thrust my hand out to help the girl to her feet.

"Go on! I don't need your help!" She swatted at my outstretched hand.

She shook her head and her baseball cap dropped onto the muddy banks of the creek causing a cascade of thick red hair to fall across her face. When I tugged at her arm, the girl let loose a string of profanities and punched me hard in the thigh. I fell forward and grabbed my leg. The girl pulled her hair away from her face and stood over me fuming with her fists clenched.

"I told you I didn't need your help, damn it!"

"Jillybean?" I asked as I squinted up at her.

She froze. Her creamy white face turned bright crimson. The little freckled-faced tomboy I remembered had transformed into a beautiful young woman. After a moment, she cocked her head and gulped, "Spike? When did you get home?"

I leapt forward and tackled her in one swift movement.

"That hurt, you little insect!"

She squealed as we tumbled down the bank and into the creek. As soon as I regained my footing in the water, I picked her up and dropped her into the deepest pocket of the creek. She shrieked and grabbed my knee, sending me under the water. I had barely surfaced when she jumped on my head to hold me under.

"Say Mother Mary Berry," she screamed. "Say it, or I'll drown you!"

"Mother..." I swallowed a mouthful of water. "Mother Mary Berry," I coughed out.

Suddenly, she was gone. I stood up sputtering. Then I spotted her running up the opposite bank towards the tree where she was so often held captive. I ran after her, her giggles making it easy to follow her.

When I finally got to the top of the bank I saw her standing beside the tree staring at the heavy equipment that waited patiently to continue its destructive path come Monday morning.

"Hey, you ragamuffin..." I started.

She turned to look me in the eye solemnly.

"I tried to get the city to save this little strip of woods as a park but they said it wasn't big enough to worry about," she said.

"Yeah?" I puffed as I tried to shift gears to adult behavior again. "It's still in good shape, though."

"It ought to be. I came out here about every day to work on it. I was an ecology major, too. This was my senior project."

I stood with my jaw slack. Jillybean had taken care of the forest while I was away. It was her forest, now.

I shook my head and pulled off my wet shirt. Jill laughed when water splashed onto the ground. I grimaced at her and hung the wet flannel on a low hanging branch before I took off my shoes and socks. Jill sat down next to me and removed her shoes and socks too.

"I really missed you," she said. "I kept your necklace."

She fished the piece of plastic, now tied to a long strip of leather with a metal clasp, from inside her tee shirt.

"That's not really ambergris, you know?"

"Duh. I kept it because..." She turned her eyes from mine. "...you gave it to me. I had quite a crush on you then. You were the only boy who was ever nice to me."

"Well, I thought you were an okay kid." I didn't like the way that came out. "I mean you were...I mean you are...um..."

Her eyes grew wide as she bobbed her head to help me find the words. I had none. At last, she giggled and finished for me.

"How about 'stacked?'" She grabbed the front of her T-shirt with both hands. "These showed up a couple of years ago and they just keep getting bigger."

"Well, some people consider those a good thing."

"Then you carry 'em around."

I held out my hands to take her up on her offer. She laughed out loud and looked uncomfortable. Haltingly, she put her hand on my thigh where she had punched me earlier.

"I didn't mean to punch you so hard."

"It's okay." The words caught in my throat. In an effort to change the subject, I pointed to the exposed soil nearby. "What's that?"

"Condos for the elderly. Can you believe it? I begged the city to save this strip but it's not gonna' happen."

"You've done a great job with it."

Jill blushed deeply, her cheeks turning the color of ripe cherries.

"Thanks, I just...finished what you started."

"Why did you pick ecology as your major?"

She tugged at several long green strands of grass growing near the tree. "Bear grass, Xerophyllum tenax. I was in class one day and realized I knew more about these native plants than the teacher. You gave me a head start."

We sat for several hours talking about the things that had happened to us over the past four years. She hadn't found a steady boyfriend but was no longer a virgin, did well in ecology at high school and her parents had divorced. Because of the divorce, she spent most of her free time out here in the woods to avoid the unpleasantness at home. We found we had many of the same teachers and we laughed about the quirks of some and about the silliness of the academic world in general.

