Journey to Authenticity and Growth, Ch2 7/11

[barelin]

Gwen McNeil, a 24-year-old recent business graduate, finds herself trapped in a soul-crushing retail job instead of the career she imagined. While working a monotonous shift at Evergreen, a surreal and provocative incident disrupts her routine—three nude women confidently walk through the store as a quiet protest against body shame. Gwen’s passive reaction to the confrontation, captured on a viral video, draws massive online backlash and makes her a symbol of silent complicity.

As her job falls apart and her self-worth unravels, Gwen grapples with public scorn, professional isolation, and personal insecurity, particularly tied to a scar she's long been ashamed of. Unexpectedly, she finds a glimmer of hope in a job listing at NaturEra Consulting—a company that promotes authenticity through a clothing-free work environment. Desperate and curious, she applies, even as the prospect terrifies her.

[barelin]

Journey to Authenticity and Growth

Chapter 1: Dress Code Violation

At twenty-four, I was certain I understood adulthood.

My business degree hung lopsided on my apartment wall—still crooked from the night I’d winged a shoe at it after rejection email number three. My résumé was a work of optimistic fiction: buzzwords standing in for experience, bullet points pretending to be competence. I had the drive—the kind that should have landed me a corner office or at least a LinkedIn worth noticing.

But no one tells you that the drive doesn’t cover rent. No one warns you that adulthood’s grand entrance might reek of lukewarm breakroom pizza, the relentless flicker of fluorescent lights, and the unmistakable scent of a department store’s existential dread—some unholy mix of regret, expired perfume, and the ghosts of burnt candles.

I’m Gwen McNeil, and instead of launching a startup—or even fetching oat milk lattes for someone who did—I’m marooned in the limbo between minimum wage and total burnout. By day, I’m a disembodied voice soothing irate customers through Evergreen’s service hotline, drowning in paperwork that somehow multiplies overnight. By night, I pin on a name tag and shuffle through aisles of half-priced dreams, restocking shelves in a place that bills itself as "retail heaven" but feels more like fluorescent purgatory.

What do I want to say to customers when they wander too close?

“Welcome to Evergreen: part clearance aisle, part flat-screen graveyard. Imagine Kohl’s—but if someone muttered ‘late-stage capitalism’ into a clogged wishing well.”

Turns out, adulthood isn’t a boardroom. It’s an endless shift in a store that never closes.

The raw truth? This is where it all starts—not with glory or growth, but with a screaming manager, three nonchalant naked women, and the sinking realization that I might be on the wrong side of history.

The Incident, as it would later be called, happened on a Friday, or maybe a Saturday. Honestly, who could keep track? When your life is measured in fluorescent-lit shifts and thirty-minute lunch breaks spent hunched over your phone—scrolling through job listings that demand three to five years of experience for wages that barely cover ramen—days blur together like smudged mascara.

I was crouched behind the cosmetics counter, alphabetizing lipsticks into chromatic submission, when the chaos erupted.

"OUT! OUT! THIS IS A PLACE OF BUSINESS! DECENCY, PEOPLE!"

The shriek belonged to Mr. Driscoll, our perpetually flustered, balding manager, who ruled Evergreen with the iron fist of a man who knew his authority was as fragile as the store’s "50% OFF" stickers. One bad Yelp review, one corporate inspection gone wrong, and his entire kingdom could crumble.

I stood up, a tube of "Crimson Confidence" still in hand, and turned toward the commotion.

At first, all I saw were customers—dozens of them—their heads swiveling in unison like startled pigeons. Then, like a surrealist painting comes to life, three women emerge from behind the sunglasses display.

Naked.

Not "artfully draped in silk sheets" naked. Not "airbrushed lingerie ad" naked. This was real, unfiltered, "this is what human bodies look like," naked. Sun-kissed shoulders, soft stomachs, stretch marks like silver trails, freckles scattered like constellations.

The oldest of them—a woman with steel-gray hair twisted into a loose bun—carried a basket of scented candles on her hip like it was the most natural thing in the world. Her companions (daughters? friends? accomplices?) flanked her, barefoot and unbothered, examining silk scarves with the same reverence one might reserve for fine art.

I blinked. Once. Twice.

Nope. Still naked.

Was it legal? Technically, yes.

Was it welcome at Evergreen? Not according to the bold, all-caps sign above every register:

"CLOTHING REQUIRED FOR DIGNIFIED SHOPPING. MANAGEMENT RESERVES THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE."

That little (MANAGEMENT) in parentheses? That was Mr. Driscoll’s doing. He treated it like gospel.

He charged at them now, clipboard clutched to his chest like a shield, his face purpling with outrage. "This is a FAMILY ESTABLISHMENT! Put something on!"

The gray-haired woman didn’t even flinch. "We’re well within our rights, dear," she said, voice calm as a lake at dawn. "Our bodies are not obscene—your discomfort is."

The younger one—early 40s, with a spiraling rose tattoo curling around her ribs—held up a sheer floral scarf. "We’re shopping for accessories. Though, frankly, this place could use a lesson in self-expression."

Mr. Driscoll sputtered, his face now a shade of mauve I’d only seen in expired lipstick. "This is not a nudist resort! Gwen! Call security!"

I froze, fingers fumbling for the store phone. Around us, customers gawked. A teenager in pajama pants had already pulled out her phone, live-streaming the whole thing. My coworker Marco leaned in, whispering, "Bet they’re from that free-body camp up near Marana," like he’d just spotted Bigfoot browsing the clearance rack, and maybe he had, because this wasn’t just a wardrobe malfunction—it was defiance—a quiet, naked rebellion against shame.

Before I could dial, the eldest woman strode toward me. Up close, she smelled like lavender and something earthy, like rain on warm pavement. She dropped her basket onto the counter with a grace that felt both regal and maternal.

"We’re not here to cause trouble, sweetheart," she said. "Just to remind people what freedom looks like." Then she pressed a card into my palm—thick, cream-colored, with elegant embossed lettering: Free the Body, Free the Mind – Sunset Ridge Collective.
For when you’re done playing dress-up.

I didn’t get a chance to respond. Mr. Driscoll snatched the card from my hand like it was a lit fuse and ripped it in two, scattering the pieces onto the floor like they might infect someone. "Filth," he hissed.

The women turned as one—Alexandria (Lex) Hicks, I’d later learn her name was—and walked toward the exit, heads high, bare feet silent against the linoleum. The automatic doors chimed cheerfully as they disappeared into the Tucson night.

As for me? I stood there, "Crimson Confidence" in one hand, the torn edges of the card in the other, my heart pounding with something that felt dangerously close to... Envy, because maybe I wasn’t angry—maybe I was jealous.

Jealous of the way they moved—unapologetic, unafraid. Jealous of the way they’d turned a fluorescent-lit purgatory into their kind of stage. Jealous that they’d walked out of there with nothing but their skin and their pride, while I was still trapped behind a counter, counting down the minutes until my next break.

That night, I Googled Sunset Ridge Collective. What happened next? I wasn’t sure, but the memory of those women, moving through the store with unflinching confidence, lingered like the scent of lavender and rain-soaked earth.

