Prologue: Thursday - Friday

"Hi! I'm Bangs Garcia from MTV and today I'm gonna get totally Naked in School! Come on!"

"I hate her," Valerie whispered and I just shrugged. I hardly ever watched MTV anyway.

The girl looked like a little Mexican, except she really came from the Philippines or something. Bangs seemed like a funny name, but she looked gorgeous too, which probably explained why she was on MTV in the first place. She had brown skin and thick, wavy black hair that she wore loose around a perfectly made up face. For being sixteen or whatever, Bangs looked a lot older to me, especially her body. She hosted a show called 'LBFM' which stood for Little Brown Fun Machine, but you can guess what most people called it.

"Are those her real tits?" Pam wondered.

"Probably not," Stacy sniffed. "She's a slut anyway."

"Good morning, Bangs!" some old white guy said cheerfully. "Are you ready to get Naked in School?"

"Oh! Totally!" The girl grinned at the camera. "This is my Principal, Mr. Swayer. He is sooooo cool!"

"Alright then," the guy smiled. "Follow me!"

They were at some school or something, well, it had to be a school, right? The camera followed Bangs as she followed her principal. A lot of other kids were there, smiling and making funny faces, holding up their fingers and making peace signs or whatever. Bangs gave us a little tour as we went. There's the school trophy case, there's the drinking fountain, there's the bathrooms.

"Her school sucks," Valerie decided.

I guess whoever made the video thought the same thing, because halfway through the tour it cut away to some cheesy graphics. Like newspaper headlines floating through space kinda and Charlton Heston did the narrating, since he's like the voice of God.

"Teen Suicides up 400% since 1979..." he said dramatically " ... School violence on the increase..." and "... 35% of teenage girls diagnosed with depression..."

"This is depressing," I sighed.

"An epidemic is sweeping our nation, a virulent plague afflicting our youth..." God said " ... We must act now, before it's too late!"

"Naked in School is designed to foster self-confidence and build a positive self-image through a process I like to call Social Enlightenment," an old man with white hair and glasses told the camera. He came with a subtitle that said 'Dr. Y. Alvarez, Harvard' and he sounded pretty boring.

"The core value of the NIS Program," a woman, one Prof. Bette Groote explained to us, "is peer networking. For a teenager, peer pressure is the single greatest factor influencing his or her self-esteem. By removing the false security of the consumer mask, such as clothing, jewelry, appliances and such, the individual must be regarded without the pretense of distraction in light of the emotional..."

"What's that mean?" Pam asked no one in particular.

"Speak English!" someone in the back yelled, probably Madison, and Ms. Owens, our Health teacher, frowned at the class from behind her desk.

"Hey! Wow! I'm sooooo nervous!" Bangs giggled, looking anything but nervous. "We're just waiting for the other kids to show up! Wait until you see my partner! He's sooooo dreamy!"

"The school district here decided to go with the lottery system to determine the schedule," that Principal Swayer guy explained in a 'taped earlier' interview. "We thought it would make the kids more comfortable if they knew when they were going to participate and with whom."

"Can you explain the lottery?" a man asked from off camera.

"Sure. We just got all the kids together in the auditorium and we had the class presidents draw names. It was pretty exciting and a lot of fun. The students really enjoyed it, I think."

"I hope we do it like that," Stacy said and Pam nodded.

"Every school district which adopts the Program is encouraged to tailor certain aspects to meet the needs of their community," a woman smiled, some Dr. P. Huston, Education Secretary and kinda old. "The most recent models show that allowing the students to participate in establishing and maintaining the NIS Program, making them responsible in part for its success, reduces stress and promotes a sense of personal investment."

"God! This is boring," Penny sighed. "Where's all the naked guys at?"

"Well, in the beginning the Program used a 'shock and awe' approach to bully students into submission," a stern looking black man, Senator William Davis said. "But we've put a stop to that. The NIS Ethics Committee has just completed a formal review of the Program and we interviewed hundreds of educators, students, and parents to identify and correct the problems those so called 'Watchdog' groups have been complaining about."

"There have been some improvements," a Ms. Cora Burley said. "But the National Organization of Women still views the NIS Program as state funded sexual harassment. There are over sixty cases pending trial in twelve states right this minute, including one involving a fifteen year old pregnant girl."

