Prologue: Thursday - Friday
"Hi! I'm Bangs Garcia from MTV and today I'm gonna get totally Naked in School! Come on!"
"I hate her," Valerie whispered and I just shrugged. I hardly ever watched MTV anyway.
The girl looked like a little Mexican, except she was really from the Philippines or something. Bangs seemed like a funny name, but she was gorgeous too, which probably explained why she was on MTV in the first place. She had brown skin and thick, wavy black hair that she wore loose around a perfectly made up face. For being sixteen or whatever, Bangs looked a lot older to me, especially her body. She hosted a show called 'LBFM' which stood for Little Brown Fun Machine, but you can guess what most people called it.
"Are those her real tits?" Pam wondered.
"Probably not," Stacy sniffed. "She's a slut anyway."
"Good morning, Bangs!" some old white guy was saying. "Are you ready to get Naked in School?"
"Oh! Totally!" the girl grinned at the camera. "This is my Principal, Mr. Swayer. He is sooooo cool!"
"Alright then," the guy smiled. "Follow me!"
They were at some school or something, well, it had to be a school, right? The camera followed Bangs as she followed her principal. A lot of other kids were there, smiling and making funny faces, holding up their fingers and making peace signs or whatever. Bangs gave us a little tour as we went. There's the school trophy case, there's the drinking fountain, there's the bathrooms.
"Her school sucks," Valerie decided.
I guess whoever made the video thought the same thing, because halfway through the tour it cut away to some cheesy graphics. Like newspaper headlines floating through space kinda and Charlton Heston was narrating, since he's like the voice of God.
"Teen Suicides up 400% since 1979…" he said dramatically "…School violence on the increase…" and "…35% of teenage girls diagnosed with depression…"
"This is depressing," I sighed.
"An epidemic is sweeping our nation, a virulent plague afflicting our youth…" God said "…We must act now, before it's too late!"
"Naked in School is designed to foster self-confidence and build a positive self-image through a process I like to call Social Enlightenment," an old man with white hair and glasses was telling the camera. There was a subtitle that said 'Dr. Y. Alvarez, Harvard' and he was pretty boring.
"The core value of the NIS Program," a woman, one Prof. Bette Groote explained to us, "is peer networking. For a teenager, peer pressure is the single greatest factor influencing his or her self-esteem. By removing the false security of the consumer mask, such as clothing, jewelry, appliances and such, the individual must be regarded without the pretense of distraction in light of the emotional…"
"What's that mean?" Pam asked no one in particular.
"Speak English!" someone in the back yelled, probably Madison, and Ms. Owens, our Health teacher, frowned at the class from behind her desk.
"Hey! Wow! I'm sooooo nervous!" Bangs giggled, looking anything but nervous. "We're just waiting for the other kids to show up! Wait until you see my partner! He's sooooo dreamy!"
"The school district here decided to go with the lottery system to determine the schedule," that Principal Swayer guy explained in a 'taped earlier' interview. "We thought it would make the kids more comfortable if they knew when they were going to participate and with whom."
"Can you explain the lottery?" a man asked from off camera.
"Sure. We just got all the kids together in auditorium and we had the class presidents draw names. It was pretty exciting and a lot of fun. The students really enjoyed it, I think."
"I hope we do it like that," Stacy said and Pam nodded.
"Every school district which adopts the Program is encouraged to tailor certain aspects to meet the needs of their community," a woman smiled and she was Dr. P Huston, Education Secretary and kinda old. "The most recent models show that allowing the students to participate in establishing and maintaining the NIS Program, making them responsible in part for its success, reduces stress and promotes a sense of personal investment."
"God! This is boring," Penny sighed. "Where's all the naked guys at?"
"Well, in the beginning the Program used a 'shock and awe' approach to bully students into submission," a stern looking black man, Senator William Davis said. "But we've put a stop to that. The NIS Ethics Committee has just completed a formal review of the Program and we interviewed hundreds of educators, students, and parents to identify and correct the problems those so called 'Watchdog' groups have been complaining about."
"There have been some improvements," a Ms. Cora Burley said. "But the National Organization of Women still views the NIS Program as state funded sexual harassment. There are over sixty cases pending trial in twelve states right this minute, including one involving a fifteen year old pregnant girl."
"Lois Donner," the man off camera said.
"Lois Donner," the woman agreed.
"The school is contending that she violated Program Policy by not using prescribed birth control."
"She was so stupid!" Penny giggled.
"I heard she's gonna have twins," Pam said.
"On religious grounds," Ms. Burley said. "Lois was completely within her rights to refuse treatment. The school was negligent in protecting the girl from sexual abuse. Her rape was sanctioned by the government and occurred with the knowledge and explicit consent of the very people we employ to protect her."
"The idea of requiring birth control for female students is a tacit admission of guilt," another woman, Abby Tolliver, was from Princeton. "For a Program which describes itself as an opportunity for young men and women to learn social responsibility and personal growth, the emphasis on sexual promiscuity seems oddly out of place."
"Only sluts need birth control anyway," Janey said.
"You better get two shots then!" Madison laughed.
"Shut-up," Janey frowned.
