Naked in School
Freedom to be Free
Chapter 13 - A New Home
The principal’s letter to the new term’s students and their parents had arrived in mid-August. It consisted of a welcome letter to the new and returning students, materials about performance and sports schedules, team tryouts, class schedules, and a reminder that any student whose last physical exam was completed prior to the previous March, must provide a copy of a current exam. Nothing was mentioned about the Naked in School Program.
When the Ritter family had returned from their vacation, they were busy getting Michael all packed and ready to go off to college; he was going to be at Penn State and needed to be there on the Tuesday before Labor Day.
When high school began that same Tuesday, Drew and Connor were happy to see that no school-wide assembly had been scheduled. On the Monday following Labor Day, however, their home-room teacher had an announcement to make to the class.
“Class, during this school year, the Naked in School Program is still a required part of the curriculum. Students will be selected to participate beginning on Mondays and their names will be announced during the home-room period. The named students will go to the assistant principal’s office, where they will receive their instructions and then will disrobe. All of the Program participation rules will be the same as last year.”
Then she named two students as the current week’s participants, but both of them responded that they were claiming their religious exemption and refused to leave the classroom. The identical scene occurred in each classroom that morning; every student chosen as a Program participant gave the same response, with the result that no student agreed to participate that week. Or the following weeks too.
During the next several weeks, all Monday calls for participants went unheeded. Sylvia Overmeyer, the Program coordinator, traveled from one classroom to another, trying to get students to comply, but after several teachers, exasperated by her interruptions, told her to stay out of their classrooms, she began trying to track kids down at lunch. That’s when William Bennett decided to confront her. Will was a senior now and was one of the resistance group’s initial planning members.
“Mrs Overmeyer?” he said when he approached her as she was badgering a student in the lunchroom.
“What is it?” she responded.
“Are you aware that your harassment of the kids here violates that court injunction?”
“Just who are you? You can’t threaten a federal official like that; I’ll arrange to put you in the Program for the rest of the school year!”
William just laughed. “Really? First, the Program is defunct here. Second, you have no right to put me in it; I’m eighteen. I have an adult’s right to privacy. Next, if I see you bothering one more kid, I’m getting a cop in here and making a complaint against you and the school...”
“Local police have no authority over a federal official...” she started.
“Is that what you think? Maybe you better read the court injunction. You are aware that the injunction was upheld by a federal court, and therefore it’s a federal court’s order, aren’t you?”
Overmeyer glared at him, then she turned and stomped away as the kids around them cheered and applauded.
During September, Connor had learned that the fire-insurance lawsuit on his home had been finally settled and paid out, and that his father’s estate had received the insurance payment for the destroyed car. Also, Connor had turned sixteen years old and was able to apply for a Pennsylvania motorcycle driver’s license, effective immediately. Gelb’s legal office was able to get some of the usual delays and waiting period loosened for him so he didn’t have to take the instruction course and the waiting period was waived. It took a private meeting with a judge from the county Court of Common Pleas to obtain those waivers; the judge was sympathetic after hearing about Connor’s past. Connor also applied for a regular learner’s permit because he intended to eventually purchase a car.
Drew’s soccer team was enjoying a good season this term, and by mid-October, they had clinched a spot in the regionals. Drew’s play was an essential part of the team’s success. The team reached the state class-3A quarter-finals but then lost that game on a penalty-kick shootout.
Jennifer, Michael, and the twins had been in touch with their nudist resort friends over the fall; they were following the news from them about how those kids were doing as their schools adopted the Program. The stories were varied; not all of their high schools had begun running it for many reasons. In the couple of schools that did run it, Jennifer learned from those kids that they had taken Emma’s advice to heart. Their parents had warned the school officials that if anyone used force to strip their child, their parents would get the police involved. Thus the word had spread to all of the other kids in those schools that nobody would be forcibly stripped, but even so, still the Program had kids willing to participate in it.
In late January, Connor received troubling news. He received a phone call from Alphonse Garcia. Connor told Frantz about the call the following day.
