Scott held his breath, trying to remain calm, and focused very hard on not writhing with terror as his little sister clutched his fragile twelve-inch frame against her chest like a baby and marched through the house toward the second floor staircase.

            As usual for the warmer weather, Maggie was dressed in a flirty spaghetti strap summer dress to show off her smooth shoulders and let her neckline dive a little further down.  This one was patterned with various shades of teal and green, contrasting with her oceanic eyes.  She was also clad in a pair of short jeans that put her carefully toned thighs and tanned legs on full display.  And, as was so common for the free-spirited Maggie while relaxing at home on the weekends, there was no bra on underneath.

            With precious little left to his imagination, Scott found himself once again bear-hugged against his sister’s cleavage as she cradled him, with only the thin fabric of the dress separating them now.  With her hand scooped under his butt, she was keeping her tiny brother curled more tightly to her person than was necessary, and Scott was keenly aware of it as the side of his face was pressed heavily against the warm skin further up his little sister’s perky breast.

            He was squeezed so close to her body, he could feel her heart pumping in his ears, faster and faster with each passing minute.

            Of course, this wildly uncomfortable botheration was nothing next to what he feared was coming.

            She had him now.  Judy was out of the house and couldn’t save him.  Maggie could march right into the bathroom right now, strip him, soap him, and spend an inordinate amount of time rubbing him down while simultaneously giving Scott some answers about her psychological development that he would trade just about anything in the world to avoid being involved in firsthand.

            He felt on the verge of exasperated tears as his sister shouldered her way into her bedroom and kicked the door closed with a hard slam from her heel, already confirming some of his fears with the drive in her stride.  Proceeding to the bed, she flopped down onto it and leaned back against the wall, but made no attempt to release her captive from her overly familiar embrace.

            Muscles tensed, Scott shivered uncontrollably as the fear mixed unhealthily with the adrenaline, knowing his sister would feel it fully, but also knowing it didn’t matter at this point.

            “You can stop looking so messed up now, Scott,” Maggie commented at last with a curious frown, smiling down at him out of the corner of her mouth.  “I’m… not going to give you a bath.”

            “Oh.”

            “Mom said I can’t give you any baths.  She said even though it’s not unreasonable, that you should be mostly responsible for your own cleaning, and that it’s different for her to do it because she’s the mom and I’m not.”

            “Oh?” Scott repeated simply, working very hard to keep from sounding too desperately relieved.

            “Nope.  So you don’t have to make a big deal about it anymore.”

            “Oh, um… okay.”

            “But you know what the funny part is, Scott?” Maggie simpered, suddenly pursing her lips and hushing her tone down to a near whisper.

            Scott shook his head back and forth, too mortified to manage a spoken response.

            “I didn’t even mention that I was going to do that to Mom.  At all.  Like, she just kinda… knew it!  Pretty funny, huh?” Maggie snickered with sickening disingenuousness.

            “She, um… maybe she just thought I might need one soon, and... and wanted to make sure I’m d-doing my own p-part to take care of myself,” Scott mumbled awkwardly, afraid to look his little sister in the eye, even though he could feel her baby blue irises burning a hole in the top of his head with their intensity as she gazed questioningly down at him in her arms.

            Scott felt cold and hollow despite the warmth emanating from his sister’s clammy hands and shirt, all hugged so tightly around him in her possessive, threatening grasp as her eyes continued working him over at such close range.

            FBI interrogators had nothing on this girl.

            “Sure, but you know what else?  I thought this was the funniest thing of all.  She also made sure to tell me I can’t wear you during games anymore.  Even though I told her you were only down there for part of it.  Funny how she just knew that, huh?”

            “Maybe she just guessed from the bruises,” Scott peeped pathetically, foregoing tact out of defeat and shutting his eyes to prepare for whatever consequence he was certain was coming for him now.

            “Maybe!” Maggie seemed to agree for the moment before biting her lip and shaking her head in disbelief.  “Or maybe, for some reason, she’s started taking suggestions from certain people who really don’t have the right to be making suggestions.  How about that?  Is that possible, too?”

            The sweat collecting on his brow, Scott opened his mouth and tried not to whimper: “M-Maggie, look, I… I… d-didn’t…”

            Before he could get the rest out, the girl’s pointer finger was pressed against Scott’s lips, silencing him.  “Hush.  I get it, really,” Maggie insisted brightly.  “I mean, she’s got a point.  Maybe I got a little carried away, having you playing down there in my sock the whole time.  You gotta last us, after all.  And plus, I bet you just want to handle your own self sometimes.  And I… guess that’s fine.”

            Scott would’ve done a double take if he had liberated motion of any kind at his disposal. He could hardly keep up with the flip-flopping tactics of his sister, let alone try to decipher where she was going with her wild head games.

            “R-Really?” Scott gawked, too confused to muster anything more intelligent.

            “Yeah.  Why not?” Maggie chuckled, leaning her head down closer to Scott’s face.  “You’re here to learn from your mistakes instead of getting beat up in jail.  That’s why you’re staying back at home, you know?  So maybe I was too rough on you.  I’m the big one and you’re the little one, after all, so I have to make sure you don’t get skooshed.  Maybe… I should’ve been thinking about how you were doing more.”

