Chapter 7: Early Friday Afternoon

I sat neck deep in water with my knees hard up against my chest and my arms wrapped around my legs. The water boiled and frothed and surged against my skin. If I’d been more relaxed it would have been relaxing. Instead, I was all tense and the constant movement of the water was annoying. I was tense because I was nervous – and embarrassed – and angry.

I was embarrassed because I was naked and there were four other people in the tub with me – who were also naked. Maybe I should say nekkid. I was nekkid, they were nekkid, everyone was nekkid. Dan said nekkidness was a state of mind. Well, I think everyone was in a nekkid state of mind – and that’s why I was embarrassed.

I was nervous because I didn’t know what was going to happen. My brain spun with imagining various things that could happen. I felt like I had no control. It was like – because I had no clothes on I had lost the ability to control what happened to me. I had lost the ability to keep myself safe. My clothing is like my bullet-proof armor that I wear to protect me from the world and without it I was defenseless.

And I was angry because it was Dan who made me do this. I trusted Dan more than anything in the world. He used that trust to get me to take my clothes off and get in the tub with him and the others. It was almost like he hypnotised me but he didn’t. He just told me to do it and I did it. And now I was angry. I’m not sure if I was more angry with Dan for telling me to do it or angry with myself for doing it. Sometimes I can be so stupid. I hate it when I get all stupid.

Dan had a reason for getting me nekkid. He explained it to me and it made sense. Maybe I was angry with Dan for doing what he did for a good reason. I’d have been much happier if I could be mad at Dan for being horrible.

I squeezed myself into as small a space as I could manage. There wasn’t a lot of room. On my right was Dan and on my left was Danielle. Shift more than an inch in either direction and my very naked skin would brush up against their very naked skin. Holding myself as still as a statue helped a bit but didn’t totally solve the problem. That’s because Dan and Danielle weren’t sitting perfectly still like I wished they would. They weren’t jumping around or anything but every now and then they would shift around or wriggle or whatever. Every time either of them moved I felt their very naked skin brush and slide or press against my very naked skin. Every touch against my skin made it fizz and prickle and send weird sensations shooting straight into my brain. And those weird sensations were both very annoying and very nice. And that made me even more nervous – and embarrassed – and angry.

“Hey!” whispered Dan. “You did it. I’m so proud of you.”

My eyes popped open. I guess that means they were closed before that.

Those simple words sent a surge of pride through me. I really did it. And he was proud of me. I looked at Dan and gave him a grateful smile. Then I remembered that I was cross with him and I frowned.

“Don’t touch me,” I hissed through teeth locked together.

“Would it help if you held my hand?” asked Dan. It was like he hadn’t heard what I said – or he was ignoring it.

He lifted his hand up above the water and held it out for me. I glared at him and then reached out and put my hand into his. Our joined hands then submerged and rested on Dan’s thigh.

“Don’t touch me,” I repeated. I don’t know if I said it loud enough to be heard or not.

Okay, I know that doesn’t make any sense – but it’s what I said.

My hand didn’t feel weird in his. There was no fizzing or crackling to disturb me. It felt normal. It felt safe. It was reassuring to have Dan holding my hand – even though I was angry and I didn’t want him touching me. I can’t explain that.

I sighed and rested my chin on my knees – my naked chin on my naked knees. Dan said I’d get used to being naked. Well it had been two whole minutes and I wasn’t used to it yet. I think he lied to me.

“All this nekkidity ain’t natural,” I drawled – trying to sound relaxed. “The way I figure it – if we was meant to be nekkid, we woulda got borned that way.”

I guess you have to picture me saying that with a kind of slow John Wayne drawl. To be totally honest I’m much better at imagining myself talking like that than I am at actually doing it. My attempts at a John Wayne drawl usually end up making me sound Welsh.

Danielle spluttered a laugh. I guess she heard me.

She also elbowed me lightly in the side. I think that was code to say she found my comment funny. I kind of wished she didn’t do it because she had used her very naked elbow against my very naked side.

Dan raised an eyebrow at me and then winked.