"Lois Donner," the man off camera said.

"Lois Donner," the woman agreed.

"The school is contending that she violated Program Policy by not using prescribed birth control."

"She was so stupid!" Penny giggled.

"I heard she's gonna have twins," Pam said.

"On religious grounds," Ms. Burley said. "Lois was completely within her rights to refuse treatment. The school was negligent in protecting the girl from sexual abuse. Her rape was sanctioned by the government and occurred with the knowledge and explicit consent of the very people we employ to protect her."

"The idea of requiring birth control for female students is a tacit admission of guilt," another woman, Abby Tolliver, was from Princeton. "For a Program which describes itself as an opportunity for young men and women to learn social responsibility and personal growth, the emphasis on sexual promiscuity seems oddly out of place."

"Only sluts need birth control anyway," Janey said.

"You better get two shots then!" Madison laughed.

"Shut-up," Janey frowned.

"Hogwash! Birth control is a fact of life and requiring that female students use it while they're active in the Program doesn't suggest that they should engage in sexual relations with anyone!" James Carvel retorted. "It's just common sense. You get two teenagers together, a pretty girl and a handsome boy, and they're gonna do it! You know it and I know it and that little girl's parents damn well should have known it too!"

"Ugly girls are sucking, I guess!" Stacy giggled.

"You're so punny," I rolled my eyes and she stuck her tongue out at me.

"Well, here we are in the auditorium!" Bangs smiled for the camera. "We just did the Pledge of Allegiance and any minute now I'm going to have to take off all my clothes!"

The camera panned around and the auditorium and the girl's school looked like a big one. It was filled with kids too and up on the stage were three girls and three boys, two students from each grade, and except for Bangs, they looked pretty nervous!

"Alright!" the principal said into a microphone. "Your NIS Program week starts now. Please remove your clothing!"

With that a large cheer went up and I giggled when I saw that there were a bunch of cheerleaders dancing off to the side, waving their pom-poms around and the band was playing. They were treating it like a Naked in School pep rally or something! Talk about totally bizarre!

"God! Weird!" Valerie giggled.

"I hope they don't do that here!" Stacy said.

"Probably it's just for the cameras," Katie offered. "For that Bangs chick."

"Make a big production out of it, why dontcha!" Janey laughed.

"Bunch of morons," Madison yawned.

Bangs got undressed quickly, but kinda slowly too. She was grinning and waving and sorta dancing in place. She looked like a stripper to me and I would know! She had a serious body, like I said, and she wasn't afraid to show it off! Her tits were big and perfectly round, all golden brown kinda, except for her big dark nipples. The camera was more than happy to zoom in on the girl too!

"What a slut!" Penny shook her head.

"I bet she's on birth control," Stacy said.

That Bangs girl took a long time getting her panties down, turning around to show her classmates her perfect, brown ass when she bent over at the waist, pushing her panties down with a waggle of her hips. It was pretty obscene looking, I thought, and I figured that woman from NOW had probably had a stroke if she'd seen this video! So much for a hundred thousand years of women's lib, huh? Bangs Garcia, sixteen year old MTV goddess, was inviting the world to see her as nothing but a tight little brown butthole and a moist, pink pussy. What a dope!

She'd deserve to get raped probably. Maybe they could make a music video out of it!

"Now remember!" the principal reminded Bangs. "You must stay naked at all times. Remain in public areas of the school facilities. You're limited to three 5 minute bathroom breaks a day and must use the locker room of the opposite sex. You cannot attempt to cover yourself in any way. And you must agree to any and all reasonable requests your fellow students might make of you during the week."

"What if somebody asks her to put her clothes back on?" Pam giggled.

"They get slapped for being stupid," Stacy rolled her eyes.

"If you try to cover yourself up," the principal continued, "we'll have to make use of these..."

He held up a pair of leather handcuffs chained to a collar of some kind. It looked weird to me, but it was easy to imagine how much it would suck having my hands up by my ears all day long. Bad enough being naked, but being helpless too? God! That was all so stupid. Why not just strap the girl down to a bed and spread her legs? Any lasts requests? Yeah, a blindfold! Some of those guys are ugly!