The days after The Incident blurred into a relentless storm of headlines, hashtags, and hot takes. Marco’s shaky phone footage went nuclear overnight—millions of views, reaction videos, and think pieces dissecting every frame with the fervor of a true crime podcast.

"When Boomers Clash with Body Positivity"
"Who Gets to Decide What’s ‘Dignified’?"
"Retail Worker’s Silence Speaks Volumes"

The pixelated video showed it all—Mr. Driscoll, red-faced and sputtering. The three women, serene and unyielding, and I, frozen behind the counter, phone in hand, face a blank mask of indecision.

Somehow, in the court of public opinion, I became the villain.

"Retail Robot Enables Bigotry"
"Employee Refuses to Support Naturist Protest"
"Evergreen Coward Bows to Store Policy over Body Freedom"

The internet dissected my every micro-expression. My hunched shoulders were "complicit." My silence was "betrayal." One viral tweet called me a "fascist of fabric," as if my minimum-wage job came with a moral obligation to strip naked and join the revolution.

The worst part? They weren’t entirely wrong. I stood there. I hadn’t spoken up. Not for the women. Not against Driscoll. I just… existed. A human-shaped mannequin in a polyester vest, watching history unfold like it was someone else’s problem.

Three days later, Evergreen Corporate released a statement:

"We stand by our store leadership’s enforcement of policies designed to preserve a family-friendly shopping environment. We support Manager Driscoll and our employees’ rights to a dignified workplace."

Translation? They threw me under the bus and handed Driscoll the keys.

The backlash didn’t just come from strangers. My coworkers—people I’d shared breakroom pizza with—started side-eyeing me as I’d personally called HR on them. Marco, who’d filmed the whole thing, suddenly acted like he’d been a silent ally all along.

"You could’ve at least said something," he muttered in the stockroom.

I wanted to scream. I hadn’t even done anything, but that was the problem. I tried to lay low. Deactivated my socials. Avoided the news, but the universe wasn’t done punishing me, because while I was drowning in anonymous hate, Driscoll was thriving.

Local news dubbed him a "Retail Hero." Right-wing pundits praised his "stand against moral decay." He did interviews, smiling like he hadn’t just ripped up a stranger’s card in front of me.

What about me? I was the girl who stood there. The girl who did nothing.

Every second that passed after The Incident made me regret not breaking up with Jeffrey Taylor, my on-again-off-again boyfriend since my sophomore year of college. He was the human equivalent of a participation trophy—mediocre, forgettable, but somehow still taking up space in my life. Now, as my name was dragged through the digital mud, he was useless.

"Babe," he’d say, "just ignore it," while scrolling through his phone as I hyperventilated over the web. "People are dumb." I wanted to scream. I didn’t need platitudes—I needed a damn lawyer.

Instead, I reached out to Evergreen’s corporate HR, hoping for damage control, but the responses—when they came at all—were colder than the break room’s broken fridge.

"We take all incidents seriously."
"Your concerns have been noted."
"Policy enforcement is at management’s discretion."

Translation: You’re on your own.

Three weeks later, I stood in the Evergreen parking lot, clutching a cardboard box of my former work life. Inside were the remnants of my retail career: a half-used bottle of hand sanitizer (irony noted), a stress cow, missing its squeaker after one too many panic squeezes, and my chipped "World’s Okayest Employee" mug—now a relic of a time when I still pretended to care, and, tucked beneath it all, the water-stained remains of Lex’s business card, salvaged from the break room trash like some sad, soggy act of rebellion.

Driscoll’s voice still rang in my ears: "You humiliated the brand," he’d spat that morning, eyes gleaming with the kind of joy only a petty tyrant could muster. "You should’ve redirected those women before they reached accessories. That delay made me look weak." I’d bitten my tongue so hard I tasted blood.

Weak? That man was a cartoon of insecurity—a balding, clipboard-wielding Napoleon who thought enforcing a dress code made him a moral authority. "You are weak," I muttered under my breath. Maybe he hadn’t heard me, or maybe he had—and firing me was his way of proving he wasn’t.

The job was gone. My reputation was in shambles. Even my savings account was hemorrhaging money like a stuck pig, so I did what all the newly unemployed do when their Wi-Fi gets cut off: I went to the public library.

The air was thick with the scent of old paper and despair. I sat at a sticky plastic table, scrolling through job listings on Indeed like a digital descent into hell:

Telemarketer – Must Thrive in High-Stress Environments! (Translation: You will be screamed at hourly.)

Front Desk Associate – Must Smile Through Verbal Abuse! (Ah, the classic "customer service is war" mentality.)

Adult Novelty Shop Cashier – "Friendly" Demeanor Required! (At least here, the customers expected awkward silence.)

I slumped deeper into my chair, the hard plastic digging into my back. This was rock bottom, or so I thought. Then there it was—glowing on the library’s flickering monitor like some kind of cosmic joke:

Office Coordinator – NaturEra Consulting
seeking an organized self-starter to champion workplace authenticity!
Salary: $52k + benefits.

I blinked. Fifty-two thousand dollars. The number hit me like a punch to the ribs. That was more than Mom made in two years scrubbing toothpaste stains from hotel bathroom sinks off I-10. That kind of money didn’t just pay rent—it rewrote futures. It meant doctor’s visits without panic. It meant maybe, finally, breathing room.

My pulse thudded in my throat as I scanned the rest of the listing. Then I saw it. Naturist Ethos: Clothing-Free Environment. Embrace Vulnerability!

A laugh burst out of me—sharp and humorless—earning a glare from the librarian. Of course. After weeks of being crucified online as the "fabric fascist," the universe was offering salvation in the one form I couldn’t stomach.

My eyes dropped to the scar on my thigh—a jagged white line curving like a question mark. A twelve-year-old’s bike crash turned into lifelong shame. I hadn’t worn shorts since high school. Not at the beach. Not during Tucson’s brutal heat waves. Not even alone in my apartment with the AC broken.

Yet my finger hovered over the mouse. "For when you’re done playing dress-up." Lex’s voice in my memory. The way she’d looked at me—not with pity, but with something worse: recognition. I clicked Apply Now before I could think better of it.

The first question appeared, blinking like a dare: How do you define authenticity? I stared. The cursor mocked me. I typed: Not pretending to be someone you’re not.

I paused. Too glib. Too easy. Backspaced and tried again: Living without shame.

My fingers froze. The words felt like a lie. I’d built my life around shame—wrapped myself in it like armor. I deleted it and tried one last attempt, fingers shaking: Being brave enough to admit who you are—even to yourself.

I hit submit before I could chicken out, my stomach churning. The truth? I didn’t believe a word I’d written. Not really, but as I gathered my things, a traitorous thought whispered, ‘Maybe I want to.’

The ceiling fan in my Tucson apartment groaned as it spun, pushing around the thick July heat rather than relieving it. Maintenance had promised—again—that they’d fix the AC this week. They hadn’t, so, like every other night, I sat at my kitchen table in nothing but my underwear, my skin sticky with sweat, my laptop burning my thighs.

Outside my window, the neon glow of a dive bar sign flickered. The Dusty Cactus, where the bartenders worked in tank tops and cutoffs, unfazed by the desert’s relentless sun. I’d walked past it a hundred times, always averting my eyes like a prude. Now, the irony of ironies, I was applying for a job that required the same level of… exposure. Just in an office with spreadsheets and health insurance.