“Frantz, one of my dad’s ... um, former associates, called me. He’s sort of watched out for my interests back in my home town and he’s a straight-shooter. Anyway, he found out that some malcontents from one of the gangs back there that my dad used to supply has decided to go looking for me—that’s what the police and prosecutor had told me could happen. Anyway, my contact told me that those guys found out about that last group home where I was living, and they tried to get the operator to tell them where I was living now. I heard that he had no idea where I had moved to, but they still shook him up a bit. You think that they could track me down to here?”
Eva had come into the room while Connor was speaking and had sat down across from them.
“Oh dear, Frantz,” she said. “Could they find out where Connor’s living?”
“Not sure, dear, but possibly this isn’t good,” Frantz exclaimed. “This could be a problem. I really don’t know how secure the social services people are back there about protecting kids’ information—we’ll need to talk to Wayne. But, ah, maybe this is a good time to tell the kids the change that’s likely to occur.”
“I think you’re right. Let me get Jennifer and Drew.”
She went to the stairs and Connor heard her call to them; they were in the basement apartment, where Connor and Drew slept when they stayed over. Then Eva called Timmy to come. When they had all gathered, Frantz looked at each of them.
“Let me start with a little preamble so you have some background,” he said. “You know that I’m a professor here at the medical school in Hershey and a doc at the Hershey hospital and the Penn State clinic. I’m board certified in pediatrics and adolescent medicine and in endocrinology...”
They all nodded.
“...and I’m the director of the Diabetes Center at the hospital; also I’m a clinical investigator doing patient-oriented research on pediatric type-2 diabetes. This summer, when we were at the nudist resort, I met a prof from the Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore. We started to talk shop and he mentioned that there’s a senior opening coming up in their med school at the end of the academic year; an associate dean is retiring, and their Division of Pediatric Endocrinology has begun to search for a senior faculty member to fill a named chair in diabetes research and patient care. They’d like one person to fill both slots if they find the right candidate.
“I was curious about the position or positions so he made a few phone calls. They’ve been searching since last May but hadn’t yet contacted some of the few prospects they’ve identified as their preferred candidates. To my surprise, I learned that I was one of them, Apparently I had been identified by their search committee for possible recruitment. Then, two weeks ago, that trip I took? They had me come out for a visit and interviews and it looks like they’ll make me an offer. It was so quick... they must have fast-tracked this recruitment. It seems that I have the exact qualifications and experience they were looking for—my diabetes research background together with my clinical work in both the hospital here and the satellite clinic was an added plus.”
“So we’d be moving then?” Jennifer asked.
“Looks very much like it,” Frantz told her. “If we do, it’ll be the end of the school year.”
“But I’ll miss my friends,” Timmy moaned.
“If we do move,” Eva told him, “you’ll be in a new middle school where you’d make many new friends anyway.”
“Will we live near other kids?” he asked. “There’s nobody nearby here to play with.”
“That’s something to check out, isn’t it, sport?” Frantz asked. “Jennifer? How do you feel about moving?”
“Um, well... most of my friends are seniors and they’ll be graduating this spring and will go away to college ... hey, if we do move, that means that we could live really close to our resort? It’s right near Baltimore. Could we? The resort has events going on all year ‘round and I have lots of friends there too and I’ll get to see them all the time, right? And our friends from here go there every summer too and...”
“Jennifer, cool your jets, okay?” Frantz laughed, interrupting her. “So I take it that moving away wouldn’t break your heart.”
“Well, I’d kinda miss being a senior and top of the heap here, but since Stacy’s family moved away last fall, going to school isn’t as much fun now. I miss her. But there’s a bunch of girls from the resort who I hang with when we’re there and I like them, they go to Baltimore-area high schools. So maybe we can live nearby?”
Frantz laughed again. “We can check it out. Remember, they haven’t made me an offer yet. But I brought this up, Connor, because this could solve the problem you mentioned.”