I admitted that I hadn't found anyone at school who held my attention. The Civil Engineering program was not replete with female enrollees. My degree seemed like treason to her. She thought I would be destroying other sacred strips of forest in somebody else's backyard. I assured her that was not my intent but ecology and this tiny strip of forest seemed so far away now.

It was small talk, mostly, but I could feel a heat between us that wasn't brought on by the June weather. The lump in my throat kept threatening to choke off my words. Every time Jill laughed, she leaned forward and the heat increased. It threatened to burn me. This girl was fast becoming a woman who cared about the world around her instead of living to grab all that she could horde.

As I lay in bed that night, all I could think about were her soft green eyes and sparkling red hair. The summer heat kept me on top of the sheets while my hand roamed down to my erection. I stroked it thinking of Jill's metamorphosis. Like those butterflies she chased so often in our yard, she had become a flash of beauty seen from afar: difficult to capture for fear that the delicate nature of the creature might crumble in one's hands.

That red hair of hers had sparkled in the sun that day changing each time she moved. As I approached an orgasm I saw her under me, responding to my thrusts and returning each one of them so that her red hair shimmered with our movements. I fell asleep with my softening flesh in my hands.

Sunday morning I lounged in bed until a knock came at my bedroom door. I wrapped the sheet around my waist.

"Come in."

Jill burst through the door, her long slow curves straining the seams of her clothing.

"Come on, Spike. You can help get some hawthorn out of the creek today."

"What makes you think I want to help you, ya' rug rat. Look what you did to my leg."

I pulled the sheet back slightly and pointed to the blue spot on my thigh.

"Oh, did I hurt da' baby?" Jill asked, pushing out her bottom lip in a pronounced pouty face.

I flew out of the bed, pounced on her and wrestled her to the floor. I secretly hoped that my sheet would "accidentally" fall to the floor but it stubbornly clung to my hips.

"Say it!" I yelled.

Between gasps and her giggles, squeezed from her body by my weight, she managed to say the words.

"Mother Mary Berry."

I let her go but couldn't stand because I found I had an erection. I had a king-sized woody that wasn't going away any time soon. I think Jill noticed but didn't seem to be in a hurry to leave my room.

"Okay, okay," I finally said. "I'll help. Can I have some privacy while I get dressed?"

"Have you got something I haven't seen?" Her eyebrows rose as she quizzed me.

I pointed to the door.

"Get...out!"

She rolled her eyes, shrugged and went downstairs to visit with my parents.

I managed to stuff my erection into my pants, where it finally began to subside, and stiffly clamber down the stairs.

"Sean, did you know Jill was in the same classes you took?" my mother asked when I came in the room.

"Yeah, Ma. I know."

My mom smiled and looked at me in a way that said, "She's nice. I like her. When are you going to go out with her instead of those trollops you see at college?"

I smiled back to say, "Ma, mind your own business."

Jill and I stomped into the woods and attacked a copse of hawthorn that grew along the creek. We worked for hours clearing, cutting and pulling the stubborn plants out of the ground. At last, exhausted, we sat down next to the creek.

Jill leaned close and I turned my head to watch her. She sniffed at my clothes and let out a heavy sigh.

"Pee-you. You smell!"

She pushed me into the water and sprinted for the other side of the creek laughing. I caught her halfway up the bank and pulled her back down into the creek. We wrestled in the water but I was determined not get caught by surprise today. She suddenly stood up and put her fingers to her eye as though she had something in it.

"What's wrong? Are you okay?" I stopped my attack briefly.

I leaned forward to look closer. She let loose with a fountain of water from her mouth that hit me directly in the face. She shrieked wildly and bolted up the bank.

"Oh, that's sick! That water's awful."

I let her get up the bank before I set off after her. I caught up to her at our tree and I threw my arms around her so she couldn't escape. Her ragged breathing on my chest caused my stomach to twist in knots. Slowly, she tilted her chin towards mine and closed her eyes.

Our parted lips met. I gently sucked her tongue into my mouth and I felt her body melt against mine. Her arms snaked around my neck as she tugged my head towards hers. Now she began to her grind her hips against mine. She broke our kiss long enough to whisper in my ear.

"We need to dry out these clothes."

She let go of me and I sat back onto the ground. She kicked off her shoes and tugged at her socks.

