Chapter 2

I thought it would be hard to get my mother to approve of spending the night at Anna’s house. I had been to sleepovers while I was in middle school, but my mom arranged those with her friend group. I wasn’t particularly close to the girls that slept over at my house.

“Mom, I have a friend at school. Can I do a sleepover at her house?”

“Yes, absolutely,” my mother responded without hesitation. I guess she was just happy that I made a friend - any friend.

“You don’t know what to know the day and week?” I offered politely.

“Quit while you are ahead,” Jake laughed when he overheard my conversation.

“I am sure you will give me all the details and the mother’s name, phone number, and address,” my mom clarified. She trusted me and seemed happy I had a friend.

I started to get REALLY nervous. I didn’t want my mother to actually MEET Rachel and judge her. I explained that I did not know when and that she asked when she dropped me off after school.

“So that’s why you didn’t want me to come to get you from school,” my mom quickly surmised.

“Busted!” Jake laughed playfully. It reminded me of the way that Anna’s family joked. The exception was that I was nervous and didn’t want to admit that was the truth. I felt guilty about it – after all, my mom was supposed to pick me up.

“Look, if you want to spend time with your friend after school, you can do that. You don’t have to lie to me or make your friend’s mother think I am a bad mom for forgetting you at school,” my mom wasn’t joking. She hadn’t even considered the possibility I forgot to call my brother for a ride.

If I had, I would have called either of them when I realized my mistake and not gone straight to Anna’s house and asked her mom.

“Just text me and let me know where you are. If I can pick you up from her house after school, I will do that. Stop making that poor lady drive all the way here.”

I hadn’t thought about what I was doing as being manipulative or taking advantage of Anna’s mom until that moment.

“Yeah, Sis, you can text me if Mom’s not available. I am not going to leave you stranded,” my brother Jake assured me. He wasn’t kidding, either. He was a good guy. Jake had a sense of humor, but I was also his little sister.

After dinner, I texted Anna and asked if she really wanted me to spend the night.

“Yass Queen,” she texted back. “I was so embarrassed when my mom suggested it. I thought you would think I am a weirdo. I haven’t had any girls ever want to do a sleepover at my house before. This is going to be cool. Friday night?”

I confirmed with my mother, and she agreed to let me bring a little overnight bag to school and go straight there after school. To say that I was nervous, apprehensive, and excited is an understatement.

My mother asked if I wanted to bring one of my doll babies. She had bought me a realistic baby doll for my last birthday, and it felt like I had matured so much after 10 months. “No,” I decided that would make me seem uncool.

Jake laughed and said I was growing up way too fast. He began to sing the lyrics to Cats in the Cradle until my dad told him to stop because I was clearly embarrassed.

Friday after school, Anna and Brodie waited for me at school so they could walk me to their house.

“Any hot chicks coming to this sleepover?” he asked his sister flatly.

“That’s mean, Brodie.”

“What?” Brodie looked at me with an arched eyebrow and explained, “Other girls, slutty girls, and stuff.”

“Even if there were a dozen girls, you couldn’t get laid unless it was a mercy fuck,” she joked.

I laughed. I was trying to be polite, but the blunt deadpan delivery coupled with just how over the top the mental image of that joke, along with the vulgarity, had shocked me into holding my tummy and chuckling hard.

“You don’t have to be so mean,” Brodie took an affront and walked a few steps in front of us for a minute.

“Quit acting like a little bitch,” she teased him. Brodie begrudgingly walked with us.

He apologized to me after the moment had passed. “I didn’t mean to say you weren’t hot. You are. I just meant, like, you know? Girls who are slutty is all.”

“Stop while you are ahead, Brodie,” she teased him.

“He’s right; I don’t particularly go out of my way to seem hot,” I admitted in a moment of vulnerable self-deprecation.

“Sounds like we’ll have to do makeovers tonight!! Because this new look isn’t working for me either!!” she smiled.

New look? That was interesting. Did my new friend regret her bald head? She seemed proud of being different, and yet she had a moment where she seemed that she might regret the choice.

“Does your hair naturally grow like that?” I asked. It was the dumbest way to ask about her shaved head possible. I knew that as soon as it came out of my mouth. It was quite literally the first time that I had even acknowledged my friend didn’t have any hair.

Brodie chuckled, and Anna seemed confused. “How does hair grow into being bald?” he asked with a curious snarky expression. I felt super stupid.

