It was just about the last thing Kayla would have expected Shae to say, and she was a little stunned at the thought. For months, she had been wondering what it would be like to be a real nudist, to be able to go to nude beaches and the like, and she knew Rachel had been thinking the same thing. They’d talked about it often enough, even back in the days they were leaving anonymous messages for each other on Allison’s Sanctuary. Now, all of a sudden, totally unexpectedly … “Shae, you’re kidding,” she somehow managed to say.

“No, I’m not,” Shae grinned. “It’s over on Sandy Hook, so it’s not real close. I haven’t been there recently, not since I started playing Shaella Sunrise, but I do know it’s still there so it probably hasn’t changed very much. Would you like me to take you there?”

Kayla actually surprised herself. She’d gotten used to running around the woods nude going to the pool and the swimming hole nude, both by herself and with Rachel, and even that time in the pool with Shae. This was different. Without even asking she knew she’d be around a lot of people, both women and men. They would all be strangers, of course, but it just wasn’t the same thing. On the other hand, this might be the only time she would be able to try out her dreams, at least until she turned eighteen. “Sure,” she replied, hoping she sounded more confident than she really felt.

“Rachel,” Shae asked, “How about you?”

“Yeah, I guess,” the redhead replied, sounding somewhat uncertain. “Don’t you need our folks’ permission or something?” It sounded to Kayla like Rachel was fumbling for an excuse to not do it.

“Technically, no,” Shae grinned. “This will be a public beach, not a private resort. Probably nobody will ask, but I do have letters from both your moms just in case.”

“You what?” Kayla exclaimed. “You mean they know about this? You planned this with them?”

“Yes,” Shae replied. “Look, your moms know and I know that sometimes reality isn’t the same as the things you dream about. They know you’re both pretty serious about this, so we all thought you ought to have a chance to see the reality. Like a lot of things, it’s not all good or all bad, but it may not be what you expect.”

“I guess,” Rachel replied reluctantly. “Whether it turns out I like it or not, I guess there won’t be a better chance to find out for years. What do you think, Kayla?”

“I’ve thought about it a lot, but I never dreamed it would happen, at least not this soon. All of a sudden it seems scary, but like you say if we don’t try it now it may be years before the chance comes around again.”

“Do you want to do it and get it over with, or wait until later when it warms up? If we go now, the beach probably won’t be quite as busy as it will be later.”

Kayla glanced over at Rachel, who was clearly having second thoughts. “Go now, I think,” she replied. “Maybe this is something we don’t want to think about too much.”

“Good,” Shae replied. “I’ll go change into a swimsuit.”

“You’re going to wear a swimsuit?”

“I pretty much have to, not because I’m pregnant, but because I still play Shaella Sunrise and I’m too recognizable. I don’t think anyone would say anything if they recognized me in the nude on a clothing-optional beach, but you never know. It’s not a risk I can take, not so much for me but for others I’ve worked with. I’d really rather be nude, but there are times when there’s a big difference between what you want to do and what you should do. This is one of them.”

It was a slow drive through urban traffic to get to Sandy Hook, and it was quieter than normal in the car. Both of the girls were wrapped up in their own thoughts, which were probably pretty close to the same, which is to say second thoughts. If Shae had suggested calling it off at the last minute, she probably would have not had much protest from the girls.

They were getting close to the beach when Shae got their attention. “Look, there are a couple of things I probably ought to say. The big thing is that this is a public beach, so there’s no control over who shows up, like there would be at a private club. There will probably be some different sorts of people running around, not what you might find at a private place. That’s not necessarily bad and probably nothing out of the way should happen. If someone gets too out of line the lifeguards will run them off, but you probably ought to stick pretty close to me. That doesn’t mean you can’t go play in the surf or something, since you shouldn’t miss that opportunity either. You’re probably going to see some things you don’t expect to see, and you might not like some of them. If it happens, just ignore it. Like I’ve always tried to teach kids as Shaella Sunrise, it’s OK to be different.”

“Sometimes that’s hard to remember,” Kayla replied quietly. “But we’re different too, aren’t we?”

“Yes you are, or we wouldn’t be taking this trip,” Shae smiled. “The other thing is that I know you girls are out in the sun a lot, but I haven’t been. I think we all need to soak ourselves down with sunscreen pretty heavily.”

“Yeah,” Kayla said. “I really don’t want a sunburned butt.”

In a few more minutes Shae parked her car in a parking lot that was already nearly full. “It’s actually a fairly long walk from here to the beach,” she told the girls. “Kayla, you want to wear your flip-flops because sometimes the shells on the pathway and the pebbles can be pretty sharp. You’ll have to keep your clothes on until you get past the ‘Clothing Optional’ signs. We’ll go to the left when we get down to the beach, since it’s sort of the custom that going to the right side of the beach is for gays. Are you ready?”