“Look at the lightning,” he whispered.

I looked out the window. Faith had been right. You could get a really good view of the storm from here. I noticed that the whole of the storm was quite a bit away from the house. It wasn’t even raining on the house but it looked like there was some rain with the storm. As I watched, a series of branches joined into a single crazy streak of lightning and marked out a path from the cloud to the ground. It was there for an instant and then it was gone. My eyes blinked and the after-image stayed on the inside of my eyelids. The raw untamed power of lightning, the sheer awesome energy of it, gets to me every time I see it. I don’t think there’s anything in nature that matches the impact on the eyes of seeing a full-on bolt of lightning sear its way across the sky.

I squeezed Dan’s hand to tell him I liked the lightning. I don’t know if he understood the hand-squeezing code very well but I did it anyway.

I wondered how I could represent the shock and brightness of lightning in a picture.

I wriggled a bit and let the pulsing water play across the muscles in my back. My right foot lifted and reached forward to play in a swirling jet of water without getting any sort of permission from me. If only I could somehow magically become not-naked I could actually enjoy this.

If only there was some spell that I could do – an anti-nekkidity spell – that’s what I needed. While I waited for the next burst of lightning I tried to focus my psychic powers on creating some clothing – lots of clothing. What I had in mind involved being covered from head to toe in material at least an inch thick. That would probably do the trick. I wouldn’t mind if I ended up looking like one of those Egyptian mummies all wrapped in bandages. Except I’d like to be able to see so maybe little eye holes would be good.

I guess I should have tried for something a bit less extreme. Maybe being so totally covered was too difficult for my powers to achieve or something because it didn’t happen. I ended up just as nekkid as when I started. I hate it when my psychic powers are on the fritz. Or maybe it was just about to happen but I got distracted by the sheet of lightning that lit up the entire sky. That would explain it. Everybody knows that being distracted stops magic spells from working.

“Bec, sweetie.” Faith’s voice floated to me from the other side of the tub.

I looked across at Faith. She was lying back against the headrest and looking very relaxed.

“You don’t need to keep wearing the shower cap,” said Faith gently.

Oh! I guess that means I hadn’t been as completely naked as I thought. Either that or my magic did work a little bit. Strangely, knowing that I wasn’t completely naked didn’t make me feel any better. If it was my magic powers that created the shower cap then I wish they had managed something more useful than a stupid shower cap.

I probably looked a bit silly sitting in the hot tub wearing a shower cap but since it was my last defense against total nekkidness I didn’t want to take it off. Of course, I couldn’t just say that.

I looked at Faith and bit my lip.

“I – um – I don’t want my hair to get wet. My braids would dangle in the water.”

Faith shrugged – I could tell because her shoulders appeared above the water for an instant.

“That’s what hairpins are for.”

She slid forward in the tub and then twisted so that I could see the back of her head.

“See?”

Faith had put her hair up in a very loose bun. I looked around the tub. Danielle’s hair was too short to tie up properly but she had used some hairpins to hold it against her head and up out of the water. Pearl had simply flipped her long ponytail over the edge of the tub – that wasn’t going to work for me – my braids weren’t long enough.

Faith stood up and walked up the steps and out of the tub. She walked casually across the balcony to a cabinet against the side wall. The cabinet door slid back to reveal a collection of odd bits and pieces. She picked out a small handtowel and dried her hands and then scooped up a handful of hairpins from a small basket. On her way back to the tub she went right up to the glass and stood there with her arms out as if she were praying.

“Shazaam!” she called out to the storm.

The storm seemed to hear her because the entire sky lit up in an enormous flash leaving her silhouette surrounded by light. The image imprinted itself on my brain.

“Wow!” said Pearl.

“I know,” replied Faith. “I have the power. The storm itself answers to my call.”

I was a bit miffed because her magic powers seemed to be working a whole lot better than mine.

Faith turned and walked back towards us. I tried not to stare at her.

“Sometimes I even amaze myself,” said Faith with a smile.

