Naked in Spring

By Jacqueline Jillinghoff

 

The atmosphere is not a perfume . . . . it has no taste of

      the distillation . . . . it is odorless,

It is in my mouth forever . . . . I am in love with it,

I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised

and naked,

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

Leaves of Grass

 

I

 

“How’s that feel, Baby?”

“It feels nice.”

“It feels nice, what?”

“It feels nice, Daddy.

He loves it when I call him Daddy, because he is my daddy. Plus, it gets him hot. It’s the same reason he always calls me Baby. It’s sex talk. After five months, he still can’t believe he’s screwing his own daughter. It drives him crazy when I remind him.

We were on the couch in the living room. Daddy was sort of scooched down with his ass on the edge of the cushion, and his head back, looking up at me. I was riding him like a pony, with my hands on his shoulders, my legs on either side of him and his cock way up my pussy, beaming down at him with all the love I had in me. We weren’t fucking hard, just moving around slowly, digging the way we felt on each other — his hard dick stuffing my slick baby cunt. Daddy pushed into me gently. I moved my ass in a circle, pressing down on him. We sighed, we said “Oo! Oo!” quietly, we stared into each other’s blue eyes.

I love my Daddy so much.

But I was worried he wouldn’t last. He knows I love my orgasms to build and build, but it takes a long time, and it’s torture for the poor thing to wait. Sometimes he shoots off too soon, so I distracted him by talking.

“It’s getting warm out, Daddy,” I said.

“Baby, I know what you’re thinking, and you can’t. You’re too old now.”

“But I want to! — Please, Daddy? Just in the backyard?”

“You’ll get caught. People will ask questions, and they’ll find out about us.”

“I’ll be careful. — Oh! Do that again! Do that again!”

So he did it again, swirling his dick over a spot that had suddenly got sensitive. When I finished grunting, he said, “Look, I promise you, when school’s out, Mommy and Daddy will take you to a beach where you can run around naked all the time.”

“But that’s so far away!”

“Promise me! Promise me you’ll wait.”

“Can I at least go to school without panties?”

“You’re already doing that, I’ll bet.”

I giggled in my naughty way, and he knew he was right. I wanted to beg him some more, but it was getting hard to talk.

“Is that it, Baby? Are you coming?”

“Y—y—yeah,” I sighed. “Daddy! Da—! Da—! Da—!

My body rattled like a truck. I fell down on him, nuzzling his neck. He wrapped me tight in his arms while I shivered and squeaked. It was so delicious, so deep and long and yummy. My cunt squeezed his cock. I could feel it jerking (and I could picture it, too, from the times I watched Daddy masturbate), and his hot, yummy come filled me up.

Then we were still for a while. I was very sleepy.

“Baby,” he said, “promise me — please — you’ll keep your clothes on outside.”

“Mmm-kay, Daddy,” I mumbled. “I prah …”

My voice drifted off. He patted my bare ass.

“Now,” he said. “How about we get dressed before Mommy gets home?”

“Uh uh,” I teased him. “Not in the house!”

 

♀♀♀

 

If you’ve been reading my stories, you know what my promise to Daddy was worth. I’d been cooped up all winter, and I was dying to be free. It was May. The trees were bright spring green, and I got that fluttery feeling — that urge — every time I left the house. Going to school with no panties on helped for a while, but I wanted the sun and air on me all over, and I couldn’t wait till summer. I was always distracted, and walking home in the afternoons, I kept looking around the neighborhood for a good place to strip.

My name is Danielle, and I love being naked.

I kept my promise to Daddy for a whole week, which I think was pretty good, but finally I had to give in. It was nighttime, though, so I told myself it didn’t count. Mom and Dad took me to one of their gigs. They belong to a small orchestra that plays in a tiny church. They did some Mozart things and Beethoven’s Fifth. It was really good, but it ran late, because the conductor showed up drunk. Anyway, that’s what Daddy said. We all went right to bed when we got home. Dad and Mom said they were dead tired, but they weren’t too tired to screw. I stripped and got into bed with the covers down and my door open. I could hear them across the landing. I fingered myself, but I couldn’t come. I couldn’t sleep, either, even after they got quiet. My mouth was dry, and my armpits felt damp. I kept tossing and turning, and thinking about how nice the night air felt outside.