"Hogwash! Birth control is a fact of life and requiring that female students use it while they're active in the Program doesn't suggest that they should engage in sexual relations with anyone!" James Carvel retorted. "It's just common sense. You get two teenagers together, a pretty girl and a handsome boy, and they're gonna do it! You know it and I know it and that little girl's parents damn well should have known it too!"
"Ugly girls are sucking, I guess!" Stacy giggled.
"You're so punny," I rolled my eyes and she stuck her tongue out at me.
"Well, here we are in the auditorium!" Bangs smiled for the camera. "We just did the Pledge of Allegiance and any minute now I'm going to have to take off all my clothes!"
The camera panned around and the auditorium and the girl's school was a big one. It was filled with kids too and up on the stage were three girls and three boys, two students from each grade, and except for Bangs, they looked pretty nervous!
"Alright!" the principal said into a microphone. "Your NIS Program week starts now. Please remove your clothing!"
With that a large cheer went up and I giggled when I saw that there were a bunch of cheerleaders dancing off to the side, waving their pom-poms around and the band was playing. They were treating it like a Naked in School pep rally or something! Talk about totally bizarre!
"God! Weird!" Valerie giggled.
"I hope they don't do that here!" Stacy said.
"Probably it's just for the cameras," Katie offered. "For that Bangs chick."
"Make a big production out of it, why dontcha!" Janey laughed.
"Bunch of morons," Madison yawned.
Bangs got undressed quickly, but kinda slowly too. She was grinning and waving and sorta dancing in place. She looked like a stripper to me and I would know! She had a serious body, like I said, and she wasn't afraid to show it off! Her tits were big and perfectly round, all golden brown kinda, except for her big dark nipples. The camera was more than happy to zoom in on the girl too!
"What a slut!" Penny shook her head.
"I bet she's on birth control," Stacy said.
That Bangs girl took a long time getting her panties down, turning around to show her classmates her perfect, brown ass when she bent over at the waist, pushing her panties down with a waggle of her hips. It was pretty obscene looking, I thought, and I figured that woman from NOW had probably had a stroke if she'd seen this video! So much for a hundred thousand years of women's lib, huh? Bangs Garcia, sixteen year old MTV goddess, was inviting the world to see her as nothing but a tight little brown butthole and a moist, pink pussy. What a dope!
She'd deserve to get raped probably. Maybe they could make a music video out of it!
"Now remember!” the principal reminded Bangs. “You must stay naked at all times. Remain in public areas of the school facilities. You're limited to three 5 minute bathroom breaks a day and must use the locker room of the opposite sex. You cannot attempt to cover yourself in any way. And you must agree to any and all reasonable requests your fellow students might make of you during the week."
"What if somebody asks her to put her clothes back on?" Pam giggled.
"They get slapped for being stupid," Stacy rolled her eyes.
"If you try to cover yourself up," the principal continued, "we'll have to make use of these…"
He was holding up a pair of leather handcuffs chained to a collar of some kind. It looked weird to me, but it was easy to imagine how much it would suck having my hands up by my ears all day long. Bad enough being naked, but being helpless too? God! That was all so stupid. Why not just strap the girl down to a bed and spread her legs? Any lasts requests? Yeah, a blindfold! Some of those guys are ugly!
I was doodling in my notebook. I liked drawing cartoons, even though Ms. Owens would give me a hard time if she caught me. Sometimes she thought they were funny though. I was pretty good at those and I did cartoons for the school newspaper sometimes, except it was just October, so they'd only had one issue so far.
"Is that the guy she was talking about?"
"God! He's hot!"
"Look at his dick!"
"Horse cock!"
"Shut-up," I told all those stupid girls, but the guy was seriously steamy!
The video was showing all the naked kids and Bangs was standing next to the guy who must have been her partner. A black guy with a huge dick, not even a really hard one yet, but Bangs was trying to fix that for him! But that black guy didn't even have the biggest one. Some white guy, kinda scrawny looking with glasses on a huge honkin' nose had a penis that must have been ten inches long! I swear, and it was pointing out and up like someone should hang a flag from it!
"Where's that school?"
"No shit! I wanna go there!"
"That would hurt!"
All my classmates were talking again, sounding like the sluts they wished they were. I knew most of them were still virgins, like me, and all they knew about sex and big dicks and all that was whatever some other stupid virgin told them. I hated health class, mostly because I didn't want to be a girl at all and listening to all the chatter got on my nerves. Guys were a lot cooler about that stuff. Sorta. Sometimes. Well, maybe not. But they were guys and my friends anyway. I didn't have any friends who were girls and they all thought I was weird anyway.
I was so glad when class was over!
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"Hi Sam," Dr. Chase smiled as she held her door open for me. "Have a seat. How are you today?"
"I'm okay," I shrugged, sitting down in the chair by her desk.
Dr. Chase was the NIS Program Counselor and she was alright. Some of the boys liked to joke about her name, since she was kinda hot and definitely worth chasing, and she joked about it sometimes. Her first name was Ellen and that's how she'd introduced herself the first time we'd met, but I always called her Dr. Chase. She seemed kinda young to be a doctor, but she had the diplomas on her wall to prove it. She had two doctor degrees, actually. One in Social Anthropology, and I had no idea what that was, and the other was in Clinical Psychology, which meant she was a shrink. Sorta. I think psychiatrists are the real shrinks, so maybe she was just a wanna-be.
