When Kayla woke up a couple hours later it was already starting to get uncomfortably warm in her room.

She was surprised to discover that she had been sleeping on top of the covers without a stitch of clothes on, but in a moment remembered going out on the patio under the stars with nothing on and the wonderful feelings it had given her. That was an experience to remember! What with everything, she’d had a very good night’s sleep after all.

She’d liked the way she’d felt out there nude under the night sky that she could hardly make herself put clothes on, but she couldn’t run around naked all day, could she? It was depressing to pull on panties and running shorts and a tank top. She’d been wearing a training bra the last days of sixth grade just because there were a lot of other girls wearing them – and some even needed them. Unlike the other girls she hadn’t much liked it, and she didn’t even want to think about how uncomfortable the extra bit of clothing would be on this hot day when she knew she’d want to wear as little as possible.

She didn’t bother with shoes or socks, of course. She’d hated wearing shoes for as long as she could remember and would take them off at the slightest excuse, even in school where her teachers would be on her about running around barefoot. Mrs. Ochsenlaager back in third grade had been real stern about it too, so nowadays she kept some form of shoes on in school but would usually walk home barefoot, even when it was real cold. She hadn’t worn shoes since school got out three weeks ago and planned, if possible, to not wear any all summer. Her dad had occasionally made jokes about her liking to be barefoot, like all it took to keep a woman happy was to keep her barefoot and pregnant. Kayla wasn’t sure about the second part; she couldn’t imagine being pregnant like Mom’s friend Vicky. She didn’t want it to happen to her anytime soon, but maybe like when she got to be Vicky’s age, which was something over thirty, about Mom’s age – but being barefoot was plenty to keep her happy right now.

It was strange to get up and have the house empty except for JJ. In summers past there had always been someone around, like Andrea from up the street, sometimes Vicky, and often Mom. But this summer was different – after a long discussion, Mom and Dad had agreed that they could be allowed to stay alone. There were some rules, like if they were going somewhere, they had to call Mom at the store or the Courier to let her know. They couldn’t have friends over without permission either, and of course they couldn’t go into the pool without someone around. But still, that degree of trust made both JJ and her feel very grown up.

As dressed as she was going to get, and not liking it very much after the feeling of sleeping nude in the open air all night, she headed out into the living room, to find JJ there, not looking very with it and playing with a battery-powered handheld game. “Hi, Kayla,” she heard him say. “Did you get any sleep?”

“Pretty good,” she smiled, resolving not to tell him how she’d managed it. It was none of his business. “How about you?”

“I guess I got some,” he yawned. “Boy, I wish I could watch some TV.”

“Yeah, me too,” Kayla agreed. “But I guess we like, can’t. I’m going to get something to eat.”

“You can’t open the refrigerator,” JJ warned. “Dad put a chair in front of it with a note on it.”

“No cereal without milk, I guess,” she shook her head. “I think there were some granola bars in the cupboard, though.”

“I know, I had one,” he replied, not looking up from the beep-beep-beep of the game.

She wandered out to the kitchen, heading for the granola bars. JJ had left the cupboard open, of course, so they were easy to find. With no TV or anything, this was really going to be a dull day. It wasn’t even a day they could go on the bus to the pool, either, not that she felt much like riding on that hot bus on a hot day like this.

She was still munching on the granola bar and not coming up with any good ideas when the phone rang. JJ happened to be closer, and got to it first. His end of the conversation didn’t tell her a lot: “Yeah … yeah … no kidding! … sure … I don’t know, I’ll ask her.” He turned and said, “Hey, Kayla. This is Brandon. They’ve got the TV on in their motor home. Air conditioner, too. Joshua and Lute are there. We can go over and watch if we want.”

At her first reaction, it was less than totally appealing. The four boys were buddies and hung around together a lot. But they were younger boys – JJ, a year and a half younger than her was the oldest of the four – they were kind of gross, and when you got them together it could get wild. On the other hand, it was something to do – and maybe she could hang out with Andrea, Brandon’s older sister. She didn’t think Andrea would want to go running as hot as it was, but there was always the chance. “Yeah, sure, I’ll go,” she told him.

A few minutes later, after calling Mom at the store, they were heading up the street, with JJ riding his bike, but Kayla jogging along, barefoot of course. Andrea and Brandon didn’t live far up the street, so it was only a matter of a couple minutes to get there. Sure enough, the motor home was sitting in the driveway, the generator running hard. Not entirely to her surprise, Andrea was outside, doing some stretching exercises. As JJ disappeared into the motor home, Andrea smiled at her and said, “Well, I guess that answers the question of whether you think you’re up for a run or not.”

“Sure, let’s go,” Kayla smiled. Given a choice between trying to watch TV with a bunch of rambunctious little boys and running with Andrea, it was no contest. “Maybe not real fast, but if we’re going to do it we might as well do it before it gets hot.”

“I figured you’d say that,” Andrea smiled.

