For weeks Kayla had thrown around plans of how to break the news to her parents. She didn’t intend to do it on her birthday, because she knew that her mom was stressed about the store. But at the same time, she wanted to keep preparing the way so things would be easier when the time was right.

Then things just happened.

There had been a track meet the evening before, a dual meet with Amherst, with the varsity boys and girls there. It had been a good meet; Rachel had beaten her by a couple steps in the mile, but both of them had agreed afterward that if it had been two miles it might have gone the other way, because Rachel was a little quicker on the starts. Still, Kayla had anchored the mile relay and had beaten Rachel by a couple steps there, so it came out about even. Both the teams had gone down to the Dairy Barn afterward, and both she and Rachel were a little sad that they wouldn’t get to run against each other again until the county meet toward the end of next month. If they were on varsity they’d have met on the track again, but the middle school team didn’t run all the meets that the varsity did.

What with everything she was a little late getting to bed Friday night, and had decided to sleep in a little on Saturday, then maybe go for a run in the afternoon since it promised to be a nice day. She knew that dad and JJ were going to be out at a ball tournament most of the day, so as she pulled herself together it seemed like a good time to start pushing the door open with her mom. With that in mind, she just pulled on a pair of panties and headed out to the living room, plopped down on the couch in front of the TV, and turned on some cartoons. Her mom was out in the kitchen doing something, and then in the laundry room, so she allowed herself to get wrapped up in the TV, rather than just sit there wondering what would happen when she was noticed.

When it came, it wasn’t what she expected: a giggle. “Kayla,” her mother laughed. “I can’t believe that you’ve got all your clothes in the dirty clothes.”

“No, Mom,” she glanced up from the TV and replied as casually as she could, “I just didn’t feel like getting dressed. Is this OK?”

Her mother laughed again at the scene, then added, “Kayla, I don’t care. You can go completely naked for all I care.”

Yes!!!! exploded through Kayla’s mind as she struggled to keep her cool. Express verbal permission!!!! Scarcely believing this was happening, she sprang to her feet, hooked her thumbs in the sides of her panties, let them drop to the floor and lay back down on the couch, waiting for her mom to say something.

As soon as Emily saw her daughter take her panties off, she realized that she’d called a bluff and lost. So Kayla was being a smart ass, she was a kid and could do that once in a while. There really wasn’t any point in saying anything. If she wanted to lie around the house watching cartoons naked, she’d soon realize that she was making a fool of herself. It might be a good lesson for her. Stay calm Emily, she thought as she said, “Do you want me to wash those?”

“I just put them on a few minutes ago,” Kayla giggled, not quite able to conceal her joy at having her mother noticeably flustered. “But you can if you want.” She picked up the panties and held them out to her mother.

Well, you stuck your foot in it, live with it. Emily shook her head, not quite clear in her own mind if she were thinking of her daughter or herself. “Whatever you want,” she said, taking the proffered panties. “It’s up to you.”

“OK, Mom,” Kayla replied, turning her attention back to the TV as Emily walked out toward the laundry room to throw the panties in the load already going.

This is my kid’s first day as a teenager, she thought. What else is that girl going to come up with?

Kayla’s heart was pounding about a million beats a minute as she lay calmly on the couch, looking at the TV but not paying attention to whatever stupid stuff was happening on the screen. She thought she’d be pushing the limits as it was, but to have everything happen that easily … she’d never dreamed of it! Of course, it wasn’t the clear full permission she’d been hoping for, and she hadn’t been given the opportunity to explain a lot of things that she’d wanted to bring fully into the open, but this really opened the door.

She lay there on the couch watching TV until the show was over. In that time her mother came through the living room several times, working on laundry and other stuff. Every time she came through, Kayla figured that would be the end of it, she’d be told to go get some clothes on – and she would have if so ordered. She’d accomplished so much more than she’d expected this morning already, it was a big step toward the next time.