"You know the Program is starting soon, right?" she asked me as she sat in the other chair in front of her desk. She never sat behind it, unless she had to.
"Uh, yeah," I nodded. "Everybody's talking about it."
"I bet they are," she smiled and Dr. Chase was really pretty when she did that. Her green eyes kinda sparkled. "I believe you saw the video in class today. What did you think of it?"
"I don't know," I said, kinda smiling apologetically. "I just wish I didn't have to do it, you know?"
"Yeah," she nodded sympathetically. "That's how a lot of people feel about it. But school is like that sometimes, isn't it?"
"I guess," I shrugged.
"I wanted to see you today because…" Dr. Chase reached across her desk, "…I have a little questionnaire and I was wondering if you'd fill it out for me."
"Another one?" I smiled at her. I must have filled out a dozen of them since school started and all the other kids too, or at least some of them. Josh had only filled out like four or five, I knew that.
"Yep," she smiled back. "One more. Do you have a pen?"
"Yeah," I nodded.
"Good. I'll let you do that and I'll be right back, okay?" she patted my thigh gently. "When you're done we'll talk a little more."
"Okay," I sighed, flipping through the four or five pages. The last question was number fifty.
Am I happy with myself? Hmmm…Sometimes.
How many hours a night do I sleep? Seven. Usually. Maybe six if there's a good movie on. I hated those kinds of questions.
Do I get angry often? Hmmmm…What's often mean? No.
When I get angry, do I express it or keep it inside? Heh! Both!
How many good friends do I have? Like three or, nah. Just one good one.
Blah Blah Blah …
Fifty questions like that and I answered them pretty quickly. Most of them I'd seen before anyway, on other questionnaires, and I mostly tried to tell the truth. I was done just before Dr. Chase came back. She had really good timing.
"All finished?" she smiled at me and I nodded. "Good. We'll just put this over here then. Now…What have you been up to lately?"
"Going to school," I shrugged. "Um, me and Josh went to EMP last Saturday. His dad took us. It was pretty cool."
"How are you and Josh getting along?"
"Fine. We just hang out and stuff."
"Does he have a girlfriend yet?"
"Uhhh…" I lifted my hands. "Not really."
"How about you? Is there anyone you like?"
"No," I giggled nervously. "Not like that."
"Okay," Dr. Chase smiled at me. "If there was…Would you tell me?"
"Ah!" I grinned at her and I was blushing.
"I'm just curious," she laughed lightly. "How's your mom?"
"She's okay," I said. "She's working a lot, you know. So…"
"Is she coming to the meeting tonight?"
"I don't think so," I shook my head.
"Did you tell her about it?"
"Ummmm…" I shrugged. "Maybe."
"Maybe?" Dr. Chase cocked a thin eyebrow at me.
"I kinda forgot," I admitted and Dr. Chase nodded at that.
We talked for about ten minutes like that. She liked to ask a lot of questions and I answered most of them, but sometimes I didn't really want to. Like she'd ask me about my dad and I never wanted to talk about him, so she wouldn't make me or anything. Dr. Chase was pretty nice and I couldn't ever lie to her, I don't know why. I'm not really good at lying anyway though, so probably that's a good thing.
It kinda sucked having to spend my study hall with her though, just because me and Josh coulda been playing table football in the library. You know, folding a piece of paper into a triangle? I was really good at kicking field goals. Better than he was! But instead I had to talk to Dr. Chase and she did make me feel good. I mean, most people didn't really care what I thought about anything. Josh did and my mom, sorta, but Dr. Chase always listened and that was cool.
But I was glad when we were done too.
"I'll see you on Monday, okay?" she said as I stood up.
"Monday?" I narrowed my eyes because it was only Thursday, but maybe she meant she wanted me to come back for more questions Monday.
"Yeah," she nodded, standing up as well. "I have a seminar this weekend so I'm going to skip school tomorrow."
"Oh," I smiled at that.
"Don't tell the principal, okay?" she laughed softly. "He doesn't like me anyway."
"He doesn't?" I giggled because Principal Eckert liked most girls just fine. We all thought he was kind of a pervert, but he tried to hide it and that only made it worse.
"Well," Dr. Chase rolled her green eyes. "Maybe he likes me too much."
"Yeah!" I nodded at that.
"Bye Sam."
"Bye."
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"You're coming over Friday, right?" Josh asked me as we walked home after school. The wind blew some of his light brown hair into his face and he turned his head in annoyance.
"Yeah, I think so. I gotta ask my mom though," I said, pulling my Mariners ball cap down. My hair was black and a little longer than his.
"Yeah," Josh understood what I meant. We'd been best friends and sleeping over at each other's houses forever. Being fifteen like we were, it wasn't really asking anymore anyway, it was more like letting our parents know where to find us.
"Is your mom going to the PTA thing tonight?" he asked me a couple minutes later.
"Mine?" I gave Josh a look. "Yeah right."
"My mom's going. You wanna hang out after dinner?"
"I don't know," I shrugged as we cut through the Lawson's backyard. They didn't like it, but they were never home either. "I'll call you later."