Kayla had run with Andrea on occasion for several years now and enjoyed it. Andrea was five years older, several inches taller, and blonde. She would be a senior when she went back to school in the fall. She liked to run and was on the cross-country team. Several years before, when she’d been an occasional babysitter, she’d taken Kayla running with her. It had been hard at first and she was faster than Kayla by a long way, but over the course of several summers Kayla had caught up with her a lot, if not all the way. Though five years is a big difference at that age, and they weren’t really friends, they were occasional running partners.

They took off up the street, taking it easy so they could talk. It was interesting to run around the town, looking at how things were different with no power. Here and there they heard generators running; houses that usually were closed up tight had windows open, and there were more people outside than they saw normally. More than one person called out to them that they had to be crazy for running in this heat – Mom was one of them when they ran by the store and found her carrying stuff out to the dumpster. Once they were through downtown, over toward where Vicky and Jason lived, there were older, taller trees and the streets were shaded. “So,” the bigger girl asked, “you’re going to run cross in the fall after all, right?”

“Yeah,” Kayla told her. “Mom’s not all that happy about it. She’d be happier if I went out for cheerleading and ran track in the spring, but she’s going to let me do cross.”

“Good for her,” Andrea smiled. “You’re going to be a good runner and you ought to do well at cross-country. The best part about it is that your accomplishments are yours, you’re not cheering on someone else’s efforts. Besides, I always thought cheerleaders were a bunch of dipwads, and I think you’d hate it.”

“Mom was a cheerleader,” Kayla reminded her half-defensively. “She had a good time with it.”

“She probably did,” Andrea replied. “My guess is that it was probably the right thing for her, but it would be a waste for you. Now that that’s settled, maybe when it’s a little cooler we can go over to the course and I can spend a little time on teaching you how to race, not just jog like we are now. It’s different. That could give you a good head start.”

“I’d like that,” Kayla smiled. “I figure if I go out for cross I’ve got to be real good at it or Mom will bug me about changing to cheerleading.”

“I figured that,” Andrea laughed. “That’s why I’m willing to give you a head start.”

They ran for an hour or more, across town, past where the men were working on the substation, back again, out around the cross-country course, past the ball fields, and past the elementary school, which Kayla was glad not to have to go back to in the fall. It was going to be different and scary to go to middle school over at the high school building, but it meant that she was growing up, and wasn’t a little kid anymore. In spite of taking it easy, they were both pretty hot and sweaty by the time they made it back to their neighborhood on the edge of town. “I’ll tell you what,” Andrea said as they were coming up on their block, “As stinky as I am, I’m still not looking forward to having to take a cold shower.”

“Me either,” Kayla replied with revulsion. Then she voiced an idea as quickly as it hit her. “We could use the pool at my place.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Andrea grinned in spite of her tiredness. “But I don’t want to go back home to get a swimsuit or Mom will find something else for me to do.”

They jogged on another few steps. “Well, everything I have would be too small for you, but I suppose there’s something of my mom’s you could wear,” Kayla suggested.

“That’d work,” Andrea nodded. “But I could just fake it, too.”

“You mean just swim in your running stuff?”

“No, just go in bare,” Andrea grinned. “I mean, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Kayla had already made up her mind that she was not going to tell Andrea how she’d spent her night, but it didn’t take much to remember how nice it had felt to not have clothes on, and wishing she could have gone skinny-dipping in the heat of last night. It didn’t take much thought: “I won’t mind if you don’t mind me doing it too.”

“Works for me,” Andrea laughed. “After all, we’re both girls.”

In the last few yards to her house, Kayla was entertaining a few second thoughts. Even though no one could see into their back yard and Andrea knew it, it would be very different without clothes with someone around than it was by herself. In the last few months, the fact that next year they’d have to be changing clothes for gym had come up often among the girls in her class. That no one was very thrilled about it was a real understatement, and some of the girls were almost in panic mode about it already; even Kayla was nervous about it. Andrea is probably used to it, she thought. Just do it, don’t think about it.

As it was, even though Kayla stopped to latch the gate into the pool area, she beat Andrea into the water, mostly because she didn’t have to stop to take off shoes, but within seconds Andrea was in with her, as naked as she was. Kayla was shocked that she had really done it, and that Andrea would, but in a few seconds she quit worrying about it. After all, as Andrea had said, they were both girls. She was too hot and sweaty to feel any apprehension over it now anyway, and the water felt so good, even better than if she’d stopped to put on a swimsuit, if she could have waited that long.

For quite a while they splashed and swam and played in the cool, comfortable water. They tossed a ball around, dunked each other, and generally had a good time. It wasn’t anything that she and Andrea hadn’t done before, and it was just as if they’d had swimsuits on, but somehow even more fun.

After a while they started to wind down and just floated on their backs in the cool of the water. “This is really neat,” Andrea said. “I always wanted to try skinny-dipping, and I kinda like it.”