I wasn’t ready for tank tops, but I was desperate enough to click Submit on NaturEra’s application.


The Job Hunt

I applied for everything that required a pulse and a GED.

Data Entry Clerk (Must tolerate fluorescent lighting!)

Overnight Stocker (“Quiet, independent workers preferred.” Translation: We don’t want to talk to you.)

Call Center Rep (“Resilience is a must!” Translation: You will be verbally abused hourly.)

Miraculously, I landed a handful of phone interviews and two in-person ones—astonishing, considering my résumé now came with an invisible footnote:

GWEN MCNEIL
Business Degree. Former Evergreen Employee. Internet Villain.

Every conversation followed the same script:

Polite Small Talk ("Tell us about yourself!" Translation: Perform normalcy.)

Rehearsed Answers ("I thrive in collaborative environments!" Translation: I will lie for money.)

The Pause; then, inevitably—"So… we saw the, uh… incident at your last job. Care to elaborate?" My fingers would tighten around the phone. My stomach would drop like a stone. Incident. Such a clean word for the catastrophe that had swallowed me whole.

Some interviewers pretended to care: "We admire your professionalism in a difficult situation." (Translation: You didn’t scream or cry on camera. Good dog.)

Others didn’t bother hiding their skepticism: "How do we know you won’t freeze up under pressure again?" (Translation: You’re damaged goods.)

I tried spinning it—"It was a complex moment of conflicting policies"—but their silence always spoke louder. They weren’t hiring Gwen McNeil, a business graduate. They were hiring Gwen McNeil, the girl who stood there. The girl who didn’t fight. The girl who didn’t flee. The girl who just… existed, uselessly, in the crossfire. By the fourth rejection, I wanted to stop answering my phone.


The Aftermath

Jeffrey left ramen on my doorstep like some kind of sad, carb-based apology. Mom sent a text: "Keep your chin up, baby." However, the truth was, my chin was buried in my hands, because the world had decided who I was, and I was starting to believe them.

The last interview had been a disaster. Another retail admin job, another manager squinting at my résumé like it was written in disappearing ink. Another polite "We’ll be in touch" that meant "Don’t call us, we’ll ghost you." I was stepping off the bus, my blazer sticking to my back in the Tucson heat, when my phone rang. It showed 3:17 PM on a Tuesday—an ungodly hour for good news.

An unknown number flashed on the screen. My thumb hovered over the decline button. These days, unknown calls meant one of three things:

A recruiter about to ghost me: "We’ve decided to pursue other candidates!"

A scammer offering extended car warranties: "Your vehicle’s factory coverage is expiring!"—I don’t even own a car.

A journalist fishing for "my side of the story"—then twisting it into clickbait. "Ex-Evergreen Employee Breaks Silence: Was She Complicit?"

The worst of all: another scheduling call for an interview that would go nowhere.

Then I saw the area code: Marana. My stomach did a slow, nauseating flip.

I answered on the fourth ring, just before voicemail. "Gwen McNeil." My voice came out raspy from disuse—I hadn’t spoken aloud in two days.

"Ms. McNeil!" The woman on the line sounded like she’d just finished laughing. Warm. Unbothered. "This is Mara from NaturEra Consulting. We loved your application."

I nearly dropped the phone. Loved. Not reviewed. Not considered. Loved. "Oh," I managed. "That’s... unexpected."

Mara chuckled. The sound is easy and unfazed. "We specialize in the unexpected." A pause. Papers shuffled. "Your answer to our authenticity question? ‘Being brave enough to admit who you are’? That stuck with us." I swallowed hard, the scar on my thigh itched under my slacks.

Mara continued, her tone softening, "I suspect you wrote that before you fully read our job description." A pause hung between us, heavy and expectant.

Mara’s voice lowered, gentle but firm, "Gwen. You realize this is a clothes-free workplace, yes?" The air left my lungs in a rush.

In my haze of desperation and stubborn optimism, I had glossed over that detail. Applied anyway. Pretended it was just another corporate buzzword—vulnerability, authenticity, whatever.

This was different. NaturEra Consulting meant bare skin. Bare everything.

"I... yes," I lied.

Mara hummed, as if she could see right through me. "Tell me, what was going through your mind when those women walked into Evergreen?"

The question hit like a bucket of ice water. They looked free. I wanted to disappear. I hated them. I envied them. "I didn’t know what to think," I whispered.

"Good." Mara sounded pleased. "Honesty. That’s step one."

Another pause stretched out, weighted and expectant. Mara’s tone shifted, becoming more decisive. "We’d like to bring you in for the first interview at our Marana office. No obligations—just see if our ethos aligns with... whatever you’re searching for. You can wear what you are comfortable with."

My fingers trembled around the phone. Fifty-two thousand dollars. Benefits. A way out, but at what cost?

"What if I... can’t?" The admission burned. "What if I show up and just... freeze again?"

Mara’s smile was audible, warm, and understanding., "Then you’ll be in good company. Most of us froze at first."

I took a deep breath, my chest tight. "When would I—"

"Thursday," Mara said as if it had already been decided. "We’ll email the details. Oh, and Gwen?"

"Yes?"

"Pack light." The line went dead.

I sat there, phone clutched to my chest, eyes fixed on the torn Sunset Ridge card on my nightstand. “For when you’re done playing dress-up.”

Curling into a ball on my bed, I tried not to hyperventilate, because, in forty-eight hours, I would have to face the terrifying truth: The only thing scarier than being seen... was being seen through.

[student]

First class beginning. Crushed by the world, Gwen McNeil is a meek little mouse, and mice get blamed for everything. I'm looking forward to this mouse roaring.

[randomlygenerated]

Somehow, in the court of public opinion, I became the villain.

"Retail Robot Enables Bigotry"
"Employee Refuses to Support Naturist Protest"
"Evergreen Coward Bows to Store Policy over Body Freedom"

The internet dissected my every micro-expression. My hunched shoulders were "complicit." My silence was "betrayal." One viral tweet called me a "fascist of fabric," as if my minimum-wage job came with a moral obligation to strip naked and join the revolution.

I don't know if this is going to be the type of story that I like, but you definitely write well. These lines especially stood out to me.

[barelin]

Chapter 2: The Naked Truth
My parents had trained me from an early age not to see what was in front of me. To look, but never to truly look. To avert my gaze before recognition could take root. To see my own body as something that needed to be hidden—shameful, indecent—and to extend that same blindness to others, whether they were fully or partially exposed.

I learned to pretend that everyone around me was always properly clothed, just as I was expected to be. A bare shoulder, the curve of a waist, any hint of skin that should have been covered—these weren’t meant to be acknowledged. My mind blurred them out, stitching imaginary fabric over reality as if I could edit the world itself.

In other words, I was brainwashed.

It wasn’t just about modesty. It was about control—a refusal to let the world exist as it was, to let bodies—mine or anyone else’s—simply be. We were taught to live in a carefully constructed illusion, one where temptation lurked in every uncovered inch and the only safety was in denial.

I didn’t realize how deep the conditioning went until I left for university—until the day it finally failed me. The moment I saw—truly saw—and the world didn’t collapse around me proved it. That revelation came later.

