The Library

By Jacqueline Jillinghoff

My mom told me once that when I was a little girl, I couldn’t keep my clothes on. She said it started as soon as I learned to walk. In hot weather, I would run naked through the sprinkler in the backyard. When we came home from Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother’s, my blouse, my green velvet skirt, and my white stockings would lie in pools on the living room floor minutes after I walked in the front door. One summer at the beach — I must have been about four or five — she wrapped me in a towel and took my suit off underneath, and she was drying me off when I slipped away from her and scurried down to the water like a sandpiper. It wasn’t a nude beach, either. The eyes of hundreds of sunbathers were on my body, but no one cared because I was so small. I remember that, too. It’s one of my earliest memories, and one of my happiest.

The stripping kept up after I started school. I would come home and go up to my room, and when I came down again, I was naked.

Mom and dad didn’t tell me to cover up until I was about seven or eight. They’re very open about things, and they didn’t want to dump any shame or guilt on me about my body, but one hot afternoon during summer vacation, I was standing naked in the inflatable wading pool in my backyard, filling it with the garden hose, when my dad drove home from a rehearsal. I remember how good it felt with the sun warming my shoulders and my bottom, and the cool stream of water tumbling over my feet. I was holding the hose at my waist, with the nozzle hanging down in front of my slit — I was pretending I was a boy taking a pee — and Daddy walked past me from the garage carrying his cello case. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t smile at me or give me a hug or ask me what was up, the way he always did. He wasn’t mad, but his face looked clouded, the way it got whenever I whined about having to do my homework or go to bed.

A few minutes after he disappeared into the kitchen, Mom called me inside. Daddy had gone upstairs, but Mommy sat me down at the table and said that from now on I couldn’t go outside naked. I wasn’t a little girl anymore, she said, and it might be bad if anyone in the neighborhood saw me, especially the boys. I shouldn’t go naked in the house when Daddy was around, either. Young women didn’t let their fathers look at them without their clothes on.

“Now go upstairs and put on your bathing suit,” she said. “Your Daddy and I are going to be in our room for a little while.”

Still nude, I followed her through the living room and up the stairs. She went into her room, and I went into mine, pulled on my one-piece, and went back outside. I could hear Mom and Dad’s voices through their door as I passed. Dad’s was just a deep rumble, but I did hear him say my name, “Danielle.” Mommy’s voice was higher and came through clearly. I heard her say, “My God, you’re hopeless” and then something like, “Come on then, daddy.”

When I sat down again in the pool, which was almost full by now, it didn’t feel right with the heavy, water-logged cloth between my legs. I peeled off my bathing suit again and tossed it on the grass. I figured if my parents were going to keep their door closed, I could go naked one last time. They wouldn’t know.

And they didn’t, but from that day on nudity became a secret thing for me. After taking a bath, for instance, I would hang out in my room, pretending to get dressed, but really standing on my bed, gazing at my crotch and my flat chest in the dresser mirror. Or I would stay in the bathroom, balancing on the wet rim of the tub, looking over my shoulder at my butt in the mirror above the sink. After school, before my mom got home, I would go through the house with nothing on, just to be nude in different places. My favorite spots were the front closet, where I could press my bare body against the heavy winter coats, and the kitchen, where I could lie on the floor and feel the cool tile all along my back and legs.

For a while, it was enough.

I had just started sixth grade, which in our town means graduation to the middle school. The building was a long, three-story block set into the side of a hill. My classroom was downstairs in a kind of half-basement that had windows on only one side. The seventh-graders were on the ground floor, and the eighth-graders were upstairs. The gym and the auditorium were at one end of the seventh-grade floor, and the library was at the other.

The library was a bright, cheerful place with high windows behind the checkout desk. There was a reading area with some square writing tables to the right of the desk as you came in, and computer tables to the left. The bookcases and tables were all made of the same light, yellow wood. The room smelled clean and warm, like paper and polish, and right away it became my favorite place in the school.

One morning a couple weeks after school started, Mrs. Lennox, my language arts teacher, took the class upstairs to the library so we could pick out a figure from American history to write about for our fall project. Picture books were laid out neatly on the reading tables, and the boys and girls milled around, riffling through the pages, trying to get ideas. I saw a few names I recognized, like Mary Lincoln and Susan B. Anthony, but nobody I felt like spending weeks reading about. Mrs. Lennox told me not to worry. I had plenty of time to decide.

That afternoon, when classes were over, I went back to the library, carrying my backpack full of schoolbooks. Daddy was out of town playing a concert, and Mom was teaching, and she wouldn’t be home until almost six. I figured I could either walk home and pour myself a glass of milk and watch TV, or I could get a head start on my homework in that wonderful, book-filled room, and maybe get an idea for my research paper.

