--Six years and eleven months before day one // the Wilson household--   Rachel sat alone in her room, finishing up the last of her homework on her computer. She was so thankful that her parents allowed her to keep the old computer while they got a newer model - sure, it ran slow sometimes, but she didn't have to worry about her stupid little brother "accidentally" deleting all her progress on whatever ridiculously long essay she spent hours working on. She printed out her work, then went to browsing the Internet at her leisure. She looked at her pocket for a second, then back at the screen. Back at her pocket. Back at the screen. Back at her pocket. She bit her lip.   Well... I didn't get a VPN for nothing...   She closed her Internet window and opened the Radish browser in the lower left corner of the screen.. Then, she pulled out the slip of paper from her pocket, keeping an eye on the door. Her hands were shaky while she manually typed in the address, which didn't make it easy, every mistype another precious moment wasted. It took her around ten seconds to input the full address. She hit the enter key.   A dark blue background popped up, then a forum header.   "Uncharted MAPs. A forum for MAPs young and old to discuss what and who they love most."   While Rachel was wondering what the hell a "MAP" was, the forum titles loaded up. The MAP hub looked to be where the action was. General Discussion. Crushes. Planning. Sharing. She clicked on "Crushes", hoping for an explanation.   "You need to be a registered user to access content."   Oh, come on!... Fine... I'm far enough down this rabbit hole.   She went to register an account, expecting to pay a ridiculously steep fee, or show a picture of her face, or...   "Please choose a username and password, then refer by username who sent you."   ...Wow... It's that easy? Uh... My username will be... ClashingWaves10.   She chose her password, a bunch of random numbers and letters, writing them in a text document as well as the box. Then, the username of who led her there.   Bubbly... Boys... Thirty... Five.   She clicked 'submit'.   "Thank you. Our mods can take up to ten minutes to verify you. Please stay on the page until it refreshes."   Rachel only had to wait half the time. In five minutes, the page refreshed, and ClashingWaves10 was born. She immediately looked into the Discussion thread, not caring about the two private messages she had received, and clicked the pinned topic, "New rules about planning".   Heaven_C0ncealed, an admin - and apparently a founder - had wrote: "Okay, we finally decided to make planning into its own sub-forum. Please refrain from posting your plans here. I would like to remind everyone that this sub-forum is for general MAP discussion. If you want to talk about specific crushes or infatuations, go to the Crushes sub-forum. Thank you."   This only confused Rachel more. She decided to check her private messages, hoping that one of them had translations for... whatever the hell she just read. One was from Heaven_C0ncealed themselves, and it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Just a "welcome to the forum" type of message. Then came the one from the girl who called herself "bubblyboys35". It was titled "OMG yaaay!"   "I'm so glad you came here so soon :) Just to get you up to speed: MAP: minor attracted person. We all like our boys young and that's ok! Discussion: Talking about what it's like to be a MAP and about our own experiences. Crushes: Gush about your favorite boys, famous or local! Planning: Newest addition! Tell us all about how you're gonna get your boy to love you! Great for advice!! Check out the second pinned topic to see what I mean! Sharing: Post your videos and pics of you and your boy... If you dare ;)   And of course we have some blasé discussion threads, but no one cares about those. Anyways I'm glad to see you! Oh and here's something you'll like..."   It ended with another link. Rachel clicked it, already far gone. It was to a topic in the Sharing sub. "Junior High School boy's shower feed". The video was short; it had no sound, poor video quality, and a lousy framerate, but it was exactly what one would expect. Several boys undressing and showering, sometimes alone, sometimes together. No serious undertones, from what Rachel could gather. Then she exited the video and scrolled down. The other posts, of which there were dozens... made her feel uncomfortable. Not sick, just uncomfortable.   "I wish I was there to give them lessons about sex." "I wanna be in the middle of a giant orgy with all of these boys ;)" "That cutie little blue kitty looking right at the camera!! I think I just felt my uterus bursting into flames!!!" "Poor little sweatband boy showering all alone... I would keep him company... Especially if he lets me touch his cock... Perfect for my mouth and pussy..."   Wait... Sweatband boy?   She went back to the video, and sure enough...   Tobias!?   Either she wasn't paying attention or missed it due to the framerate. How could she not notice her own kid brother in this? She went through the video again, going through those forty seconds before she found him. He was in three frames near the end. And, in the second frame, his privates were the clearest thing caught on the camera - which wasn't saying much, but still. She gazed at his privates for several seconds before closing the browser and shutting the computer down.   