First, there was the lie—the one my parents and their community had woven so tightly around me that I believed it without question. For years, that belief isolated me. While other kids my age navigated friendships, first crushes, and the awkward, beautiful mess of growing up, I stood apart, unable to relate. I had no real friends—not in elementary school, not in high school—not until I finally escaped.

By the time I reached university, the illusion began to fracture. As my eyes opened, so did the rift between my parents and me, especially my mother, who fought desperately to maintain her grip on my thoughts. She bombarded me with warnings, with prayers, with frantic pleas to guard my morals against the “evilness” of the world beyond her control.

The truth was already seeping in. Once it did, there was no going back.

The entire morning had been a meticulous calculation—getting ready for the interview, mapping out the four bus transfers, padding my schedule for delays, and obsessively checking my phone for any route changes. Every minute was accounted for. Now, the desert sun blazed through the first bus window, turning the vinyl seat beneath me into a griddle. Sweat prickled at the back of my neck, trapped beneath the tight knot of my hair. I adjusted my navy blazer—buttoned to the throat, starched stiff as armor—and wiped my damp palms on my slacks.

In the smudged reflection of the window, I barely recognized myself. Hollow-eyed, jaw clenched. A woman heading to an execution, not a job interview.

This company—this job—stood against everything my mother had carved into me. Every sermon, every hissed warning, every trembling prayer. Evil wears a suit, she’d say. Evil sits in boardrooms and smiles while it ruins souls. Yet, here I was, walking straight into its jaws.

A part of me wanted to crawl back. To call her right now. To hear her voice wrap around me like a shroud: Come home. Let me fix you. It would be so easy. I could slip back into the illusion, let the numbness settle over me again, and let her rewrite the world in safe, familiar strokes. No more questions. No more fear.

The bus lurched forward, and so did I.

The other part of me—the part that had spent nights wide-eyed in a dorm room, realizing how small her cage had been—whispered something worse: What if she was wrong? What if the world weren’t a minefield of sin, but just a place? What if I wasn’t a sinner for wanting to stand in it, unflinching?

The next stop was mine. I stood before the driver could call it, my fingers white-knuckled around the overhead rail. Forward. Always forward. Even if it burned.

I stepped off the last bus, exactly as planned—just over a block from the glass-and-steel tower that housed NaturEra Consulting. The name alone had seemed harmless enough when I’d applied it on a sleep-deprived whim after three glasses of wine. Back then, bleary-eyed and desperate for any job that wouldn’t make me vomit from boredom, I’d assumed it was just another corporate wellness gig. Yoga breaks. Meditation pods. Maybe a kombucha tap in the breakroom. Now, standing here, the name sent my pulse skittering.

A group of four professionals strode past me, their laughter sharp against the hum of traffic. One woman stood out—tall, polished, her blazer cinched at the waist like a warning. It wasn’t her poise that froze me. It was the others flanking her. Two women and a man, older, all of them, not wearing a stitch.

My breath was locked in my throat. The man’s bare shoulders gleamed in the sunlight; one of the women swung a tote bag casually, her hips swaying as if her skin weren’t on blatant display. My muscles tensed, my mother’s voice hissing in my skull: Look away. I looked away, but I couldn’t. Their ease was a slap. They moved like this was normal. Like I was the odd one, buttoned to the chin in my suffocating blazer.

I nearly walked into a light post. Stumbling, I caught myself, my face burning. This was NaturEra’s doing. Their clientele. The job listing had mentioned “holistic corporate integration” and “body-positive frameworks,” but I’d glossed over it, too fixated on the salary to parse the jargon. Now the truth coiled around me: this wasn’t just a company that tolerated nudity—it embraced it, and I was about to walk into its lobby.

A tremor ran through my hands. I could still bolt—delete the interview reminder from my phone, crawl back to my crappy apartment, and apply somewhere safe—somewhere with dress codes and cubicle walls and rules that made sense.

I glanced again at that polished woman in the blazer, walking alongside her bare-skinned colleagues like it was nothing. Like she was nothing like me.

My fingers tightened around my portfolio.

The interview invitation had arrived with an unexpected footnote that made my screen blur: “Our workplace culture embraces textile-free authenticity. Please dress (or not) in whatever makes you comfortable.”

My finger hovered over the delete button. Then it twitched to the trash icon. Then back again. I took three breaths. Then four. Still, the email stared up at me, daring me to pretend I had options. I almost did—until I remembered the hollow clink of my last quarters hitting the counter at the bodega yesterday, and the eviction notice curling under my coffee table like a sleeping viper. My former boss’s dimpled smirk as security shadowed me through Evergreen’s glass doors (“We’re restructuring,” he’d said, like it wasn’t personal, like he hadn’t seen me coming in early for three years straight)

That smirk was why I’d applied to NaturEra in the first place. Why I’d drunk-wheedled my liberal arts degree into sounding like “transferable skills” at 2 am. Why I now stood sweating through my thrift-store blazer in front of a building that might as well have had ABANDON MORALS, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE carved above the revolving doors.

The glass façade reflected my grimace—a funhouse mirror version of the girl who used to cross the street to avoid bikini ads. Somewhere inside that tower, people were working without clothes. Answering phones. Attending meetings. Maybe even making fucking spreadsheets while their bare thighs stuck to ergonomic chairs.

My stomach lurched. I could still walk away. Spend my last twelve dollars on bus fare to my mother’s place, kneel on her scratchy floral couch, and let her stroke my hair while whispering, “I told you the world would break you.”

The revolving door spat out a laughing couple, e—both naked except for lanyards and hiking boots. The woman tossed an apple core into a bin while the man adjusted his genitals, ls—casually like they were cufflinks. I blinked hard and turned my head, heat crawling up my neck. Was this my life now? I buttoned my blazer to the collar and walked inside.

Stepping into the lobby felt like crossing into another dimension. The blast of cool air carried a faint scent, like sun-warmed skin. Everything was sleek white minimalism: curved benches that looked more like art installations than seating, a living wall of ferns trembling under the AC vent, and at least a dozen people milling about in varying states of undress. My vision automatically fractured, eyes darting from face to face like a pinball machine, desperately avoiding the expanses of exposed flesh in between.

The reception desk might as well have been a mile away. I focused on the click of my heels against polished concrete, counting steps like a prisoner walking the plank. That’s when I saw her.

Nancy. Mid-fifties, silver bob perfectly styled, fingers flying across her keyboard with the efficiency of someone who’d worked this job for years. Completely and unapologetically nude from the collarbones down. No artful drapery. No strategic folder placement. Just… Nancy. The name on her lanyard might as well have been flashing in neon.

“Gwen McNeil?” Her voice was warm, the kind that usually made people relax. My spine locked tighter.

I nodded, chin jerking like a marionette. My eyeballs burned from the effort of maintaining strict eye contact—somewhere between my mother’s voice hissing about modesty and my starving artist budget screaming that I needed this job. The rules played on a loop in my head: Face. Only the face. If you look down, you’ll scream. If you stare, they’ll know you’re broken.

Nancy’s smile didn’t waver as she tapped her monitor. “They’re ready for you on the third floor.” She gestured toward the elevators where a group of three nude associates were laughing over iced coffees, condensation dripping onto—nope. Face up. Always up.

