Hooking up with an older guitar-player hadn't exactly been Carol's first choice. Carol Valroy had gotten herself into the worst scenario she could have possible imagined. It wasn't as though she planned for her life to go haywire, and buck her in every which way, as if it was a wild bull. However, she dealt with her consequences, and dealt with them well. She had grown up to be responsible for her actions. These actions were also all her own doing, but not all her fault. Had she known what laid ahead, she wouldn't have dared climbed into the beat up van containing a myriad of musical instruments, none of which worked.
Carol Heather Valroy had not grown up a mischievous girl that disobeyed her parents. In fact, if she did disobey her parents, she would have harsh punishments. Mr. David Valroy and Mrs. Cheryl Valory were both very strict, but it was evident they loved their little girl, more than any other parent seemed to. Every Sunday, they'd dress carol up in a little ruffled, blue dress with a matching blue bonnet. Carol hated that bonnet, but was rewarded with vanilla ice cream any time she went through the whole sermon without complaining about how it was digging into her chin. Carol had been an attractive young girl- bright red hair, freckles that were splayed across her entire face, due to the time she spent in the sun, and she was very thin. She feared, that, once she hit teenager hood, she would look gangly and unappealing to any potential applicants for a boyfriend. She'd had two boyfriends in this time. One named James, who was a weird boy. He seemed to believe he was above her in terms of gender roles, which she fought against fervently. They broke up quickly; they agreed on virtually nothing.
Carol didn't even count Jeremy, who was a summer fling that she'd experimented with. She confessed during a session in church, explaining how filthy she felt because she let him touch her breasts. She was cleared of her sins, said the man in the booth, and she was off, feeling as though she had let twenty pounds off of her chest. When she got home, she felt something was off, and realized she had reached the next stage in her becoming a woman. It had taken a long fourteen years for her to mature and menstruate. Carol had been so proud that she marched right out into the living room area and bragged to her mother that she was finally an adult, just like her. Her mother had scoffed, and told her to continue playing with dolls and being a 'silly girl' while she could.
That very same night, Carol had removed her clothes and thoroughly examined herself, as though she was a doctor that was trained to do so. She traced every rib, decided that she'd need more meat on her bones if she wanted to get anywhere near curvy, like the rest of the girls. At this age, she had become a rather popular figure among the girls in her eighth grade class. She was pretty, witty, and most certainly a good friend to have. She traced the lines of her small breasts, wondering how on earth Mandy and Jessy, her two best friends, managed to have hips so wide and breasts so large. It didn't make sense. Why couldn't she be a curvy cutie while remaining thin? She looked at pictures of the models in magazines all the time. They had the thick thighs and the big hips. She could see her hips bones and her thighs barely touched. She sighed and put her clothes back on, and that night she had dreamed of women's bodies, and woke up slightly aroused, and very curious.
By fifteen, Carol was so much more mature, and so much more informed on everything she had been curious about at fourteen. It had taken her a year to realize that Mandy and Jessy were both quite bigger than her, and had also gotten their periods years before her. She also was told she had a fast metabolism, which meant the things that came in went out just as quickly. She felt beautiful, when boys would compliment her, and tell her how pretty her hair looked in the sunlight, or how long her eyelashes were. Carol Valroy had become increasingly popular, and increasingly beautiful, and was shaping into a young woman at the age of fifteen. She was responsible, able to care for herself and others at a time. She was a selfless individual, always making sure her friends were okay before she was. One time, a friend of hers had just gotten out of an abusive relationship, and felt traumatized, so badly that Carol told her mother and got her help. Carol saw her every day, and even put her schoolwork behind her to make sure her friend was recovering well.
During that year, she had discovered startling things about the world. It was not all that pure, and, as the sermons claimed, was full of sin. What was more startling was the path the sermons had started to take. They went from being peaceful, full of serenity, to full of hatred, racism, and anything else the preacher felt like throwing in there. Montgomery, Alabama was changing for the worst. She recalled a time where everyone was friendly, saying 'Hello!' to their neighbors, before cheerily tending to their garden.
Carol, at this age, had also experienced her first encounter with masturbation, which she found to be both pleasurable, and a bit disturbing. She didn't like the way she sometimes imagined a man's hand there, and stopped almost at once, not daring to touch herself again. She apologized to God that night, and prayed for his forgiveness. At once, she confessed, telling the man in the booth about her secret pleasure that she would never return to.
However, at sixteen years of age, she did return to it, and found herself doing so more often. She often dreamed of the senior boys, or the freshmen in college boys. She even went to her first frat party. She meant one boy, Andy. Andy was sweet, and practically swept her off her feet with his poetic words. He was around the age of twenty, and she found herself growing more and more lenient of his age. He'd often come to see her, throw little pebbles at her window, and wait for her to answer. They would sneak away into his car and go to parties, where sometimes, she'd drink or smoke this thing called 'pot'. They would go back to his truck and fool around. Andy was kind to her, with chestnut hair and a winning, white smile. He had emerald eyes, which were deeper than any great forest she could think of. Sometimes, she really believed that she was in love with him, but knew that love was for adults, and adults only. She also knew it was sacred, not something you could put as a label on anything. You could love peanut butter, but it was different from loving a person, wanting to make all of their pain evaporate, wanting to help them cower away from their fears. She didn't feel that around Andy. But she felt good, beautiful, and free.
Upon further investigation, she also learned that he was a guitarist for a small band that occasionally performed gigs at a small café in the middle of the town, called the Coffee Bean. Disguised as a cute Shoppe of sorts, it wasn't. It was a run-down, beat up joint where the smokers and the drinkers joined and melded. She didn't find, that when he went to his shows, that she fit in much there. She was also admiring other band mates of his. He hadn't declared Carol and him in a relationship, so she looked at other men, admired women, and dreamt of a time where she would no longer have to be something she wasn't.
David and Cheryl Valroy grew more and more concerned for their little angel. She spent almost no time at home, and was sneaking out, becoming less and less of the girl they knew, and more and more of the girl Andy wanted to know. Andy had transformed her from innocent into a badass girl, even if that didn't exactly have a positive connotation behind it.
Andy had even convinced her to perform in a Rocky Horror rendition, in which she played Janet. He clapped the loudest when she was in lingerie. She realized, then, that he didn't like her for more than her body, and more than the pleasure she was giving him. She couldn't stop loving him, or thinking that she did. Eventually, they made a plan, late at night, to get away with his band mates to obtain fame and make a name for themselves, and to get out of the mundane life in Alabama. Carol had been hesitant. Running away with four grown men was sure to raise some red flags, but in the end, it sounded like a good idea to her. However, she hadn't finished school, and wasn't going to, as far as she could see.
However, a few states over, she realized how much she disliked Andy, and how much she fancied another one of them. His name was Stuart, and he possessed all the qualities that she desired. However, the most outstanding quality was that he was 21, and very apt to drinking more than he should. However, he seemed to like her back, and she was smitten within a few days of their road trip. Stuart had the same chestnut hair, but his eyes were a piercing blue- almost so blue that they were the color of icicles. He was built like a lumberjack, but he was so manly, and so tall, and just so mature, that she couldn't help but feel attracted to him.