But when the show was over and her mother still hadn’t said anything, her curiosity was just about to overcome her. Maybe she could push things just a little further …

She sure is having her fun with me this morning, Emily thought after about the fourth time she’d walked through the living room to see Kayla still lying naked on the couch. Did I enjoy freaking my mother out that much?

You did, she grinned to herself. Not like that, but …

She was giggling aloud to herself at a pleasant memory when she heard the vacuum cleaner running in the living room. Now what the hell, she thought. Did Kayla spill something? What a morning … she quit folding the laundry and headed into the living room, to find Kayla busy with the vacuum cleaner – not cleaning up anything, just going over the floor, and not wearing a stitch more than before. “Kayla!” she yelled over the racket.

Kayla shut the machine off and said innocently, “Yes, Mom?”

“Kayla, honey,” she said, not allowing her bluff to get called again. “You know you should dust before you do the carpet.”

“I know, Mom,” Kayla said. “I already did.”

Curiosity finally overcame her. “What brought this on?” she asked.

“Oh, I know you’ve had a tough week,” Kayla said. “I figured I ought to be helping out, rather than just lying around watching cartoons.”

“Well, thank you, hon,” Emily replied, thinking that that wasn’t exactly what she’d meant when she asked. But it was clear that she wasn’t going to get a straight answer unless she came out and asked, and then Kayla would know that she’d gotten to her. Well, if you can, I can, she thought. “Did you get the lamp shades, too?”

“Oh, yeah, Mom, I did them. Do you want me to mop the kitchen floor, or will just sweeping do?”

“Just sweeping, although it could stand to be mopped if you feel like it,” Emily said in defeat. If the kid was willing to help, even naked, she might as well get what she could out of it. Let her have her fun, don’t let her freak you out.

Better and better, Kayla thought as she went back to vacuuming. She really didn’t care that much for housework, although she was discovering that it was more fun in the nude – especially when she had her mother so obviously flustered. She was slowly beginning to realize that this wasn’t just another incident to loosen her folks up – this could be the day that she’d been hoping for!

Sooner or later her mother was going to break down and ask what was going on. She had already – Kayla knew that, but it was fun to watch her mother freak out some.

Boy, what a post this was going to make on Allison’s Sanctuary! Airclad would really be thrilled! Jealous too! So would some of the others on the site. Cleaning house in the nude … and with her mom around and watching! … somehow it really made her feel like a nudist.

The cleaning went on for a couple hours. The only hitch came when Kayla mopped the kitchen floor and warned her mother not to walk on it with shoes, although bare feet were all right. That meant that Kayla had to fold a pile of clothes and take them to her mother when she was standing on the living room carpet, and that was as close as Kayla came to actually wearing clothes all morning.

Emily had heard Kayla singing to herself as she mopped the kitchen floor, and even as she rinsed the few dishes in the kitchen sink. Finally, with the kitchen floor dry it was nearing lunchtime. “What would you like for lunch, Mom?” Kayla asked.

“Oh, nothing much,” Emily replied, still amazed – both at her daughter being naked, and her willingness to help this morning. If she was that much help in the nude, maybe she ought to go nude more often … “I guess just something like peanut butter sandwiches. I’d share a can of soup with you if you like.”

“OK, I’ll get started on it,” she said. “Unless you’d rather I got that load out of the dryer and got that next load going.”

Will wonders ever cease? “If you like, I’ll do lunch,” Emily offered.

Kayla had just finished folding the load of clothes when Emily finished dishing up lunch. It was nothing much, just peanut butter sandwiches and tomato soup, a combination she’d liked since she had been a child. She knew Kayla liked it too.

It was the surreality of sitting in the kitchen, eating soup and sandwiches with her naked daughter that finally cost Emily the curiosity battle. “Kayla,” she asked as casually as she could. “Are you planning on getting dressed at all today?”