The elevator doors opened with a chime that sounded suspiciously like judgment. Stepping onto the elevator, I nearly sagged with relief at the sight of two fully clothed individuals—a man in a gray suit and a woman in a conservative blouse and slacks. For a blissful second, I thought maybe this was just some elaborate misunderstanding. That’s when I realized: they were probably here for the same job. Competitors. Allies. Fellow outsiders, just as desperate as I was.

The woman—young, early twenties at most—exchanged a nervous glance with me as the elevator climbed. She chewed her bottom lip, fingers tapping against her portfolio. When the doors opened on the second floor, she hurried out without a word, leaving me alone for the final ascent.

I took the moment to steady my breathing, pressing my clammy palms against my slacks. You need this. You need this.

The woman at the reception desk had given clear directions: Conference room 303, end of the hall. My heels clicked too loudly against the hardwood, each step echoing like a countdown to my undoing. When I reached the door, I hesitated, hand hovering over the handle. This was it—the point of no return.

Then I stepped inside. Four people sat around the sleek glass table, all of them completely nude. All of them stared at me like I was the one exposed.

My pulse roared in my ears. Every instinct screamed at me to turn around, to bolt, to pretend this had never happened. If my family ever found out—if they so much as suspected I’d be interviewed at a place where clothing was optional—it wouldn’t just be a matter of disowning me. They’d scrub me from memory. A ghost. A cautionary tale whispered at family gatherings. “Remember what happened to Gwen?”

Still, they looked… normal. Not like the exaggerated figures from my mother’s warnings, not like sinners or degenerates. Just people. A Korean man with a sharp jawline and an easy smile (Daniel Yong, HR). A Black woman with locs piled into a neat bun, posture relaxed but attentive (Lila Huston, Operations). A Latino man with warm brown eyes and a faint scar along his collarbone (Carlos Gomez, Client Relations). The fourth was—Praia Chavez—who hadn’t spoken yet, just studied me with an unsettling stillness.

“Gwen McNeil?” Daniel gestured to the empty chair. “Please, sit.”

The words snapped me back into my body. This was an interview, not an execution. I could do this. I sat, and then the real test began.

The interview had been going surprisingly well—until it wasn’t.

Most of their questions were straightforward, the kind I could answer in my sleep after three years of business courses and eighteen months of phone-jockeying at Evergreen. I carefully steered the conversation toward my administrative strengths—inventory systems, client documentation, workflow optimization—glossing over the retail floor duties like a politician sidestepping a scandal. Yes, I interacted with customers. No, I didn’t mention the time a woman screamed at me for suggesting our organic cotton towels weren’t cursed.

Lila leaned forward, her locs swaying as she steepled her fingers. The conference room’s AC kicked on, raising goosebumps on her bare shoulders.

“We saw the video.”

Four words. That’s all it took to send my stomach through the floor. The video. The one that had gone viral before my former boss even finished writing me up. Thirty-seven seconds of shaky smartphone footage: me, frozen mid-aisle, mouth agape, as the nude ladies walked through the store wearing nothing. My manager’s falsetto shrieks were practically drowned out by the woman cheerfully comparing thread counts.

By the time the corporation sent the “deeply concerned” email, the clip had 500,000 views, with me in the background looking stunned. By the time I emptied my belongings a few weeks later—after the company landed all of the blame on me—it had spawned reaction videos, think pieces, and a social trend called #GranBare.

Carlos tapped his pen against the table. “Your former employer cited ‘failure to maintain appropriate professionalism’ in articles about the incident.

Praia finally spoke, her voice quieter than I expected. “You looked… startled.”

A hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat. Startled. That was one word for it. Try “existentially dismantled.” Try “a devout family belief.”

Daniel saved me from responding by sliding a tablet across the table. The frozen image made my pulse spike—there I was, eyes wide as saucers, frozen mid-aisle like my brain had slammed into the park. One arm crossed over my chest, the other clamped between my thighs, like I was the one who’d suddenly realized they were naked in the store.

“We’re curious,” he said, “how you’d handle a similar situation here.”

The unspoken question hung heavier than the silence: Are you one of us, or just another gawker?

I made myself look at them—look. No flinching. No performative modesty. Just four people were waiting to see if I’d finally understood the assignment.

So, I told the truth. “I’d ask if they needed help. It wasn’t their nudity that was the problem—it was my former boss’s reaction and my upbringing that taught me not to see what was real.”

Lila’s grin split wide open.

“I admire workplaces that value authenticity,” I lied, gripping the edge of my seat. The words tasted like sawdust. What I meant was that I needed this job because no one else would hire the girl from the “Nudist Granny” viral video—the one where my shocked face had become the meme-worthy backdrop to a senior citizen’s sagging breasts.

Praia’s eyebrow arched like a drawn sword. “Do you?” Her voice carried the weight of someone who’d heard every variation of this lie before.

Daniel leaned forward, his bare chest pressing against the conference table. “What makes you uncomfortable about nudity?” The question hit like a bucket of ice water, dissolving all my carefully rehearsed answers. My mouth went dry as a lifetime of conditioning surfaced.

Sister Mary Margaret’s ruler snapped against my knuckles when my school uniform skirt rode up an inch. My mother’s hissed warnings about “tempting men” as she safety-pinned my swimsuit straps together. The way she’d clutch her terrycloth robe shut just to check the mailbox as if the neighbors might catch a glimpse of her ankle and riot.

“I…” My fingers dented the manila folder, leaving crescent-shaped impressions on the cardboard. The conference room’s air conditioning suddenly felt glacial against my flushed skin.

Carlos nodded knowingly. “Family stuff? Religious upbringing?” His tone suggested he’d had this exact conversation with dozens of candidates before.

“Yeah,” I exhaled. “Something like that.”

Daniel steepled his fingers, the picture of professional calm despite being completely nude. “From your composure today, we can see you’re willing to adapt, even without prior experience in clothing-optional environments.” He exchanged glances with the others before delivering the verdict. “We’d like to invite you back for a second interview in three weeks.”

My momentary relief shattered as he continued. “This will be a full-participation interview. We expect you to join us as you see us now.” His gesture encompassed their collective nudity. “You’ll undress in the lobby before coming upstairs.”

The room tilted. Visions flashed through my mind—the childhood scar on my hip from a bike accident, the stretch marks on my thighs I’d earned during freshman fifteen, the birthmark on my left breast that had made me beg my mother to let me skip swim class. Every imperfection I’d spent years hiding would be on display.

“I understand,” I heard myself say, while every nerve ending screamed.

Stepping into the hallway brought unexpected relief. For the first time since that damned video went viral, I wasn’t “Nudist Store Gwen”—just another applicant navigating an unusual workplace. Reality crashed back as I passed a very pregnant woman strolling naked down the corridor, her belly leading the way like a ship’s prow. The casual way she chatted with colleagues while cupping her swollen abdomen made me feel oddly overdressed in my blazer and slacks.

Nearly walking into the glass exit door snapped me back to the present. Outside, the afternoon sun felt foreign after the building’s climate-controlled sterility. As I walked to the bus stop, my senses went into hyperawareness—the scratch of my bra straps, the way my blouse clung to my back with nervous sweat, the constant need to check that my clothes hadn’t somehow disappeared. Every passing pedestrian’s glance felt like an X-ray.