The walk home wasn't a real long one, about a half-mile maybe, but it seemed long sometimes. Seattle rains too much and Josh and I were looking forward to taking driver's education next semester. We'd both turn sixteen the following July which was kinda cool, I guess. At least we'd get our licenses and be able to drive. Maybe we'd even get cars, except I wasn't holding my breath or anything. My mom was kind of stingy since it was just me and her and she didn't have a really great job or anything. We weren't starving or whatever, but you know.
Josh might get a car though. His dad worked for Boeing and his step-mom volunteered at the public library, reading books to little kids. They did okay and Josh lived in a nice house. Me and my mom lived in a nice house too, except we just rented the upstairs from the old lady who lived downstairs. Mrs. Whiting was nice usually, but she could get cranky too and when her arthritis was acting up we had to kinda tip-toe around or she'd get mad. Mom said she was a little senile. She always treated me okay though and knocked some money off the rent because I did all the yard work and stuff. Mom kept saying I'd have to get an after-school job next year and I was actually looking forward to that, or at least having some pocket money.
"Hey, did you talk to that girl?" I asked and Josh kinda rolled his dark brown eyes at me.
"Penny? No, not yet."
"Chicken?" I grinned at him. "I saw her looking at you at lunch."
"You did?" Josh grinned back at me. "What were you looking at her for?"
"Shut-up!" I kicked at a pine cone lying on the sidewalk. "It was pretty obvious anyway. What's her name said she likes you."
"Who?"
"That other chick, the chubby one," I shrugged, even though we'd known those girls half our lives practically.
"Yeah yeah," Josh knew which one. "Pam?"
"Pam. Yeah," I agreed. "Anyways, you oughta just talk to her."
"I don't know what to say," Josh admitted. "Girls are weird."
"Yeah," I laughed, because that was true. "They're kind of cool though, right?"
"You think so?" he asked, sorta squinching his face at me like he did when something surprised him a little.
"I don't know," I said, feeling a bit self-conscious suddenly. "Penny's cool, I know that. Lotsa guys like her."
"You're pretty weird, Sam."
"What?" I frowned at that. "Why? I'm just saying…"
"You think about her a lot?" he asked and I felt myself getting warm, but only because he was teasing me.
"No!" I answered him truthfully. "I'm just wondering why you won't talk to her."
"Yeah you do!" he grinned at me. "You like her."
"I do not," I repeated, more annoyed than embarrassed or anything. "I'm just asking why you totally ignore her."
"You talk to her," Josh said, rubbing it in now that he knew he was getting to me.
"Forget it," I shrugged and then I didn't talk to him at all. He hated that. I didn't know why I was bringing it up anyway. Maybe I just wanted to hear Josh tell me he didn't like Penny, or any other girl for that matter. I didn't really want him talking to her at all and I was looking for reassurance mostly.
"Sam! Come on. I was kidding, dude." He walked backwards for a bit so he could try and get my attention, but I ignored him. "Fine. Whatever. I'll talk to her tomorrow. Happy?"
"No," I finally answered with a scowl.
"What do you want?" Josh kind of whined with frustration. He was bigger than me, like five inches taller and easily thirty pounds heavier, but I was a lot more stubborn.
"How come you don't wanna talk to her?"
"I don't know." He turned around again and walked beside me. "I don't like any of those girls."
"You don't?" I looked up at him and the wind almost took my hat off.
"Not really."
"You don't want a girlfriend or anything?"
"Maybe," he shrugged. "I don't know. I like girls, I mean, yeah, but…I don't know."
"You're weird," I decided and he grinned at me then, so I grinned too and we were okay again.
I knew he liked girls. Josh and me were fifteen now, so we had like raging hormones and all the stupid questions and ideas that puberty gives a kid. I figured he probably jerked off every night or something, except I didn't really want to know about that stuff. It was kinda personal, you know, and we talked about almost everything, but not that. Josh was a good looking boy though, even I knew that much, and Penny was definitely one of the cutest girls in tenth grade. There wasn't any reason he shouldn't hook up with her and maybe that's what was bothering me.
If Josh got a girlfriend, then…What about us? We'd still be best friends and all, but he'd be pretty busy with Penny too, probably. Instead of hanging out with me on Friday nights, he'd be taking her to movies or something. Josh would probably be kissing the girl too and all that stuff, like making out and feeling her up and…I pushed those thoughts away. It was weird being jealous of Penny because my best friend was kissing her, even though he wasn't even dating her yet. Was I jealous? I frowned at that because it felt like I was, but I didn't want to admit it.
Being fifteen sucked, I decided and I was kicking myself for bringing Penny up like I had in the first place.
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"Sam!"
"Hey, Mrs. Whiting," I answered up as she spoke through the screen door.
She owned a big Victorian house, like the kind that look haunted, and it was a hundred years old probably. Mom and me lived in the apartment upstairs which had been remodeled by Mr. Whiting before he'd died. I'd never met him, but he looked like a nice guy in his pictures.
"I want the yard raked," Mrs. Whiting said, "before it starts raining."
"You want me to rake today?" I looked around and there were a ton of leaves on the big front yard, but… "The wind's blowin' like fifty miles an hour though!"
"It looks bad," the old woman said and then she closed her front door and I just sighed.
