Like the rest of the family, Kayla was bummed to hear that her mother wasn’t going to be at the Spee-D-Mart much longer, and wasn’t sure what she was going to do until or after it closed.

Her mom had worked at the Spee-D-Mart for as long as she could remember, and long before that. Kayla had even been half expecting that she would be working there herself, at least a few hours a week, when she turned fourteen, a year and a couple months off – but apparently that wasn’t going to happen. The Spee-D-Mart was a part of her family and her life, just as much as her house and the school. She figured that in the long run her mom would wind up doing something else. She had lots of contacts and friends, so something was bound to work out.

But the part that really bummed Kayla was that her mom had commented that she might just decide to work out the rest of the days at the Spee-D-Mart and then draw unemployment over the summer while looking forward to starting somewhere next fall. It would be a long vacation that she’d never really had, and would give her some time to catch up on being a mother. If that happened, she would most likely be around the house most of the summer.

It had been hard enough to get nude time while avoiding JJ last summer. JJ didn’t really care much what his sister was doing, after all; he was a boy and had boy things to do, and therefore having his sister out of sight had her out of mind as well. It would be much worse with her mother hanging around; she’d want to pry into what she was doing, rather than just accepting the fact that she was out of sight.

Other than the few minutes in the locker room, nude time had been hard to come by the last couple months because it was cold out. No walking home from school the long way, through the woods, or at least not with her clothes off in January and February. Her dad was often home when she came home now, her mom was more often, also, and there was a fifty-fifty chance that JJ would be there with friends.

She usually took a shower in the evening, then went to her bedroom, closed her door, and lay on her bed nude for a while, reading or listening to CDs. She often pulled on a nightie or a T-shirt to come out to the living room for a final pre-bedtime drink of water and to say goodnight to her folks, but she’d have it off behind her closed door before she went to bed. The only problem was that sleeping nude hardly counted as nude time for her anymore.

Though her opportunities to check out the forum on Allison’s Sanctuary were as rare as ever, she got enough in to keep up on important discussions. She was not alone in her problem getting nude time; many of the kids on the board had the same problem, at least the ones in the Northern Hemisphere. The ones in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa seemed pretty smug about the fact that it was high summer there, and that the winters weren’t as hard.

One of the permanent ongoing lines of discussion on Allison’s Sanctuary was if your parents knew about you being nude, telling the parents, and variations on that issue. There were often several threads going on about it, and usually not long after one of them died out another one would start up. When she got the time Kayla read through these threads, and frequently reflected that life would be a lot simpler if her parents knew about her desire to be nude, and would let her be nude around the house or in the back yard when nobody but family was there. But telling them was another issue; she was scared, and from reading the reports of many of the kids on the board she realized that she had every right to be. If she told the truth she might lose her nude time altogether.

Allison often got involved in these discussions. She’d told her parents when she was thirteen, and a little to her surprise they’d been pretty lenient about it. One day, in response to a question of “Should I tell my parents?” she dropped some words of wisdom that resonated with Kayla: “I can’t tell you whether to tell them or not. Only you can be the judge of how they will take finding out. Your situation is unique and different from everyone else’s.”

It was worth sitting back and contemplating, and Kayla thought about it a lot. She knew that her parents had been nude with friends on occasion, and that they’d even gone up to the Tyler’s and used the hot tub just a month before. Kayla didn’t ask if they’d gotten in the hot tub nude with them again, but what wasn’t said pretty well told her that they had. That meant that they were open to the concept of nudism, at least in a limited way. That was a heck of a lot better than being totally closed to it, like seemed to be the case with a lot of kids on the forum.

From the beginning Kayla realized that if she decided to tell them it would be foolish to just head out into the living room some day without a stitch on and announce, “Hey, I’m a nudist!” That was almost certain to get a bad reaction, and several of the discussions on Allison’s Sanctuary seemed to confirm it. But several of the kids who had outed themselves had done it successfully by preparing the way first, being sly about it. After a couple weeks thinking off and on, Kayla realized that she needed to do a little preparation for the day itself, even if it never came. At a minimum, it could make life simpler if she got caught nude sometime.

