At first, Lydia was sure that she had made a mistake. Sure, she usually put her towel and her clothes in the same location but today perhaps she had done something differently, right?
But, no, no matter where she looked in the girl's shower room -- or for that matter, in the girl's locker room -- she could find no sign of either her missing towel or her missing clothes. And all the other girls appeared to have left so she had no one to borrow clothes from.
Then she heard someone laugh. It was a very distinct laugh. A laugh Lydia had heard quite often since she first started attending Miss Shannon's School for Girls.
It was the laugh of her old nemesis Claire Brewster.
As Lydia watched in horror, Claire Brewster entered the girl's locker room with a very familiar pair of black underpants in her hands. They were Lydia's black underpants.
Claire Brewster observed the forlorn expression on Lydia's face and smiled. But it was not a nice smile but rather the type of smile one would picture on the face of someone who enjoyed pulling the wings off flies or heating up ants with a magnifying glass. In short, it was the type of smile that Lydia had come to expect from Claire Brewster -- so much so that Lydia frequently found it hard to imagine Claire smiling in any other way.
"Missing something, Lydia?" asked Claire.
Lydia nodded.
"Really?" asked Claire. "What?"
"My clothes, of course," said Lydia as she struggled to stay calm, knowing that any emotion that she showed would just encourage Claire to do far worse than she already planned to do.
"You lost your clothes, Lydia?" asked Claire with an expression of mock surprise. "And here I always thought you were such a careful girl. I guess part of you just wants to go naked. And who can blame you? You're certainly not likely to attract any boy with your clothes on."
"How would you know?" asked Lydia in spite of herself.
Claire paused. "Was that a question? Did you expect me to take that comment seriously? Geez, no wonder you're always losing your clothes, Lydia. You just have no idea how to talk to people."
"It's fairly obvious from the underpants that you have in your hand that you know where my clothes are, Claire, " said Lydia. "So why don't you just tell me what you want from me and let's get this whole thing over with?"
"You want your underpants back, huh, Lydia?" asked Claire.
Claire then opened the locker room door to the main hall and threw Lydia's underpants out into the hallway. "In that case," said Claire, "go fetch!"
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