“I shave it, Susan. I do not have any hair anywhere,” she looked at me as if that should be obvious. I was already turning red in the face. I implied when I looked down at her crotch that I was wondering if she had pubic hair. She was wearing denim jeans. She looked down at her waist and confirmed, “I do not have any hair anywhere, especially there.”

The words lingered in the air awkwardly. I felt strange that she admitted that in front of her brother. I could never imagine telling my brother anything about what happened downstairs.

Anna seemed to be waiting for me to ask “WHY” she didn’t have any hair. I assumed it had to do with her mother, but I didn’t know why her mother didn’t have any, either. There may have been no reason other than they liked the way it made them look.

I was mortified that I asked the question the way that I did and walked in silence.

“I am not mad that you asked. I am actually glad that you felt comfortable enough to ask,” she assured me. “Mom wasn’t kidding when she said that we are all open books. We were raised to be totally honest, and that’s why you don’t see a gaggle of super hot slutty chicks coming over to my house. I’d have to tell them exactly what I thought of them, and they wouldn’t like that.”

“You could brown nose them for one night and tell them how cool they all are,” Brodie suggested playfully that he’d be willing to pretend for one night that superficial slutty girls were cool if it meant that he could spend the night with them.

“I prefer people that are going, to be honest with me rather than play games,” Anna replied seriously, and we changed the subject. Rachel’s truck was not in the driveway when we arrived. They found the key under the mat and went into the house.

As soon as we got there, Anna offered me something to drink, and after I declined, she showed me her room. It was small, with a single bed. It was a typical teenage girl’s room. There were posters on the wall and a lot of Polaroids from past vacations. She told me to toss my stuff down and get comfortable.

Then she started to undress. I assumed she was changing clothes. I felt awkward because I didn’t normally change in front of other girls, but I assumed it was totally normal. Once she was down to her bra and panties, she unsnapped her bra and let her breasts pop out. “Ah, that feels good. Feel free to release the puppies.”

I was frozen to where I stood, trying not to make eye contact.

Brodie walked right into his sister’s room and plopped down on her bed. He had a Nintendo Switch and was playing Animal Crossing with it. He didn’t even acknowledge his sister was completely topless and wore only a white lace collar and matching panties.

“Ugh, knock next time, fart knocker,” she said as she placed two thumbs in her panties and pulled them down around her ankles. Anna stood up, and I saw her hairless pussy after she stepped out of the panties and tossed them aside. “What do you want to do first?”

I heard the sound of her mother’s truck pulling in. Anna and Brodie instinctively left the small room and waited for their mother in the living room. I joined them. I tried not to look at Anna’s pert little bubble-shaped butt as I waited.

“Sorry, I had some errands to run,” Rachel said as she walked into the house. She did not seem to acknowledge or care that her daughter was naked. “I brought you guys some snacks and ice cream for your sleepover.”

Rachel held up two grocery bags of munchies and snacks before realizing from my face that I was shocked. “Did you tell your friend that we sometimes go nude in this house, Muffin?”

I had never heard Rachel call her daughter Muffin before.

“Yeah, I mean, uh, I just assumed it was okay?” Anna flicked her eyes nervously and grew cautious in her tone.

Rachel sighed and looked at me. “You look totally traumatized. I apologize.”

She insisted that her daughter go back and change. Anna turned on her heel and went to her room to put her clothes back on.

“Ha-Ha!” Brodie pointed at Anna with delight and imitated the sound of Nelson Muntz laughing at someone else’s humiliation on the Simpsons TV show.

“This is serious, Brodie. You know I do not enjoy making other people uncomfortable,” she said before saying she wouldn’t blame me if I wanted to go home.

“No, I do not mind at all,” I assured her.

“See, Mom!” Anna popped her head out of her room with a big goofy smile.

“Susan said she didn’t mind that you got naked. She didn’t say that she wanted you to continue to flap around the house in the buff,” Rachel chided her daughter. “We talked about this. You can’t just dump someone in the deep end and see how they swim.”

I could tell Rachel was a very considerate woman and I didn’t feel in the “deep end”. I was actually intrigued with how this family operated. It was so different than anything I’d ever encountered.

“No, I do not mind,” I assured them both that it was all good. I was so blown away and out of my element, but at the same time, I didn’t want to seem like a stick in the mud. I was quite a bit intrigued as well. Anna happily ‘flitted’ back into the living room and danced around like a butterfly flapping their wings triumphantly when her mother permitted it.