The bus ride home became an out-of-body experience.

I watched my reflection in the dust-streaked window—a perfectly ordinary young woman in a navy blazer and slacks, hair pulled into a neat ponytail, makeup understated. The picture of professionalism. The picture of normalcy.

Still, my mind raced with impossible questions: Could I do this? Could I walk through that lobby naked? What would my mother say if she knew? What would anyone say?

I cut the thought off before it could spiral. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? This job wasn’t just a paycheck. It was a chance to finally step out from under the weight of other people’s expectations—even if it meant shedding every literal and figurative layer of protection I’d ever known.

At the next stop, my heart nearly stopped.

A woman boarded the bus, moving with such casual confidence that at first, I thought I was hallucinating. She wore nothing but a pair of strappy sandals and a transparent backpack slung over one shoulder, its contents on full display: a wallet, a phone, a dog-eared paperback. Her skin was bare, unapologetic, glowing under the fluorescent bus lights. No one gasped. No one stared—except me.

I forced my gaze away, cheeks burning, fingers tightening around my briefcase. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as she settled into the seat across from me, crossing one leg over the other as if she were wearing jeans instead of just… herself. She pulled out a romance novel—something with a shirtless pirate on the cover—and began reading, utterly at ease.

Around us, the other passengers scrolled through their phones, chatted quietly, or gazed out the window. No one reacted. No one cared.

I cared. My pulse hammered in my throat. My entire life, I’d been told what was acceptable to see, to think, to be. Don’t stare. Don’t question. Don’t step out of line. Yet here was this woman, existing as freely as if she were in a sweatshirt and yoga pants.

By the time I reached my stop, I’d transferred buses twice, each one filled with people dressed in what my brain had been conditioned to call normal. Button-ups. Skirts. Jackets. Layers upon layers of fabric, of rules.

As I stepped onto the sidewalk, the world cracked open.

The woman from the bus walked ahead of me, her bare shoulders golden under the afternoon sun. She moved without hesitation, her stride long and unhurried, as if the city itself belonged to her. I trailed behind, my mind spinning—not just about her, but about the interview I’d just left.

Had I been too stiff? Too guarded? Would they even want someone like me—someone who blushed at the thought of her own body, let alone displaying it in front of strangers?

By the time I reached my apartment, my hands shook so badly that I dropped my keys twice. I closed the door behind me and let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding.

The mail in my hand felt heavier than it should—junk fliers, a credit card, and the thick, official envelope from the unemployment office. I tore it open right there in the hallway, my fingers shaking. Claim approved. Relief should have flooded me; instead, my throat tightened.

This wasn’t just about money anymore. It was about the interview.

I clawed at the collar of my blouse like it was suffocating me. The scar on my inner thigh—usually hidden under layers—burned beneath the fabric, a phantom reminder of all the things I’d been taught to keep concealed.

I peeled off my interview clothes with ritualistic care: the blazer first, then the blouse, each garment smoothed and hung like armor returning to its rack. After removing my slacks, I was down to just my bra and panties. I froze, my gaze darting to the blinds. Were they fully closed? Could someone see through the slats? My skin prickled under invisible judgment.

Inside, I stood before the full-length mirror and did something I hadn’t done since puberty—really looked at myself. Not the quick, critical glance while changing. Not the fleeting inspections before dates or meetings.

A real examination. The curve of my waist. The slope of my shoulders. The faint stretch marks on my thighs. The body I’d spent years hiding under blazers and high-waisted skirts might soon become my professional uniform. My freedom.

The agency’s offer echoed in my head: three weeks to decide. Three weeks to become someone new. I took a deep breath. For the first time, I wondered if being naked wasn’t just a state of undress, but a kind of courage.

My phone buzzed from the kitchen counter—two missed calls from unknown numbers. Potential employers? The agency? I should call them back. The thought of speaking aloud, of forcing steady words through this unraveling panic, made my stomach twist. Tomorrow, I decided. When I wasn’t standing here half-naked, my heart racing like I’d already taken the first step toward my undoing.

That’s what it would be, wouldn’t it? Undoing. Stripping away not just clothes, but every rule etched into me since childhood.

The fridge hummed as I stared into its barren interior. Stale cereal or canned tuna? I opted for the tuna, arranging crackers in a sad, meticulous circle on the plate. Comfort in order. Control in small, meaningless acts.

The TV flickered to life as I collapsed onto the couch. For the first time, I didn’t look away. A silver-haired news anchor debated tariffs, her bare chest unapologetic on-screen. A plus-sized model scrolled through comments during her makeup livestream, her stretch marks untouched by editing. In the corner of the screen, a gaming stream played—some guy in his twenties, completely nude, pouring coffee in the background like it was nothing. No pixelation. No outrage. Just… bodies. Existing.

A week ago, I would’ve changed the channel immediately. A week ago, I wouldn’t have seen it at all—my brain trained to erase the forbidden before it could register.

Now? Now, the conditioning cracked. They weren’t the ones who were wrong—it was me.

I’d been raised in a cult of shame. From the moment I could understand language, my parents weaponized it, stitching modesty into my skin like a second skeleton. The human body wasn’t just indecent—it was a crime scene. A moral failure waiting to happen. See nothing. Acknowledge nothing. If you must see it, erase it.

Yet… that woman was on the bus today. The way she moved through the world was as if her skin were just skin, not a battleground.

The agency’s offer burned in my mind: three weeks to decide. Three weeks to become someone new.

I reached for the business card on the coffee table, the edges worn from my restless fingers. The cardstock was thick. Official. Real. Just like the choice in front of me.

I turned down the television; its glow was the only light in the dim apartment. Having removed my bra and panties, I lay on the couch in nothing but my skin—something that would have been unthinkable just days ago—I let the silence press against me.

The programming had been flawless—from my arrival at Jefferson Carter University to the day I graduated four years later. Four years of walking the same paths between classes, sitting in these same lecture halls. How many of them had been right beside me all along, completely comfortable in nothing but their skin? A hundred? A thousand? Yet I’d never really seen them. Not until now, thinking back.

Today, for the first time, my eyes were open. I remembered the nude woman at the crosswalk beside me on the way to my interview, her bare shoulders freckled in the morning sun, wearing only sandals. Not to forget the professor at the university who chatted with students outside the science building—just as comfortable in his skin as he was in his expertise. They’d always been here. Living. Existing. Unashamed.

While I’d spent twenty-something years seeing the world through my parents’ carefully constructed filters. Every glance diverted, every bare shoulder mentally clothed, every human body automatically censored by my conditioned mind. I’d perfected the art of looking without seeing.

Until that incident at the store. Especially after that interview. Until they offered me the chance to shed more than just my clothes—to shed a lifetime of programmed blindness.

The past looked different now. The world looked different—like I’d been wearing tinted glasses my entire life and only just took them off.

How much else had I failed to see? There was no unseen that I’d seen today. The world has always been this way. I was the one who’d changed. Now, the memories detonated like buried landmines.

At eight years old, my mother yanked a towel around me at the public pool, her nails digging into my shoulders. “Decent girls don’t let strangers see them.” The other children ran free, their laughter sharp against my shame.