“Yeah, I guess so; moving again would make it extremely hard to find me. What’ll be strange is that we’d be seniors in the new school ... and... hey, Drew? You’d need to change soccer teams again...”
“Somehow I don’t think that Drew would have a difficult time getting on a school team,” Frantz chuckled. “First team All-State honors; named as one of the top-three defensive players in the Eastern Region two seasons running, and two prep-school scouting/rating websites named her as one of the top defensive players in the state.”
Drew smiled. “Yeah, I’ve been scouted. Several college recruiters have already spoken to me; they’ve been watching my games. Division 1 schools too, so they have scholarships to offer. If we move, I’d like to get in a school with a competitive team.”
Frantz rubbed his face. “Oh boy. Lots of factors in play. We’ll see; one step at a time.”
The middle of the spring term in their high school was uneventful. The federal pressure on the school from the OSA about the lack of student participation was virtually gone, since Overmeyer had been recalled and reassigned to a school in Philadelphia over the winter holiday break. The high school was still naming students to participate by posting their names on a bulletin board outside the office each Monday. That list was completely ignored by everyone and the named students simply went blithely on with their day. The school officials’ threats about failure to graduate never materialized; at the end of the previous spring term, all the seniors had been allowed to graduate—and were allowed to attend the commencement ceremony too, including those who had claimed a religious exemption.
Frantz did receive the offer from Hopkins and it combined the administrative dean’s position and the named professorship. It was an amazing opportunity and much too good for him to turn down, so during the school’s spring break, the Ritter family, together with Drew and Connor, traveled to Baltimore to look for a home. Frantz had gotten in touch with a recommended realtor there and had given her their minimum requirements. The parents had spoken to Drew and Connor about their lodging situation; clearly their living apart from the Ritters wasn’t feasible now. The agent found several five-bedroom homes in the areas where Frantz had specified, and three of them had separate in-law apartments. She sent the listings to Frantz before their trip.
Jennifer had contacted her resort friends too; she had sent texts to them to ask them where they lived and which school they attended, while Drew looked at the websites of the high schools in the areas where those houses were located to try to get information about their soccer teams. She didn’t want to ask the Ritters to pay the approximate $1,200 annual cost for her to join a Premier League club.
After several days of touring the available real estate, the Ritter parents had narrowed the choices down to three homes. All were located in Anne Arundel County, a southern suburb of Baltimore; they were reasonably close to the medical school; and each home had a separate apartment suitable for Drew and Connor. When Connor offered to pay rent, Frantz firmly refused.
What delighted Jennifer was that two of the homes were within fifteen miles of the nudist resort. Drew laughed when Jennifer mentioned that tidbit of information.
“You really do love nudism, don’t you?” she asked and Jennifer nodded enthusiastically.
“Sure, I really do,” she replied. “If we live close, we can go lots more often. Look. Mom and Dad are talking with Mrs Howland about some details about the areas and the schools. Let’s see what they found.”
Frantz and Eva were looking at an area map with the agent, Susan Howland, who was giving her own analysis of the relative merits of the areas around the three homes.
“This first home, the high school isn’t the best of the three, and the local street traffic might be higher—that might not be good for Timmy, and the middle school is a distance away. Oh, here’s Drew. Drew, did you find out about the soccer teams in these areas?”
“I did. None of the three high schools have a great team right now, but kids come and go, so when I was back home, I had emailed some of the schools’ athletic directors and told them that I would be moving into the area and was a good soccer player. Could they tell me about their coaches’ backgrounds, like career team records and if they themselves played. I told them that, if possible, I wanted to be on a team where I would get good exposure to college scouts. So I got the three responses. They were okay but one was very good. That coach played in a professional league but had to stop because of an injury. She has a lot of D1 college contacts and a number of kids that she’s coached get scholarship offers. She’s the coach at Glen Burnie High—and that house is the one we all liked best too.”
Howland nodded, “That school is one of the better ones in the county, it’s in the top ten, and the middle school is located nearby as well.”
Jennifer was hopping with excitement now. “Oh, that’s the school where Sherrill and Wilma Robbins go!”