So she started to leave little clues. She quit closing her door at night; she still slept nude, but threw her nightie or T-shirt on the bed where it could be seen that she wasn’t wearing it. If anyone asked, she’d be able to say it was damp or she was more comfortable without it, or something. To her surprise, nothing was said, so she got bolder, lying on her bed nude with the door open a ways after her shower or changing clothes, so anyone walking by her room could get a glimpse. It happened a few times, and again, nothing was said.

Her plan seemed to be working. Now she just had to keep the heat on, and turn it up when she could …

To many, the first real harbinger of spring is not Groundhog Day on the second of February, but the Daytona 500 on the third Sunday. For real fans, there are just two seasons: winter and NASCAR.

Kevin didn’t watch every stock car race on TV, but he caught a few each year on Sunday afternoons when he didn’t have much of anything better to do. He’d blocked out this afternoon for the 500, and to his surprise Emily joined him, her current knitting project on her lap. It made for some together time, if not real close together, but with all the shakeups in their life over the last few months, any together time was good.

They were deep in the pre-race and the announcer was babbling something about tire pressures and how critical they were when all of a sudden there was a break-in for a special announcement. “A Southern Airways airliner from Mexico City enroute to Chicago was hijacked by terrorists a few minutes ago. Passengers were able to fight off the terrorists and regain control of the airplane, but the flight crew was apparently severely injured in the battle. The plane is now headed for Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, being flown by a woman charter jet pilot who happened to be on board. We take you now live to Barbara Bishop of KPRT, our Shreveport, Louisiana affiliate.”

“Shit,” Kevin said. “I hope this doesn’t screw up the race coverage.”

The scene switched to a young-looking blonde woman with short hair, standing in front of an empty airfield, microphone in hand, who said with usual young newscaster intensity, “Details are very sketchy here at Barksdale Air Force Base about the hijacking of Southern 111 a few minutes ago. What little we know we were told by Master Sergeant Will Hoffman, the Barksdale Public Information NCO. Here’s a portion of his statement.”

The scene switched to a tall, handsome young man, wearing an olive drab jacket with a lot of stripes on his sleeve. “Apparently a few minutes ago Southern Airlines Flight 111 was briefly taken over by hijackers,” the sergeant said. “The passengers apparently fought back and regained control of the aircraft. The flight crew was seriously injured in the process, knife wounds from what I understand, and one hijacker was also seriously injured. The crew is incapable of flying the airplane, and it’s being flown by a woman business jet pilot who happened to be on board. My understanding is that she has an Airline Transport Rating but is only rated in smaller aircraft. There is an Air Reserve Lieutenant Colonel by the name of Bruce Hadley who flies the same type of airplane for Southern, and he’s currently giving the woman a run-through on operation of the Airbus 300. A couple minutes ago they were still out over the gulf, south of Biloxi. The plane was scheduled from Mexico City to Chicago. There is an unconfirmed report from the aircraft that the hijackers planned on steering it to the Daytona 500. That’s about all I have for you at the moment.”

“Good looking dude,” Emily grinned as the scene switched back to the blonde reporter.

“Yeah, looks like he just stepped out of a Marlboro Man commercial if they had those any more,” Kevin snorted. “Probably gay, he’d have to be to look that good.”

“Sergeant Hoffman tells us we can’t get into the tower,” the young reporter was saying on the television as Kevin was making his catty remark, “but he’s arranged for us to monitor the traffic between the tower and Southern 111 on a portable radio.” They watched as Bishop put her microphone in front of a small black radio sitting on a car hood.

“One-eleven, this is Barksdale,” they heard Colonel Hadley say. “Are you getting the feel of it?”

“Affirmative, Colonel,” the pilot replied. “You’re right, it maneuvers slowly but seems well behaved.”

That woman’s voice sounded familiar to Emily, even though it was distorted by the cheap speaker on the portable radio. She listened as the camera focused in on the radio, the microphone held in front of it along with a couple other microphones, apparently from other stations. “I’m going to start turning you toward the approach radial of the Shreveport VOR,” Colonel Hadley purred. “Come left to a course of three two five degrees. Shoot for a two-minute turn.”

The radio was silent for a few seconds before the woman came on again. “Course three two five,” she reported professionally. “We’re out of flight level two four zero and descending.”