At twelve, my father slammed my laptop shut with violence that made me flinch. On-screen, a documentary showed an Indigenous woman bare-chested, her skin painted with symbols of her tribe. “That’s not how civilized people act,” he spat as if her existence were an affront to his brittle morality. The screen cracked under the force of his disgust.

I had lived a lifetime being taught that my body was a secret to keep, a mess to fix, a shame to bury. The mirror had been their accomplice, reflecting only what they wanted me to see—flaws to punish, curves to conceal. However, the world outside their suffocating dogma whispered a different truth.

Bodies were just bodies. Not scandals. Not sins. Not battlegrounds for their disgust.

Then—clarity. A quiet, primal thing stirring beneath the shame they’d drilled into me. Their revulsion wasn’t instinct. It was indoctrination. My body was never the problem. Their fear was.

A buzz from my phone wrenched me back to the present. Praia’s voice was crisp through the receiver: “Your final interview has been moved to Wednesday, the 30th. Ten A.M.”

Three weeks.

The number echoed in my skull as I hung up, collapsing onto the bed. Three weeks to decide. Three weeks to keep flinching at bare shoulders on the street, to keep averting my eyes from skin like it was something forbidden. Three weeks to let their voices keep dictating what deserved to be seen—or to step into the frame myself. Unscripted. Unashamed.

I stood before my closet, bare, the interview clothes discarded on the bed like shed skin. The blaze, and the slacks—once armor—now felt like relics of a life I was ready to leave behind.

My phone buzzed again—another ignored text in a sea of unread messages. I didn’t need to check to know what they’d say: Are you okay? Why are you acting like this? As if unraveling a lifetime of conditioning could be explained in a text.

For the first time since walking into this apartment, I didn’t reach for a robe. I didn’t cover up. I let the air touch me, let my reflection hold my gaze without apology.

The world had tried to teach me that my body was something to hide, but here, now—alone but not ashamed—I was learning something else: Freedom wasn’t forgetting what they’d taught me. I was remembering myself beneath it.

Back on the couch, the television blared a sitcom laugh track I hadn’t bothered to mute, its artificial cheer clashing with the apartment’s leaden silence. The world outside’s usual roar felt distant, muffled under the weight of the phone vibrating in my palm, against my bare skin like a secret that had no place in my mother’s rulebook.

The screen lit up again, casting jagged shadows across the room: Mom (212 missed calls, 313 unread texts), along with countless other messages—voicemails and texts from others left unanswered.

Her last voicemail hissed through the speaker before I could stop it: “Gwen Marie, you’re throwing your soul away for that… that den of perversion.” Her voice trembled with performative grief—the kind she’d weaponized at my graduation when she’d spotted a group of nude students lounging on the quad. I could still see her gloved hand clapping over her eyes, her shrill “Don’t look, Gwen!” sharp enough to turn heads. Dad had marched us to the stadium parking lot like fugitives, his grip on my elbow leaving bruises I’d hidden under my robe. That night, I’d packed my dorm room in silence, cheeks burning with a shame I couldn’t name, and called a friend to ask her if I could stay with her. That led to the job at Evergreen—the one I never wanted.

Lying here, listening to the voicemails from Mom and the others, the phone trembled in my hand like a live grenade of guilt. I flipped it facedown, but her voice unspooled anyway—indecent, sinful, disgraceful—each word a stitch in the shroud she’d spent a lifetime sewing around me.

My fingers found the scar on my thigh, a jagged monument to the summer I was eleven. I’d fallen from a tree branch reaching for a fledgling bird, the gash bleeding through my jeans. Mom had dressed the wound but refused to take me to the hospital. “Doctors see too much,” she’d muttered, dabbing iodine with shaking hands. For weeks, I’d limped through church picnics in ankle-length skirts, the secret of my skin throbbing beneath layers of denim.

The mirror across the room caught my reflection—a mosaic of everything she’d taught me to hate. Sunlight pooled in the soft dip of my stomach and highlighted the uneven tan lines from last summer’s timid foray into tank tops. My hips stubbornly defied the “modest” silhouettes she’d picked for me since puberty. Yet earlier, in NaturEra’s glass-walled conference room, four strangers had sat naked before me, their bodies unapologetic. Praia’s scarred knees. Lila’s stretch-marked shoulders. Daniel’s paunch. Carlos’s knotted surgical scar. They hadn’t flinched. Hadn’t hidden their gazes held no disgust—only a quiet challenge.

What if they saw more of me than my mother ever had? The thought detonated, propelling me to the closet. Inside hung rows of armor: high-necked blouses choked with pearl buttons, slacks starched into submission, and shapewear still tagged from last year’s panic buy. At the back, half-buried under winter coats, a sundress had waited like a rebellion on pause.

The phone buzzed again. Another voice call I let go to voicemail:

Mom: Your father’s heart can’t take this rebellion. We’re coming to get you.

The words blurred. I had three weeks until the next interview—naked. Three weeks to face my family in the rawest way possible. To strip off the years of her siege, even as her texts piled up like sandbags and her voicemails dissected my damnation.

Tomorrow would be the beginning of my deprogramming. I looked up at the screen and saw a woman selling something, wearing nothing but combat boots and a sunhat, her bare breasts gleaming with sweat. She winked as she strode through the crosswalk, her laugh booming. No one gasped. No one cared.

My thumbs hovered over the keyboard as I heard her last messages, considering deleting them all. The cursor pulsed like a tiny metronome, counting down to the rift I’d spent a lifetime avoiding. In the mirror, the skin glowed like a fever dream. I finally texted Mom:

Me: I’m working through some things. I’ll call when I’m ready.

I pressed send before I could fold. The screen dimmed. Somewhere, my mother was probably clutching her rosary, dialing again, but here, in the silence, the nothingness whispered against my thighs—not armor, not a flag, just fabric. Just me.

The first boundary drawn wasn’t in the text. It was in the space between my skin and the world, finally breathing.

The next morning, after the interview and finally responding to my mother, I scraped the last of the cereal from the bowl—dry, stale, the kind you eat not because you want to, but because you have to. The crunch echoed through the apartment, each bite a reminder of how far I’d fallen.

I had slept in my skin—the one that belonged to a version of me who still believed in possibilities. The blanket clung to me now, thinned and fraying like my resolve.

I stared at myself in the smudged bathroom mirror: the imperfect skin, dark circles under my eyes, hair a tangled mess. My body looked absurd paired with my exhaustion, like a costume I had been wearing for a life I wasn’t living anymore.

Then a memory flickered: the girl on the bus. She had been naked, a backpack slung over one shoulder, a book in her hands. It hadn’t been a performance or a protest. Just a person. Existing. I remembered growing up all surrounded by this and refusing to see it, clear as day, both before and after graduation from high school and university.

Had that been real, or was my mind playing tricks after the NaturEra interview?

I squeezed my eyes shut. The university campus flashed behind my eyelids—not the sanitized version I’d clung to, but the truth I’d spent years ignoring: bodies, everywhere.

Not just in lecture halls, but sprawled on the quad under the sun. Swimmers darting between dorm showers in towels slung low. Activists in body paint —bare-chested at rallies. Even that one philosophy TA who’d worn shorts so short they blurred the line between clothing and suggestion.