“Probably later,” Kayla shrugged. “I want to go for a run this afternoon, and I have to put something on for that. But it doesn’t seem like a bad day out there, and I thought maybe I’d see if I could find a place out back in the sun and out of the wind so I can get a head start on a tan.”

“Maybe you’d better do it before your run, while the sun is high,” Emily said casually, realizing that her daughter planned on lying out in the sun nude. Well, no one could see her in the back yard, and they both knew it. She sure hadn’t been expecting this. Should she have been? After all, she knew Kayla had been nude in her bedroom a lot the last few weeks, but she’d been just too busy with the store and the paper to pay close attention. Now she realized she should have. “Kayla,” she said after a moment, giving in. “Can I ask why you’ve been naked all morning?”

“Because I like it,” she replied with a grin. “I’ve just come to feel more comfortable if I’m not wearing clothes. I feel, well, more honest, more natural, more free. It’s like when I have clothes on I’m hiding the real me. I like the real me better, so I’m happier without them. Mom, I think I like being a nudist.”

Normally when a problem came up with the kids Emily would talk it over with Kevin, but right this moment there was no way she could. He was at that game, and this was something that JJ probably shouldn’t overhear. Worse, there’d be a lot of parents around, and this was really something that shouldn’t be breezed around. She was totally lost at what to say, what to do – except to realize that by humoring Kayla all morning, she’d probably crossed a bridge that she hadn’t known was even there, and it would be tough to turn back now.

Not a great deal was said over the rest of the lunch, but the silence had to be deafening. Maybe Vicky might have an idea, she thought. She did some goofy stuff when she was a kid, goofier than my own antics. For that matter, Jason. After all, he’d gone through this with a teenager, one on one at that age, and Duane had turned out pretty good, if you ignored the fact that he was starting his third year as a Grand Canyon raft guide tomorrow. When he’d been home over Christmas with his new girlfriend they’d both referred to themselves as “Canyon bums.” Duane was a good kid but he wasn’t what anyone would call “normal.” When you got down to it, neither was his father … but God knows, this isn’t normal. Maybe I ought to drop by the knife shop and run it past Vicky and Jason. Maybe they’ll have a good suggestion I can run by Kevin. If all else fails, he can just order her to keep her clothes on, which I can’t do, not after this morning.

“You’re right about one thing,” she told Kayla finally. “It is a nice day out there. I think I’ll fire up the bike, get out on the Interstate and blow the carbon out of the cylinders. It’s been too long.”

“Yeah, Mom, you’d enjoy that,” Kayla smiled. “I’ll rinse the dishes if you like. Is there anything else you want me to do around the house before I go lay out in the sun?”

“Just the lunch dishes, I guess,” Emily sighed. “Don’t stay out in the sun too long. This is your first time out this year and you don’t want to risk a full-body sunburn.”

All Emily really intended to do was to go out to the knife shop and sound out the problem with Vicky and maybe Jason. But once she had the Harley between her legs and was close to the Interstate, she figured that maybe running it a little could clear her mind. So she roared right past the knife shop and the Chicago Inn, went under the overpass, took a left and roared south up the on-ramp that so many of her friends from high school had taken on their way to new lives out of Bradford. That had to be just a little bit symbolic, she thought as she accelerated to cruising speed.

It was breezy and on the cold side. Even with leathers on it was uncomfortable, but it was bracing. How could she have been so stupid to not see what was there in front of her for months? The girl had been trying to tell her something, that was clear, and she’d been too wrapped up in everything else to notice it. But crap, everything else that was going on in her life, and now this!

It was too cold to run very far at speed; she just took it south to a couple miles past the state line, then got off at the first exit, went under the overpass there, and got back on the northbound four-lane. The traffic was light, and she got up to about ten miles an hour over the speed limit. When she crossed the state line again she realized that she hadn’t seen any cops while she’d been southbound, so she twisted her wrist and let the bike bellow. The speedometer needle wrapped around and pointed far down to the lower right, blowing past a couple cars and a semi like they were standing still. Bradford was coming back at her awful fast this way, but she kept the bike roaring right up to the exit sign, then braked hard down the ramp. Despite the stupidity of it, a fast run like that felt good.

