Chapter 3

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

I woke up early, around 6:00 am. I went ahead and took a shower. While I was in there, I decided to 'take care' of myself. I hadn't gotten off since this whole thing started. I tried to fantasize about a girl, but eventually my mind just kept coming back to Larry Oquendo. I imagined us back in biology class, only this time he was naked too, and he was running his hands all along my body, over my chest, my ass, and finally my dick. At this point, the image was too much and I came. My semen mixed with the water and ran down the drain. I finished washing up, and toweled off.

I looked in the mirror while I was brushing my teeth. My bruises were fading, but you could still see them. I decided to stay naked for breakfast. The goal of this whole Program thing was to get us to open up about our bodies, and this was the only place I felt safe doing it. The Ng's all came to breakfast naked too, but that was usual for them.

Mrs. Ng made bacon, eggs, and waffles for everybody. I don't know if that was their usual breakfast or if they just made it when I was there. I was beginning to think that they suspected something was wrong with my home life, and tried to help compensate for it. They sure let me stay over a lot more than I thought was usual, although I had no way of knowing what was usual. When all this was sorted out, Ray would probably never let me spend time with them again, if he even let me go back to school. Even if Ms. Epstein somehow got me away from Ray, I'd probably get stuck in foster care or an orphanage somewhere really far away.

Eileen announced that she was just going to go to school naked. She asked me if I wanted to too. To my surprise, I actually considered it for a second, but I decided that I wanted to spend as much time clothed as possible.

When we got to school I stripped off reluctantly but efficiently at the front entrance. I figured that the less time I spent stripping, the less attention I'd attract. I broke off from Eileen and Connor and went to see if I could find my shoes. I'd left them in Mrs. Geis' room.

She was in there grading papers.

"Did you have something you wanted to ask me?"

"No, I left my shoes in here."

"Oh, I'm afraid I haven't seen them. The janitors must have taken them yesterday."

That was just what I needed. Those were my only pair of shoes. Now I'd be spending the rest of the week completely exposed; at least before I had some part of my body covered.

"Shoot, I'll try the lost and found."

"Brian, what did you get called down about yesterday?"

"Oh, nothing."

"You know they told me about it last night. Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?"

"Yeah, I'd better go."

I made my way to the lost and found. I took my first request in a couple of days on the way. A girl asked me to do a few poses for her, nothing really out there. I wasn't as uptight about it as I'd been on Monday, I guess spending the night with Connor had helped with that a little. I couldn't find my shoes in the lost and found, and the 5 minute bell rang, so I hurried to get a seat in the back of Mr. Chenault's class. Once again, he didn't call on me.

Gym class presented a problem. We were running on the track, and I, of course, was barefoot. I did my best, but by the middle of the period my feet were sore as hell, and had turned black from the asphalt. The coach wasn't looking so I slowed to a walk. I noticed I was getting a lot of attention from the little kids at the playground across the street. Some of them were naked too, but they'd probably never seen someone my age naked unless they had older siblings. Impulsively, I waved at them, and one of them waved back. I wondered if they'd still have The Program when he got to high school. I suppose he would grow up used to kids his age walking around naked. Just then, the kids mother came to get him. She was nursing a baby, I guess his little brother or sister. She had her hair styled in an Afro and was wearing blue jeans, with no top of course. She turned to see what he was looking at and saw me. Shyly, I waved at her. I hoped she wasn't going to get me in trouble, but she just smiled and waved back at me, then took the little boy by the hand and walked off. They looked like a really happy family. Sometimes when I was younger, I'd go to the park to watch the families playing together, and imagine I was one of them. I'd thought I had outgrown that.

Finally, the coach blew the whistle to hit the showers. I hobbled back to the gym and into the showers. The girls were still giving me a wide berth. I hadn't overheard any of their conversations on the track, but I can't imagine they were very complementary towards me. I spent most of the time in the shower trying to scrub the dirt off my feet. I ended up slipping and falling on my ass, drawing a wave of laughter from the girls. With any luck that would remove any temptation for them to see me as an object of sexual desire. I managed to get most of the dirt off, but you could still see some of it. I didn't worry about it too much, no one would be looking at the soles of my feet.

I got to history class and sat down in the back, next to Connor. Hopefully being sitting in the back every day with me wouldn't bring down his grade in that class. Mrs. Pullen had other plans. She called me to the front and announced that because of the "unique circumstances" of me being in The Program this week. She then proceeded to read an email that Mrs. Estep had sent her, and apparently all my other teachers, about what had been going on with me and David, complete with a sanitized version of what Ray had me do to clients.

"So how did that make you feel?" she asked.