“Your mother texted me to confirm that you were here. She seems like a very nice lady. Do you guys ever walk around your house naked?” Rachel asked me. Her eyebrow was arched in a way that suggested she wasn’t joking around about this.

“No,” I confessed. I did not think it was a normal thing at all to be nude around anyone. I did not even think my parents were naked around each other except maybe during sex.

“Well, I have a few rules about it. First off, no going out in the front yard,” she looked right at her kids as if that may be something they would have done. “Secondly, no selfies. They have a tendency to end up all over the internet.”

She waited for me to acknowledge those.

She pointed to a towel that was folded on one of her dining chairs and said that I was to sit on a towel if I sat on furniture when I was naked. I realized she was giving me rules for what to do if I wanted to strip naked. That felt about as likely as wanting to pour gasoline all over my body and then set myself on fire.

“I have an appointment at 8 pm. He’s a regular, BUT if you are in the living room, then I expect some decorum,” she turned to her daughter and made sure that she understood that. “I am, after all, running a business.”

She promptly went to the kitchen and began putting away the snacks and ice cream. She told me as she did that my mother texted her.

I was very nervous when she said that. I panicked, thinking about the possibility my mom would find out that my new friend was some kind of nudist and so apparently was her mother. “Your mom was just concerned that you weren’t overstaying your welcome. You are welcome here any time. She asked if you were okay, what we’d have for dinner, and told me to let her know if you misbehave.”

I hung my head in shame.

Rachel smiled at me warmly when I reacted that way. “Mothers just do that because we love you guys. I’ll send a similar text to her when Anna spends the night at your place.”

I could imagine my family’s reaction to Anna stripping down at our house. I had this sudden dry sensation in my mouth.

Rachel told us that she’d make us dinner before her appointment, and I took that as a cue to retreat to Anna’s room. I was thankful that she shut the door when we went inside her small room.

“Are you really okay that I am nude? You don’t look like it,” she said as she gathered up her make-up and brushes.

“I-I-I ... just didn’t expect it.”

“I can see that,” she looked at me. “I am sorry I didn’t tell you before we got home. I think I was secretly worried you’d think I was a fruitcake and call it off, so maybe I stripped subconsciously to get it out of the way before you could freak out and leave.”

“You are always naked at home?” I asked as I sat on her bed and tried to look anywhere at her young, lithe body and admire her pale milky white skin.

“Whenever I can be, yeah,” she said. That made no sense to me. I couldn’t understand why she WANTED to be naked. I assumed it would make her feel vulnerable and ashamed.

“What about when your brother’s friends come over?” I asked incredulously.

“You met Brodie; he doesn’t have friends,” she giggled playfully. There was nothing particularly wrong or creepy about her little brother. Anna was obviously facetious. “I told you that we are a little weird and didn’t get many visitors. This is really just the tip of the iceberg.”

She had avoided my question.

I was trying to get my head around it.

“I should probably put something on. It’s obviously freaking you out, and that really wasn’t my intention, Susan.”

“No, no, I think it’s like ... cool, it’s just not something I can imagine.”

“It’s very liberating to be nude at home, very comfortable. I hate the way I look in clothes,” she said. She was still wearing the thin white lace collar.

“How come you don’t dress slutty at school, then?” I asked.

“Just because I do not like to wear clothes at home doesn’t mean I want to dress like a whore in public,” Anna took offense to the question. I hadn’t meant it like that.

“I mean, just wear less clothes, show off your body?”

“I am not showing off my body,” she looked at me as if she took pity on me for thinking that was her intention. “I am comfortable nude, but that doesn’t mean I am trying to impress anyone,” Anna said.

Then she added with a snarky tone that she didn’t have enough boobs to really ‘show off’ and that her mom would not let her dress like a slut anyway.

“Your mom seems pretty open-minded,” I said. She was certainly way more progressive than my mother was.

“I had to beg to shave my head and wear a collar, and she only allowed it so that I could satisfy my curiosity,” my friend admitted before tossing a Polaroid at me. I almost didn’t recognize Anna. The picture was probably six to eight months earlier. The picture was of her in a bikini at the beach. She wore her hair cropped short. She had dyed it purple. She was standing next to Brodie. He looked exactly the same. They were both holding up peace signs behind each other’s heads without the other realizing it.