The picture books had all been put away. Nobody was there except the librarian, Mrs. Cohen, who was sitting at the checkout desk. I said “excuse me” kind of hoarsely and asked where the history books were. I thought maybe I could find somebody interesting I had missed earlier.

“In the back, in the right-hand corner,” she said. “What’s your name, miss? I don’t know the sixth-graders yet.”

“Danielle,” I said.

“You must really like books, Danielle. We don’t get many students coming in just to browse.”

“No, ma’am.”

“And very polite, too. You can call me Mrs. Cohen. You’re a real blonde, too, aren’t you? I can hardly see your eyebrows.”

“They’re there, though,” I said, stupidly touching the bristles over one eye.

“I wish my hair was as pretty as yours.”

“I think yours is real pretty, Mrs. Cohen,” I said, trying out the name. “It’s just different.”

“Well, thank you, Danielle” she said. “You can stay for about a half hour. Then I have to close up.”

I did like her hair. It was a deep reddish-brown, and she wore it pulled back in a big, frizzy ponytail. What I really liked about her, though, was her boobs. They stretched out the ribs of her turtleneck sweater, the way a globe separates the lines of longitude at the equator. She was almost as short as I was, but round like a woman in all the places where I was still straight like a boy.

Well, I was starting to get boobs. They weren’t much yet — no higher than a pair of Christmas butter cookies with pink cinnamon dots at the center — but they fascinated me. At home I would gaze at them in the mirror for a long time, trying to raise some cleavage by pushing them together.

I had on my favorite pants, a pair of denim pedal pushers that fit tight across the seat. I thought they made my butt look round, even though, with a kind of justice, they showed off my skinny calves, too.

I was also wearing my purple Crocs, which made my feet look like Barney’s; white ankle socks with a lavender trim; and my red Phillies T-shirt: my nipples were starting to swell out, making little points under the “h” and the “e.”

There were two big, freestanding bookcases behind the writing tables at the far end of the library. They were parallel to each other and stopped about three feet from the back wall, forming three aisles between the bookcases set into the walls on either side. From the aisles, I could look out and see the writing tables and Mrs. Cohen’s desk, but it got private when I turned a corner and the bookcases blocked the view. I threw my backpack in the corner, and I was glancing over the packed rows of books when I realized Mrs. Cohen couldn’t see me. My stomach kind of squeezed, and suddenly I felt like I had to go to the bathroom.

Just to make sure, I peeked around the corner of the bookcase. Mrs. Cohen was sitting at her computer with her back to me, typing away.

It would only take a second, I thought, and nobody would know. Bent half over, with my eyes fixed on Mrs. Cohen’s ponytail, I reached down and undid the button on my pants. Nothing happened: No alarm went off. Nobody yelled at me. I undid the zipper — slowly, in case she had good ears.

Then I hooked my thumbs into the waistband and slid my pants and underwear off my butt. That was all: I was only mooning the books behind me, but a naughty part of me was naked someplace where it shouldn’t have been. Mrs. Cohen turned her head to look at a paper on her desk, then looked back at her computer screen. For an instant, I saw her face in profile, but she didn’t notice me. She was clueless, and it made me bolder. I sidled out from behind the bookcase and pushed my pants and panties to my knees.

After a breathless moment to make sure Mrs. Cohen didn’t turn again, I lifted the hem of my T-shirt up to my neck, exposing my nipples. The tapping on the keyboard continued, and I started swaying my hips, bending and straightening one knee and then the other — an eleven-year-old girl’s idea of a sexy dance. I even stuck my tongue out at her, which was kind of mean, since she’s so nice. I was almost daring her to turn around. It was fun to think of her seeing me, even though the idea of it really scared me.

I spun back to my hiding place at the end of the bookcase and looked down at my nude body. The notch between my legs looked strange. It was different than it had been even just a couple of hours before at lunchtime, when I went to the girls’ room to pee. It looked deeper, the sides swollen together and pushing outward. Clamping my shirt under my chin, I reached down with both hands and gently opened the cleft. The skin inside was pink as a strawberry milkshake, with a shiny film on top. The folds and puckers near the front glistened with wet under the fluorescent light, and a tiny pip I had never seen before popped out at me as I drew the lips farther apart.

I was all set to touch it with my middle finger when the door to the library clicked open and I heard man’s voice say something to Mrs. Cohen.

I flattened my ass against the end of the bookcase and pulled my shirt down. Mrs. Cohen said something, then the man did, then Mrs. Cohen called out, “Danielle, time to close up.”