A minute or so later she pulled into the knife shop and parked the bike in front of the door. Jason and Vicky were keeping Saturday hours. Vicky was in a “MacRae Knives” T-shirt and jeans, but Jason was wearing a denim kilt he often wore in the machine shop instead of pants.

She knew, of course, that Vicky was pregnant again; she and Jason had wanted more than one kid and wanted to keep them close. Her due date was in October, about the same time as Shae’s. Must have been something in the water about then, she thought. I’d sure hate to start another kid at my age, the end of this jazz is almost in sight and they’re just getting going. Maybe there were some advantages to skipping college and getting married right away after all …

“A mite on the cool side for ridin’, nae, lassie?” Jason grinned, using the fake Scottish accent he affected from time to time, especially when he was wearing a kilt.

“Better to be out blowing the carbon out than have to be home, where Kayla is running around the house bare-assed and telling me she likes being a nudist,” she snorted, laying the problem out right in front. “Let me tell you, some days being a parent isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and this is one of them.”

“A nudist, is it the noo?” Jason laughed. “What brought on this state o’ affairs?”

So Emily told them the whole story – how for several months they’d known Kayla was occasionally around the house without benefit of clothing, and then the scene this morning – including letting Kayla snooker her into a corner by thinking she was being a smart ass and overlooking it. “The thing I can’t understand is that she seems perfectly comfortable and happy with it,” she concluded. “No shame, no covering up, no embarrassment, happy to help out around the house. I don’t know what the hell to do, or how to deal with it.”

“Hell,” Vicky said, shaking her head. “Lord knows I don’t know what to tell you, except to point out that you drove your mother half up the wall for a while when you turned vegetarian on her.”

“That thought has crossed my mind once or twice,” Emily shook her head. She’d been about Kayla’s age, maybe a little bit older, and for some reason decided that she’d be happier if she was a vegetarian. That phase lasted for a couple months, until one warm spring Sunday afternoon when her dad got out the charcoal grill and commenced cooking steaks. The smell overcame her fledgling principles, and that was the end of being a vegetarian.

“And ye, lassie,” Jason grinned at Vicky. “Ye were nae better. I mind tha’ night I looked out the shop window in tha’ light of a full moon, and saw a skyclad lass standing over a pentacle, singin’ some heathen chant.”

“So I was Wiccan for a while, so what?” Vicky shrugged. “Exploring alternatives is part of growing up. I think I was a Wiccan for about as long as Emily was a vegetarian, maybe a little longer. I grew out of it. Face facts, Emily. You’ve got a young teen, just like we were. Ride it out, it’ll blow over. This is one of those phases that kids go through.”

“Aye,” Jason agreed. “Ye’ll just hafta get used ta tha; fact tha’ yon lassie is gonna want ta explore who she is and wha’ she wants ta be. I’ll admit ta the odd occasion when Duane seemed a mite extreme. But there be many ither thin’s he might a’ done tha’d done him more harm. Ta the best a’ my ken, he’s never done drugs, an’ I dinna thin’ he drinks more than a dram, even now. Poor lad, tha’ lack o’ drink means he is missin’ out on some o’ the fun parts of bein’ a true Scot!”

“Jason is right,” Vicky added. “There’s a hell of a lot worse things she could be doing. And hell, there’s not really anything wrong with a little nudism. You know that, you’ve been up in Scott and Sonja’s hot tub in the nude with us, listening to them and Amber and Aaron tell us about their winter trips to nude beaches in Israel and the Caribbean.”

“Aye,” Jason grinned. “An’ I mind hearin’ ye sayin’ ye’d like tae go with ’em some time.”

“Well, I would,” Emily said. “But … but … oh shit, right?”