I went back to doodling in my notebook. I liked drawing cartoons, even though Ms. Owens would give me a hard time if she caught me. Sometimes she thought they were funny though. I was pretty good at those and I did cartoons for the school newspaper sometimes, except it was just October, so they'd only had one issue so far.

"Is that the guy she was talking about?"

"God! He's hot!"

"Look at his dick!"

"Horse cock!"

"Shut-up," I told all those stupid girls, but the guy was seriously steamy!

The camera panned slowly past all the naked kids and Bangs stood close to the guy who must have been her partner. A black guy with a huge dick, not even a really hard one yet, but Bangs was trying to fix that for him! And that black guy didn't even have the biggest one. Some white guy, kinda scrawny looking with glasses on a huge honkin' nose, had a penis that must have been ten inches long! I swear, and it was pointing out and up like someone should hang a flag from it!

"Where's that school?"

"No shit! I wanna go there!"

"That would hurt!"

All my classmates were talking again, sounding like the sluts they wished they were. I knew most of them were still virgins, like me, and all they knew about sex and big dicks and all that was whatever some other stupid virgin told them. I hated health class, mostly because I didn't want to be a girl at all and listening to all the chatter got on my nerves. Guys were a lot cooler about that stuff. Sorta. Sometimes. Well, maybe not. But they were guys and my friends anyway. I didn't have any friends who were girls and they all thought I was weird anyway.

I was so glad when class was over!

"Hi Sam," Dr. Chase smiled as she held her door open for me. "Have a seat. How are you today?"

"I'm okay," I shrugged, sitting down in the chair by her desk.

Dr. Chase worked as the NIS Program Counselor and she seemed alright. Some of the boys liked to joke about her name, since she was kinda hot and definitely worth chasing, and she joked about them sometimes. Her first name was Ellen and that's how she'd introduced herself the first time we'd met, but I always called her Dr. Chase. She looked kinda young to be a doctor, but she had the diplomas on her wall to prove it. She had two doctor degrees, actually. One in Social Anthropology, and I had no idea what that was, and the other in Clinical Psychology, which meant she was a shrink. Sorta. I think psychiatrists are the real shrinks, so maybe she was just a wanna-be.

"You know the Program is starting soon, right?" she asked, taking the other chair in front of her desk. The woman never sat behind it, unless she had to.

"Uh, yeah," I nodded. "Everybody's talking about it."

"I bet they are," she smiled and Dr. Chase was really pretty when she did that. Her green eyes kinda sparkled. "I believe you saw the video in class today. What did you think of it?"

"I don't know," I said, kinda smiling apologetically. "I just wish I didn't have to do it, you know?"

"Yeah," she nodded sympathetically. "That's how a lot of people feel about it. But school is like that sometimes, isn't it?"

"I guess," I shrugged.

"I wanted to see you today because..." Dr. Chase reached across her desk, " ... I have a little questionnaire and I was wondering if you'd fill it out for me."

"Another one?" I smiled at her. I must have filled out a dozen of them since school started and all the other kids too, or at least some of them. Josh had only filled out like four or five, I knew that.

"Yep," she smiled back. "One more. Do you have a pen?"

"Yeah," I nodded.

"Good. I'll let you do that and I'll be right back, okay?" she patted my thigh gently. "When you're done we'll talk a little more."

"Okay," I sighed, flipping through the four or five pages. The last question was number fifty.

Am I happy with myself? Hmmm ... Sometimes.

How many hours a night do I sleep? Seven. Usually. Maybe six if there's a good movie on. I hated those kinds of questions.

Do I get angry often? Hmmmm ... What's often mean? No.

When I get angry, do I express it or keep it inside? Heh! Both!

How many good friends do I have? Like three or, nah. Just one good one.

Blah Blah Blah...

Fifty questions like that and I answered them pretty quickly. Most of them I'd seen before anyway, on other questionnaires, and I mostly tried to tell the truth. I finished just before Dr. Chase came back. She had really good timing.

"All done, Sam?" she smiled at me and I nodded. "Good. We'll just put this over here then. Now ... What have you been up to lately?"

"Going to school," I shrugged. "Um, me and Josh went to EMP last Saturday. His dad took us. It was pretty cool."

"How are you and Josh getting along?"

"Fine. We just hang out and stuff."

"Does he have a girlfriend yet?"

"Uhhh..." I lifted my hands. "Not really."