“You’re coming along just fine,” he said. “We’ll stick with that course for a couple minutes, then come left to three one zero to intercept the radial. By the way, ma’am, I don’t believe any of us caught your name.”

“Roger, Colonel,” she replied professionally. “I have a single-engine pilot by the name of Jeff Waldemer in the cockpit with me. My name is Jennlynn Swift.”

“OH. MY. GODDDDDD!” Emily shouted, reaching madly for the phone. “I thought that sounded like her!”

Emily was picking up the phone as Colonel Hadley’s voice sounded again: “Ma’am, by any chance are you the woman they call ‘Learjet Jenn’?”

“Affirmative,” came out of the speaker of the little aviation scanner sitting on the hood of one of the news trucks.

“That’s our Jennlynn all right,” Emily said into the phone. “Boy, when they find out what her hobby is the shit is going to hit the fan.”

The phone lines in Bradford were in severe danger of melting for the next few minutes, and there were now few eyes in town not watching a TV screen as Barbara Bishop continued her report. “We still can’t see Southern 111 from here. Southern 111 is now on a long final approach for the main runway here at Barksdale Air Force Base, still a few minutes out. From what we can make out over the emergency channel things are proceeding normally. Let’s listen to some of the traffic over the emergency channel.”

“Barksdale, one-eleven,” Jennlynn’s voice came through the little portable radio, and out through television speakers around the world. “Speed one four zero, localizer centered, coming up on the glide slope. Rate of descent now seven five zero. Runway in sight.”

“Could not be better,” he said. “We now show you eight miles out.”

There were several seconds of silence. “They’re a little over three minutes out,” the young newscaster said into the microphone. “It’s very hazy here today, we haven’t been able to pick the plane out … oh, there it is!” On TV sets around the world, the scene changed to a tiny silver dot that rapidly grew closer. “If you didn’t know better you’d think that it was a normal landing,” Bishop continued. “Neither Jennlynn Swift nor Colonel Hadley sound excited in the slightest. Just very smooth, very professional, but they are both professionals, even though Swift has never flown an airplane of this size before …”

There were a few more exchanges, sounding very professional if a bit cryptic. “Inner marker,” Jennlynn said as the aircraft was very close to the runway. The gear was now down, and they saw the nose rise a little as it felt for the runway.

“Looking good,” Colonel Hadley said. “Looking good … almost there …”

With the Airbus’s nose high, the main gear hit the runway, and the nose started to drop. They could see the airplane slow in what looked like a normal landing. In a few seconds, it was just taxiing down the runway. They could hear the microphone from the plane come on, and over a background of cheers from the passengers, they heard Jennlynn say, “Barksdale tower, Southern one eleven. I’m a stranger here, you’re going to have to tell me where to park this thing.”

The phone rang, which it had been doing steadily for the last fifteen minutes when Emily didn’t have it tied up. This call was a little different: it was Dave, and she could tell he was crying, but they were tears of relief, and maybe happiness. “Thank God,” he said. “I feel like the Class of ’88 just struck back for Julie.”

“Seems like it to me, Dave,” she replied slowly. “I just hope the aftermath isn’t as bad as I’m afraid it’s going to be.”

After a moment’s more talking, Emily hung up the phone. “Jeez-o-pete,” she said to Kevin, Kayla, and JJ, “I’m sure glad I’m not the one who has to write this up for the Courier.”

The events at Barksdale Air Force Base – and who was involved – were the main topic of conversation as people came into the Spee-D-Mart for their morning coffee and doughnut fix.

Really, the one question in the air was whether Rev. Archibald Swift of the Bradford Disciples of the Savior Church had said anything about it. No one could believe that he hadn’t heard about it, but no one had noted an explosion of about the size of the fireworks factory blast over in Hillsdale a few years before.

Emily knew there were news crews in town trying to find someone who could tell them something about Jennlynn, or where she might be – but all anyone could tell them was that she hadn’t been seen in town for a dozen years or more. Emily knew a little more than that, including a couple phone numbers, but decided that if anyone asked her she wasn’t telling.

