Chapter 2: The Weight of Threads

Monday Morning: The New Normal

The air outside tasted like iron, sharp and unforgiving—a late-autumn chill that bit at my skin as I walked to school. My backpack hung heavy with textbooks and the five state-approved seating towels, each stamped with a bureaucratic seal that read “DLS-Certified” (Department of Lifestyle Standards). The rules were etched into my bones now: no fabric, no shoes, no adornments, nothing that could be construed as “modesty enhancement.” Even a hairpin could land me in front of a juvenile judge. Freedom, it turned out, came shackled to a million tiny laws.

The school parking lot was quieter than the week before. No phones raised, no gasps. Just sidelong glances and muttered “There she is” as I passed. Progress, maybe—or numbness.

Someone vandalized my locker, scrawling “WHORE” in red marker across the metal. The letters bled like wounds. Beneath them, in smaller print: “Put them away!” I stared at my reflection fractured in the shiny, dented surface.

Last week, this would have shattered me. Today, I pulled a state-issued sanitizing wipe from my bag and scrubbed. The ink smeared but refused to vanish.

“Need help?” Liam leaned against the adjacent locker, a granola bar in hand. He’d added a hemp necklace since Friday, the beads clacking softly.

“It’s just words,” I said, though my voice wavered.

“Yeah, but words are why we’re here, right?” He nodded to his locker, pristine save for a sticker that read “This Machine Kills Fascists” with a doodle of scissors cutting a fabric tag. “They tried to shame me into pants once. Now I’m a walking middle finger.” I almost smiled.

Mrs. Greer’s decree waited on my desk: a stack of black towels, stiff as cardboard. They smelled industrial, like bleach and compliance.

“Flexible and washable,” Mr. Donovan recited, as if reading from a manual. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You’ll ... uh ... place one beneath yourself whenever seated. To protect school property.”

Protect school property? Not me?

I unfolded the towel. The fabric was scratchy, prison-issue grade, stamped with the school crest. A performative compromise—letting me exist, but only if I didn’t touch anything too purely.

Marisol caught my eye from the back row. She pantomimed gagging.

The towels became a ritual. Unfold, place, sit. Repeat. By third period, my thighs were raw from the friction. In chemistry, Tyler ‘accidentally’ spilled ice water on my assigned stool. “Oops,” he said, grinning. “Guess you’ll have to stand.” Mrs. Kwon handed me a fresh towel without comment.

At lunch, Marisol commandeered a table near the windows. “Soda,” she said, laying out her towel—a tie-dye monstrosity from home. “They can’t regulate my ass.”

We ate in silence until she said, “They’re scared you’ll win.”

“Win what?” I replied curiously.

“The battle.” She gestured to a group of freshmen staring openly. “They’re used to bodies being secrets. You’re a truth bomb. You seek to expose that which they wish to keep secret ... to keep hidden.”

In the hallway, Jenna materialized like a ghost. She’d dyed her hair black, her nails matching. She eyed the raw, red marks streaking my thighs and smirked “Damn, I guess their dress code comes with a side of sandpaper.”

“You look like you’re auditioning for a school play.”

She smirked.

For a second, I saw the girl who’d shared her headphones during rainy lunch periods. Then she added, “They’re voting you ‘Most Likely to Get Arrested’ in the yearbook,” and walked away.

Inside my locker, tucked between textbooks, was a folded slip of paper: Meet @ the oak after school. Bring the towels. —E Erika’s handwriting. I’d know it anywhere—she’d signed my registration forms in the same looping script. The bell rang. I stuffed the note into my bag, the paper crisp with promise.

The oak’s gnarled branches clawed at the sky, their shadows stretching like cracks across the pavement. Erika stood beneath them; her nudity as unremarkable as the bark itself. Beside her, the man in the suit adjusted his camera lens, its glass eye glinting in the dying light. His tie was too tight, his smile too practiced.

“Cassidy, this is Marcus Wells from The Times,” Erika said. Her voice carried its usual magnetism, but there was an edge now—a hunger. “He wants to hear your story.”

Marcus extended a hand. I looked at it but resisted the urge to take it. “Your courage is inspiring,” he said, the word dripping with condescension. “A teenager standing up to systemic oppression? It’s Pulitzer material.”

I crossed my arms, the state-issued towels crumpled in my grip. “It’s not a story. It’s my life.”

Erika stepped closer; her gaze sharp. “Stories change lives. Imagine the impact—kids like you, everywhere, seeing they’re not alone.”

“What do you get?” I asked, unsure if I wanted my life to be an inspiration to millions of teens across the country.

Her pause was a confession. “A platform. Funding for the movement. You know how this works.”

The wind hissed through the leaves. Somewhere, a car alarm wailed. Marcus set up a tripod. “Let’s start with the towels. How do they make you feel?”

I stared into the lens. “Like a germ.”

He blinked. “Elaborate.”

“They’re not for me. They’re for them.” I shook one towel, the school crest glaring. “They don’t care if I’m comfortable. They just don’t want my skin on their precious chairs. When they forced me to use them, I was told they were ‘to protect school property’.”

Marcus scribbled notes. “How have the other students reacted?”

I thought of Liam’s smirk, Marisol’s eye rolls, and Jenna’s poisoned barbs. “Some want me to disappear. Others ... watch. Like they’re waiting to see if I’ll surrender ... give up and walk away.”