The leaves were blowing every which way and I wasn't kidding about that wind. Raking wouldn't do a whole lot except help make a bigger mess, I thought, but what was I gonna do? There wasn't any arguing with Mrs. Whiting, not when she closed her door. The sun was going to go down soon anyway, being almost the end of October like it was. I figured I'd rake for an hour maybe, let her see me doing it and then she'd be happy again. I hated raking.
"Hey Sammy!" a girl's voice drew my head up and I knew who it was.
"Hey Angie," I replied and then blinked as just right then a gust of wind tried to lift her white skirt.
She'd moved in next door over the summer and went to nursing school, and I guess they all had to dress like nurses. Angela and her two roommates, I mean. I knew all of three of them, but Janelle and Tricia mostly ignored me, being eighteen or nineteen like they were. Angela always said hi to me though and smiled and she was the cutest one anyway. Kind of a tall and willowy blonde with big blue eyes, like Japanese cartoon eyes, I thought, but they were nice anyway. She had high cheeks too, mostly because the cool autumn air had turned them pink.
"Better be careful or that wind's gonna blow you away!" I grinned at her, even though I probably should have looked someplace else. Her skirt came almost up to her butt before Angie caught it a pressed it back down to her thighs. She wore white stockings too, or pantyhose probably, and white shoes and all that.
"I better, huh!" She giggled at me, kind of stopped for the moment, and I leaned on my rake. "What are you doing?"
"Me?" I shrugged. "Raking up leaves."
"I see that!" She stuck the tip of her tongue out at me. "How come?"
"I dunno," I laughed and felt kind of silly. "Mrs. Whiting wants me to rake, so…I just do what she wants, you know."
"Yeah," Angie nodded and grabbed her golden hair in her fist, pulling it out of her face. "Maybe if it's nice this weekend you can come rake our yard?"
"Yours?"
"We'll pay you," Angie smiled at me. "How much do you get for raking leaves?"
"Ummm…" I shrugged.
"Twenty dollars?"
"That's a lot," I said, biting my lip.
"We got a lot of leaves," Angie shrugged. "Probably take all day. You wanna do it?"
"Sure," I agreed. "I can do it Saturday."
"Great!" the girl said with an even bigger smile and she sorta looked me up and down, which made me look down too. I wore my usual clothes, just jeans and a t-shirt under my big old army jacket, but Angie made me feel like I was standing in my underwear or something.
"Okay," I said, looking back up and feeling kind of warm all over.
"I better get going," Angie sighed, taking a deep breath so that her breasts seemed to rise beneath her coat and they were nice ones too, for being as tall and thin as the girl was.
"Yeah," I nodded and looked at my rake as if it was special all of a sudden.
"See you on Saturday, Sammy," Angie promised and then she was on her way and I watched her butt move from side to side.
She was still clutching her skirt and pulling it tight so that the cotton really hugged her hips and thighs, and especially her small, round, firm butt. Yeah. Angie was always nice to me and I'd never been sure exactly why, since she was so much older. Four years doesn't sound like much, but it's forever when you're my age. Probably she was nice to everybody, I thought, but a part of me kinda hoped she wasn't.
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"Monica?"
"I'm in the bathtub," her voice drifted down the short hallway. "Where have you been?"
"Here," I replied, finding the bathroom door open and my mom was in the bathtub, just like she'd said. "I had to do some raking."
"Raking?" Mom sighed and she knew what Mrs. Whiting was like. "Are you hungry? I didn't fix anything yet."
"I can do it," I shrugged. "It's after four-thirty already."
"Is it?" She opened her eyes, dark like coffee as she smiled at me. "I guess I have to get out then."
"Yeah," I nodded. "I'm just gonna make macaroni and cheese or something."
"Okay."
"Hey, there's that Parent-Teacher thing tonight…"
"Is that tonight?" Mom gave me an apologetic smile as she started moving. "I don't think I'm gonna make that one, Sam."
"I know."
I didn't need to stand there and watch my mom get out of the bathtub. She'd do it too, right in front of me, I mean. We weren't very shy, or at least Mom wasn't. I kind of liked my privacy though and I liked to give my mom hers, except she never seemed to notice one way or the other. I guess that's what being a stripper does to a woman. She called it dancing if someone asked, but I knew where my mom worked and Pure Platinum was definitely a stripper place.
She'd bleached her hair just so she could work there. Mom used to have black hair, like mine, since she's totally Hispanic. Like Spanish, you know? But not anymore. She had long, silver hair now to go with her caramel skin, but her roots were showing dark and Mom would have to do something about that pretty soon. I'm not saying she looked bad; my mom was only 31 and didn't even look that old to me, or anyone else probably. It was just weird seeing her like that, since she'd had black hair for the first fourteen years of my life, you know?
Mom had gotten a boob job as well, which was why she'd quit the other place and taken a little vacation at the end of summer. That's what she'd called it anyway. We couldn't really afford a vacation, but healing is hard work too and she made more money now anyway. One of her boyfriends had paid for her surgery and my mom always had a few of those, but they never lasted very long. I think that was more their fault than my mom's, since they were mostly married. Mom liked married guys though, so maybe it was her fault too in a roundabout way.
"Hey, Sam." Mom found me in our tiny kitchen about ten minutes later as I waited for the water to boil. "Do you have homework?"
