Skin Deep Enough, Ch2, 13 Jul

[Danielle]

Chapter 1: The Skin I Didn’t Choose

Do me a favor—don’t blink. Don’t scroll. Don’t breathe too easily. If you’re going to look at me, really look. You already know what they did to me. Or maybe you don’t yet, and you’re waiting for some cute, slow-burn setup like, “My name is Amara, and everything changed one day…”

No. Screw that.

Everything didn’t change. Everything was ripped. Off me. In front of everyone.

So yeah. This is where we’re starting. Not in my bedroom with a sappy playlist and a slow pan across teenage angst posters, but in the nurse’s office, sitting on that awful paper-crinkled cot, in nothing. Not a sock. Not a thread. Not even a hair tie.

Just me. My skin. My breath. My shaking fingers curled around my knees like they could turn back time. Spoiler: They can’t.

"You're lucky you're not being suspended," the nurse said, her voice colder than the metal tray she slapped down beside me. "Disrupting the school day, causing a scene…"

Oh, I’m sorry, was my assault disruptive? Did my humiliation inconvenience the morning announcements?

I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything. I just stared at the blue veins on my wrists and tried not to vomit.

"You should’ve been more careful," she added, arms crossed over her boxy scrubs. "Honestly, the way you were carrying on during Spirit Week—"

“I was wearing jeans and a hoodie.”

"Well," she snapped, like my voice had scratched her, "you didn’t guard yourself."

Guard myself.

You hear that?

I should’ve walked around with duct tape wrapped around my waist. Or maybe a chain-mail onesie. Maybe I should’ve seen it coming—that four girls would pin me down behind the bleachers and strip me like a game.

They thought it’d be funny. They thought it’d be viral. It was both.

The nurse wouldn’t give me a blanket. Or a towel. She said if my "choices" led to this, I could sit in it until my ride came.

So I sat.

Naked. On paper. In fluorescent light.

And I want you to imagine it, really imagine it—because the worst part isn’t the cold. Or the itch of the vinyl against your thighs. Or the fact that your goosebumps feel like betrayal.

The worst part is when the door opens, and it’s your mother.

Not with clothes. Not with a hug. Not with a whisper. Are you okay, baby?

With fury.

“What the hell, Amara?”

She doesn’t look at me. She looks at me like I’m not her daughter but a crime scene. Her eyes are knives and shame and disappointment all sewn into one glare.

“I told you to stop making yourself a target,” she hisses, yanking the oversized purse strap off her shoulder like it’s a weapon. “And now this? What, are you trying to get expelled?”

I try to speak, but my voice is hiding in the back of my throat somewhere. Probably under a pile of memories it wants nothing to do with.

She grabs my arm. My bare arm.

“Mom—!”

"Get up. You’re coming with me."

“I don’t have anything on—”

“Oh? I hadn’t noticed.” Her laugh is made of glass. She doesn’t let me cover up. Don't let me linger. Just pulls, like I’m her broken doll.

In the hallway, I hear gasps. One teacher mutters something. A kid drops their phone in shock.

And suddenly I’m outside, skin to sunlight, walking barefoot across cracked pavement to her car like it’s normal.

Like, this is my fault.

Like I deserved it.

Like I wanted it.

She unlocks the passenger side with a sharp click and gestures.

“In. Now.”

I hesitate for half a second. Just half.

“Unless you’d prefer to walk home like this?”

So I climbed in. I fold my body into the seat and let the seatbelt cut into my chest like I deserve it. And we drive. Not a word between us for the first few blocks.

Then she starts.

“You think this is how girls get respect? Parading yourself in front of a gym full of people?”

“It wasn’t—”

“Spare me. You knew this would happen. You tempt them. You push and you push and then act shocked when they snap.”

“I wore jeans and a hoodie.”

"You wore an attitude. You wore rebellion. And now you’re wearing nothing."

I don’t cry.

I stare out the window at the trees whizzing past and think about how bark is stronger than skin.

When we get home, she storms ahead, unlocks the door, and throws it open like she wants to shatter it off the hinges. I follow, silently. Raw.

She points to the laundry basket.

“You have two choices,” she says, voice level now. Controlled. Scarier. “Put on some damn clothes, or pack every piece you own into garbage bags and commit to this. Live without them.”

I blink. “You’re not serious.”

“I’ve never been more serious.”

Maybe you’re screaming at me through the page. Telling me to just put something on. Just grab a t-shirt. Just cover up. Save face. Be normal.

But I don’t.

I walk to my closet.

And I start packing.

Tops. Pants. Socks. Hoodies. Underwear. All of it. Into the black plastic bags that smell like dust and finality.

I don’t do it because I’m brave.

I do it because I’m already naked, and the idea of pretending I wasn’t feels like a lie I can’t survive.

Are you still with me?