The article dropped at midnight. By first period, the hallway buzzed with screens.

Naked Truth: Teen Defies Dress Code of Shame My face stared back from every phone—unfiltered, unapologetic, mid-sentence in the interview. The towels were a blurry pile at my feet.

Jenna cornered me at my locker. “You’re famous,” she sneered, waving her phone. “They’re calling you the ‘Nude Revolutionary.’”

“Better than ‘Most Likely to Get Arrested,’” I shot back.

She flinched. For a heartbeat, I saw it—the girl who’d lent me eyeliner before my first dance. Then she spat, “Enjoy your fifteen minutes,” and vanished into the crowd.

Mrs. Greer summoned me at lunch. Her office reeked of burnt coffee and panic. “This,” she jabbed at the article, “is a liability. The school board is demanding action.”

“I’m following the law,” I said.

“Laws change!” Her composure cracked. “You’re making us a target. Parents are pulling donations. The governor’s office called.”

I stood. “Then maybe they should’ve thought about that before harassing me. I am just trying to quietly live my life the way I choose to. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t made an issue of my life choice.”

That afternoon, I found a note in my locker: Meet us @ the quarry after dark. Bring the towels. —L & M The quarry was a relic—abandoned, half-flooded, and littered with graffiti. Liam and Marisol waited by the water, a bonfire crackling at their feet.

“Burn them,” Marisol said, nodding to my stack of towels.

Liam tossed a matchbook. “They want to erase you—to make you appear less than what you truly are. Erase them instead.”

The flames roared high above Cassie’s head. She tossed the school-issued towels one by one into the roaring fire and watched as the fire devoured the fabric. The school crest blackened, curled, dissolved.

Tuesday morning, I walked into the homeroom without a towel. Mr. Donovan froze. “Where’s your—?”

“Lost them.” He opened his mouth, closed it, and handed me a detention slip. By Wednesday, three more kids arrived towel-free.

Thursday after homeroom, the school’s lawyer stood at the front of the auditorium, his suit crisp, his words crisper. “While the state recognizes permanent nudist registration as a protected lifestyle choice,” he said, adjusting his glasses, “educational institutions retain the right to enforce health and safety protocols.”

The projector flickered to life, displaying a legal clause buried in subsection 12.7 of the Wisconsin Educational Code: “In cases where communal welfare is deemed compromised by individual conduct, schools may impose temporary remedial measures.”

“Remedial measures,” Principal Greer repeated, her voice slick with faux sympathy. “For your protection, Cassidy..., and ours.”

The “measure” hung on a hanger behind her: a gray polyester jumpsuit, the kind worn by prisoners. Tag still attached.

“You can’t do this,” I said, my voice steady only because Erika had drilled me for hours. “Never let them hear you shake.”

“Oh, but we can,” the lawyer said. “Your registration is irreversible, yes, but state law doesn’t bar schools from enforcing temporary dress codes to mitigate ... disruptions.” He gestured to a blown-up screenshot of a parent’s Facebook rant: “MY CHILD SHOULDN’T HAVE TO SEE THAT!!!”

Erika’s hand shot up from the back row. “Define disruption.”

“Ms. Mitchell, you’re not a student here—”

“Define it,” she repeated, louder.

The lawyer sighed. “Substantiated instances of harassment, distracted learning environments, or ... hygiene concerns.”

“Hygiene,” I spat. “I shower twice a day. How many of you can say that?”

The room buzzed. Principal Greer nodded to a security guard. “Cassidy, either change willingly, or we’ll escort you to the locker room.” They gave me privacy, if you could call it that—a stall with a broken latch, the jumpsuit draped over the door like a corpse. The fabric stank of formaldehyde and regret.

I texted Erika: They’re making me wear it.

Her reply was instant: Fight. Now.

But Mom’s voice, softer, echoed in my head: “Pick your battles, Cass. Survive first.”

The jumpsuit scratched like fiberglass. I zipped it to my collarbone, the sound like a guillotine. The hallway stared. Not at my body but at the uniform. Whispers coiled around me:

“Guess she finally cracked.”

“Told you it was a kink.”

“Should’ve stayed naked. This is sad.”

In biology, Marisol slammed her textbook. “Since when do we dress like UPS employees?”

Mrs. Kwon ignored her. “Page 142, everyone. Mitochondria are the powerhouse...”

Liam passed me a note: Burn it. I’ll bring the matches.

Cassie intercepted me at the cafeteria, her nudity a weapon. “They’re violating Title IX. You’re right to equal treatment.”

“They don’t care,” I muttered, picking at the jumpsuit’s seams.

“They will when this goes viral.” She handed me her phone. A local news headline blared: School Forces Nudist Teen into ‘Prison Uniform’—Legal or Overreach?

The comments section was a war zone:

“Disgusting! Let the girl be free!”

“Thank God—someone’s finally parenting these kids.”

“Where’s the OF link though?”

“Channel 8 wants an interview,” Erika said. “You game?”

By math class, the jumpsuit had fused to my skin. Sweat pooled at my lower back, my thighs chafed raw. I scratched at my neck, leaving crimson trails.

Mr. Riley paused mid-equation. “Do you need the nurse, Ms. Carter?”

“I need air,” I hissed. He opened a window, Autumn’s bite doing nothing to cool the fire under my skin.