            “Uh-huh,” Scott mumbled dumbly as he attempted to discern what kind of alien parasite had chewed through his sister’s brain to cause her to admit fault of some sort without any trace of irony.  He squinted at her, scanning for some twitching imperfection or curl of a lip to indicate that she was about to burst into peals of laughter at her elaborate joke, but he saw nothing.  Sure, she wasn’t exactly groveling on her knees for having stamped bruises into him for an entire game, but it was still by far the closest thing to an apology he knew he’d ever receive from her.

            His befuddlement even allowed him to ignore the fact that his body was now bobbing up and down while still being cupped pretty tightly against Maggie’s chest as she cradled him.

            “So that’s settled, then.  No more riding with me for games.  But I’ll give you fair warning about one thing, Scott.  Even with Mom’s silly little rule about baths and your silly little pride, if things get too…” she whispered throatily, before pressing her lips against the top of Scott’s head and planting a moist kiss in his hair, “…dirty, I may just have to do a little clean-up on you anyway.”

            Scott trembled again, horrifyingly confused and eerily comforted by this roller coaster of a conversation.  Against his shoulder, he could once again feel Maggie’s firmed nipple prodding at him through the fabric of the dress, and at once he realized why she’d been rubbing him so precisely against her breast.

            He fought back a dry heave at this realization.

            “Understand?” Maggie hissed as she held her head high again, letting her mouth hang idly open while her tongue bounced between the top and bottom rows of her pristine teeth.

            “Y-Y-Yes,” Scott stammered, unable to hide the fear in his voice and only barely able to stop some dangerously oncoming tears from changing his tone.

            “That’s my favorite little doll-boy brother,” Maggie chimed happily, running a pinky finger through Scott’s hair and brushing it lovingly, using the moisture from her kiss to part his locks more smoothly.  “I like it when you say “yes” to me.  It makes it so much easier.  For both of us.”

            “Uh-huh,” Scott whimpered, lowering his head, too strung out to look Maggie in the eyes again as they made their way up the stairs.

            “For example…” Maggie chirped playfully.  She lowered him away from her chest and sat him down in front of her on the bed where she slowly circled her legs around him to prevent him from moving.  She pinched her fingertips around one of Scott’s tiny hands as well to discourage escape.  “I know you gotta want to be able to talk to Ella again.  I could help make that happen.  If you acted the right way.”

            At this, Scott felt the temperature in his blood rise just a little bit higher, and it wasn’t just from the humiliation of having his sister threaten to scissor lock him between her thighs.

            Boy, did she know how to hit where it hurt.

            “You… you mean you’re…”

            “What?”

            “You mean you’re not going to tell… Mom?  About the phone?”

            Maggie snickered, tilting her head piteously.  “Well, I didn’t say that for sure.  I might still, if you can’t chill out around me a little more.  I think that’s fair.  What do you think?”

            “Uh-huh,” he mumbled, having to hide his shock that the girl apparently wasn’t going to take this information directly to the worst possible pair of ears.

            “Think about it a little, little brother,” she continued smarmily.  “You’re not reaching that phone on your own with us around.  You know Kyle won’t help you.  He’s too mad at you still.  Who else is gonna do it?”

            “Mom?” Scott suggested boldly.

            Maggie threw her head back, letting her hair toss smoothly across her face, and let out a girlish cackle.

            “Are you serious?” she laughed.  “You know her rule for you with the phone.  What do you think she’d do to you if she found out you were about to break it?”

            “I don’t know,” Scott sighed, deciding quickly that contesting the point with his sister wasn’t going to go anywhere.  As much as he wanted to believe his mother’s recently more cordial behaviors were a sign of changing times for them, he was also all-too familiar with Judy’s famous ability to change her presentation of herself on a dime.  The odds were far too flimsy for him to risk a phone call around her, even on her best day.  “You’re right.”

            “Of course I’m right,” the girl confirmed triumphantly.  She ran a fingertip across the top of his head again, tilting her head to the side slightly as she did so.  “So maybe we can come up with a little deal.”

            “What kind of deal?” Scott asked bluntly.

            “The kind where if you promise not to tell Mom about stuff, I’ll promise not to tell her about stuff too,” Maggie crooned with a wink as she stroked her brother’s hair again.  “Easy as that.”

            “Promise not to tell her about what stuff?” Scott uttered with increasing emptiness, lowering his head in a feeble attempt to escape his sister’s caresses, but to no avail.

            “Oh, who knows?  I’m not psychic, Scotty,” Maggie said with a shrug.  Running her extended index and middle fingers along the tip of her sticky tongue with a dramatic slide, she dabbed the moisture vigorously into his hair to part it again.  He shivered but didn’t fight her.  “You know me.  I just take things as they… come.”

            Without needing to add any further comment, the sixteen-year-old master manipulator lifted her legs back up over her cowering brother and slid her way off the bed.  Scott remained lying obediently in a rumpled bundle of his sister’s bright pink blankets like a lapdog, her spit drying into his hair, while a vegetative state of despondent stoicism overtook him.