Chapter 42

August 11, 2017

Dear Ms. Diary,

[Written August 13]

Practice, other than the two sets each of more laps than we usually do once, was relatively easy. Liya surprised me by asking Coach if she could join in running laps. Coach did not surprise me by agreeing to her request, but she did tell Liya not to try to keep up with us unless she was used to running distance. We had another set of outside-foot shooting and passing practice. Civia practiced with us roulette students while the rest of the team ran other ball-handling drills. Rhee, Heather, and Lissa had the roulette down counterclockwise, and they were working on the opposite direction. The rest of us were getting close to being proficient at it.

The six of us arrived at the house about a half-hour earlier than usual. Dad wasn’t home, so as we trooped upstairs, many of us began divesting ourselves of clothes.

When we got to my room, I asked, “How do we want to assign showers? I’d prefer to get it done in one round, so we’ll use both showers.”

“I got it,” Liya stated. She tapped on her phone for a bit, then said, “Upstairs shower is Civia, me, Beth, and Heather.”

“What did you do, Liya,” Civia asked.

“I’ve got a spreadsheet, set up with a random number generator, as an icon. Yeah, it’s only a pseudorandom number generator, but for anything other than serious science, pseudo random works fine. I just changed the bounds, made them 1 and 6, and ran it until I got four different individuals of us.”

“Why four and two, rather than three and three?”

“‘Cause the wash-your-friend’s-back thing doesn’t work without an even number. We’ve tried, it just doesn’t work.”

“Oh.” Civia obviously thought for a few seconds, then asked, “Could you show me the spreadsheet after showers?”

“Sure. And, Girl, you need to get those clothes off.”

“Oh, yeah. Thanks, Liya.”

“You don’t need to thank me for little stuff like that. These are the sorts of things that friends do. One friend wants to learn something that another friend knows, the other friend shows her or teaches her. It’s like ... when you know something simple like ... how to take over the world that...” Our laughter interrupted Liya, but she continued. “ ... that would take only a few minutes to teach a friend. Would you expect to be thanked?”

“Uhh. Though I’m not sure that taking over the world is simple, I understand. I’ll remember that. Why did you use that example?”

“I’m guessing that you’ve never watched ‘Pinky and the Brain.’”

“Umm ... no.”

“You need to look into that. Actually, we can probably show you this afternoon.”

During this banter, I had texted Dad with a minor request. As Civia began undressing, I headed to the shower to get the water going. Civia wound up being paired with Heather in the shower, which was accomplished more quickly than usual because, given the light workout we’d gotten today, we decided to forego hair washing.

Once we were done and all upstairs, I said, “Dad will be at least a couple more hours and the Moms are at work today.”

Heather got it, immediately (“Great! No clothes! I’ll get started on lunch.”), and headed downstairs, resulting in a wide-eyed Civia.

“Civia, if none of the adults are here, we often go naked. If you don’t want to do that, that’s more than fine. If you’ll be uncomfortable with us doing that, please let us know; we can get dressed. To answer the questions that I suspect you have, our parents know that we do this and are fine with it. Dad will text me to give us some warning.”

Civia, already with a panty on, looked at me, then swallowed.

“I ... I’m fine. That will be fine. I don’t want to be a drag.” She inhaled deeply. “I want to get to where you girls are. I can do it.”

She looked at each of us, then pushed her panty down and off. When she stood erect, again, she looked around, then looked at me and nodded. I returned the nod and headed for the stairs, phone in hand. When I entered the kitchen, I saw that Heather had sandwich makings, dishware, flatware, and glasses out.

“I knew we kept you around for some reason.”

“You funny, girl,” Heather retorted in our usual fake-Oriental accent for that line.

“Oh,” Civia exclaimed.

I turned to look at her; she was looking at the kitchen windows. She nodded, then inhaled deeply.

“I assume,” she said, “that there’s some reason that you’re not worried about the windows.”

Rhee responded, “I like a girl that thinks. Yes, that reason is one-way glass. All of the first-floor windows have it.”

“Th ... Okay. What ... how does one-way glass work? That seems...”

“Oxymoronic? Contradiction in terms? Is that the term you’re seeking,” asked Gracey.

“Uhhh ... yeah, I suppose.”

“Oddly, we don’t know. That is, we haven’t tried to find out. Liya, Beth, why haven’t we looked into that?”

“Good question. Perhaps a short project for this afternoon, along with introducing Civia to Pinky and the Brain.”

“Agreed, Liya,” Heather said. “I definitely won’t mind watching an hour or so of that. It’s one of those perfect cartoons. Kids can laugh at it at one level while ... umm ... adults and ... we smart girls appreciate it at a different level. Have you seen ‘Ren and Stimpy,’ Civia, or ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle?’ Like Pinky and the Brain, they’re all old, particularly ‘Rocky,’ but they’re so witty.”

With lunch eaten and one-way glass researched, we dove into Pinky and the Brain on the wall TV in the living room. We were into our fourth episode when my phone emitted its incoming-text jingle; I read the text.

“We have less than ten minutes, girls. Let’s get dressed.”

“Oh. Wow. I’d forgotten.”

“Yeah,” responded Gracey, “with a good distraction, Civia, it’s pretty easy to sit around in your skin with your best friends and not really ... remember that you’re naked. I was like you when we started this, but I quickly got used to it. I now prefer it, and strongly so.”

Civia looked at Gracey for a bit, then said, “I can see that.”

Civia then seemed to look inside herself. Since she was obviously pondering hard, we all waited for her to come to wherever she was headed.

“You ... you girls are ... I really like this. All of this. The comfort of being with ... friends. The sharing of fun things.” She sniffled, then said, “The past two weeks have been the best. I’ve never enjoyed soccer so much, enjoyed so many things that weren’t soccer ... had so much fun. Thank ... Liya, this isn’t small. Thank you for being my friends. I know, I say something like this almost every time I’m with you. It’s just so new to me, but unless something even more wonderful happens, I’ll try not to say it again. Just ... just know that you’ve made my life much more enjoyable.”

“No problem,” I said. “We still say things like that to each other, occasionally. We’ve all done it for all of us. I doubt that any of us could have imagined how much better our lives could be before we came together. We all think that you’re a good addition.”