“You know people from here? Are they sisters?” Howland asked.
“Cousins. They’re gonna be seniors in the fall like me.”
“Ah, Frantz and I know those families too,” Eva said. “We’ve met both Robbins families socially when we’ve been here on our summer vacations; we like them too,” Eva told her. “I think that we’ve decided, Susan. Let’s get things moving so we can make our offer.”
Later that day, Eva asked Jennifer, “How is it that the house we picked is the one near where your friends live?”
“I’ve got, ah, eleven really good friends from the resort who live all around Baltimore, Mom. The Robbins girls are just two of them.”
While Howland went off to negotiate the purchase with the selling agent, Eva decided to contact both of the Robbins families to tell them that they were moving to the Baltimore area. When Eva reached Delia Robbins and told her, she was in her car and had her phone connected to the car’s audio. Their daughter Wilma was with her and her squeal was ear-splitting when she heard Eva’s news; this was followed by a rush of exclamations and questions.
Eva laughed, “Goodness, Wilma, I can see why you and Jennifer get on so well. You both have enough enthusiasm to power the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders! Yes, Frantz has been offered a position at the Hopkins Medical School and our agent is negotiating a house purchase. Block your ears now, Dalia. The house is in Glen Bur...”
She was drowned out by Wilma’s squeal again.
“Wow, wow! Jen’s going to be in Glen Burnie?” Wilma shouted.
Eva had turned on her own phone’s speaker, so Jennifer heard this.
“Hi, Wilma, it’s Jen. Yeah, looks like I’ll be a classmate.”
The two celebrated.
“Eva, let me call Brenda and tell her, okay? Say, are you open this evening? Come over for dinner and I’ll see if Brenda and Frank can come with their kids.”
Eva called out to Frantz to ask him and he agreed, so they arranged it.
That evening, the Ritter group went to the home of Jay and Delia Robbins. The other Robbins family was there; the Ritters knew both families and, in fact, they all quite liked each other. Jay was a partner in a local law firm and his brother Frank was an architect. His wife Brenda owned an interior-design service and Delia was a supervising social worker. So the only introductions needed were for Connor and Drew. When the two of them walked into the Robbins’ house, Wilma and her cousin Sherrill were standing off to the side. When they saw the two teens, their eyes grew large and their jaws dropped.
“Ohmygod!” Wilma exclaimed. “It’s Conan and Xena!”
“Um, no, name’s Connor, not Conan,” Connor laughed.
“Thanks for the compliment,” Drew chuckled. “I’m not in Xena’s league, can’t you see?” She put her hands on her chest. “Name’s Drew.”
Sherrill’s tongue was finally loosened and she spoke.
“No, Wilma’s right. Look at you both. Jen’s told us that her parents became guardians of two teens but she never described you...”
The adults were looking on at the byplay, amused.
“Nice to meet you, Connor, Drew,” Jay said, shaking hands first with Connor. “Let’s get the introductions done; come meet our combined family.”
As he shook Drew’s hand, he pointed his chin at Sherrill and winked at Drew. “Clearly you’ve impressed my daughter and niece,” he laughed.
They went around greeting everyone. Wilma had an older brother, who was away at college, and a younger sister, Tracy, who was almost thirteen and in middle school, while Sherrill had twin siblings, Jessica and Robert, who would be twelve in two weeks.
“I do get Wilma’s Conan reference, also the Xena one,” Brenda said, looking at the teens appraisingly. “You two are amazing physical specimens. Connor, you’re what? Six-three?”
He nodded. “Yep. And no, I don’t play football,” he smiled.
“You have a very similar build to a teen we know... oh, you must know him too, Randy Clawson...”
“Oh sure. He’s in my school. Yeah, I guess I can see that. He’s a couple inches taller and maybe fifteen-twenty pounds heavier, but we’re built just about the same.”
“And you, Drew, Eva told us that you’re a soccer star,” Brenda continued. “You must be five-ten or eleven and your clothes don’t hide how muscular you are. You could be a model for an Amazon princess, actually,” she laughed.
