Chapter 24: The Twin’s Absence

For the next few days the world of Lifestyle Nudism fell right off Jessie Harper’s radar. She went to school as usual and went to her additional choir practice on the Thursday night as planned, then met up with the gang again on Saturday afternoon as usual. This time there were no topless sixty year old women wandering about the mall and the subject of Certified Nudism and Clothing Optional Nudism wasn’t mentioned by anyone in the group - not even Tammy and Chris Maple made any mention of their own recent C O N status as dictated by their parents. Jessie Harper just had another happy afternoon with her friends then went to church with her mother on Sunday morning as usual too ... but that’s were the ‘usual’ began to shift and become less stable again for the young fourteen year old Jessie Harper ... the girl with the voice of an angel.

On Sunday morning at church Jessie was meant to do another piece for the congregation with Carrie and Troy Pearson backing her up. After that Carrie and Troy were going to do their own piece with Jessie as the backup - and all done in a sea of contrapuntal harmonies coming from the choir in the background. The only problem was - Carrie and Troy Pearson never showed up. They didn’t show up for the pre-service practice and they didn’t show up at any other time through out the whole morning. Jessie Harper was able to perform her own pieces well enough without them and the choir had its own repertoire of well rehearsed songs to fill the gap where the twins should have been. All the same, the whole session just wasn’t the same with these two in absentia.

At the end of the service Jessie asked and looked all over the place for the twins. Nobody seemed to know where the two were and when she quizzed Gerald Claxton, the choirmaster, about their absence he just gave a nervous little cough as if he knew something but wasn’t saying. Jessie pressed him a bit more on the matter but all she got was a mumbled statement that more might be forthcoming at tonight’s practice ... then he found an excuse to scurry off to attend to some other matter that needed his attention.

Jessie Harper was most unsatisfied by her lack of progress in her inquiries but decided that the best thing to do was to just leave it for now and wait for the practice and see what came out then. In her own mind she had all ready decided that there would be a perfectly logical reason for the twin’s absence - a sudden family bereavement, or a vacation that they forgot to tell people about, or they just got their performance time table muddled up or something like that - it wouldn’t have been the first time - lot’s of others had done exactly the same thing over the years that Jessie had been involved with the choir.

Jessie settled her mind with these comforting thoughts and enjoyed a quiet afternoon at home with her mother - watching TV together then doing some homework for school then getting her mother to drop her off at the church again for the evening’s choir practice ... when, hopefully, all would be revealed!