No, no, no! Not Tobias! I don't... I don't wanna see him in that way... I can't...   Her hands shaking from the stress, she exhaled hard. Someone knocked on the door.   "Hey, sis? Mom says you gotta help her do some laundry."   "Y- yeah, ok!"   Rachel sat in her chair, disturbed. In a little under twenty minutes, she had discovered a whole new world - and it questioned any notion that she didn't like boys equal to or below her age. She started to feel a tad queasy.   I'm... I'm a pedophile... I like little boys... I can't say that I'm not after I watched a video of young boys showering twice!   She turned the computer back on, logging back in and returning step by step to the forum. She went into her PMs and composed a message to Natasha.   "Hi... I'm kinda worried. I'm worried that I'm a pedo. I feel gross. But I kinda didn't mind watching that shower feed video... I want some advice."   She clicked the send button, sighing.   "Your message to Heaven_C0ncealed has been sent."   Yes, that- wait, NO! DAMMIT!   She sent the message to the admin, not to Natasha! She closed the browser and logged out again, exiting her room in a poor mood.   Rachel went downstairs and into the laundry room. Her mother was partly done wifh the laundry. The dryer was full; the washer was empty. Mrs. Wilson sighed in relief once Rachel appeared.   "Thank you, sweetie. I'll handle the dry stuff later, so don't worry if it goes off. I would really appreciate it if you put those clothes into the washer! I'm very busy with other things, so I gotta make a call or two. Thank you!"   Mrs. Wilson patted Rachel on the back as she left, the noise of the dryer drowning out any other sound in the house. Rachel sighed before getting to work. It was mostly socks and undergarments that belonged to Tobias and their dad... She kept the thoughts in the back of her mind at bay as she put her dad's dirty clothes away first.   Then this one... No... Another one... C'mon, no one can see you...   Her dad's dirty laundry was in the washer in no time. All that was left were a few pairs of Tobias' socks and pairs of special undies. She put the socks in first, wasting no time to get to the undies. She held a pair up. Her hands were shaking again. She was freaking out.   C'mon! Do something with 'em! NO! They're Tobias'! He won't care! But it's wrong!   Quickly, Rachel grabbed all the pairs of undies in the basket and stuffed them all into the washer, slamming the lid shut and starting it like her mother taught her. She was breathing heavily. A bead of sweat ran down the side of her face. Her legs felt weak. And between her legs, she felt... different. She knew she had sexual organs and what they did, but she had never experienced something like this. She took another deep breath to compose herself and clear her mind.   I... I'm ok... I did the laundry, and I'm just gonna walk out...   She kept her eye on the washer as she backed off, then turned and-   "BOO!"   "AAH!"   Tobias jumped out from around the corner, giving Rachel a fright. She caught her breath.   "You jerk! What was that for!?"   "Just because."   "Rrrgh... I'll let it slide this time, you little shrimp..."   Tobias snickered while his sister sulked up the stairs, blissfully unaware of any issues she might have. Rachel herself went back into her room, shutting the door and sitting against it.   I did NOT just try and do something weird with my brother's undies... What the hell's wrong with me!?   She stared at her computer screen.   I... I... I wanna go back to that site... I gotta...   She got up, sat in her computer chair, turned her computer on, and redid every step she took to get to the website, even down to logging into her account. The message she accidentally had sent had already received a reply. She clicked on it.   "Hello. I understand that you didn't send this to who you wanted to. That's fine. Because I'll give you the same advice I've given every single person who's asked me similar questions: It's okay. Because you're ok. There's nothing wrong with you. You love who you love. And you can't change that anymore than a straight or gay person can. And honestly, the sooner you accept that, and stop making excuses like "it's illegal, it's against my arbitrary moral code, I can't really be a MAP", or whatever, the better off you'll be. There's a fantastic thread in General Discussion about the problems I can tell you're having. It's called "The Newbie's Guide to a MAP Life". And once you're done there, if you're still interested, there's another thread in Planning titled "The Final Stage of a Crush, and Its Crescendo: What To Do During and After". I hope those threads will quell any issue you have. Thank you for your message."   Rachel was taken aback with the sheer calm the admin was talking about being attracted to younger boys. But there was something stronger inside her... A sense of understanding, of acceptance for something that would lead to exile in other circles. While going to the first of the threads the admin mentioned, she recognized what it was.   Validation.   