DING dong
The time had come. Sharing a look, it was obvious neither Lydia nor I wanted to answer the door, so I was glad when I heard my mother scurry in from her bedroom. She opened the door and I could see the bright, unpredictable outdoors, plus Mrs. Norman in the doorway.
“You girls ready for your big day?” Mrs. Norman asked with a grinning scowl.
“I wanted to talk to you about that,” my mother said, and then they started conversing in whispers in the kitchen. There was the occasional ‘Oh, I don't think so!’ or ‘She’ll get what she deserves!’, but I knew better than to interrupt. Finally, they stood before us, apparently ready to tell us what they had decided.
“Mrs. Peters here seems to think that I got a little carried away with my idea of punishment. While I don’t necessarily agree, she did convince me that you two parading around with your goods out might lead to other slutty behavior. And I’m especially looking at you when I say that, Lydia. Might even start enjoying it,” Mrs. Norman said, digging into both of our psychies.
“We agreed to change the rules a bit, where you’re still going to be humiliated like you humiliated our family. But maybe now you can keep it in your pants. Or lack thereof, heh. So I decided you can wear a bath towel, but that's it."
We just processed for a bit. Then we shared a glance, and I hugged Lydia hard from the side. We were going to have at least some covering! I knew Mrs. Norman couldn’t go through with the original punishment.
“Now hurry up before I change my mind. We gotta leave soon,” she prodded.
“Thank you, Mrs. Norman! We’ll be right back down in a second,” I said, dragging Lydia upstairs with me. I knew just what towel to pick.
“We can do this, Lydia. We’ll be completely covered! It’s just like a weird outfit for spirit week or something,” I said.
“Yeah, but we’re the only ones. And I have to make sure I’m not flashing my ass constantly.”
I grabbed the towels I was thinking of, clipped them with a bunch of claw hair clips, and we checked ourselves out in the mirror. It was weird, sure, but the towels I picked were so long that there was more than enough material to cover us, and the clips worked surprisingly well too. It really would be like wearing a weird, impromptu dress to spirit week. We grabbed our backpacks and headed down, actually mentally ready for the day now.
“Oh no no, those are basically robes. Get normal towels and no clips. You aren’t getting off that easy,” Mrs. Norman demanded.
“Uhh -- please, we did like you said! You didn’t specif--” I said.
“You have 30 seconds to be out the door or you’re using kitchen towels instead,” she yelled.
I gulped at the thought of only being able to cover one part of my body with a kitchen towel, and we scrambled up the stairs. Throwing the old towels, grabbing the new, and then we only had a few seconds to haphazardly adjust them and make sure butts and nipples were covered (they were, but only barely).
We were back down in enough time, though taking the stairs at that speed meant that Lydia briefly flashed a nipple, and her towel was already looking completely out of position. That was something we were going to have to look after throughout the day.
We piled into Mrs. Norman’s old SUV and suddenly we were off to school, clothed only in miniskirt bath towels and backpacks. I looked down at my bare feet and then it finally hit me how weird today was going to be.
“Oh, and no tying those either. I want you precarious throughout the day. Make the other kids know this ain't just some rebellion thing,” Lydia’s mom said.
Ughhhh. I wanted to strangle her. But, instead I swallowed the unfairness and looked out the window, trying to think of anything but my anxiety.
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