"A little," I admitted. "It's easy."
"You don't need help?" she asked and Mom did that sometimes, like tried to be normal or whatever.
"Nah," I shook my head, getting out of the way so she could reach into the refrigerator. "I just gotta look up some words for English."
"Okay," she said, clutching her old pink bathrobe around her body while she dug around for a Diet-Pepsi. "I might be kind of late tonight."
"How late?"
"Ummm…" snick! Mom opened her soda. "Like morning? Maybe?"
"Okay," I said with a shrug. It wasn't like I could do anything about it. Mostly she got home about three in the morning anyway, so coming in at six or seven wasn't a big deal. She just liked to worry about what I thought about all of it. She really tried hard to be my mom.
"A guy from work keeps asking me out for breakfast," she explained needlessly. "Maybe it won't be too late."
"Maybe," I said and my water was almost ready for the macaroni. "Hey. I'm gonna sleep over at Josh's tomorrow, okay?"
"Sure," Mom nodded and then she tilted her head. "Are you guys getting along okay?"
"Who? Me and Josh?" I smiled at that. "Yeah. Why wouldn't we?"
"No. I mean, you should get along," she said quickly. "Just, uh…Is everything alright?"
"Everything's fine," I told her, narrowing my eyes as I tried to figure out what she was talking about.
"Well, you know you can always talk to me, right?"
"About what?" I opened the macaroni box and found the cheese packet with my fingers.
"Anything," she shrugged. "You're growing up now and…"
"I'm okay, Monica," I promised her. "You better get ready for work. It's like five o'clock already."
"Yeah. Shoot." Mom made a face and looked at the clock on the wall of our tiny kitchen. "Come home from school tomorrow, alright? Before you go to Josh's house."
"Yeah. I will," I agreed, stirring macaroni into the water.
She had to tell me that stuff because we might not see each other until then. Sometimes all we did was write notes, but not so much anymore. That was one good thing about that Pure Platinum place; my mom didn't have to be there until six. The other place, The Bodyshop, she'd had to be there at three in the afternoon, but they were only open until midnight or something too.
"Where's my keys?" Mom was frowning half an hour later as she looked inside her purse. "Found them."
"Are you driving?" I asked her around a mouthful of macaroni.
"I have to," she glanced at the clock. "I'm running late."
She meant it too and I guess women are just that way. Mom had taken a long time getting ready, which I never completely understood since she was going to change all her clothes once she got to work anyways. I suppose it was her makeup and hair or something. She looked pretty great though, I had to admit that, but mostly I tried not to think about it too much. Some of the guys at school gave me a hard time about my mom being really hot.
"Okay," I started getting up.
"Maybe it'll start by itself," Mom said and I gave her a doubtful look.
Our car was an old Ford Mustang, one of the ugly ones, and it was a good car, but just really old. Like thirty years old, you know? The carburetor was really funky and I was going to fix it on Saturday, but if I was going to rake for Angie I'd end up doing it Sunday. It just needed to get torn down and cleaned up mostly. There wasn't really anything wrong with the carb, except the car needed a tune-up bad. I'd do that too, if Josh's dad didn't mind letting me borrow some tools and stuff. He'd taught me a lot about cars, Josh as well, but I was better at it.
"Start it, Monica," I told her, jamming a screwdriver in the air intake, because it liked to stick and that's all it was. I'd sprayed a bunch of WD-40 on it anyway and once the car was running, it wouldn't stop until Mom got to where she was going.
"Come onnnnnnn…" Mom sorta sang as the engine whined and then coughed and then finally growled into life.
"Take the screwdriver. You're gonna need help when you come home," I reminded her. She was totally not into cars or any of that stuff. She kinda depended on me for fixing stuff and I didn't mind.
"I know," Mom nodded. "Give me a kiss. Be good."
"I will," I promised, kissing my mom goodbye though the open window.
"And do your homework!" she ordered with a grin. "Love you, Sam."
"Love you, Monica."
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"Last night's PTA meeting was a good one," Mr. Dawson said as he passed out sheets of yellow paper during homeroom. "I saw a lot of your parents there, but not all of them. I'm handing out some consent forms. These are very important so make sure your parents sign them. I need these back on Monday…"
Besides homeroom, Mr. Dawson taught chemistry and biology and he was okay, except he'd totally humiliated me in front of my mom about two weeks before. We'd had the first parent-teacher conferences of the year, not for any real reason except to show our moms and dads the school and classrooms and stuff. My mom had come, of course, and Mr. Dawson had done everything but lick her butt.
I mean, he'd just kept talking about what a great kid I am and how happy he was to have me in his class, since besides homeroom I was in his freshman biology class. Then he talked about how great my mom looked in her jeans and sweater and how he hoped he'd get to see a lot more of her…I swear, the man didn't shut up for fifteen minutes and I don't think he took his eyes off my mom's tits once. At least my other teachers acted normal, mostly, although Mr. Nichols, my math teacher, had stuttered a lot and his big round face had been really red. Mom called him Mr. Tomato Head after that, but made me promise not to tell anyone.