There was a chance of that. Most Bradfordites were aware that Emily was the main local source of information on the current addresses of the Class of ’88 – the benefit and the Dave Patterson story had something to do with that. So Emily was not terribly surprised to get a call from Hazel Perkins down at the Courier shortly after eight – she figured that Lloyd would want some inside information. She knew she’d be willing to bend the rule for him a little, even though there wasn’t much she could add.

But that wasn’t it. “Emily,” Hazel asked in a troubled, tearful voice. “Is there any chance you could come down here. I mean, like right now?”

“Sure, Janine is here, she can watch the place,” Emily told her. “What’s the matter?”

“I just had a call from Betty. Lloyd had a heart attack this morning. They airlifted him to Borgess in Kalamazoo, and she’s not sure if he’s going to make it.”

Emily felt her heart hit the floor. She’d known Lloyd Weber for years, and over the past few years of working very part-time for him, she’d come to like him. The one back up plan that she’d been able to come up with after Sharon had announced that the Spee-D-Mart would be closing was that maybe she could increase her hours at the Courier. She’d started working part-time there years before so that Lloyd would have backup to take a vacation, or to fill in during an emergency. Now, with the biggest and probably trickiest story the paper had seen in years facing them, Lloyd was going to be out of it. That meant the story had been dumped right squarely in her lap.

A few minutes later she was at the newspaper office, where Hazel sat behind the front desk, tears rolling down her face. “This is just terrible,” she said. “And to have a story like this going on, I know Lloyd would have wanted to pull out the stops. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

“What we’re going to do is do the best we can,” Emily told her. “It’ll just have to be good enough. It may not be what Lloyd would have done, but we’ll make do with the best job we can.”

Taking a deep breath, Emily headed over to the main computer and turned it on. She pulled up the file for the current issue, and her heart sank when it showed that Lloyd had hardly started on it. Usually he got quite a bit done on the paper in the latter part of the previous week, and on the weeks she’d filled in for him the majority of the paper would be put together. Now, there were mostly blank pages. There was a thick pile of stories to be dealt with, ads to build, and while she hadn’t looked at e-mail yet was pretty sure she would find more there.

She shook her head and said to Hazel, “It looks like he didn’t get a lot done last week.”

“No, he wasn’t feeling well,” the elderly accountant said. “He was gone most of the time.”

“Hazel,” she said. “I can’t make the Monday ad calls on top of everything,” she said, “though I at least know what I want in the Spee-D-Mart ad. Do you think you could work on that?”

“I haven’t done much with ads for years,” Hazel said, “but I could try it for now. This is going to be an important issue, maybe we can get a few extra.”

“Do what you have to do,” Emily told her. “I’ll get going on this mess.”

Emily looked at the pile of work. There was no way that she would be able to work her way through it and still do the story on Jennlynn the way it deserved to be done, or even the best she knew how to do it. It was clear that she needed an extra pair of hands to help out. Vicky might have been a possibility, but she had Melissa to deal with, along with some important work for the knife shop – and worst of all, Emily knew that Vicky couldn’t type worth a damn and was a rather creative speller for being a college graduate. There had to be someone …

There was. She picked up the phone and called the Spee-D-Mart. “Janine,” she said. “Has Dave Patterson come in for his morning coffee yet?”

“He’s here now,” her assistant said.

“Great,” Emily smiled. “Could you tell him I need to see him down here at the Courier office right away?”

A few minutes later Emily was telling Dave what she had in mind. “Lord knows I owe you a lot for what you’ve done for me,” Dave told her. “But you should realize that I’m not a reporter, I’m a book editor.”

“Close enough for today,” Emily smiled. “You know how to type, and you know that a noun and a verb have to go in a sentence, which is more than can be said for some of the correspondents who wrote some of this stuff,” she pointed at the pile of work to be done. “If you can help with the scut work I’ll get started on some of the other stuff.”

“That could take us all day,” Dave nodded, heading for another computer in the office. “Remember, I’ll have to watch the boys after school.”

“It’s going to take us all day and then some,” Emily said. “We’ll be getting more in during the day. I can have Kayla babysit for you after school, because I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re here half the night.”