“Me, too,” Kayla replied from a few feet away. “I’m glad you thought of it.”

“You know,” Andrea said slowly, “I’m half tempted to get out and lay on the deck for a while, I mean, to like work on my tan, you know? I’ve gone naked in tanning booths a few times, but I’ve never tried it outside.”

“I think so too,” Kayla agreed, “but I think I’d better put on some suntan lotion.”

“Yeah, me too,” Andrea smiled. “Especially on my white parts.”

“I’ll run inside and get some,” Kayla offered.

A minute or two later she was back outside, just as Andrea was getting out of the pool. This was the first time she’d had a real good look at Andrea without her clothes on; she was mildly curious to note that her older friend had little pink nipples on breasts that were smaller than Mom’s; her own were larger and darker. Andrea’s pubic hair, though, was just as blonde as her hair, and she had only a narrow strip in the center. Something didn’t seem quite right about that but Kayla didn’t want to stare. “I’ll do your back if you do mine,” Andrea offered.

Kayla took her up on the offer. For a minute they passed the bottle of suntan lotion back and forth as they covered themselves. When it came Andrea’s turn to do Kayla’s back, the older girl commented, “I see you’re still wearing one-piece suits.”

“I want to get a bikini,” Kayla sighed, “but Mom said she already bought me a couple of new one-piece suits, so I figured I’d make do.”

“Well, if you like, I have a couple that are too small for me but ought to be about right for you,” Andrea offered. “You could get a more all-over tan that way.”

“I’d like that,” Kayla grinned.

A few minutes later they were lying side by side on the pool deck, just talking girl talk, but now Kayla realized this might be a good time to talk about something that had been on her mind off and on for months. “Andrea,” she asked, “Is it as bad to change clothes for gym as some kids say it is?”

“It’s nothing at all once you get used to it,” Andrea said from beside her. “It took me a little while to get used to it. Some girls don’t mind much, some girls wrap towels around themselves to change and just rush in and out of the shower. Some girls are happy to have a first-period phys. ed. and smell the rest of the day so they don’t have to let the other girls see them naked. It’s really hard when you first start out in seventh grade, since girls are in all stages of development, and, well, they sort of compare themselves. I mean, without much being said.”

“I think that’s what a few of my friends are afraid of,” Kayla nodded. “I mean, there are some girls in my class who have had their period for a year or more and already have pretty big breasts, and there are some who haven’t even started.”

“It can be kind of icky,” Andrea told her. “But you have to remember that you are yourself, not anyone else. After a year or two, everyone’s pretty well back together and it’s not such a big deal, and by then you’ve had time to get used to it, too.”

That started a good discussion. Kayla learned a lot about what she’d be facing the next few years – not only in how things would happen in middle school and high school, but some of the things that would be happening to her body, and how to cope with them. Andrea told her that she probably had some more growing to do and would probably gain another three or four inches over the next few years, ending up about as tall as her mother.

Andrea also told her that if she had to guess, that she wouldn’t have real big breasts, mostly because she was thin, and her mother and grandmother didn’t have them, either. “That’s not all bad,” Andrea told her. “Especially if you’re a runner. There’s a girl who quit the team because she didn’t like hers flopping around all the time. A lot of girls are going to be bigger, but that’s them, and you are you. Be proud of who you are, and don’t be ashamed of what you are or aren’t.”

After a while they began to feel like they’d had enough sun, even with the sunscreen, so they went up into the shade of the porch, found lounge chairs, and continued to talk. Somewhere in there Andrea mentioned that she had to shave the sides of her pubic hair so that none would show from under a swimsuit, which settled that point of curiosity without Kayla having to ask.

In time they needed something to eat. They still couldn’t use the refrigerator, so they made peanut butter sandwiches and got tepid water from the sink, and then went back out to the lounge chairs to eat, still nude, talking girl talk, and just enjoying being friends. They swam a couple more times to cool off. In time Andrea said she ought to get on home and invited Kayla to come along since there probably would be something cold in the motor home’s refrigerator. Realizing that she’d have to put clothes on, Kayla picked up those she’d dropped on the deck hours before, went inside the hot house, threw them in the dirty clothes hamper, and got out clean ones. After being naked for so long, it was really uncomfortable and restricting to have clothes on at all – a thought that surprised her.

She came back outside to find that Andrea had put her running clothes back on, and had jumped into the pool with them. “Why did you do that?” she asked.

“Mom is going to know we’ve been swimming and will wonder what I wore for a swimsuit,” Andrea grinned.

“That’s smart,” Kayla said with a smile, and turned to head back inside. She grabbed one of her one-piece swimsuits, dunked it in the pool, and hung it over the porch railing to dry out. “Andrea,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone we’ve been out here all day with no clothes on if you won’t.”

“I won’t,” Andrea smiled. “I was going to ask you the same thing, but you beat me to it.”

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