Her Scholastic Pt. 01

Author's note: This is my first series which I hope to update intermittently. It is light on sex and falls more into the more niche category of "naked fiction" than that of steamy erotica. I hope you find the setting and story interesting!

Part 1: Her Longtime Friend

Emily Brooke Carper needed to get out of the house. For what felt like a whole minute, she'd tiptoed her way down the stairs, hardly breathing for fear of making a sound, only to realize she'd left that stupid backpack in her room. Voicelessly, she mouthed the word "shit," swiveled on the ball of her right foot, and raced up the stairs. Or rather, she raced up them for two steps before remembering she was trying to be silent. She mouthed another word, "fuck," sneaked up to her bedroom, and snatched the bag off the floor. As she examined its contents for the dozenth time that day, a flash of heat shot through her. Emily paused. This room had been hers as long as she could remember. That was her bed. Those were her well-loved stuffed animals. And yet somehow she felt it all belonged to someone else. Before she started her second descent, she reached a hand into her T-shirt and undid the hook. She left her bra on the foot of the bed.

Emily didn't have much experience sneaking out of the house, but tonight she didn't have much of a choice. Sure, she'd picked the date and the time--midnight on the last Wednesday in July, sure to be quiet--and it was her idea in the first place, but it was something she knew she had to do in order to go forward with the madness she'd committed to, now just around the corner. She had to do it at night, and she had to do it in secret. But she wasn't doing it alone.

Her phone chimed, and not quietly. Emily winced. It was a text message. It said, "I'm here."

"One sec," she replied, "Currently sneaking out with the stealth of an African elephant." She managed to silence her phone before receiving "😂😂😂" about half a second later.

Emily reached the bottom of the stairs, now with a backpack over her shoulder. She was mere steps from the front door when all the lights turned on. She shuddered. Fortunately, no one else was in the room. If she'd done this sort of thing more often, she probably would have thought to switch off the motion-detector lights earlier in the evening. She imagined blinding bright light pouring into the master bedroom under the crack at the bottom of the door and hoped that, somehow, her parents were still asleep.

She crept through the doorway and bolted down the street to the old white Mazda waiting for her at the corner, out of sight from the house, as she'd requested. As she ran, breathing more heavily now, she couldn't help but laugh at herself. For Emily, just leaving the house felt like a perilous adventure, and yet, in an uncharacteristic act of boldness on an otherwise unremarkable Friday afternoon in April, she had dared to enroll to attend college at Hillthorpe School. She thought she must have lost it. But really, Emily Brooke Carper was well on her way.

She leapt into minivan. Inside it was Jason Hurley, her closest male friend going back to middle school. He grinned. "Glad to see you made it out of Shawshank," he said.

"Where's Alana?"

"She chickened last minute. Is it still alright if it's just us?"

"Yeah, that's okay," she replied. She'd hoped to have a female companion on this adventure, but if she didn't do it now, she wasn't sure she'd ever work up the nerve again. "Let's go," she said. And they were off.

"Did you bring a towel?" she asked.

"Yep, you?"

"It's in the backpack. Flashlight?"

"I keep one in the car."

"Did you check the batteries?"

"I switched them out this morning. We'll be just fine, Em."

"Bug spray?"

"Didn't think of that."

"I think I have enough for both of us."

"We're all set then!" Jason declared, turning off the main road and onto the wooded parkway. "I think we'll have a lot of fun. You're sure you still want to do this, even without Alana?"

"Well, I think I've got to try it."

"Emily, if you don't want to do it, neither do I."

"No, I really want to do it." She giggled. "It's just a bit daring for me."

"You have gotten more daring this year."

"Yeah, I might be going crazy."

Jason laughed heartily. "No comment."

Emily smiled. "We'll have fun."

"Yep, we'll have fun."

Jason parked the Mazda on the side of the parkway. In an uncharacteristically gentlemanly gesture, he walked around the front and opened the passenger door. Emily had thought her nerves were settling, but the moment she moved to step out of the car, the butterflies in her stomach started doing backflips.

"Right up this way," said Jason, beelining directly to the trail head. Emily turned on her flashlight and followed, applying bug spray as she walked, and passing the can to Jason. The hike was just over ten minutes, and they hardly said a word to each other. At one point, Jason stepped over a fallen tree and said, "Watch out for this log," even though Emily could obviously see it. She followed him silently, breathing slowly and intentionally, listening to the whisper of running water gradually crescendo into a roar. And by the time she saw the waterfall in the beam of Jason's flashlight, Emily felt the calmest she'd felt all evening. Here in the clearing by the water, it was finally too late to fret over whether it was too risky or to worry about whether this could damage a long-lasting platonic friendship between a straight young man and a straight young woman, and their current task was too present and real for her to agonize over her decision to attend Hillthorpe. No, what they were about to do had finally been reduced to a few simple physical motions. Get in, swim around a bit, laugh, get out. The only barriers that remained were simple and physical: a T-shirt, a pair of running shorts, and panties. But then Jason spoke, and her momentary sense of peace was broken by the uninvited thought I wish Alana were here.

He said, "So I guess we can face back-to-back and then turn around when we're both done."