Finally I looked at my digital clock. It was one-thirty.

“Fuck this,” I said.

I got up and tiptoed across the landing. I listened at my parents’ door. One of them was snoring, probably Mom. For a second, I thought of going back to my room for a T-shirt or my pajama top — something I could cover up with if somebody saw me. But then I thought, uh uh. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it all the way.

My heart was racing as I padded down the stairs. My chest felt tight and my legs got weak. I had to lean against the wall and take a couple of deep breaths. It was crazy, I know, but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to. I was like an addict or something.

I went out through the kitchen. The back door made a kind of sucking sound when I opened it. It was quiet, but the way I felt, it seemed awfully loud. My hand shook while I made sure the doorknob would turn from the outside. Then I carefully pushed open the screen door and slipped out, pulling the main door shut.

Going outside with no clothes on is like taking off my last scrap of clothing. I mean, I go naked inside all the time, but that’s inside. It’s private. It’s like I’m still wearing my house, if you know what I mean. Out on the back steps, I was really, truly, completely, utterly, and totally naked.

For a minute I just stood there, relishing my exposure. I locked my hands behind my head and let the night air lick the sweat from my armpits. It was a little chilly, but that only made my skin feel alive all over. A big half moon was rising over our garage. It was bright in the starry sky, and I admired the way it made my pale skin look silvery blue. My little pink nipples — the circles around them are no bigger than dimes — turned pale purple, and the slit on my bald pussy was a deep, thick shadow.

This was fascinating to me. I look at myself naked in the mirror all the time, waiting for any signs of development, but my body was strange to me now. I looked like a ghost. I lowered my hands and passed them down my chest and over my tummy, then up my thighs and between my legs — Mmmm! — and back over my ass. The only thing I was sad about was that I couldn’t see my bare butt in the moonlight. I twisted around and tried to look, but I couldn’t see.

Well, that’s it, I told myself. You’ve had your fun. Go back to bed. But that was just a little game I playing. Part of me said, “Don’t do it,” and then the other part said, “We’re just getting started.” I went down the steps and around to the front of the house.

We live on a small, curving street not far from my school. It’s got one little Cape Cod house after another, like ours, and it was empty at this time of night. There are no sidewalks, so I stayed on the edges of the lawns. The grass was cool and soft on my bare feet. I went from streetlight to streetlight, watching the way the light played on my skin, almost daring somebody to look out their bedroom window and see me. The air felt amazing, and so did my middle finger, which I keep between my pussy lips sometimes when I walk around naked.

I was halfway down my block when I saw some headlights floating up along the cross street. They stopped, then they came around the corner, heading toward me. Where I was right then, there weren’t any bushes or trees to hide behind — just a big empty lawn. So I scampered back into the shadow of the house and laid down, flattening myself chest-down on the grass. I was out of sight for like half a second, but the stupid house had some kind of motion sensor, and suddenly my bare ass was caught in a spotlight. I grabbed the grass and tried to flatten myself even more.

The car was a little blue and white police cruiser. The cop looked right at me, and he slowed down. I saw his head in silhouette, and I recognized him. It was Officer Boone, the guy who taught the DARE program when I was in fifth grade. He had just caught his star pupil bare-ass on somebody’s lawn, though I doubt he recognized me without my clothes on. He just looked for a second, like he was trying to figure out what he was looking at. Maybe he thought my blonde head was some kind of little bush, and my ass was a couple of white rocks. But then he unbuckled his seatbelt, and I heard his door click open. For an instant I thought I could get out of trouble be offering to suck his cock or something. I’d never seen a black guy’s cock before, and I had a crush on Officer Boone when he taught our classes.

Suddenly his head snapped around. He looked down at his dashboard. He swung his door open, then slammed it shut again, and he drove off fast with his red and blue lights flashing. 