There was something about the casual way she was walking around completely naked that awed me. She looked like she was going for a stroll in the park – but nekkid. She was breaking all the rules about how people are supposed to do things. People only get naked like that in private – not in front of other people. I mean, you have to take your clothes off to wash and to change clothes but then you get dressed again right away. It’s only natural. See, being in the tub was kind of okay because it’s like washing. But walking around – she should have put a robe on or something.

Of course, Faith had been putting on a big act for most of the day. I wondered how much of this was performance. Probably all of it.

Faith must have heard what I was thinking because she spread her arms wide and did a big over-the-top bow to all of us. Then she walked down the steps and back into the tub. It was a bit of a relief when the bottom half of her sank below the water and out of sight.

Then she made her way across the tub towards me. Since she was coming closer, I let go of Dan’s hand and wrapped my arms back around my legs. That way I could make sure that my legs were completely covering my chest – just in case she could see down into the water.

The middle of the tub was deep enough that Faith could stand and be covered up above her waist. That meant her breasts were fully exposed and right in front of me. I think it was the first time in my life that I had such a close up view of a grown woman’s naked breasts – except for Mum’s a couple of times when she was feeding Angie, but I don’t think that counts because Mum never really totally uncovered hers.

I mean, I’d seen naked people before. I’d been in the changing rooms at that football game for example. But nobody had been anywhere near as close to me then as Faith was now. Her boobs were right there in front of me in full 3D color and stereo. She wasn’t thrusting them into my face or anything like that but I could have reached out and touched them if I wanted to. I kind of wanted to but I didn’t do it.

Inside my head, a part of me was sad because I’ll never look as good as that. I know I’m still growing and it’s frustrating that my body is taking so long to get curves and I know I have to be patient and all that but the truth is that I’m never going to be as curvy as Faith. Sometimes I hate my stupid stick of a body – my stupid completely naked stick of a body. That was another reason for keeping my body hidden. Next to Faith my body would look completely childish.

Those boobs were still hanging there in front of me. I wanted to reach out and hold them and stroke them. Were they really as firm as they looked or were they soft? Were they heavy or light? Did the skin feel the same there as everywhere else? I wanted to let my fingers caress across her nipples and watch her reaction to see if her nipples were as sensitive as mine. I wanted to do so much but I didn’t do anything. I sat there and kept all of those thoughts safely locked inside of me.

The thing that amazed me was that Faith didn’t seem embarrassed about all of us seeing her like that. In fact, she didn’t seem to notice. It was like she didn’t care. I’m sure she knew what she was doing. I can’t imagine anybody forgetting they were naked. It would be impossible for her not to know we could all see her boobs. I wondered what she was feeling. Was she nervous? Whatever she was feeling, she hid it well.

I wondered how much of her display was intended for Dan. Like I said before, she seemed to enjoy teasing Dan – trying to see if she could get him to react. But she felt safe because she knew he would look but not touch or make a big scene or anything. So in a way, she was teasing herself more than she was teasing him. I think she was trying to see how far she dared go. The evidence seemed to suggest she was willing to go a fair way.

I glanced sideways and sure enough, Dan was looking. I couldn’t blame him for that. He likes boobs and out of all the boobs in the tub – all seven of them if you count my one – Faith’s were the biggest. More importantly, they were the only ones visible, so of course he was looking. I looked back at Faith’s face and saw that she was watching me. She’d seen me looking at Dan and knew what I was thinking. Her eyes flicked sideways to Dan for an instant and then came back to me. She turned her face slightly away from Dan and did a really subtle wink at me.

A little grin sneaked its way out of me. I think if I hadn’t been naked I would have laughed.

Faith sat herself on Danielle’s leg so she was looking at me from my left. Because she was sitting on Danielle, her boobs were still up out of the water and dangling close to my arm. Faith reached out and took the shower cap off my head. She got me to hold my right braid up out of the water while she played with the left one.

“What do you think, Bec? We could tie them both up at the back to make a bun. Or we could coil them up on the sides and give you a Princess Leia look – that would be so hot. Let’s do that.”

She didn’t really give me a chance to tell her what I thought – but that was okay because I didn’t really know what I thought.