"Okay," she replied, and turned her back. She started to grab the bottom of her shirt and glanced over her shoulder to check that Jason had turned around. He had, and he was already pulling his shirt off his head. She felt guilty for peeking. She took a deep breath, and her shaky exhalation caught her a little off guard. She thought it was kinda ridiculous that she felt this anxious about getting undressed with a friend. Sure, she wasn't the most adventurous girl in the world, but she'd never thought of herself as being unusually modest. And she'd hung out nearly-nude with Alana at home earlier this summer, and hadn't felt terribly uncomfortable about it, even though it was definitely weird. Going skinny dipping is normal, harmless teenage behavior, she told herself. This really shouldn't be such a big deal.

"Alright, I'm ready," said Jason seriously. Emily was still fully clothed.

"One minute. Don't turn around yet." Quickly, Emily pulled off her shirt, and the soft breeze reminded her that she'd left her bra in her room. She kicked off her shoes. She hadn't worn socks. When she looked down to pull off her shorts, she saw that her hands were trembling a bit. She also saw her breasts, exposed to the open air.

"Are you ready now?"

"Almost." She felt "ready" was silly euphemism. The correct term was "naked." She took in another deep breath, and let out an involuntary and unexpected nervous sigh. Then she dropped her shorts and panties to the ground in one smooth motion and said, "Okay, I'm ready now."

"On three," said Jason. Now it was really too late to fret. "One. Two. Three." And finally, wearing only forced smiles, they turned around, flashlights in hand. They were naked.

When they saw each other, they both giggled like they were kids again. She resisted the urge to cross her arms in front of herself. She glanced at his flaccid penis and then averted her gaze. "Oh my God it's so..."

"Tiny?" Jason interrupted, smiling broadly. "It's not the size, Em. It's what you do with it."

"Oh yeah? And what exactly do you do with it?" she replied with a joking skeptical expression.

"Usually something like this," said Jason, helicoptering as best he could with what he had.

Emily yelped with embarrassment and covered her eyes with her hands. She peeked between her fingers to make sure he'd stopped swinging his penis around before she removed her hands and forced them to her sides. Feeling the side of her own leg reminded her of everything she was letting him see, and her heart jumped in her chest.

"Also, I don't know if you're aware of this, but my dick actually grows from time to time," said Jason, as if he were explaining gravity to a toddler. "Can you say the same about your..." he said, laughing and gesturing to his chest.

She said, "Hey!" and then felt even more naked. She crossed her arms in front of herself. She liked her breasts, but it was embarrassing for them to be out, for Jason to joke about their size so casually, like it was nothing. She realized that he must be appraising every part of her body. It was only natural that he would.

"I'm just kidding!" he said, "Your boobs are nice! To be fair, you said my dick was small."

"You said it was small. I was going to say it was so white."

"Also true! Race you to the falls!" He shouted suddenly, running past her toward the waterfall, granting Emily her first glimpse of his flat, pale rear. She followed. There's no way skinny dipping is supposed to start with awkwardly standing around for a minute looking each other over, she thought, and without the influences of alcohol or sexual tension. She dipped into the deep part of the frigid creek. "I win!" said Jason, standing under the falling water.

"You must be freezing."

"I'll admit it's chilly. How do you feel?"

"Naked."

"Well I guess that makes sense. Hopefully you start to get used to it."

"How do you feel?"

"It's cool! It's an interesting experience. It's weird for me too, but not bad." Jason swam around a little, but the part of the creek that was deep enough to swim in wasn't very big. They both went quiet for a little bit. I wish Alana were here, Emily thought for the second time. She and Jason had known each other since the sixth grade and had been friends since the eighth, but here, naked in the middle of the night, she couldn't think of anything for them to talk about.

"I'm gonna climb it," Jason said suddenly, pulling himself out of the water and starting to scale the small rocky waterfall. Emily cringed up-close view of his bare butt from below. "I gotta say I don't think I could do what you're gonna do," said Jason, fully exposed. "Like, this is fine, but I don't think I could do it every day."

"Why not? You seem comfortable," she said without much confidence. He reached the top of the waterfall and sat on a rock, legs spread. He certainly hadn't made any effort at modesty, but he seemed maybe a bit more boyish--or a bit more uncertain--than his usual self. She was too distracted by her own state of mind to fully grasp his.

"Yeah but we know each other well, and it's just a fun thing we'll do once. It's not part of my actual life. You and everybody at Hillthorpe are going to be butt naked every day in every class for the next four years. I dunno."

Emily glanced down at herself. She tried to imagine that body, as it looked right now, sitting at a desk in a literature class, or giving a presentation in front of that class. She'd been trying to imagine exactly that scene for months now, but she couldn't make it feel entirely real to herself. Nudity is the simplest thing in the world, but it somehow felt impossible, too. Looking back up, she followed Jason to the top of the falls and sat cross-legged in the water with her hands in her lap. "I think it's going to be fine," she said, unsure whether she believed it. "And the term is 'buck naked,' not 'butt.'"

"'Butt' makes more sense. Either way, by the end, you'll be an even more interesting girl than you already are. I think you'll enjoy it. But it's definitely not for me."