And Mr. Eckert, our principal, had insisted on giving my mom a personal tour of the school. I'd noticed the man hadn't done that for anyone else's parents. The rest of my teachers were all women and so they were more professional and hadn't said much to my mom at all. They were just polite mostly, but I caught some of the looks they'd shared behind my mom's back and I knew what they were thinking. It wasn't like a big secret what Mom did for a living, you know? It only took one person to know and then everybody knew.
"I missed seeing your mom last night, Sam," Mr. Dawson told me with sigh, putting the parental consent form on my desk. "I'd really like to see her again soon."
"Uh, yeah," I shrugged. "Maybe."
Of course some of the other tenth graders heard him and I felt the back of my neck getting warm because they were whispering and laughing. I hated that.
"I'd like to see her again too," Mike Conroy leaned forward, since he sat right behind me. He was sort of a bully, since he was big and kinda tough, or tried to be anyway.
"Yeah. All of her!" Todd Burton grinned and he sat to my left. They were best friends, Mike and Todd, and a couple of stupid jerks too, if you asked me.
"Shut-up," I frowned and started folding up that dumb piece of paper into a small thick triangle.
All it said on it was "NIS Parental Consent" and a bunch of the usual gibberish about the school not being responsible if I got lost or broke my leg or accidentally spilled some soda on the Mona Lisa. Except it was different too. Like the school wasn't responsible if I got pregnant? God! And if I contracted an STD the school district would arrange treatment? Double God! Everybody knew what NIS was, but hardly anybody could agree on what it was about. Everybody liked to say it was about helping kids feel good about themselves, but I didn't see a lot of kids saying that, you know? Mostly we were just trying to ignore it, or at least I was.
I liked school though, don't get me wrong, and I was okay at it, getting mostly B's and sometimes even an A or two, but some of the kids were annoying. I got teased sometimes and not just about my mom, but everybody goes through that probably. I got along okay though and I'd been going to school with most of those kids for a long time anyway. They all knew me and that was cool, most of the teasing I got was just for fun and I always gave some back.
Josh was sitting in the front row, at the end by the windows, while I sat kind of in the middle of the class towards the back. Penny sat in the second row, close to the door on the other side of the room from Josh, so I noticed right away when she looked at him. Josh didn't seem to notice, but I did. That girl was like staring, although she pretended not to, but it was obvious. Penny really did like Josh; Pam hadn't been lying about that. I didn't like it and I wasn't exactly sure why. It just made my stomach knot up thinking about my best friend being with her all the time instead of hanging out with me.
Penny was a cute girl too, which just made it worse. She was fifteen, like us, and one of those early bloomers. Like she grew up when she was fourteen or something. Not all the way, but you know what I mean. She had the biggest tits in ninth grade last year and they were still the biggest this year, probably. She was kind of auburn haired and green eyed. Her last name is O'Toole, so that explains it, right? A peach complexion and in the summer she'd get just a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Not a lot, just enough to make her even cuter than she already was.
Stupid Penny. Why did she have to like Josh? We were fine without any girls in our lives. We liked doing the same stuff, you know, hanging out and playing his Playstation or reading comic books. We both had a lot of those. We liked to throw the football around and go to baseball games with his dad in the summer. We both liked Ichiro a lot because he's so good and everything. We liked fixing our bikes and learning about cars and just hanging out. There wasn't any room for a girlfriend in the middle of all that. So what was her problem?
"What's your problem?" Josh asked me as we walked towards our first class, English with Ms. Egan.
"What?" I frowned. "Nothing."
"My dad's gonna take us to get some movies tonight," he told me. "Mom's making spaghetti, I think."
"I thought we were gonna get pizza?"
"I dunno," Josh shrugged. "She said she wanted to make spaghetti."
Josh's step-mom wasn't a really great cook. I liked her okay, she was pretty cool, but mostly we got pizza when we stayed over at his house. We couldn't sleepover at mine too often because my mom was always working and she didn't want to leave us there alone. I argued with her, but she wouldn't change her mind about that. It kinda sucked, but I could almost see her point. Sometimes Josh and I did do some stupid stuff, like the time we got in a water fight and made big stains on Mrs. Whiting's ceiling downstairs. It sucks painting a ceiling, believe me, and it's even worse getting grounded. That was when we were thirteen though and I'd told Mom we were smarter now, but she knew us too good.
"I gotta go home before I can go to your house," I said. "My mom wants to make sure I'm alive or something."
"That's cool," Josh shrugged. "Hey, you got the answers for English?"
"Yeah," I nodded. "You didn't do it?"
"I forgot," he said with a cheesy smile and I was already digging out my notebook.
"You better do it quick," I told him. Josh was always copying off me, but sometimes I copied off him too, so I didn't mind.
We only had like five minutes between classes and Josh went into the bathroom to copy my homework. Lots of kids did that and I just hung out by the drinking fountain and waited for him.
"Excuse me, please." Penny wanted to get a drink, but her tone was way too polite not to be sarcastic.
"Sorry," I muttered before I could help myself and I wished I had something sorta smart to say back to her, but I didn't.
"What are you doin'?" Pam asked me.
"Holdin' up the wall?" Stacy giggled and those two girls were Penny's best friends, so they went everywhere together. Pam was okay mostly, but Stacy was kind of stuck-up, like she thought she was totally hot or something, but she wasn't.