This was getting more and more real to the girls. “I guess if we’re this close we’d better do it,” Rachel said, clearly without a lot of enthusiasm. Shae picked up a bag that had bottles of water, sunscreen, and towels. With no more discussion the three started down the long path toward the beach.

There were more people around than Kayla had expected – somehow in her mind she’d figured there wouldn’t be very many. The men and women were all different kinds too – short and tall, various colors from black to white, some fat, some thin. There were some really good-looking people, and some, well, less than appealing. From what she could tell, most didn’t seem to think this was any big deal.

They finally got down to the beach itself. At first glance it seemed more or less like what they’d have expected at any big, popular beach – coolers, blankets, chairs, umbrellas. There were volleyball nets and lifeguards wearing swimsuits. It was quieter than Kayla had expected: no music blaring, no kids screaming. The beach was cleaner than they expected, with little garbage.

The only difference was all the naked people.

“Let’s find a good place and spread out,” Shae suggested as she pulled off her top, revealing that she was wearing a bikini that didn’t hide one bit how pregnant she was. “Remember, we need to get sunscreen on.”

Kayla looked around at all the naked people, at Shae, and then at Rachel. This was it. Could she do it? Should she? Rachel was obviously having the same thoughts, and it was clear that what one of them would do, the other would follow. For over a year she’d thought of herself as a nudist, and now she would have to find out if she really was one. This was harder than she had thought; it wasn’t quite like her dreams had been.

Now or never?

“Well, I guess,” she sighed, and started to pull off her T-shirt.

“I finally had to call a halt,” Shae told Emily and Mary out on the deck of the Holst pool a few days later. The girls were out running around the Bradford cross-country course; they’d fallen out of training for the mini-marathon because of the trip to New York. There had been so much to do there, new things to see, and no time or place to easily run to train. “Even with the sunscreen I was getting too much sun and I knew it. I just haven’t been out in the sun this summer like the girls have been. But they were busy playing in the surf, laying in the sun, and playing volleyball with some other kids they found on the beach, some older, some younger. It was exhausting just to watch them.”

“So they wound up taking it all right?” Emily asked.

“There were some really nervous minutes right at the beginning, but they fell right into it after that,” Shae replied. “They had to spend a little time at first looking reality in the face. If it had been all women I don’t think they’d have had any doubts, but the mixed nudity, well, it’s a big step for girls that age to make.”

Mary shook her head. “So now we know we have a pair of committed nudists. I’m not sure how much I like that.”

“Well, yes, you do,” Shae admitted. “But you knew that was likely to be the case anyway. I was unsure the two would actually go through with it until we got out on the sand. I figured it was fifty-fifty at best. But it’s not all bad. I think they learned a few things from the experience.”

“Well, we’re just going to have to live with it,” Mary replied glumly. “This is sure not something I expected out of Rachel. I guess they learned that they really can be nudists.”

“More than that,” Shae offered. “Look, we already knew they liked being clothes-free, so that’s not a big surprise. But they also knew that there are times when nudity isn’t appropriate, and that’s most of the time. But there are times and places that it is. They know the difference, and now they’ve seen the practical side of it. When it’s appropriate to be nude, they know they can handle it. Look, I was an athlete for years, and a locker room is one of those places where nudity is appropriate. They can handle it, where a lot of girls can’t. I don’t mean just in middle school either, I mean on up through college. I knew girls in college who still couldn’t hack it, and it was very awkward for them.”

“All right, I’ll give you that one,” Mary nodded. “I’m still athlete enough that I can handle it in a locker room, but I don’t think that I could ever come up with the courage to go to a nude beach.”

“So it’s OK to be different,” Shae grinned. “You’re you. That’s fine. You shouldn’t be making decisions for others, at least other adults, based on what your reaction would be, just like those others shouldn’t be making decisions for you. The girls, well, their comfort point isn’t quite at the same place yours is. They’re not going to be out running down Main Street in the nude, because they realize that it isn’t appropriate. But they know that in a locker room or in private, in a pool, or a hot tub with friends can also be an appropriate place for it, so long as everyone’s agreeable. I don’t think they’re going to push anyone, so long as no one pushes back.”

“I suppose that’s all right, I guess,” Mary replied uncertainly. “It’s just, well, it’s hard to comprehend. I mean, it just doesn’t seem right.”

“Too many people mix nudity up with sex,” Shae pointed out. “It’s perfectly understandable, even though there is a difference. You may not be aware of it, but the girls at least realize that one doesn’t automatically mean the other. That’s a hard lesson for some people to learn, but at least they’ve learned it. I think they’ve learned another important lesson for girls their age, and that’s sex doesn’t have to be mixed up with their self-identity. That’s true for all too many girls their age. Emily and I saw enough of it in school, and I’m sure you must have, Mary.”

“That is one of the things I’ve really been concerned about,” Mary sighed, “that Rachel would be so comfortable being nude that she’d wind up, becoming, well, a stripper, or even worse.”