“Not a soccer star, but I’m working on that,” Drew chuckled. “I hope to play on the team here.”
“I’m sure that they’d want you,” Frank said. “Say kids, do you want to bring your friends with you to school tomorrow? It’s a short day, right? You can introduce Drew to the coaches.” He spoke to the Ritters. “Our spring break doesn’t exactly coincide with yours; ours starts Monday, and there’s a half day tomorrow.”
“Visiting the school’s a great idea,” Connor said. “Jen too? We can meet some of our new classmates to be.”
They agreed, and Wilma made plans to pick them up from their hotel to drive them to the school. Then she announced to the others, “While you adults talk about boring stuff, Sherrill and I want to talk to Jen and get to know Drew and Connor.”
“You can see who really runs this family,” Jay joked as the kids left the room.
All the kids went off to the den while the others remained in the living room, catching up on Ritter and Robbins family news.
When the kids were alone, Sherrill asked Connor quietly, “I gotta know—are you as cut as Randy? He’s got a body like one of those Greek sculptures.”
Connor laughed. “And you’ve obviously seen him in the all-together. Yeah, I guess I have good muscle definition like he does. I don’t compete, but I swim and do weights. Oh, and run with Drew too. She got me into that but I don’t have her stamina. You know, in a typical game, she runs over six miles and a lot of that is sprinting and changing directions.”
“Oh, hey, just thought of this,” Jennifer broke in. “Will we see any naked kids at school tomorrow?”
“Oh, you gonna start talking about that naked school crap again?” Tracy moaned. “Jess, Rob, let’s go to my room and play video games. When the high school kids get together, all they want to talk about that stupid Program, like last summer at the resort. Program talk, all the stupid time! Want to go with us, Timmy? We can play in teams.”
“Oh sure, Tracy! Cool! What games do you have?”
“Minecraft, Fallout, Super Mario... a whole bunch...”
They went off as Wilma laughed at them. “Okay, what happened with the Program in the schools here is pretty crazy; that’s right, maybe you two didn’t hear. Drew, Connor, did Jen tell you about the bull session we teens had at the resort last summer? With a kid named Emma?”
“Sure. Awesome story. She sounds like quite an operator,” Connor said.
“Frikkin’ way more than that,” Wilma retorted. “We heard that she won the Physics Nobel Prize last fall. At frikkin’ fourteen years old! It was a discovery she had made in Alaska while thinking of ways to keep warm. So funny.”
The others were staring at her, amazed and speechless.
“Yeah, I had the same reaction. It’s tough to make me speechless, but that news did.”
The others laughed.
“Okay, I’ll tell you more about Emma afterwards. So, the Program. I mentioned Emma ‘cause she’s lots like you two as far as family goes. She’s an orphan and lives with a family that she met in a very complicated way, it was about something like grandparents knowing each other. And then I guess she declared that those family members were her honorary cousins. The boy in the family, Andrew, has two younger sisters and they’re all lit kids; and Emma and Andrew are tight too. But his sister Sam, she started high school last fall, they put her in the Program the first week ‘cause she was going around their school telling everyone that they didn’t have to do it. She had been telling lots of kids in the school that if they refused, they couldn’t be forced. That was exactly what Emma had told all of us kids at the resort to do. To just refuse, periodt. So Sam refused and got most of the other kids who got picked to join her in refusing that first day, and most kept it up for the rest of the week. Now she’s been writing a blog every single week, telling kids how to avoid participating. And lots of kids in her school do refuse now.”
Wilma was just charging ahead with her stream-of-consciousness description as the others tried hard to keep up with her words.