I heaved a huge sigh. My heart was beating against the ground. I could feel every blade of grass tickling and prickling all down my body. And my pussy! My pussy was shuddering like a puppy in the cold. I wasn’t coming, exactly, but I’d never felt anything like it.

It gave me an idea.

Now, my Mom and Dad and I have had some discussions about whether I’m an exhibitionist or just a nudist. What I did next pretty much settled that question, I think.

I got up and went down to the corner where I’d first seen Officer Boone’s headlights. It’s a four-way stop, but the cross street is bigger than mine, and even in the middle of the night, there’s always a few cars. There was a row of blooming forsythias on a lawn on the other side, bordering the road. I went over, crouched between a couple of them, and waited.

It seemed like a long time, because I was so wired, but at last, I saw the flicker of headlights far down the road. My arms started tingling again as I watched them coming closer, getting bigger in the dark. Just when the car began to brake for the stop sign, I shot across the street. The headlights flashed over my body. For an instant I wondered how they made my ass look, and how much the driver saw. I ran up on a front lawn and kept going, charging as fast as I could, not looking back, down the block from lawn to lawn. And it happened again. My pussy began to shudder. It shuddered so hard I couldn’t run any more, and I went down on my ass and skidded to a stop, like I was sliding into second base. I was really coming now, and I didn’t even have to touch my pussy. I flopped on my back, my arms over my head, and squirmed on the grass like a crazy thing.

“Oh … oh wow,” I said, laughing quietly. “Whoo!”

My breathing and my heart gradually came back down to normal. I stopped squirming, welcoming the breeze on my damp pussy.

I shivered like I was cold. Then I stopped. Then I shivered again. I hugged myself until I stopped completely. I tried to get up, but my legs were weak, and I fell right back on my ass.

So I looked up at the stars, with my arms crossed over my chest, taking deep breaths, and I wriggled my toes on the grass.

The car I flashed hadn’t followed me. I wondered why. Maybe the driver wasn’t sure what they saw, or maybe they didn’t believe it. Or maybe they were too tired to care. I suddenly realized I was tired, too. Exhausted, in fact. The adventure was over.

I got up. I was still wobbly, but I could walk. I wiped the grass off my butt and slunk home, humming Beethoven’s Fifth, the march in the second movement, to keep myself going.

The back door was still unlocked, the kitchen was still dark, and mom was still snoring behind her bedroom door. It was like nothing had happened.

Believe it or not, I put my pajamas on before I crawled into bed. It sounds weird, but after running around naked and coming so hard, I was feeling modest, even virtuous. I wasn’t sexed up anymore like I’d been just — I looked at my clock — seventeen minutes ago.

I pulled my covers over my face. It felt good to be warm and all wrapped up. I fell asleep with a smirk, telling myself I wasn’t going to take any more dumb chances.

But I knew that wouldn’t last.

 

 

II

 

Sex with Daddy is sweet. Sex with Mom is weird, but I think it’s funner. It’s kinky. Daddy makes love to me. He kisses me all over, and when he puts his penis in me, he’s so gentle. Fucking him is like eating a butterscotch sundae with lots of whipped cream. And he always asks me if I came. Mom acts like she doesn’t give a crap. She just likes to dress me up and make me do shit.

Like this one day, when she made me wear bright red stockings that came all the way up my thighs, and red, old-fashioned dress gloves that came all the way up my arms. And a dog collar. That was all. We were down the basement music room for what Mom calls “obedience training.” She was so slutty-looking in her black bustier. The bra part mashed her little titties down and puffed them out on top. She also had on black thigh high boots and no panties. She trims her cunt hair into a neat rectangle, which she only started doing when we started fooling around last Christmas.

She told me to move the music stands and chairs against the wall. Then she snapped a leash on my collar and she made me crawl around behind her on the carpet.

“Speak!” she said.

I went, “Arf!”

“Beg!”

I got up on my knees and held my hands up like paws, with my fingers curled down.

“Good dog! Here’s a treat.”

She popped an M&M in my mouth. Peanut, my favorite.