“Right,” Vicky smiled. “Remember how hard it was for us all to get into the hot tub with Scott and Sonja the first time? And that was after we agonized over it for days, and it turned out to be perfectly innocent and fun.”

Emily remembered it well, especially the indecision, the agony, the fear of embarrassment – but everyone else was nude and it had turned into a warm and mellow occasion that reopened a friendship much weakened by years of separation. The Tylers and the Heislers weren’t as close friends as Jason and Vicky, but she could see they could easily be if they lived closer. “But,” Emily protested. “Going nude with a bunch of adult friends on a beach in the Caribbean isn’t the same thing as my daughter doing it at her age.”

“Aye,” Jason grinned, and then decided to drop the accent, which he could turn on or off like a faucet. “You’re saying you’re setting different standards for your daughter than you are for yourself?”

“I have to,” Emily said. “She’s a kid, I’m an adult and I’m married.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it. Why were you embarrassed to think about going in the hot tub nude with Scott and Sonja? Were you ashamed of your body, maybe? Or was that just how you thought you were supposed to think? You know that there’s nothing wrong with a little social nudity among friends, that it doesn’t have to have anything sexual involved with it. Wouldn’t you rather have Kayla developing the same attitude? I don’t know if it works the same way for women, but for guys, what women look like under their clothes is a mystery and in most cases they want to explore that mystery. That’s tied in with sex. Take away the mystery and a lot of the sex charge evaporates.”

“It works for me that way, pretty much,” Vicky agreed.

Emily churned it over in her mind for a moment, then sighed. “You’re saying that I just have to get used to it, right?”

“Within reason,” Jason advised. “Look, if it were me, I’d sit down with Kayla and set some reasonable limits, like say, keeping it around the house and in the family, and make sure Kevin and JJ know about it. Once it becomes accepted the novelty goes away, and I expect the nudism will too. But she’ll have learned a couple valuable lessons, I think.”

“But what happens if it doesn’t go away?” Emily shook her head. “I mean, look at Duane. You cut him a little slack with his outdoor adventures, and look where he is now!”

“You mean, earning more in a practical sense than I did before I retired since he doesn’t have expenses like a mortgage, having adventure every day in the most awesome landscape on earth, with a woman of exceptional beauty and exceptional talents by his side?”

“I … I … oh, hell,” Emily said, realizing she didn’t have any answer to that argument.

“Besides,” Vicky snickered. “You know how kids are. Hell, we were all like that. You come up with something that tweaks your parents, you’re rebelling, and that’s what a kid does. It’s part of growing up. If it turns out the parents approve, then the fun goes out of it and there goes the rebellion.”

“I suppose,” Emily sighed. “Damn it, I know I should have given her a straight answer.”

“You mean about her going nude?” Vicky smiled.

“No back when she was a little girl, preschool I think, we were out at a beach somewhere, she had this cute little two-piece and didn’t want to wear the top because JJ didn’t have to wear one. I couldn’t tell her why she had to wear it other than that’s the way things are done. I never was able to come up with an answer to that, since I don’t know what it is.”

“Because it’s the way things are done,” Vicky laughed. “I know, it ground on me when I was that age too. But one of the things I learned from Jason long ago is that just because things are the way they are doesn’t mean that’s the way they have to be. I mean, who do we know who wears a kilt more than I wear a skirt? Hell, it wasn’t that long ago that it was real rare for women to wear slacks or pants. Kayla just may be ahead of the curve.”

Emily shook her head. “I can just see her writing a book. I Was A Teenage Nudist.”

Jason laughed. “That sounds like one of those bad old second features we used to have in drive-in movies back when we had drive-in movies. I mean the kind that you never knew what happened because you were always busy making out with your date by the time it came on.”

“Well, there is that,” Emily sighed. “At least I don’t have to worry about her making out with some boyfriend in the back row of some drive-in.”

“Yeah,” Vicky snickered. “That one was already mostly off the list when we were kids too.”