She felt validated in knowing that this wasn't unusual. That her experience wasn't uncommon. That there were probably girls around her age dealing with the same things she was. Her interest was piqued; she opened "The Newbie's Guide" from a mod - "Klara Kolmogrov" - and began to read.   "Well... You're a MAP. You're gonna get busted for accessing this site, let alone even thinking about things like whether or not minors can consent to sex or even understand relationships beyond friendship. It's all over, right? Well... Not really. This is intended for those who are new to the whole MAP scene, so if you're a long time MAP there's not much here that's useful for you. Baby MAPs, keep reading!"   For the next two hours, Rachel dove deep into the thread, reading everything this "Klara" had written about being attracted to minors. She kept going back to the sections that interested her the most, rereading them, studying them harder than any dry school text. She felt moist between her legs as she read.   "I'll be blunt - yes, it's ok to have sexual thoughts about minors. It's even ok to masturbate to them. There's nothing illegal about your thoughts. Now, if you actually do go out and have sex with a minor?... That's ok, too! Because minors can consent as much as you and I. Hell, I'm a minor (16) and I can give consent to my minor boyfriend (10), as he does me! Is he raping me? Am I raping him? Are we "offenders"? No! Despite what our modern establishment wants us to believe, we both willingly consented and continue to do so each time we make love..."   "When I first started to recognize I was attracted to minors, I was scared. I was worried that the police would knock down my door just for researching similar topics on the web. (That was obviously before I found out about the Radish browser and this lovely site.) But, as I researched more and more, my views matured, and my attractions blossomed into a perfectly healthy, sexually compatible relationship with my boyfriend, who, again, is a minor..."   "Here's the truth, loud and clear: MINORS. CAN. CONSENT. When adult so-called scientists, support groups made up of adults, or whoever else tell you otherwise, THEY ARE LYING. They are lying because they don't want you to take your completely normal relationship to the next logical step. Nor do they want people to understand that minors aren't as stupid as they want us to believe! So what do they do? They demonize anyone who commits thoughtcrime as a "pedophile". There are even several online groups dedicated to harassing and doc-dropping and threatening even the nicest, least offend-iest MAPs out there..."   Rachel finished reading the whole thing for a second time. She was starting to accept that she liked younger boys. But who did she like? She thought hard.   I can't ever be attracted to Tobias... I guess... The fish boy from the party... Yeah, Darwin!   Darwin's name and face fresh in her mind, she sped over to the Planning section for the second thread the admin mentioned, written by one "MAPpac".   I'm not exactly crushing hardcore, she thought, but I can at least have a stress test with Darwin if it doesn't work out. I'll be his first girlfriend... Yes, I'm fine with being Darwin's girlfriend! Ok, now I gotta get to reading...   "When you're in the later stages of your crush, after you've been to his house, gotten to know his parents, and shared some time together, this is when you're entering the final stage of the crush. This is an important point, as here is where the crush could blossom into something beautiful. Now is when it's ok to be on the nose. It's okay to ask them if they want to go for ice cream after school, or to do something special without their parents' knowledge. Of course, you'll need to have conversed with their parents beforehand, but telling your crush that their parents don't know opens up a mental door inside your new boyfriend..."   "Now we proceed to what I've coined the Crescendo - a moment where both you and he realize you love each other, and it can happen in many ways. Whether you're both sipping on a milkshake, holding hands, or - if you've prepared him like I advise in my previous thread, "Preparing Him for Relationships" - hugging or kissing-"   I definitely need to check that thread out, Rachel noted before continuing.   "...This Crescendo is the turning point when you can truly say he's your boyfriend. You love him. And, although he might not admit it at first, he loves you. It's also the point where you can begin some more decadent activities, but we'll save those for another time."   *knock-knock-knock*   "Raaachel! Time for dinner!"   Rachel was startled by Tobias' sudden, loud voice interrupting her "study". Just like last time, she turned her computer off rather than leave it running with the monitor off, for safety's sake.   "Coming!"   --   After dinner, Rachel went back to her room, tired as ever. But her mind was still wide awake, awake with what she would do with Darwin.   So... I have to earn his trust... He let me kiss him, so I think that's a given... What else was that? I have to get his family to trust me... That's gonna be tricky. All the other stuff that user mentioned should be pretty easy... And then, I... I might... We might end up having sex. But... That's ok. If I love him, I love him. And if it doesn't work out... Oh well. There are bigger fish in the pond.