My heart was clicking like an egg timer. My pants were still at my knees, and I was afraid if I moved, Mrs. Cohen or the man would catch me pulling them up. All I could think to do was cross my hands over my crotch. When I heard her voice again, it was a lot closer, over my shoulder and almost in my ear.

“Danielle, are you back here?”

Don’t breathe, Danielle.

“I guess she isn’t back here.”

My backpack lay in the corner just to my right. If she had peeked into the next aisle, she would have seen it, and when she bent over to pick it up —

“She must have left,” the man’s voice said.

“I didn’t see her leave,” Mrs. Cohen said, her voice getting farther away.

“She’s obviously not here.”

“I get so busy,” Mrs. Cohen said.

The voices broke up into a muffled buzz. A second later, the lights went out, and the door snapped shut.

I blew out a long breath.

It was a while before the blushing heat drained from my face and my heart slowed down to where I couldn’t feel it anymore. But I had to laugh, silently, through the panting. This was fun, and now I was alone. I didn’t have to hide behind the books anymore.

Quickly I pulled my shirt off over my head, kicking off my plastic purple shoes at the same time. Then I slid my butt to the floor and pulled off my pants. My panties came with them, hanging from the toes of one foot. I flipped them off with a giggle, and they landed on top of an oversize book on the bottom shelf.

Out of caution, but more a sense of play, I didn’t stand up right away. Instead, I crawled out between the bookshelves on my hands and knees like a little dog, aware more than anything of the air on my naked, upturned ass. I peeked over one of the square tables, making sure Mrs. Cohen was really gone — though she surely would have seen me by this time — and when I was sure I was alone, I climbed up on the tabletop.

It was like being on a stage. I posed with my hands clasped behind my head, twirled on one foot, jumped from one table to the next, my stocking feet nearly sliding from under me as I landed on the smooth surface. I danced to the music in my head, and I imagined the kids in my class, boys and girls, sitting around looking up at me, eating lunch and drinking root beer at the tables. I pictured other girls in my class dancing naked, too, two to a table. The boys would probably pay to see that. I wondered if anybody had ever thought of doing anything like it.

I jumped off the last table and walked slowly from one end of the library to the other. I clasped my hands behind my butt, a nonchalant customer, checking the papers on Mrs. Cohen’s desk, inspecting the computers, and glancing down at my skinny bare legs and the shadowy crease between them.

Then the library’s double doors caught my attention. I went over and looked out the windows — those thick, two-pane things with the wire mesh inside.

The overhead fluorescents in the corridor were turned off, but the edges of the floor tiles gleamed with light from the window at the end of the hall. I could only see a few feet down the wall opposite, because of the tight angle, so I pushed one of the doors open and peered down the rows of seventh-grade lockers. The school band was playing far away in the auditorium. Nothing came through distinctly, just a high blare of the brass and the deep muffled thumps of the drums.

What would the band think if they knew a stark-naked girl was peeking at them from backstage?

Did I dare?

Yes, I did.

I tiptoed into the corridor and let go of the door, but the instant before it shut, I remembered it locked from the inside. If I let it close all the way, I would be separated from my clothes forever. My hand shot out into the narrowing gap and the sharp edge pinched my fingers. I would have yelped, but I was too relieved, and too scared somebody would hear me.

I reached around the door and popped the button at the center of the handle inside. The outside handle loosened up. I waggled it up and down a couple of times to make sure it was unlocked and finally let the door swing shut. To be really sure, I opened and closed it one last time before moving toward the music.

Suddenly it was hard to walk. I couldn’t breathe, my knees felt like they were going to snap, and red lights were flashing in front of my eyes, so many of them I couldn’t see. My face and arms were tingling, and a big balloon was swelling up in between my legs. I felt like I had to poop and pee at the same time. I reached out and leaned against a locker, struggling to catch my breath.

Finally I regained my strength and moved on. I took short steps and peeked into each classroom I passed to make sure I was really alone. The music grew louder. The safety of the library receded. My skin felt alive all over. I walked faster, on tiptoe, absent-mindedly pressing one hand on my crotch. As I went on, my middle finger sank into the crack. The flesh oozed up on either side like dough. It was slippery inside. The tip of my finger slid into my hole, and a warm, tight feeling spread out in waves from that little pip all through my body. I had never felt anything so good when I ran around naked at home.

I passed the short corridor that turned off toward the principal’s office and the front door of the school. The corridor was to my right. To my left were the heavy steel fire doors that opened onto the main stairwell. I took short, mincing steps, clasping my hand to my pussy, loving the sexy little bump that came with each footfall. The sound of the band became clearer, but it also seemed more distant, like music on the radio when I’m drifting off to sleep. I opened my mouth wide, forming my lips into a big “O” as I took deeper, longer breaths. The feeling in my little girl-hole was freaking amazing.