The kids at school would laugh like hell if they ever found out what we were doing. I could just hear them — “She makes you act like a dog!?” But I really got into it. I shook my heinie like I was wagging my tail. I jumped up on her and stuck my nose in her crotch. I could tell she was creaming. Her cunt had that thick, sweaty smell. I made loud sniffing and panting noises.

“Down, girl!” she said. She wrapped the leash tight around her fist and gave it a yank. It jerked me away from her.

“Bad dog! Any more shenanigans, and I’ll smack your ass with a rolled up newspaper. Understand?”

I made a sad-puppy whimper. The rule was, I couldn’t talk.

“Better,” she said. “Now listen to me. Your father tells me you want to outside naked again. We talked about that when you were little, and I told you no. The answer is still no. And if I find out you’ve done anything naughty, you will be severely punished, like the bad little dog you are. I am ordering you to be good. Understand?”

I looked up at her with my eyes wide. She yanked hard on the leash again.

“Understand!?”

I gave another whimper.

“Better,” she said. “Now come with me.”

She led me back to the unfinished part of the basement, where the washer and dryer and the stationary tubs are. It was dim back here, and the bare tile floor hurt my knees. I smirked as I followed along. Mom and Dad had no clue about my nude nighttime run.

And an order from Mom was worth even less than a promise to Dad. It’s like if a puppy pees on the rug, and you beat it, it doesn’t stop peeing. It just does it in secret.

But I let her think she was in charge.

When we got to the washing machine, she made me take off the gloves and hand them to her. They were old and delicate, she said, and she didn’t want them to get soiled. Then she made me lay on my back on the cold tile floor while she stood over me, one boot next to each hip. I looked up into her cunt, and I was just thinking, “I came out of that,” when she said —

 “This is for your own good.”

And God, did she let go. Who knew such a slender woman could have so much pee in her? It rained down on me, rolling off my chest, spattering my face, soaking my hair. It smelled nutty, like roasting cashews, and it tasted salty like cashews, too. I caught some of it in my mouth and spit it out. It sounds gross, but I loved it. It was the wildest thing ever. Mom’s piss all over me — Ewww. Yummy. I bathed in it, rubbing it into my skin all over like soapy lotion. It ran under me on the floor, and I slid around on it, bouncing back and forth between Mom’s boots.

“Filthy,” she said over the splashing sounds. “Bad, filthy little dog. Filthy little bitch dog.”

And I was filthy. The hot piss loosened the grime on the floor, and it smeared me black. The grit dug into my ass and my shoulders, and clung to the soles of my feet. My stockings were thick with smelly wet. They stuck to my legs and toes.

“There,” Mom said when the last few drops had smacked me in the chest. “I hope we’ve learned our lesson. No going outside naked. You may speak now. Say, ‘Yes, Mother.’”

“Yes, Mother”

“Better,” she said. “Now — ”

She raised one foot from the floor and pressed the slimy toe on my lips.

“Lick it off,” she ordered.

I scraped my tongue along the filthy underside of her boot.

“Now the other,” she said. “Better. There’s a rag in the tub. You are to clean up this mess you made. When you’re finished, you are to come upstairs and take a shower and rinse out your mouth. Then you will eat your Mother’s pussy. You’re too disgusting to go near it the way you are.”

She threw the leash in my face and marched upstairs.

I laid there breathing hard. Humiliation was a thrill, and I wanted it to last. I rolled around in the puddle of pee, with my arms over my head, making myself totally dirty, front and back. Face down, I touched my tongue to the floor and smacked my lips. But I was already getting cold. A hot shower would feel good now, and a shampoo. So I got myself up. I was a hideous mess — “bedraggled” was the word. Bedraggled with dirt and piss. I found the rag. I rinsed it out with hot water and got back down on my hands and knees and started to scrub. Mom’s cold pee drizzled down my pussy while I worked.

Cinderella’s wicked stepmother peed all over her, then she made her scrub the floor, I thought. But the beautiful, virtuous Cinderella knew one day she would be free. One lovely spring morning, she would escape her filthy dungeon and run off into the enchanted forest.

And she would be naked.