"No," I frowned at her. "I'm waitin' for Josh."
"He's in the bathroom?" Penny asked, standing up straight after getting her drink of water.
"He's copying my homework," I told her.
"Does he have a girlfriend?" Penny asked and I knew she knew that he didn't. She was just rubbing it in or something.
"No!" I said, a little stronger than I meant to. "He doesn't want one either."
"I guess not!" Stacy said with a giggle, pointedly looking at me and I didn't understand her meaning right away.
"I bet he does," Penny said with a soft laugh. "He just doesn't want to tell you about it."
"Come on," Pam said. "The bell's gonna ring."
"Yeah," Stacy agreed and they were leaving, Penny as well, and I just looked down at my feet mostly.
Penny even smelled like peaches and I wondered if she was right and figured she probably was. What fifteen year old boy wasn't gonna want to go out with the hottest girl in school? Or at least in tenth grade, I mean. Some of the juniors and seniors, especially the cheerleaders, they were definitely hot, but Penny was too and when she got older…I didn't want to think about it. The way things were going Josh would probably marry the girl and move like a million miles away and I wouldn't even have a best friend anymore after that. It was totally depressing.
"Thanks." Josh came back out and we had really had to run to get to our class, even though running in the halls was like a felony or something.
We barely made it in time and Ms. Egan was ready to close her door on us, so we got dirty looks and tried to look innocent as we slipped past her. I spent most of the class just looking at Josh and happy that Penny wasn't there. We had some classes with her and some classes Josh and me were apart, like we had different gym and Health classes. Anyway, I just looked at Josh and wished I knew what he was thinking. Not knowing was the worst, and if he was going to tell me he wanted a girlfriend and was going to be spending more time with Penny than with me, I'd rather know right away.
I hated not knowing.
What I hated even more than that though, sorta, was gym class. I had it right before lunch, when Josh went to his Health class. The first period after lunch, Josh had gym and I had Health, so we were switched, see? There was a perfectly good reason for that too and I didn't hate gym class only because Josh wasn't in it with me. I hated it because it was the only time all day that I couldn't really be myself. Health class too, sorta, but that was just strange and a little embarrassing more than anything else. Gym class was way, way worse.
I stood in the corner, kind of away from everyone else as much as I could, and undressed slowly with my back to the locker room. I didn't want to look at anyone and I especially didn't want anyone looking at me. I hung my book bag from a hook in the locker and then pulled my flannel shirt and the t-shirt I wore underneath off all at once. I hardly ever unbuttoned my shirts. I sorta rolled them up and put them on the bench behind me. I could hear the other kids talking, laughing and whatever, but not about me. They were just being normal as they changed clothes.
My gym t-shirt was a blue one with Batman on it, the yellow bat thing, you know, and it was old and good for gym. I pulled it on quickly, covering my body up before anyone could look at me and say something about my tits. They weren't really big or anything and I didn't bother wearing a bra, but over the summer I'd gotten some breasts finally and I didn't like them a whole lot. I didn't like the way my puffy bubblegum nipples were sticking out either, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. I had stupid bumps right on the wings of the Batman logo.
I kicked off my shoes, some old hiking boots that I didn't even bother to tie, I just let the laces drag and they weren't too long. I wasn't gonna trip or anything and it was cool, you know, wearing boots like that. I undid my jeans and pushed them down and my boxers too. Joe Boxer shorts, all red with little Mario's all over them like he was jumping with his fist in the air. I didn't like being naked that way, even if nobody could see anything except my bare butt. I made sure nobody could see my little pussy. It didn't look like much anyway, just a slit and a little bit of dark hair at the top. Not very much at all and that was pretty new for me as well, pubic hair, I mean.
So I didn't waste any time pulling up my gym shorts and I never wore underwear in that class. My shorts were tight and made out of yellow nylon, sort of clingy the way that stuff is, and all the girls had to wear them. I had no idea why either. Like what difference did it make? But every girl in school had to buy a pair from Sears, because that's who sold them. I told Mom it was probably some kind of kick-back deal, you know? Like the gym teacher was getting money from Sears, but she just laughed at me.
I pulled my shorts up, like I said, and tried to ignore the way the crotch was like super-tight against my naked pussy underneath. I couldn't wear boxers under them and there was no way on earth I was going to wear panties! I didn't even own a pair. I kept thinking I should buy some BVD's or something, you know, tighty-whiteys like some boys wear, but I never did. Going without underwear wasn't that uncomfortable anyway, I just didn't like it when the nylon would sorta pull up into my slit. I always felt self-conscious, like everyone could see my pussy when that happened, or at least the shape of it.
Having a pussy was pretty embarrassing, even worse than having tits, and that was why I hated gym class. It made me realize that I was always going to be a girl no matter what else I did. No matter what job I had or who my friends were, I was always going to have a pussy. I was always going to be smaller than Josh and never mind if I had some muscles, which I did, I had hips too. I had a pert little butt and girlish legs and slender shoulders and a pretty, heart-shaped face like my mom's. I hid all that stuff as much as I could, but in gym class? There was no place to hide. I was five foot one inches tall and about ninety pounds of fifteen year old girl, and every day I grew a little farther from being the boy I wanted to be and into the woman I would be.
That was so unfair.