CRASH!

Somewhere a steel door slammed open, and I heard boys’ voices echoing from the stairway. Eighth-graders, and they were on their way down. There was nowhere to go but back. I ran toward the library as hard as I could, panting like a frightened cat. My socks skidded beneath me on the tile floor, and I had to struggle to keep myself from falling on my bare behind.

I raced past the open stairwell, catching a glimpse of four or five pairs of feet on the landing between the floors. They’d be down in a second, and it was sure they’d be heading to the front door. My legs flew in long strides, but the finger I had hooked into my cunt slowed me down. Something was happening, and I couldn’t make myself take it out. I kept it rigid, massaging my pip as I ran, and a great wave of excitement broke everywhere over my body.

I pulled open the library door just as the gang of boys burst into the corridor. One of them turned in my direction, and for an instant, our eyes met.

I don’t know what he thought he saw, with the overhead lights off, but there was nothing between his eyes and my naked body. I was standing side on to him, so maybe he couldn’t tell I was nude. Or maybe my white socks distracted him, or maybe he just couldn’t believe his eyes, but time stopped and he said nothing for the long split-second we stared at one another.

I lunged through the door and pulled it shut behind me, pushing and twisting the lock button.

Five breathless bounds and I was back through the tables and among the books. There my legs gave out. I couldn’t take another step. Weak and tingling all over, but safe again, I dropped to my knees. My bare ass went down on my heels. My thighs split open in a wide “V,” and I pumped furiously at the soggy glob between my legs — or at least my hand and arm did. They didn’t belong to me anymore. They belonged to the feeling — the yummiest feeling I ever had in my life. It wrung out my body from the inside. It bounced me on the floor like a ball. I remember thinking, in that part of my mind that was still calm, somewhere inside the crazy storm, that if anyone caught me, I would let them watch. They could blab as much as they wanted, but I wasn’t going to let go for anything.

And they did catch me — almost. The library door began to rattle. The handle snapped and clicked. There was a pounding on the glass.

“Hey girl, come out!” somebody yelled.

“Is she in there?” someone else said.

“What was it?” a third voice said.

“You’re nuts. There’s nobody in there,” a third voice said.

“I’m telling you, she was nude! Hey, girl!”

“You’re out of your fuckin’ mind.”

Pound, pound, pound.

But I just knelt there, playing with my yummy slimy toy.

The bounces grew softer, farther apart. I went with the feeling, rubbing myself more slowly, until I gave a short cry, a little “Uh!” and the last wave passed. I rubbed some more, gently, but I couldn’t work up another peak. I was spent. My body relaxed — collapsed, really. Shoulders, spine and hips all deflated at once, rolling over one another like a runaway stack of logs. Slowly I toppled onto my side.

Mmmmm. I lay there a long time with my eyes closed, breathing dreamily, half asleep, with my hand resting between my legs. It was a warm, comforting feeling. And when I came to myself again, the school was still. The voices at the door had gone away. The knocking had stopped. There was no more music.

I pushed myself off the floor, and I noticed a wet spot on the carpet where I had been kneeling. Maybe a stain would still be there in the morning, and Mrs. Cohen would see it and wonder what it was. But for now, I was tired and happy. I had taken a humongous risk and gotten away with it, and I was already thinking about how I could do it again. (The rumor that flew around school the next day — that some girl was running through the halls naked — only heightened my sense of adventure. When I heard it, at lunch, I lowered my gaze into my milk, hoping the red-hot blush in my ears didn’t give me away.)

I put my clothes back on without much enthusiasm, and it was only when I zipped up my jeans and felt the rough inside seam in my crotch that I realized my panties were still hanging off the corner of that book. What if Mrs. Cohen found them? I smiled at the thought, but I couldn’t go that far. I stuffed my panties into my backpack. It didn’t feel any freer without them, since I was wearing pants, but I promised myself I’d go without them again tomorrow, and I’d wear a skirt to class.

I headed out, down the dark corridor. The boys were nowhere to be seen. The only kids outside were a couple members of the band, who stood with their trumpet and clarinet cases between their feet, waiting for their parents to come and pick them up.

Passing the flagpole, I glanced back to see if they were looking, but they were busy talking and paid no attention to me. I slipped my hand down the front of the jeans, and I kept it there the whole way home.

The End

Danielle’s story continues in “The Music Room”

© 2012 by Jacqueline Jillinghoff