“The Program started up in most of the other schools in the area, but I hear from many of my resort friends that lots of kids have been refusing, but lots do wind up having to do it. Now, in our school, something really different happened. See, one of the kids at school, her grandfather is a judge on the state Appellate Court in Annapolis and knows a judge on the U.S. District Court in Baltimore. The grandfather got several families, friends of his granddaughter, together to request an injunction against the school district, naming our school in particular. He got the request heard by that federal judge, since it was against the federal Program requirements, and the federal district judge gave a temporary restraining order against the school, stopping them from starting the Program unless the school or government provided funding for us kids’ security, including video surveillance of the entire school and guard personnel to be stationed where student privacy is required. This totally got the school tied up so far and kept them from starting the Program here, but the word last week is that the hearing on getting a permanent injunction is to be in June and that the request for the injunction will very likely be overturned. But that granddaughter will graduate in June, so the grandfather got what he wanted for her.”
“Huh, that’s quite a tale, if I followed it all,” Drew told her. “You know, the churches in our area used a religious-freedom injunction to allow exemptions for kids who claim that the Program violates their rights for personal modesty, as the Bible requires. Our area is crawling with extremely conservative churches, not like here, so I don’t think that very many kids could use that exemption here.”
“Um, I guess you’re right,” Sherrill said. “People here are very diverse and religion isn’t that big of a deal in general community life. Well, that’s why we haven’t had the Program in our school yet, but we expect that it’ll start this fall, unless Emma comes up with another brilliant idea.”
“She go to your resort a lot?” Drew asked.
“She came first time last summer. She had moved to Maryland from Alaska just before the summer,” Sherrill answered. “But Andrew’s family, they came the summer before that. They’re British and been going to nudist places in Europe for years before they came here, Andrew told us.”
“Hey guys, you said a brilliant idea?” Drew broke in. “Emma may have already had one, um, actually it was Andrew’s idea, according to Jen.”
The others looked at her.
“Sure, Jen told me that Andrew was telling your group about Emma’s first nudist experiences. I remembered this ‘cause Jen told me that Emma was like me—the idea of the Program turned her off about being naked in public. Jen told me that he asked you guys if you thought that kids would accept being in the Program if it simply allowed them to be nude voluntarily and not require all that sex shit. Jen said that everyone liked the idea, but they wondered how it would work, or even could work.
“Maybe there’s a way it could be made to work. Connor got this great idea the very first day we saw the Program running in our first high school. He said that kids could protect each other by banding together—he had the idea to give the naked kid an innocuous Reasonable Request and that protects them from being forced to do a nasty one. So extending that idea, if kids could be naked in a bunch together; they wouldn’t become lone targets of opportunity for abuse and could mutually support each other. Jen is constantly telling me—yeah, Jen, you do slip nudism into our chats all the time—she tells me that what happens at your resort; it’s respect and acceptance for everyone, is basically what the Program seems to want to teach kids. Except that the perverts in power added the sex shit and humiliation on top of that, which of course are its biggest cringe factors. So get lots of kids to agree to go naked and that takes all of the terror out of having to be naked in the school. ‘Cause lots of kids are too. Right?”
“Jeez, Drew, that’s a really awesome way to make that idea work,” Wilma said. “Hey, maybe we can do something with that idea at our school. If we can come up with a plan before school starts and, um, then we could have the students take the Program over and then we’d run it how we wanted!”
“But how would you convince kids to get naked if there’s no one forcing them, Drew?” Connor asked.
Drew shrugged. “I guess that would need a lot of planning and ... um ... a core group who are willing to get naked? To show that it’s fun, not humiliating, no one’s a target for groping or abuse. It could also skip any class demos which are certainly totally unnecessary. Am I right?” she asked.
“Say... maybe there’s an idea there,” Sherrill mused. “Wilma, you know how some of our non-nudist friends are so curious about what we do at the resort?”
“Sure, when we get back from vacation, they all want detailed reports,” Wilma nodded. “You think that we could convert them to... um,” she giggled, “to the dark side?”
Wilma and Sherrill looked at Connor and Drew speculatively.
Drew grinned and shook her head. “Hey, I might have gotten the idea, but don’t include me—us.” She pointed to Connor.
