Side chapter: Anna thinks about her hand towel incident

Sneaking around with only the little rectangle of the book covering herself, Anna was reminded of covering herself with only a hand towel. She had to do this a couple of times, when the towels had been taken out of the bathroom without her knowledge. It usually happened when her mother had taken the towels to the laundry and had not replaced them. Those times, Anna only realized the towel was gone after she had gotten out of the shower. She had **** but to dry herself with the hand towel. But then what? It was too small to wrap around herself. All she could do was hold it in front of her to cover as much as possible. She walked down the hallway with her back to the wall, just like she planned to do now, to cover both her front and rear.

Still, that was not as bad as the time she had nothing but a washcloth to dry herself with. She could not even get completely dry. And clearly, the tiny washcloth couldn’t cover anything. She just had to run as fast as she could, dripping wet, to the linen closet at the opposite end of the hallway, then grab a towel, wrap it around herself, and run back to the bathroom to finish drying. When she later used the towel to mop up her wet footprints, she was reminded of the embarrassment she felt streaking through the hallway. Even if nobody was around to see her, she still felt embarrassingly exposed.

However, even that was not as bad as her suspicion that one of those times, her brother Caleb might have seen her. She had heard his footsteps coming up the stairs, and she thought she saw the top of his head pop up. However, she did not stay around to check. She had to get to safety as fast as she could. She had to face her bedroom door to open it, putting her back to the hallway, leaving her bare bottom as her exposed.. If Caleb did make it up the stairs, he would have certainly gotten a full view of her backside. Worse, she would have no way of knowing. All her attention was on getting to safety as fast as possible. She had no time to look behind her. However, if he had seen her, he never said anything about it. At least, Anna realized, not to her.

She also realized she was daydreaming, when she should be concentrating on staying out of sight and getting to safety. She hoped no one noticed her while she was not paying attention. With a sigh, she got back to the situation at hand.