Faith coiled the braid around several times and used a half dozen hairpins to fix the coils to the side of my head. During the entire time she was doing that, her boobs dangled close to my left arm where it wrapped around my legs. One time they brushed lightly against the outside of my arm. I said before that my skin was fizzing and prickling every time someone touched me. Well, the sensation was ten times stronger when it was Faith’s very naked boobs touching my very naked arm. Sparks jumped between us and sent lightning bolts shooting into my brain.

I sat there and let it happen.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say.

I felt uncomfortable and embarrassed and nervous.

But I didn’t want her to stop.

It was kind of exciting. It made me feel – I don’t know – kind of wired.

Finally Faith finished and sat back to admire her handiwork.

“What do you think, Danni? Aren’t I a genius?”

Danielle kissed Faith on the shoulder and then made a face when she got a taste of the chemicals in the water. They kissed each other briefly on the lips and then Faith slid off Danielle and moved around to my other side. That meant she had to sit on Dan’s leg – not that Faith asked or anything. Dan never objected to Faith sitting on his leg. I guess I didn’t expect him to. Apparently Faith didn’t expect him to, either. It was hard not to laugh at her.

Faith coiled my right braid and fastened it to the side of my head. I watched her face as she worked. Her lips were pressed together and her eyes were fixed firmly on what she was doing. Lightning flashed outside and lit up the side of her face. Faith looked sideways out the window and I looked as well but it was too late to see the lightning. Faith went back to fixing my hair and I kept looking out the window.

Faith leaned back and tilted her head to the side while she examined her handiwork.

“Princess Leia never looked so pretty.”

I thought maybe I looked even more silly than I had wearing the shower cap. I guessed it would keep my hair out of the water so I didn’t make a fuss.

Faith leaned sideways so she could kiss Dan lightly on the lips. I think she figured she could get away with doing that because she did the same with Danielle after sitting on her leg.

“I think if Princess Leia looked like this,” I said and used my left hand to gesture at my hidden nakedness, “the film would’ve needed an R rating.”

Faith slipped off Dan’s leg and into the middle of the tub. She squatted down so that only the tops of her shoulders were above the water and looked at me with a grin on her face.

“Damn! That would be a film worth seeing,” she said. “Can’t you picture it? A nude Princess Leia going Oh! Help me, Obi wan Kenobi!“ She did that last bit with a breathless sort of acting voice.

“It would make you wonder exactly what sort of help she was asking for,” said Danielle.

“Eeew!” said Faith. “Bad mental image! Princess Leia getting it on with Ben Kenobi. Eeew!”

Faith slid back in the water and reclaimed her place on the seat next to Danielle.

“Alec Guinness looked good in that film,” protested Pearl. “Very sexy.”

I think she was trying to remind us that she was straight and a naked Princess Leia wouldn’t be a highlight for her.

They kept talking like that about Star Wars and other films that would be “improved” by having naked women in it. When I say they, I mean mostly Faith. I kind of wished she would change the subject. This conversation wasn’t helping me feel any better about being naked.

Eventually the conversation did move on. Faith and Danielle and Pearl were talking together about something but I don’t know what they talked about because Dan started talking to me about trivial family stuff. I didn’t figure out what he was doing until he’d done it. We talked a bit about Tara and then we talked a bit about how I missed out on going shopping with Mum and then he asked me what I thought Dad was doing this morning. When he asked about Dad, I pressed my lips together and looked away. I didn’t want to talk about Dad. Dan went silent. That’s when I figured out that Dan had been deliberately running through everyone until he got a reaction from me – and I’d just given him one.

I glared at Dan so that he would know I’d figured out his game. He raised an eyebrow as if to say that he knew that I knew what he was doing but it didn’t matter because he’d already found out what he needed to find out and I couldn’t take it back. I glared some more and then turned my head away from him. I laid my head sideways on my knees but then I remembered that they were wet – as well as being naked – so I lifted my head up again and rested my chin on my knees and stared out the window.