 

♀♀♀

 

The enchanted forest turned out to be a mental hospital. For real. Mom and Dad had a gig playing outside at Friends Hospital in the city. The main building went up in like 1810. It’s painted yellow, and it looks like a mansion, with high windows and a slate roof. It was out in the country when they built it, and the crowded neighborhoods and the strip mall hemmed it in over the years, but it still has acres of wooded hills surrounded by iron fences, and every spring, they open up the grounds for the big Azalea Festival. People come in and wander around and look at the garden. It was awesome the Sunday we went. The blossoms were at their peak, and the bushes were trimmed into perfect balls piled one on top of another, white and crimson, like giant scoops of vanilla ice cream and red raspberry sherbet, and pink, like monster wads of cotton candy. Some were purple, and I can’t think of what they were like. There were only a few puffy white clouds in the sky, and the sunshine poured down like honey. The colors were so intense it was sexual.

Mom and Dad set up their chairs and stands in a circle on the gravel path, in front of a great pink wall of flowers. The bushes blocked the sun, and it was shady and cool there. Mom played her oboe and her English horn while Dad coasted through some bass notes on his cello. It was the easiest gig in the world, Mom said, since nobody there knew anything about music, and they weren’t expecting much. They did some arrangements of Schubert and Handel, and that tune from the Civil War series, and a couple other dumbed-down things — though Dad always has to throw in a movement or two from the Bach suites. That always gets attention.

I got into the act, too. Dad promised me ten bucks, part of his take-home pay, if I played my flute. So I did my Nielsen, that piece I fucked up at the school holiday concert. I was good at it now. I didn’t even need the music anymore. I stood between my parents in my sky-blue tank top, my denim pedal pushers and my blue canvas slip-ons, and I pulled in a small crowd. They gave me a nice round of applause, and while I was taking my flute apart and putting it back in the case, I overheard one lady tell Mom I was “lovely.”

“Sometimes she’s a handful,” Mom said.

“It’ll only get worse as she gets older,” the lady said. “You should enjoy her while she’s young.”

“Oh, we enjoy her thoroughly,” Mom said.

“That was lovely, Sweetie,” Dad told me. “See what happens when you practice?”

“Can I get some lemonade?” I said.

He stretched his legs out and dug into his pocket for his wallet.

“Here’s your pay,” he said. He handed me a ten.

“Can’t you buy it for me?”

“Spend what you earn, and learn to budget,” he said.

Everything’s a fucking lesson with those two. I stood my flute case next to Dad’s chair, and as I went off down the path, Mom called after me —

“Don’t wander off too far. You play again in twenty minutes.”

“I thought I already earned my money,” I called back, and I trotted away.

The refreshment stand was at a long, low building that used to be the stable. I paid two-fifty for a big Styrofoam cup of lemonade and ice. The lady put a top on it and handed me a straw. I stuffed my change in my pocket and went off sipping. It was good — cool and not too sweet, and not from a mix — and I needed it after my performance. My mouth was dry, but more from performance nerves than from having to blow. It’s weird — I like exposing myself to cops, but playing a simple melody for a few undemanding old people scares me shitless.

Pretty sick, huh?

I swear, I wasn’t thinking about getting nude when I started back up to the garden, but I missed the little sign with the arrow on it, and I went straight instead of turning, onto a dirt path that went up a hill. There weren’t any azaleas up here. It was all trees. When I realized I’d gone the wrong way, I turned around and saw an older couple going around the back of the stable. That was the way I should have gone. It would have been nothing to go back down and follow them. But it was nice up here. It was out of the sun, and the shade was easy on the eyes. It was cool, too … and private.

Suddenly a cold flush swept over me. I knew what I wanted to do.

I turned my back on the old couple and climbed the rest of the way up the hill, sipping my lemonade. At the top I went a couple of steps over the crest. Nobody could see me here, but it wasn’t as nice. There were thorny vines tangled in the dead grass. A few feet down the slope the iron fence was bent and chipped, with brown leaves and litter stuffed along the bottom and razor wire curled along the top. Beyond that was a block of seedy brick row houses.