"How about you? Is there anyone you like?"

"No," I giggled nervously. "Not like that."

"Okay," Dr. Chase smiled at me. "If there was ... Would you tell me?"

"Ah!" I grinned at her and I was blushing.

"I'm just curious," she laughed lightly. "How's your mom?"

"She's okay," I said. "She's working a lot, you know. So..."

"Is she coming to the meeting tonight?"

"I don't think so," I shook my head.

"Did you tell her about it?"

"Ummmm..." I shrugged. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" Dr. Chase cocked a thin eyebrow at me.

"I kinda forgot," I admitted and Dr. Chase nodded at that.

We talked for about ten minutes like that. She liked to ask a lot of questions and I answered most of them, but sometimes I didn't really want to. Like she'd ask me about my dad and I never wanted to talk about him, so she wouldn't make me or anything. Dr. Chase was pretty nice and I couldn't ever lie to her, I don't know why. I'm not really good at lying anyway though, so probably that's a good thing.

It kinda sucked having to spend my study hall with her though, just because me and Josh coulda been playing table football in the library. You know, folding a piece of paper into a triangle? I was really good at kicking field goals. Better than he was! But instead I had to talk to Dr. Chase and she did make me feel good. I mean, most people didn't really care what I thought about anything. Josh did and my mom, sorta, but Dr. Chase always listened and that was cool.

But I was glad when we were done too.

"I'll see you on Monday, okay?" she said as I stood up.

"Monday?" I narrowed my eyes because it was only Thursday, but maybe she meant she wanted me to come back for more questions Monday.

"Yeah," she nodded, standing up as well. "I have a seminar this weekend so I'm going to skip school tomorrow."

"Oh," I smiled at that.

"Don't tell the principal, okay?" she laughed softly. "He doesn't like me anyway."

"He doesn't?" I giggled because Principal Eckert liked most girls just fine. We all thought he was kind of a pervert, but he tried to hide it and that only made it worse.

"Well," Dr. Chase rolled her green eyes. "Maybe he likes me too much."

"Yeah!" I nodded at that.

"Bye Sam."

"Bye."

"You're coming over Friday, right?" Josh asked me as we walked home after school. The wind blew some of his light brown hair into his face and he turned his head in annoyance.

"Yeah, I think so. I gotta ask my mom though," I said, pulling my Mariners ball cap down. My hair was black and a little longer than his.

"Yeah," Josh understood what I meant. We'd been best friends and sleeping over at each other's houses forever. Being fifteen like we were, it wasn't really asking anymore anyway, it was more like letting our parents know where to find us.

"Is your mom going to the PTA thing tonight?" he asked me a couple minutes later.

"Mine?" I gave Josh a look. "Yeah right."

"My mom's going. You wanna hang out after dinner?"

"I don't know," I shrugged as we cut through the Lawson's backyard. They didn't like it, but they were never home either. "I'll call you later."

The walk home wasn't a real long one, about a half-mile maybe, but it seemed long sometimes. Seattle rains too much and Josh and I were looking forward to taking driver's education next semester. We'd both turn sixteen the following July which was kinda cool, I guess. At least we'd get our licenses and be able to drive. Maybe we'd even get cars, except I wasn't holding my breath or anything. My mom could be kind of stingy since it was just me and her and she didn't have a really great job or anything. We weren't starving or whatever, but you know.

Josh might get a car though. His dad worked for Boeing and his step-mom volunteered at the public library, reading books to little kids. They did okay and Josh lived in a nice house. Me and my mom lived in a nice house too, except we just rented the upstairs from the old lady who lived downstairs. Mrs. Whiting was nice usually, but she could get cranky too and when her arthritis started acting up we had to kinda tip-toe around or she'd get mad. Mom said she was a little senile. She always treated me okay though and knocked some money off the rent because I did all the yard work and stuff. Mom kept saying I'd have to get an after-school job next year and I actually looked forward to that, or at least having some pocket money.

"Hey, did you talk to that girl?" I asked and Josh kinda rolled his dark brown eyes at me.

"Penny? No, not yet."

"Chicken?" I grinned at him. "I saw her looking at you at lunch."

"You did?" Josh grinned back at me. "What were you looking at her for?"

"Shut-up!" I kicked at a pine cone lying on the sidewalk. "It was pretty obvious anyway. What's her name said she likes you."