Emily went back out and fired up her Harley, then headed down Main Street toward Garrison, where the ball tournament was being held. It might be a while before she got there; she thought she might just ride for a bit until her thoughts were more in order.

As she went through downtown, she rode by the Spee-D-Mart – or what had been the Spee-D-Mart, now with a big “CLOSED” sign in the window, locked up and dark. She thought absently that she should have given Sharon back her keys but realized all of a sudden that it didn’t matter any more; in a few weeks they wouldn’t open anything, anyway. Pure force of habit made her slow down to start the turn into the parking lot, but at the last instant she changed her mind and rode on past the entrance. She knew what she would find there – mostly empty shelves and a lot of memories about the way things used to be, about when she’d been a little girl not a lot older than Kayla. She’d had lots of hopes and ideas for the future, most of which hadn’t worked out – and most of which she didn’t mind losing. She was perfectly happy with the way things had worked out. She had about the nicest possible husband, a comfortable home, good kids, owned her own business, part owner of another one, respected in the community, lots of friends. When you got down to it, it would have been hard to ask for any more.

She twisted her wrist, dropped a gear, and sped up, putting the place behind her. She’d walked out of there yesterday for the last time, now she’d keep it that way. The future lay ahead, not behind.

Out on Taney outside of town she twisted her wrist again to get up to speed, not racing this time, keeping it under the speed limit. The heck of it was that she’d pretty much agreed with everything that Jason and Vicky had been telling her, had felt it even before she walked into the knife shop. OK, so it wasn’t normal for kids to be running around the house naked. But neither was it wrong; it just didn’t happen much. She would never have been able to get away with it when she’d been growing up, and the bout of nude sleeping that she’d gone through at about Kayla’s age was about the limit of her rebellion in that area.

She remembered putting on a cotton nightie to go downstairs right before bedtime to say good night and get a final drink. Then she’d go back up to her room, take it off, then sleep on top of it so it’d be all wrinkled up when she threw it in the laundry. She never knew if her mother knew about that or not, and had been so afraid that she’d catch hell for it that she’d never let it go much further. That had been in the summer; when it got to be winter she went back to sleeping in nighties because it was warmer, and it pretty much stayed that way until she married Kevin.

It was most likely that Kayla had gone through much the same sort of experience, except that she was braver or more committed or something – she’d taken the risk to come out to her mother. If Emily had taken the same risk when she was Kayla’s age, experimenting with nude sleeping, would she have had the same problem getting nude in the hot tub with Scott and Sonja and the others? And what was so wrong with that?

She remembered the first time she and Kevin had seen each other naked. It was before they were married, although not very long before (and that was something Kayla didn’t need to know either). The heat of passion had been pretty strong, and had overcome a lot of embarrassment. Although she knew what a man looked like naked, it had been the first time that she’d ever been naked with one, and it was different than she’d expected; more real.

Nowadays she and Kevin could be nude or in their underwear around each other easily, without lots of passion or romance – just getting dressed in the morning, or whatever. She knew what his body was like now, knew what it looked like, felt like, tasted like, and all over – just like he did hers. In fact, there hadn’t been as much of that as she would have liked the last few years; it had been wilder and more fun before, when the kids were little and not quite as aware of what was going on. With them growing up maybe they could get back to that some.

As far as that went, back in the winter there had been some discussion of going to that place in the Caribbean with Scott and Sonja and Aaron and Amber – Orient Beach, she thought it was called. A nude beach, nude hotel – apparently none of the four of them had worn clothes for days! That would be fun, and would be far enough away that no one from Bradford would ever have to know what kind of a vacation their mayor had. That would be really getting away! It wouldn’t be cheap – but maybe by next fall they’d have a better idea of what their financial condition would be after all the uproar of the last few months. They’d cut themselves pretty tight on vacations the last couple years with all the financial uncertainty, and one like that would make up for it some.

And no, damn it, Kayla, there are limits. That’s one vacation you’re not going on, nudist or not.

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