I’d trained myself not to see it—to look through people, to treat skin as something separate from the person. Now, I wondered if I’d been the odd one out all along.

The cereal turned to dust in my mouth. I leaned over the sink and spat it out.

My phone buzzed—another notification from the unemployment office. Just one more form to fill out, another box to check to prove I was still desperate enough to play their game.

I didn’t move. The real question wasn’t whether the girl on the bus was real. It was: why does it matter so much to me if she was?

The unemployment office smelled like every government building: bleach and hopelessness. I clutched the prepaid assistance card, its sharp edges biting into my palm. A few hundred dollars were loaded onto the plastic, just enough to keep me fed while I jumped through their hoops. The job counselors had been polite, if useless.

“Have you considered retail?” one asked as if my résumé didn’t scream “recently fired from retail.”

“Customer service is always hiring,” another offered, sliding a pamphlet across the desk like it was a lifeline instead of a death sentence.

I smiled. Nodded. Played the grateful, humbled job seeker. The only thing I heard was the unspoken verdict: You’re damaged goods now.

That damn video followed me everywhere, and the worst part—they weren’t wrong.

Long before the Evergreen incident—before the protests and the viral shame—I had rules: never be naked outside the apartment; never be naked inside the apartment unless necessary (showering, changing—and even then, hurry); never exist without layers between you and the world.

Even alone, I wore clothes like armor: a ratty t-shirt to sleep in, sweatpants on lazy Sundays, and socks in summer because bare feet felt too vulnerable. I told myself it was normal.

Standing in my empty kitchen now, staring at the government-issued plastic on the counter, I wondered—when did I start believing my body was something to hide?

The girl on the bus—naked and unashamed. Had she been real, or was my mind so desperate for proof that freedom existed that I’d imagined her?

I pressed my palms into the edge of the counter until my fingers turned white. The unemployment card sat nearby, quiet and mocking.

You have a choice, it seemed to whisper. Keep playing the broken, clueless girl from the video… or prove them wrong.

The groceries sat on the counter—generic cereal, discount pasta, the kind of food that keeps you alive but never reminds you why you’d want to be. The government debit card had barely covered rent, leaving me with a balance I’d have to scrape together somehow. That was tomorrow’s problem.

I picked up my phone and scrolled to Mom’s contact. My thumb hovered over the call button.

What would I say?

“I bought groceries with food stamps today.”
“I might take a job where no one wears clothes.”
“I don’t know who I am anymore.”

The screen blurred. I set the phone down. Then it hit me—a reckless, dizzying thought: take it off. Not for anyone else. Not for some grand statement. Just to see what it felt like.

My fingers found the straps of the sundress—thin, fraying, worn soft from years of neglect. The same one I’d slipped into the night before. The same one I hadn’t taken off.

I slid the straps down and let the fabric fall. It whispered against my skin as it pooled at my feet until there was nothing between me and the air.

I stood there, in the middle of my kitchen, as bare as the girl on the bus, as bare as the NaturEra employees, as bare as I’d been at birth before the world taught me to cover up.

The air felt different on my skin—cooler, sharper, like I’d been living underwater and only just surfaced. I looked down. My body wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t ugly. It just… was.

My hips had never quite fit into the “right” jeans. A stomach that curved softly, no matter how many meals I skipped. A pale, jagged scar on my thigh—the ghost of a childhood accident I had spent years hiding.

For the first time, I didn’t flinch. I just… looked. This wasn’t about nudity. It was about choice. The world had spent my whole life telling me my body was something to judge, hide, and fix. What if it wasn’t? What if it was just mine?

The phone kept ringing. Mom.

I stood naked in my apartment, voicemail blinking, and realized—I wasn’t just shedding clothes. I was shedding a decade of silence.

Friends I buried from high school. Gwen had believed in forever. There was Trina, with her crooked smile, who stole fries off my tray and whispered, “ Screw the dress code” as she rolled her skirt waistband up.

Heidi, who painted constellations on her Docs and swore we’d go on a road trip to the Grand Canyon after graduation.

That was the plan. Graduate. Adventure. After. However, there was no after. Just a rain-slicked road. A swerve, a tree, and two caskets too small to hold all the things they’d never get to be… and me—alive.

Alive when the memorial photos were passed around. Alive when someone hi,d “If you’d just ordered the damn sashes on time, they wouldn’t have been out that night.”

Alive when I packed for university and folded my grief like a secret into every sweater. I’ve worn it ever since.

In college, I perfected the art of disappearance. I never answered my dorm room door. I completed group projects alone to avoid meeting anyone. I let my family’s calls pile up in my inbox without a reply.

It was easier to be the ghost than the girl who survived. Now I stood bare in my kitchen—government groceries on the counter, my mother’s voicemails piling up—and I began to wonder if I’d been wrong. Not just about hiding, but about everything.

My fingers traced the scar on my thigh—not from the crash, but from crash, but from a bike fall years earlier. It was strange how the body remembers. Trina had been there that day, pressing a napkin to my bleeding leg while Heidi sprinted for the nurse. “You’re fine, you’re fine,” she’d chanted, like a spell. They’d seen me bloody, and they’d never flinched.

A sob clawed up my throat, but I didn’t wipe the tears. I let them fall. For the first time in years, I wanted to be seen.

My finger hovered over Jennifer’s texts—nineteen unread, the last one from three days ago: Gwen. Please. Just tell me you’re alive. I exhaled. My thumb trembled.

I could open them. I could answer, or I could do what I’d done for years—swipe left, archive, pretend none of it existed.

That was how I treated every outstretched hand after the crash. Trina’s older sister offered to drive me to campus on move-in day. I deleted the message. Heidi’s mom texted on what would’ve been their 21st birthday. I marked it as spam. My cousin Jennifer—who’d been my first friend before we even knew what friendship meant—was reduced to a notification I refused to acknowledge. I’d built walls so high, even I couldn’t see over them anymore.

I opened my email. There were 1,427 unread messages. Condolences. Job leads. University alumni newsletters. All of them were shoved into a folder labeled “Later”—a graveyard for connections I’d severed without explanation.

The only thing left in my inbox now: NaturEra Consulting – Second Interview Confirmation

“We look forward to seeing you as you are.”

A laugh escaped me—sharp and broken. They had no idea what they were asking, and I had no idea who “as you are” even was.

I thought of the interview lobby—the receptionist’s bare shoulders as she typed, the way Carlos from HR had stretched, unselfconscious, like his body wasn’t a thing to apologize for. I thought of the girl on the bus, naked and reading like it was nothing. I thought of the screens last night—all those unedited bodies, living without fear.

Mental berries. That’s what I used to call them in my head since high school—the invisible barriers I’d erected to avoid seeing what was there, but today, they were crumbling, and it terrified me.

Jennifer’s text still glowed on the screen. The “Later” folder was still open beside it. The sundress lay crumpled on the floor.

I picked up the phone, and for the first time in years, I replied.

Gwen: I’m here. I’m… figuring it out.

Three dots appeared immediately. Jennifer had been waiting. A sob tore loose from my chest. I didn’t stop. I stood there, naked in every way that mattered, and let myself be seen.