Now I was back to being angry with Dan again – this time for tricking me. And I was back to being angry with myself for falling for it.

A flash of lightning speared across the sky, splitting and branching off in countless directions. I blinked against the brightness of it.

Dan leaned close to me and spoke quietly.

“What happened between you and Dad last night? Is that why you don’t want to go home?”

I ignored him and kept staring out of the window.

“In a little while you’re going to tell me. Maybe later when we’re out of the tub so you can tell me without an audience, but you are going to tell me.”

I hated how confident he sounded. I wasn’t going to say a word. If I told him about what I did to Dad then Dan would hate me too and I couldn’t cope with that. A wave of sadness swept through me. I’d been carefully not thinking about Dad for all this time and had managed to get myself feeling okay. But I wasn’t okay. I’d hurt Dad and given him nightmares and now he couldn’t even let Mum touch him and it was all my fault and he must hate me and I couldn’t possibly go home and more than anything else I hated myself for what I did to Dad.

I stared out the window and hoped that if anyone saw how wet my face was they would think it was water from the tub. If I hadn’t been naked I would have jumped out of the tub and run out of the room. But I couldn’t do that because if I jumped up everyone would look to see what I was doing and then they would see me naked. I was trapped in the tub. All I could do was sit still and hope nobody would notice the tears tumbling freely down my face.

Of course I wasn’t that lucky. Dan was watching me like a hawk. He slid even closer to me, sending water sloshing around the tub in waves, and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. He pulled my head in close to his and made shushing noises into my ear.

I ignored him.

Well, I tried to ignore him anyway. It was kind of hard to completely ignore him with my very naked body pressed up against his very naked side and his very naked arm wrapped around my very naked shoulders. I guess you could say that I pretended to ignore him.

I wondered how far I would get if I somehow distracted Dan and ran away. Except I’d have to put my clothes on first. My brain made a picture of me running wet and naked down the street in the middle of a storm. I blushed and tried to hide my face. The down side of having your hair tied back is that you can’t hide behind it.

Then to make everything worse, suddenly Danielle was pressing her very naked body against me from other side. She was rubbing my shoulder and telling me everything was okay. What a ridiculous thing to say. Obviously, everything was not okay. I was very aware that the other two had also stopped talking and were paying attention to me and asking Dan what was wrong.

It all became too much. My stupid crying had done the one thing I wanted to avoid the most. It had made everyone look at me. And now they were all crowding around and touching me in my nakedness. It was all way too much.

“Don’t touch me,” I screamed.

I thrashed around with my arms and tried to push people away from me. I think I might have hit Dan in the face. I feel bad about that. I screamed and thrashed and slapped away the hands trying to hold me. I guess you could say I was having a tantrum. It’s a bit embarrassing – having to write all this – but I kind of lost control for a while. My arms kept thrashing the water – sending up sprays of foaming water and keeping the others away from me.

Then suddenly the anger drained away and was gone. It had hit me like a wave breaking at the beach. It rolled over me, tossed me around, dumped me on the sand and then was gone – leaving me with a mouthful of bad-tasting water. I spat the water out and wrapped my arms around my head. I tried to curl up into a little ball. That was hard because I was already sitting in a little upright ball so I couldn’t curl up much tighter. I tried anyway.

Then I pulled the shutters closed and hid away.

Inside my head I became that girl from Vietnam running away from the burning village with no clothes on. Inside my head I ran naked down the street – screaming as I ran away from everything – ran away from myself.

I couldn’t run fast enough so I became a rider on a huge black horse, galloping through the storm. Rain lashed down in sheets sending water streaming off my naked body.

A deep voice spoke in the background. It sounded calm but clear amongst the turbulence of the storm.

“It’s nothing you did,” said the voice. “She’s upset about something that happened at home. She’s been up and down like a yo-yo all day.”

I pulled the speaker cable out of the computer so I wouldn’t hear the voice any more. I pressed the reset button, hoping to go back and start the game again. This time I would avoid doing everything wrong and maybe I could get through to the end of the game without losing all my clothes. The water must have shorted out the computer or something because it was stuck showing the screensaver of a little girl hiding from the storm.