I put my cup down between two exposed roots, and I looked around. Then I looked around some more. I tweaked my nips through my soft cotton top, and they stood up fast — The Poky Little Puppies. (I still don’t wear a bra if I can help it.) Maybe if I put my hand down my pants and wanked a little, I told myself, I’d get over this crazy mood. So that’s what I did.  I was trying to talk myself out of this, because I knew it was fucking nuts. There were people down the hill, not fifty yards away.

Yeah, but that’s what makes it so sweet, said the Devil on my shoulder

I slipped out of my shoes and took my jeans off and folded them neatly next to my lemonade cup. Then came the top, which I also folded neatly. I stood in my blue cotton panties and flicked my nipples some more. A minute of that, and my panties felt too tight in the crotch. I played with the waistband, pulling it out in every direction and down like I was teasing somebody, letting the air get in. Finally I stuck out my ass and rolled them off completely, doing a striptease for the little forest creatures. 

The air was even nicer than it was at night in my neighborhood. It was richer, with a smell like fresh, warm dirt. The shadows of the leaves danced on my bare skin.

I went back up to the crest of the hill and hung my panties from the branch of a sapling. I meant it as a private joke, but it was actually pretty smart, as I found our later.

The hill was steep, but it didn’t seem as high now that I was looking down. The people going to the lemonade stand weren’t very far away at all. If they bothered to turn their heads, they’d see me plain as day, though they might have to squint a little to tell I was nude. I snuck down a little at a time, going from tree to tree, hiding behind each one and holding on to keep from losing my footing and running all the way down.

I tried a few poses, like leaning back against a trunk with my arms up, or leaning forward, supporting myself on my hands and looking back over my butt with eyes that said, “Yeah, you want this?”

The big surprise came when I hugged a beech tree. The light bark was just a little rough, and it rubbed against the top of my slit, where my clitty is. That felt … interesting. So I pushed back a little from my shoulders and pressed crotch harder into the trunk. That felt more interesting. I jiggled my legs, and in another minute I was getting off by humping a fucking tree. I named him Woody, and just when I came I threw my arms around him and frenched his blank gray face.

Hey, don’t judge me till you’ve walked a mile in my naked butt.

The fresh air was made me dizzy. Well, coming did, too. I slid down Woody’s and stretched out on the cool ground, gazing up through the swaying branches. That should have been it. I’d gotten away with it. Nobody had seen me, and it was getting to be time to go back to my Mom and Dad. But fuck ’em. They could wait. I wanted more of the air and the sun and the moving shadows on my body, and that’s what got me into trouble.

I got up. Down below, a mom was pushing stroller down toward the lemonade stand. There was a little girl in the stroller, with a balloon ties around her wrist, and a boy walking with them who might have been about eight. The boy looked right up at me. He turned to his mom said something, but I jumped behind Woody, and if the mom looked up she didn’t see me. I counted to ten and peeked out again. They were gone. I ran back up the hill. I was the wood nymph, the naked forest sprite that appears to the boy in the story and then vanishes.

I could imagine what they said:

“Mom, there’s a girl up there with no clothes on!”

“Where? Oh, you’re crazy — and pretty horny for an eight-year-old.”

The hilltop curved around like the rim of a bowl. I went along until it dropped off, and there was the garden spread out like an afghan, and the people weaving their way through the bushes. I didn’t see Mom and Dad, but I could hear Mom’s English horn, and I recognized the pink wall of azalea blossoms.

I snuck down. The dirt hill rolled right down to the pink wall. No one was back there. The garden and all the people were on the other side, and they had no idea a naked girl was just a few feet away. I crept along, homing in on Mom’s reedy whine. She was playing “Goin’ Home” from Dvorak. Dad was playing a low drone. Through a small gap in the bush, I cold just see Mom’s hair pulled back over her left ear. I figured my pussy absent-mindedly. It was starting to feel good again when I heard two or three people applauding, which was confusing, because Mom hadn’t stopped playing. Then I heard a low whistle, and I knew that wasn’t for Mom. That was for me.