"And if I don't like it, I'll transfer!" she said, mostly to herself. She placed her flashlight on a rock. With an effort, she lay back into the water, stretching her arms out past her head. She felt Jason's eyes sweep across her. "I finished reading The Scholar, and she has a good perspective on it. Like, right now, this is just plain nudity--It doesn't mean anything--but at the school the nudity is only one part of a whole philosophy. It's an important part, but, like, it only gets two chapters in the book. It's not about being naked. And so, I think it'll actually be less awkward because everyone undresses understanding what it means." She couldn't tell if those were her thoughts, or if she was just regurgitating sentiments from Linda Vaughn's controversial book as her own. Would everybody there understand what it "means?" Do student's enroll because they're genuinely interested in Vaughn's vision for higher education? Is that why she'd enrolled? She wasn't sure it was. No, she couldn't have done something this extreme merely out of some academic curiosity about the heterodox pedagogy of two eccentric academics.

"If you say so," Jason said, but Emily wasn't listening. She closed her eyes, and stretched out her arms. She uncrossed her legs and spread them, pointing her toes straight out. Her face was barely sticking out of the stream, and all she could hear was running water. For a moment, the thought of what Jason was seeing entered her mind uninvited, but she cast it out. She focused on the sound of the water. She focused on breathing deeply with her diaphragm. She paid attention to the sensation of the cold water rushing over every part of her: between her fingers, on her shoulders, along her sides, at her waist, over her feet; all of it touching her for an instant and then passing her by while she stayed in place. And for some reason, for just that minute, she felt better about Hillthorpe than she had all summer.

And just as quickly as that moment of serenity had appeared, it vanished. She was sober, cold, outside, stretched out fully naked with a guy whom she wasn't into and who wasn't really into her. Why? To get practice being naked? It's easy to get naked, she thought, The hard part is holding onto your self-respect. She felt like she was annihilating the proper boundaries of a friendship in a silly attempt to make sense of what was coming for her, almost forgetting Jason was even present. This wasn't a bonding experience; it was only about her dealing with her own feelings, and Jason was just there, looking at her. It was all vulnerability with no intimacy. She sat back up and grabbed her flashlight. "Alright, we did it. Let's hike back."

"So soon?"

"Yeah, no point waiting around to get caught."

"Uh, okay. How are you feeling?"

"Fine," Emily said, climbing down the rocks. As she walked back toward the trail, she tried not to shudder at the thought at Jason watching her butt.

"Nice ass!" Jason said in an inflected, goofy tone, right on cue. The timing was so perfect and the delivery was so silly that Emily actually chuckled, despite the wave of embarrassment that was threatening to drown her. And then her heart sank.

She'd looked down. "Where the fuck are my clothes?" She scanned the ground in front of her. Without the need for conscious thought, she raised an arm over her chest and put a hand over her crotch. "Did you do something with my clothes?" Her eyes shot at him, and he grinned. "That's not funny. Where are they?" She imagined having to hike back to the car without anything to wear and running into someone on the trail.

"They're right where we left them, down there." He shined his flashlight on their clothes, twenty feet farther away from the waterfall than she had remembered.

"Oh, thanks." Thanks? she thought to herself. That makes no sense. "I mean, sorry."

"All good." Jason politely looked away while she threw her clothes back on. She immediately felt a huge relief, and then a bit amused at herself for getting freaked out so suddenly.

"Sorry. I just needed to get dressed right then."

"I could tell! Are you alright?"

"Yeah. I'm glad we tried this. Better to panic a little in front of you than than to panic in front of the whole school." Jason put his clothes under his arm. "Are you not gonna get dressed?"

"I thought it might be fun to do it at the car."

It was a bold idea, but she was done for the night. "Please cover your dick, dude."

"This one?" He repeated his helicopter move, and she looked away, laughing awkwardly.

"I mean it! Get dressed!" she demanded. He did.

On the hike and drive back, they chatted Jason's college plans. He was interested in joining a fraternity. They avoided the topics of Hillthorpe, Vaughn, and nudity. By the time he dropped her off, she was feeling better. It had been interesting, it had been very awkward, and everything was still okay. "Thanks for doing that with me."

"It was fun! I'm sorry Alana couldn't make it." Emily also wished she'd been there, though she suspected he had a different reason. "Let me know if you want to try anything like that again."

Getting out of the car, she replied, "Jason, I love ya, but that's the last time we see each other naked."

"That's fine. I already got enough pictures saved up here." Jason tapped his head. "Go get some rest."

"Will do. See ya." Jason drove off.

She crept back into her parents' house, remembering to switch off the automatic lights before stepping in range. She tiptoed back up the stairs and into her room. Safe. The clock by her stuffed animals read "1:09 A.M." She felt like she'd been out all night, but it had only been just over an hour. She locked her door and stripped naked again, looking over herself in the mirror. This, she thought, every day. She didn't know how she'd do it, but she knew that she would. She turned off the light and got into her bed, the first time she'd done so nude. Calmly, she asked herself, How the hell did I get myself into this? And she passed quickly into a deep sleep.