"Who?"

"That other chick, the chubby one," I shrugged, even though we'd known those girls half our lives practically.

"Yeah yeah," Josh knew which one. "Pam?"

"Pam. Yeah," I agreed. "Anyways, you oughta just talk to her."

"I don't know what to say," Josh admitted. "Girls are weird."

"Yeah," I laughed, because that was true. "They're kind of cool though, right?"

"You think so?" he asked, sorta squinching his face at me like he did when something surprised him a little.

"I don't know," I said, feeling a bit self-conscious suddenly. "Penny's cool, I know that. Lotsa guys like her."

"You're pretty weird, Sam."

"What?" I frowned at that. "Why? I'm just saying..."

"You think about her a lot?" he asked and I felt myself getting warm, but only because he was teasing me.

"No!" I answered him truthfully. "I'm just wondering why you won't talk to her."

"Yeah you do!" he grinned at me. "You like her."

"I do not," I repeated, more annoyed than embarrassed or anything. "I'm just asking why you totally ignore her."

"You talk to her," Josh said, rubbing it in now that he knew he was getting to me.

"Forget it," I shrugged and then I didn't talk to him at all. He hated that. I didn't know why I'd brought it up anyway. Maybe I just wanted to hear Josh tell me he didn't like Penny, or any other girl for that matter. I didn't really want him talking to her at all and I was looking for reassurance mostly.

"Sam! Come on. I was kidding, dude." He walked backwards for a bit so he could try and get my attention, but I ignored him. "Fine. Whatever. I'll talk to her tomorrow. Happy?"

"No," I finally answered with a scowl.

"What do you want?" Josh kind of whined with frustration. He was bigger than me, like five inches taller and easily thirty pounds heavier, but I was a lot more stubborn.

"How come you don't wanna talk to her?"

"I don't know." He turned around again and walked beside me. "I don't like any of those girls."

"You don't?" I looked up at him and the wind almost took my hat off.

"Not really."

"You don't want a girlfriend or anything?"

"Maybe," he shrugged. "I don't know. I like girls, I mean, yeah, but ... I don't know."

"You're weird," I decided and he grinned at me then, so I grinned too and we were okay again.

I knew he liked girls. Josh and me were fifteen now, so we had like raging hormones and all the stupid questions and ideas that puberty gives a kid. I figured he probably jerked off every night or something, except I didn't really want to know about that stuff. It was kinda personal, you know, and we talked about almost everything, but not that. Josh was a good looking boy though, even I knew that much, and Penny was definitely one of the cutest girls in tenth grade. There wasn't any reason he shouldn't hook up with her and maybe that's what really bothered me.

If Josh got a girlfriend, then ... What about us? We'd still be best friends and all, but he'd be pretty busy with Penny too, probably. Instead of hanging out with me on Friday nights, he'd be taking her to movies or something. Josh would probably be kissing the girl too and all that stuff, like making out and feeling her up and ... I pushed those thoughts away. It was weird being jealous of Penny because my best friend was kissing her, even though he wasn't even dating her yet. Was I jealous? I frowned at that because it felt like I was, but I didn't want to admit it.

Being fifteen sucked, I decided, and I kicked myself for bringing Penny up like I had in the first place.

"Sam!"

"Hey, Mrs. Whiting," I answered up as she spoke through the screen door.

She owned a big Victorian house, like the kind that look haunted, and it had to be a hundred years old probably. Mom and me lived in the apartment upstairs which had been remodeled by Mr. Whiting before he'd died. I'd never met him, but he looked like a nice guy in his pictures.

"I want the yard raked," Mrs. Whiting said, "before it starts raining."

"You want me to rake today?" I looked around and there were a ton of leaves on the big front yard, but... "The wind's blowin' like fifty miles an hour though!"

"It looks bad," the old woman said and then she closed her front door and I just sighed.

The leaves were blowing every which way and I wasn't kidding about that wind. Raking wouldn't do a whole lot except help make a bigger mess, I thought, but what was I gonna do? There wasn't any arguing with Mrs. Whiting, not when she closed her door. The sun would be going down soon anyway, being almost the end of October like it was. I figured I'd rake for an hour maybe, let her see me doing it and then she'd be happy again. I hated raking.