My escape was blocked by a sheer glass wall. I pressed my nose to the glass and looked through. Inside, a little girl-child – naked as the day she was born – was being lifted out of a tub by a giant of a young man. He carried her to the open shower but he struggled to pull a shower cap over her head without dropping her. He said something but his words were muffled and distorted by the glass. A young Asian woman hurried over to them, her own skin glistening and dripping with water. She quickly positioned a shower cap over the girl-child’s head and then tucked her own long pony tail into a second cap.

The two of them stood together under the shower with the girl-child propped between them looking fragile and lost. The young man held her while the young woman poured some body wash onto a sponge and washed her down.

The faint scent of strawberries dipped in chocolate wafted around me – drifting past me like a memory.

The young woman finished washing the girl and they rinsed her off. Then they lifted her out of the shower and wrapped her in a large and fluffy towel. They propped her on a bench where she sat lifelessly while they returned to the shower and washed themselves. That seemed to take no time at all because almost immediately they were back and patting her dry with the towel. There was more teamwork as the two of them dressed the girl – first in underwear and then in a long flowing dress. By this time the young man was also dry and dressed. He picked the girl up in his arms and carried her out of the room.

Being clothed and held securely in Dan’s arms called me back into my body. I turned my face into his chest and breathed in his smell. Dan must have found deodorant somewhere because a whiff of scent lay over the clean smell of his body. My clothes felt clean and fresh against me – even though I knew they weren’t. Maybe it was because I felt clean and fresh under the clothes. The bodice wrapped tightly enough around my chest that I could feel securely covered.

Dan settled onto a sofa and lowered me until I was sitting curled up sideways on his lap. A moment later I felt someone slide in next to him and tuck herself under my legs. Judging by how close she was sitting to Dan and how small the hands were that started stroking my sock-covered feet, I guessed it was Pearl.

I felt lips press against my head. Dan’s voice whispered softly in my ear.

“I’m sorry, sweetie. I pushed you too hard.”

I could feel his breath fluttering against the hair on the top of my head. My ear was pressed firmly against Dan’s chest. I could hear the double thump of his heart pumping away. I could feel Dan’s arms looping around me – enclosing me. Their weight against me pressed me into Dan. I would have been happy to melt completely and soak all the way into Dan. I knew that I was supposed to be angry with him but I couldn’t remember why.

Pearl was lightly drumming her fingers against my ankles and the lowest parts of my legs. It felt nice. Time seemed to stop. I kind of wished it would stop forever.

A rumbling noise deep in Dan’s chest told me that Dan was talking. I had to concentrate a bit to sort the noise into words.

“ ... a bit clingy for a while but she’ll come good.”

Dan stopped talking for a moment. There was a buzzing in my other ear and I only figured out that it was someone talking to Dan when it stopped and Dan answered.

“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

I felt a strong finger hook under my chin and lift my head off Dan’s chest. A soft kiss landed on my forehead.

“Open your eyes, Bec sweetie. I need you to look at me.”

I could feel little puffs of air teasing the skin of my face. I was so absorbed in feeling the sensation of Dan’s breath against my eyelids that it took me a while for his words to develop meaning. My eyes flickered open and then blinked repeatedly. Dan’s face was right in front of me – his eyes looking down into mine.

“There you are,” he said lightly. “I figured you were in there somewhere.”

I blinked again and looked up at Dan.

“Faith and Danielle want to say something to you.”

I blinked at Dan and waited while his words connected together to form a sentence. My body was alive with sensations. My brain was so busy experiencing those that actually thinking felt like finding my way through a room filled to the ceiling with cotton balls. I felt sure that I should be embarrassed about Faith and Danielle but I couldn’t remember why. They wanted to talk to me? My eyes travelled away from Dan’s face and down to his shoulder. A head covered with jet-black hair leaned there. A beautiful pair of almond-shaped eyes gazed steadily back at me. I blinked at her a few times before I connected the idea that I was looking at Pearl with the idea that it wasn’t Pearl who wanted to talk to me.