It took a while to get Dave going on the copy but he knew computers and editing, and soon was well under way. Emily was very slow at doing some of the other things, some of which she’d only been briefly exposed to. Sometime along about mid-morning, she realized that stuff was coming in faster than it was going out, and she hadn’t even started thinking about the Jennlynn story, which obviously was going to be huge.

“I’m getting caught up a little,” Dave suggested. “I know that whatever we do we’ve got to be fairly detailed about what happened yesterday, but I can get online and cull most of it from the wire service and network websites, then file off the serial numbers and mix it together.”

“Right,” Emily agreed. “We’ve got to work in the local angle, like she was the valedictorian, some local reactions, and anything like that.”

“No doubt,” Dave said. “Emily, how are you going to handle the prostitution issue?”

“We’re not,” she said immediately. “We just won’t say anything about it. It’s like Jennlynn said on TV yesterday, it doesn’t have anything to do with the story. I know it’s mostly just a hobby for her, and if her hobby were knitting or something we wouldn’t mention that, either. We’ll keep things positive and let other people deal with the negatives.”

“Well, I suppose,” Dave nodded.

“Besides,” Emily added. “Archie and Becky Swift are going to get their noses rubbed in it enough as it is, there’s no reason we need to add to it. If I’m wrong Lloyd can yell at me when he gets back, if he gets back. But I think he’d probably do the same thing.”

With the two of them working together, by mid-afternoon they had a good start on the story, and several other things were coming together as well. But one knotty problem had arisen: “I’d sure like to have a current photo of Jennlynn,” Emily said. “I’ve got her senior photo at home, of course, but she really doesn’t look much like that anymore. There are a couple photos from the tenth reunion, but there’s nothing where there’s a good photo of her. I don’t know that we shouldn’t just steal something off a website.”

“To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t,” Dave said. “You might get away with it, but let’s face it, the town is going to have news crews in here over the next few days. There’s too good a chance the local paper could get to someone who would raise hell over it. If there’s one thing I know about as a book editor, it’s copyright infringement.”

“So how do we get a photo legally?” Emily asked. “As far as I know, most of the photos Lloyd has used in the past either have been submitted by someone he knows, or he’s taken them himself.”

“Beats the hell out of me,” Dave shook his head. He thought for a moment, looked at his watch, then reached for the phone and began to dial a number from memory. “I do have an idea though.”

Emily started to ask what his idea was, but Dave just said into the phone, “Dave Patterson calling for Shae Kirkendahl … yes, I’ll hold.”

“Shae?” Emily frowned. “What would she have to do with it?”

“It’s complicated,” Dave smiled. “But you know that before she went to Avalon she worked for World Sports Network. She still does stuff for them. They’re tied in with World News Network. She might know who to ask.”

“Makes sense,” Emily smiled. “I have to admit, I never would have thought of that one. How’s she doing, anyway? I know you’ve been seeing her right along but I don’t think I’ve seen her since around Christmas.”

“Pretty well, but that’s a long story …” he said, then broke away to speak into the phone. “Hey, babe, how are you doing?” The phone was silent for a moment, then he replied, “Well, that’s good. Hang in there, it goes away after a while …” He briefly explained the problem, answered a few quick questions, then after a minute or two, said, “That ought to do it then. I’ll get back with you if we need more help. I’ll see you this weekend … I love you too babe.”

Dave hung up the phone, then turned to face Emily, who had a big grin across her face. “Yes, you heard what you thought you heard,” he said casually. “But I’d just as soon you didn’t tell the world about it just yet.”

“I take it this is pretty serious,” Emily smiled.

“You could say that,” Dave replied cryptically. “Let’s just say that there are those who might think this is a little soon after Julie, and I’m one of them. But what’s done is done, and we’ll just have to make the best of it. Anyway,” he continued, pointedly changing the subject, “she’s going to call a guy she knows over at WNN and lean on him a bit, then have him send something to my e-mail. If that doesn’t work there’s another guy she knows who might help. She’ll let me know on e-mail. It may take a little time, there’s another couple scenes to shoot before they wrap today.”

“Well, good,” Emily said, wondering what Dave was being so shy about but unwilling to come right out and ask him. She’d know sooner or later. “We’ve got enough else to do so we might as well get to doing it.”

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