I looked over. There was a small group of people, men and women, at the far end of the bush, and they were all grinning. I guess one of them had stuck his nose around to see if there was anything behind the bush, and when he saw that there was, and what it was, he waved more people over. Or something. How didn’t matter. What mattered was standing there naked in front of a gathering crowd.

I threw my hands over my tits and pussy, but then I figured why bother and I let my arms drop. The whole encounter couldn’t have last more than a couple seconds. There was a guy who a camera with a big telephoto lens pointed at me like a cannon. He was snapping away, just pressing down on the button — click-click-click-click-click.  I kind of liked that, but then the kid popped out around the bush and pointed at me.

“Hey Mom!” he yelled. “There she is! I told ya!”

That’s when I took off. It was a straight line back up the hill, and everybody could see my bare ass every step of the way. I could still hear the camera clicking, and with that lens, he must have gotten a got close-up shot. The trees all looked the same, and I started to panic. I didn’t remember where I’d left my clothes, but then — I told you this was smart — I saw my panties hanging from the tree. I ran for them.

It took forever to get there, but I did, finally, and jumped over the top of the hill and collapsed in the dead grass. I was winded, and yes, I was coming again, thanks for asking. I pumped my pussy hard. It was like all the fear and excitement shot through it and blew out into the air.

Everything got still again. The sun was still shining, and the trees were still swaying. I crawled back to where my panties were peeped over the hill. I couldn’t see the garden from here. Nobody had followed me. I felt clean, like I had been cured of my habit for at least for a little while. I put my pants and top back on, but I left my panties hanging on the little tree for somebody to find.

Then I picked up my lemonade and went back to Mom and Dad like nothing had happened.

“You’re late,” Mom said.

“Sorry. It’s just so pretty.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Dad said. “I’m glad we came.”

“You still have to play one more time,” Mom said. “And then we’re done.”

I put my flute back together, and the three of us — Dad, and Mom and me — and played the minuet and trio from Mozart’s 39th Symphony. It was Dad’s reduction, and it sounded nice. It was easy, too, and I was more relaxed than I was the first time I played. I recognized most the people listening. They’d seen me behind the bush. There was the kid, and the guy with the camera, taking more pictures of me. If I could have smiled while I was blowing into my flute, I would have. So they’d seen me naked. Big fat hairy deal.

Nobody said anything, but when we were done, they cheered. I mean, really cheered. We were good, but we weren’t that good. So I knew why they were cheering. I was just glad my parents didn’t. It was like we’d all played a trick on them.

It was the woman who told Mom I was “lovely” who handed Dad the check. He introduced her me as Mrs. Lowery of the Festival Committee. She was short and chubby, with short white hair, and she wore sandals with stockings. When we she shook hands, she looked at me longer than I was comfortable with. Then she said, “You have something in your hair,” and she pulled it out. It was dead grass.

We went off to the lot and put our instruments in the back of the car. We have a hatchback, because of Dad’s cello case. Mom rode shotgun. I sat in the back. We pulled out of the driveway onto the boulevard. Dad turned the radio on to check the traffic, and I was feeling pretty good because I had gotten away with something — a big something.

“There was a bit of a buzz while you were getting your lemonade,” Mom said. “Apparently there was a young girl running around the woods in the altogether.”

The bottom fell out of my stomach. I really felt like I was going to crap my pants, but I kept my mouth shut.

“I didn’t see it,” Dad said, “but everybody was talking about it. Somebody called her Miss Nude Azaleas.”

“What do you think her parents should do if they found out she was being so disobedient?” Mom said. “Because I’m sure they’ve talked to her about it.”

“That’s a tough one,” Dad said. “She didn’t hurt anybody, but you can’t just let something like that pass. What do you think, Sweetie?”

“I dunno,” I said.

“If she were my daughter,” Mom said, “I’d spank her bottom good and hard when we got home.”

They let me chew on that a long time. Then Dad said, kind of slyly, “I don’t know. It’s such a pretty bottom.”

We laughed all the way home.

 

The End

© 2013 by Jacqueline Jillinghoff

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