“I think they have the two separated enough in their minds,” Shae replied, realizing that this wasn’t a good time to bring up the subject of their classmate Jennlynn Swift. Maybe someday, but not now. Emily understood that there was much more to her than met the eye, but it would take a long time to educate Mary. “Even for a stripper, there’s an appropriate time and place to go naked. Whether she should be doing it is another story.”

Emily spoke up. “I always have to remember that Kayla isn’t a carbon copy of me. She’s already her own person and will become more so. I’m all right with that. Like Shae said, it’s OK to be different, and it’s as true there as it is anywhere else.”

“Maybe so,” Mary shook her head. “But what does that mean for the future?”

“Who knows?” Shae replied. “If they can keep their little hobby private, or at least known only among family and tolerant friends, it may not matter too much, at least until they turn eighteen. They’re not going to be begging to go to a nude beach every weekend, because they can’t, and they know it. Where we went is the closest one to here, in this country anyway, and it’s six hundred miles away. What’s more, they won’t have the option of going there with me, since I won’t have my apartment there anymore. After they turn eighteen, who knows? The whole interest may have blown through by then, or it may not have. There’s no way of telling. At least now, they have a taste of the reality of it, which they didn’t have before.”

“Well, there is that,” Mary said, a little more brightly. “I’d hoped that they would see some of the reality of the situation and they did. It just came out differently than I thought. I just hope they don’t get too carried away with it.”

“I can’t say,” Shae said. “But I can tell you that we don’t know what’s going to happen, and we don’t know what will influence them, and that can keep life interesting. Mary, did you know it’s legal for a woman to be top-free in Ohio?”

“No, I didn’t. Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, and the girls know it too. It’s not well-known, and you rarely see women taking advantage of it, but it’s the truth.”

“You spent a lot of time going through Ohio. Did they have their tops off as soon as you hit the state line?”

“No, of course not. The girls knew that legal or not, it wasn’t appropriate, which should tell you something. But do you know why it’s legal in Ohio? Because a woman once got arrested for indecent exposure while she was sunbathing topless or something, and rather than just knuckle under to the cops, she fought it in court and won.”

“I figured it must have been something like that.”

“I told that story to the girls, and they both said someone ought to do something like that in Michigan. I told them that was well and good, but that fighting something like that involved lawyers, and lawyers are expensive. The girls looked at each other for a second, and then Kayla said, ‘But what if we were the lawyers?’”

It was Emily’s turn to shake her head. “You don’t suppose they mean it, do you?”

“I don’t know, and it would be a long time before it could happen,” Shae laughed. “But I can tell you that they’re both interested in human rights issues, in protecting people’s rights to be different. So I wouldn’t put it past them, either one of them.”

“Shae, you don’t really think that could happen, do you?”

“Who knows? If they have the drive to push themselves to be the athletes they’re obviously capable of becoming, why shouldn’t they have the drive to push themselves through law school?”

As Emily and Mary pondered the significance of that statement and came to the conclusion that their daughters might go even more places that their parents had never been, the girls showed up, having finished their running at the cross-country track. They were hot and sweaty from their run, and while they’d cooled off and loosened up by jogging very slowly back to the house, the pool drew their attention right away. They all but ignored the three older women sitting by the pool as they ripped off all their clothes and jumped into the cool water.

“So how did it go today?” Emily asked.

“Pretty good,” Kayla said. “We cut our time again today.”

“You probably shouldn’t do a run that far again before the mini-marathon this weekend,” Rachel’s mother counseled. “Just a little light running to stay loose. While you want to be ready, you don’t want to wear yourselves out before it starts either.”

“Yeah, Mom, we figured that,” Rachel said, before ducking her head under water to take advantage of the coolness. She came back up, shook her head a little and added, “The water’s fine. Why don’t you come and join us?”

“I, well, I couldn’t,” Mary protested.

“Why not?” Rachel asked. “We’re all girls here. It doesn’t matter.”

“You know, that sounds good to me,” Shae said, getting to her feet and starting to peel her clothes off. “My back is hurting, so I could really stand being in the water. Do you want to join me, Emily?”

“Oh, what the heck,” Emily said. “Mary, would you mind? The pool has been looking pretty good. You don’t have to join us if you don’t want to.”

“The pool looks good, but I’m looking forward to the hot tub out at the new house later this fall,” Shae added as she stripped off more of her clothes – she was taking her time and being careful. “You are all invited to come out and use it some time, but I can tell you right now it’s going to be clothes-free.”

“Oh, what the heck,” Mary smiled as she stood up and started taking off her T-shirt. “After all, it’s all just us girls.”

“At least this time,” Emily grinned.

“Yes, this time,” Mary replied thoughtfully. “I guess next time is one of those bridges we’ll have to cross when we get to it.”

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