Because this is the part where you’ll have to choose, too.

You can close the book and decide I’m damaged. Or you can follow me.

Barefoot. Bare-skinned. Unflinching.

[Chiloneb]

Wow what an interesting start. I'm thrilled for the next chapter

[Somebody]

I love it when people bust out the really good writing. Can't wait to see what the hell is going on.

[Danielle]

Chapter 2 – The Quiet That Stings

Thanks to everyone who read my first posting on this site. 

Do you know what happens when you pack away your last pair of socks?

Nothing.

No trumpet sounds. No gasp from the heavens. The world doesn’t stop spinning. You just… stand there. Cold floors against bare feet. Garbage bags sagging like dead bodies on your carpet. And something inside you that used to feel like "you" starts to crack.

I stood in my room for a long time. Just me and the silence. Not even the air dared to touch me too hard.

There’s something brutal about the quiet after a scream. The way it presses in, not to comfort, but to accuse.

This is your fault, Amara.

You did this.

You chose this.

The voice in my head sounded suspiciously like my mother.

She didn’t come in. Not to check on me. Not to see if I needed dinner. I heard her downstairs once, talking to someone on the phone, low and furious.

“… No, she’s refusing. Bagged them herself… I don’t know, Carol, maybe therapy, or something stronger…”

Something stronger.

Yeah. That’s the ticket.

Maybe there’s a pill for surviving a full-body punch of humiliation. Maybe there’s a bottle labeled For Girls Who Got Stripped and Now Sleep in Their Skin. Take it twice daily. With water and silence.

Anyway,

I lay on my bed without sheets. I couldn’t handle the feel of cotton just yet. Every texture was too much. Too much against me. Against this, my skin, still pulsing with memory.

I bet you’re wondering why I didn’t cry.

But crying felt like giving the pain another voice, and I was already drowning in the one inside my skull.

Instead, I talked to you. Yeah, you. The invisible reader I made up. Because even pretending someone’s listening is better than being alone with this echo chamber of shame.

Let me tell you what no one warns you about when you lose your clothes, your control, your illusion of safety: everything becomes weaponized.

The breeze from the ceiling fan?

Weapon.

The curve of your reflection in the mirror?

Weapon.

Even your shadow looks at you like it’s disgusted.

The next morning, I didn’t come down for breakfast.

I wasn’t hungry.

Well, that’s not true. I was starving. But not for eggs or toast.

I was starving for softness. For the version of my mother who used to hold me after nightmares. For the sound of laughter that didn’t end with a shove. For normal.

But normal had been peeled off me like a sticker, and the sticky part left behind? That was all mine now.

“Amara!” she called from the kitchen. “Come downstairs!”

I didn’t move.

A minute later: footsteps. Measured. Heavy. She was coming. I sat upright, spine straight, hands folded on my thighs like I was in church.

She opened the door and stopped. I didn’t look away. Neither did she.

She scanned me. Her face was tired. Lined not with age, but with disappointment.

“You’re going through with this.”

“I already did.”

“And what, you think this makes you strong?”

“No. I think it makes me honest.”

She flinched. Just barely. But I caught it.

“You think walking around like that is going to make the world take you seriously?”

“No,” I said. “But maybe it’ll make them look. And keep looking. Until they realize what they’ve done.”

She crossed her arms. “You’re just giving them more ammunition.”

“They already fired the shot.”

A pause.

Then, she turned and left without another word.

That was our rhythm now. Her silence, my defiance. Rinse. Repeat.

I spent the next few hours drifting from room to room like a ghost.

Have you ever tried watching TV when your whole body feels like a bad dream?

It doesn’t work. Every commercial is too loud. Every laugh track feels like it’s aimed at you.

Eventually, I gave up and opened my laptop.

And there it was.

The video.

It had a title now: Spirit Weak: Amara’s Breakdown.

Funny, right?

Thousands of views.

Hundreds of comments.

Some laugh. Some call me brave. Some are just gross.

I clicked one.

“Is this even legal? She’s naked.”

“She’s got issues. But lowkey respect for not crying.”

“Amara Delane? More like Amara Defamed.”

I closed the tab.

But it was too late. The words had already crawled inside me.

I curled up on the couch—still unclothed, still exposed—and I whispered to the walls:

They can’t take anything else. Not if I take it first.

And maybe that sounds like power.

But it was grief. Dressed up as strength.

I wasn’t reclaiming anything yet.

I was still bleeding.

But at least now, I knew what kind of war I was in.

Are you still here?

Still watching me fold in on myself like laundry?

Good. Because it gets worse before it gets anything better.

Just promise me you won’t look away.

[barelin]

The author's deliberate shattering of the fourth wall in this narrative isn't merely a stylistic flourish; it's a potent narrative engine that fundamentally transforms the reader's experience and the story's thematic resonance.