Julia Grass

Tender desire

CHAPTER ONE

EDIE

Even the sign outside of town was small. STANTON – Pop 19,865. Just about as small as the town and the minds of the townsfolk, I figured, as I drove down its tree-lined streets. Already I was sorry I'd taken this assignment. Mini-town. Mini-minds. Shit, I'll probably get bored to death. And the assignment I'd been given looked like a deadend for sure. Who'd believe that this pretty little Squaresville, U.S.A. harbored the largest organized society of child molesters, Lolita swappers and infantilism freaks in the country. Orgies, swinging, swapping, young kids, depravity? Out here in God's Country?

Never.

I was on the main drag now and hunting for a parking space. My journalistic inquiries might just as well begin here as anywhere. So my eyes scoured the sidewalks for an available meter.

Then I noticed her.

She was just a kid, fifteen, maybe sixteen, leaning against the window of the neighborhood ice cream parlor. Just a pretty young kid, like so many pretty young kids.

Or was she?

The Stanton High T-shirt she wore was so tight I could see every detail of her braless breasts. And the look in her piercing dark eyes, now focused on me, seemed to belong to someone far older, far worldlier.

I parked in front of the soda shop. "Hi," I called to the girl as I locked my car door.