Standing in front of me, with an impish grin on her lips, she toyed with the bottom hem of her T-shirt. Slowly, very slowly, she pulled the hem up to her bra and then turned away as she flipped the shirt over her head. Eyeing me over her shoulder she undid the clasp of her bra and let it fall to her feet. The buttons on her shorts popped open and her pants fell to her ankles in a pile. She stepped boldly out of the wet fabric.

I had a lump in my throat and a bigger lump in my pants. Slim-hipped with peaches and cream skin, Jillybean turned slowly to face me. Ample pale breasts pointed towards me riding high on her ribcage.

She stuck her thumbs into the waistband of her simple white cotton panties and pushed them to her knees. Stepping out of her panties she faced me, with her chin held high and her hands flat against her hips, staring into the distance.

Jillybean stood before me, naked as a newborn babe except for the necklace I had given her so many years before. The tree she stood in front of was the same one she had been tied to years before as the damsel in distress awaiting her rescue by the pony soldiers or some handsome man wearing a white hat astride his palomino.

I drank in her smooth contours and round breasts: breasts that wouldn't give in to the forces of gravity just yet. There was a soft crease between her breasts and each rib stood out prouder than the one above it until my attention fell to her sweet soft stomach. The expanse of buttery skin was interrupted by her belly button, that sat higher than I expected, and a lone pink birthmark between her hip and a narrow patch of wispy auburn hair: a wayward traveler across her pale skin.

Her face seemed different now. Her eyes were wide open and inviting while her breathing was labored. Her sparkling green eyes glinted in the light, flashing back the flame of the sunlight multiplied by a sum of her beauty. Her nostrils flared slightly as she drew a deep breath and her chest heaved gently.

She focused her eyes on me now as she leaned forward and ran her middle finger below her collar bone, tracing a line of sensation that ended circling her nipple, causing it to stand high atop her breast begging for attention. Mouth parted, she tilted her chin towards my face.

I stood slowly and gently pulled her willing body to mine, her soft curves forming to my angular physique. I slid my hand along her hips towards the soft swell of her belly and dipped my fingers into her warm slippery sex. She shivered at my touch and panted into my chest. I tapped lightly at the center of her red-fringed well, causing her to bite the cloth of my shirt and dig her nails into my arm. When I touched the nubbin that controlled her pleasure, her knees buckled slightly. I pressed her body to mine so she wouldn't fall.

Jillybean's hand found my flesh hard, eager for her touch. Massaging me through the fabric of my jeans her body weighed on mine and I felt the entrance to her body yield as my finger broke through the sticky resistance of her swollen lips. A sigh escaped her lips and was captured in my flannel shirt while her grip on my erection slipped. Jillybean was lost in her pleasure now.

Eyes screwed shut, her face, in fact, her entire body slid down mine and I had to pull her back up to keep my busy fingers between her quivering thighs. Staccato breaths from her open mouth warmed my skin and I felt, for a moment, that I was holding her with nothing more than my fingers: fingers that were being pulled inside by her hungry sex, milking them for whatever pleasure they possessed. The veins on her neck strained against her skin as she approached a satisfaction of body and spirit.

Her body twisted violently in my grasp and her mouth clamped shut as she whined quietly. It was the sweet sound of a young woman on the cusp of adult passion. Then she hit her apex and lifting her face to mine, she clutched the back of my head pulling my lips to hers roughly. A series of a squeaks came from deep inside her throat and her entire body shivered as her climax overtook her. The breath left her body in a rush and then her passion subsided, leaving her to whimper softly against my chest.

At last, she was able to speak.

"I dreamt of this moment a million times, Sean. Please, say something," she whispered.

Tears welled up in the corners of my eyes as I spoke.

"No one..." I choked. "No one has ever offered me something as beautiful or as special as this. I want you more than the breath of life. But not here. Please, put on your clothes. This is a beginning and I want it to be something very special."

She sniffled as a tear skidded down her cheek.

"I love you, Sean." She quickly threw her hand over her mouth. "Oops...I'm sorry. I mean...uh..."

I kissed her lips shut. Then I trailed a string of kisses across her eyes, her neck and then back to her lips again.

"Mother Mary Berry," I whispered. "I'm yours, Jillybean."

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