“Yeah, Drew,” Sherrill said, looking at her with curiosity. “How come you guys don’t come to the resort with Jen and Mike? Oh, that’s right; Jen told us that you play in a summer soccer league, is that why?”
“Uh huh, basically. The league runs from mid-June to mid-August. Then it’s time for the high school team practices. Also, Connor’s got his summer job. But I don’t know if Jen told you anything about my personal view of public nudity. I think it’s fine if you want to do it, Program crap excepted, but it’s not for me. That’s how my moral sense feels, anyway.”
“Oh... jeez, too bad,” Wilma shrugged. “But if you get picked for the Program next year...?”
“Got that covered. I have a statement in my school file claiming a religious Program exemption.”
“But that was in Pennsylvania. What if they don’t accept it here?”
“Ah, they have to. A fed appeals court ruled on those exemptions. I have the decision bookmarked; let me check on my phone... Here we go. They based the decision on a 1972 Supreme Court case, Wisconsin versus Yoder. It was about a Wisconsin compulsory school attendance law that required school attendance through the twelfth grade. But Amish parents refused to obey; they said that the law conflicted with their religious beliefs. And the Court agreed, saying that law violated their First Amendment rights to freely exercise their religion. On the Pennsylvania Program injunction decision, the appeals court based their finding mostly on the Yoder case and they held that a personal, deeply held religious belief in modesty must be allowed as an exemption from being forced to be in the Program.”
“But you won’t be living in that community next fall,” Sherrill objected.
“No, but when I move, I won’t be leaving my personal beliefs behind,” Drew told her. “They’re part of me and not connected to any church back there.”
“Damn, I guess that’s true,” Sherrill conceded. “Say, I have another...”
Just then, Brenda called that dinner was ready and everyone should come. The conversation stopped at that point and the teens trooped into the dining room. They all enjoyed the dinner and the Ritter “extended” family appreciated learning interesting details about their new community.
“And tomorrow, you’ll learn about the high school,” Frank told the two teens later as the family prepared to leave. “Wilma will pick you up, when, Wilma?”
“Starts at 8:30 so from the hotel, um, to be safe, I’ll come at 8:00. It’s ten minutes away and five to ten minutes to park, max. Then fifteen in the office to get guest permissions.”
Back at the hotel, Jennifer wanted to talk to Drew about their conversation with Wilma and Sherrill.
“I saw them making you a little uncomfortable, Drew. They’re really pro-nudism... um, guess I am too, right?”
Drew nodded, smiling. “Actually that discussion didn’t bother me. Too much. You got me used to your talking about the activities you do at your resort. I know that every time you used to mention nudism, I would change the subject. I guess that I’m just so touchy about it, you know? I’ve tried to think of why I feel that way and I have some ideas. Of course the biggest reason is that assault and I still get a feeling of terror and foreboding when I recall it. I get that terror when something reminds me of that time and seeing the Program nudity reminded me big time about it. And the abuses of the kids I saw made it all worse too. And then there’s my religious feelings about public nudity, like about what it says in the Bible, Oh, I know, much of that stuff is allegory, where nudity is the imagery for humiliation and degradation. But I think that the attack I had bolsters the feeling that being naked in public is wrong, and that wrongness was reinforced by seeing those naked kids getting abused and attacked, even injured, just because they were naked and only because they were naked.”
Drew emphasized those last phrases.
“Damn, Drew, I can see that, sure,” Jennifer told her. “It’s a real shame that you didn’t get counseling after that happened.”
“Uh huh, the woman police detective who spoke to me afterwards had strongly recommended it back then, but my father insisted that I had tempted that attack and that I didn’t need someone to tell me any different.”
“Shit, I just don’t understand how someone can be so callous and unsympathetic. Even if he didn’t love you as his child, having sympathy is just human nature.”
“Maybe that proves that the man simply isn’t human?” Drew shrugged.
“You poor girl,” Jennifer said and hugged her. “Anyway, what do you think of my friends?”
“Hey, I like them. They seem to be really confident and mature. If their friends are like them, we’ll be very happy at their high school. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s visit.”
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