Chapter 4: Clover's Uniform

The uniform is exactly what you’re imagining. Red cap. Striped choker. Name tag clipped to my nipple ring. That’s it.

Here’s the thing about working in fast food when you’re naked: nobody knows where to look.

Not the customers, they figure it out eventually, after the first few seconds of wide-eyed panic. Not the co-workers, most of them have known me for months, and they’ve developed strategies. Hazel looks at my face. Gus looks at the grill. Piper looks at the clipboard she’s always carrying, like she’s afraid she might accidentally see something she can’t unsee.

And then there’s Rowan. Rowan looks at his shoes. Constantly. Which would be endearing if it didn’t also mean he kept walking into things.

“You’d think,” Hazel said to me once, during a slow afternoon shift, “that after two months, he’d have learned to navigate by sound.”

“You’d think,” I agreed.

But Rowan is still walking into things. Still blushing when I pass him in the narrow hallway behind the counter. Still stammering when I ask him to grab more napkins from the back.

He’s seventeen, tall, with sandy hair that falls over his forehead and a smile that’s probably nice when he’s not directing it at someone who makes him nervous. The person who makes him nervous is me. The reason I make him nervous is obvious.

I don’t encourage him. I don’t discourage him either, not actively, because what am I supposed to say? “Stop looking at my shoes.” “Stop being attracted to me”? He’s not doing anything wrong. He’s just existing, same as me, in a body that wants what it wants.

But I noticed. I notice everything.

The Uniform (Detailed, Because You’re Wondering)

Let me describe it for you, since the cover only shows so much.

The cap is red, with a green clover logo embroidered on the front. The brim is curved, not flat, not bent into some weird shape, just a normal baseball cap, the kind you’d buy at a gas station if you forgot your hat and the sun was in your eyes. I wear it pulled down low enough to keep my hair out of my face, high enough that I don’t look like I’m hiding.

The choker is red and yellow, striped like a candy cane made by someone who’d never seen a candy cane. It’s maybe an inch wide, fastened at the back with a tiny clasp that I have to ask Hazel to do up for me because my fingers are too cold to manage it. (She always sighs, but she always does it.) The choker sits right at the base of my throat, and sometimes, when I swallow, I can feel it move.

The name tag is a standard white rectangle with “KATE” printed in block letters. It has a metal clip on the back, the kind you’d normally attach to a collar or a pocket. I don’t have a collar or a pocket. So I clip it to my left nipple ring.

Yes, that’s allowed. Yes, I checked with Marlene, the owner. She looked at me for a long moment, then said, “That’s creative, Kate. Just make sure it doesn’t fall off into someone’s soup.”

(It hasn’t. Yet.)

The nipple ring is silver, a small hoop that I’ve had since I was fifteen. Willow took me to get it pierced as my birthday present, she said, though my birthday wasn’t for another three months. “Early present,” she’d said, holding my hand while the piercer lined up the needle. “For being brave.”

I wasn’t brave. I squeezed her hand so hard I left marks. But I didn’t cry. And when it was over, I looked at the small silver ring in the mirror and thought: That’s mine. That’s mine now.

The right nipple has a stud, smaller and less noticeable. No name tag on that one. The left one does the heavy lifting.

And the shoes. The shoes are skin-tone. Not my skin tone, nobody’s skin tone, really, unless your skin is the color of a bandage that’s been left out in the sun. They’re croc-like, with little holes in the top and a strap that goes around the heel. They’re comfortable in the way that ugly shoes often are: they don’t care what you think.

The shoes are the only thing I wear that could be called clothing. Sometimes customers look at my feet and do a double-take, like they can’t figure out why my feet are the wrong color. Sometimes they ask.

“Are your shoes ... flesh-colored?” a kid asked me once, pointing.

“Skin-tone,” I corrected. “Not mine, though.”

“Why do you wear shoes if you don’t wear anything else?”

“Because the floor is hot,” I said. “And also because I don’t want to step on broken glass with my bare feet.”

The kid thought about this for a moment, then nodded. “That makes sense.”

Kids are easy. They accept things. Adults are the ones who need explanations.

The First Time I Wore the Uniform

I started working at The Clovers two months after my sixteenth birthday, in early September. The summer was fading, the leaves were just starting to turn, and I was desperate for something to do besides sit in my apartment and think about my dad’s signature on the consent form.

Willow found the job listing. “They’re hiring counter staff,” she said, showing me her phone. “No experience necessary. And “ she paused, reading the fine print. “It says here they’re a ‘pilot program-friendly employer.’ That’s a good sign, right?”

I applied online. I went to the interview in my usual routine because that’s the point of the program: you don’t put on clothes just because you’re trying to impress someone. Marlene, the owner, was behind the counter when I walked in. She was maybe seventy, with gray hair pulled back in a bun and the kind of face that’s seen everything and isn’t impressed by any of it.

“You’re the naked one,” she said.

“I’m the naked one,” I agreed.

She looked me up and down, not staring, just assessing. “Are you cold?”

“A little.”

“You’ll get used to it. The kitchen’s warm.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a red cap. “This is the uniform. Cap, choker, name tag, shoes. That’s it. You can wear the name tag wherever you want, as long as customers can read it.”