Bare at the Clovers: Secrets Behind the Counter

[Danielle]

Synopsis: A naked young woman, a diner’s secret, and a love that sees everything. Kate chose radical honesty, no clothes, no hiding. But when she uncovers a coworker’s desperate theft, she must decide: expose the truth or save someone drowning. A raw, warm coming-of-age romance about being truly seen.

Author’s Note: A Note on Exposure

You probably picked up this eBook because of that title, and the cover image made your thumb pause for a fraction of a second. Maybe you’re curious what this novel is about, or maybe you’re the type who reads the final page first, and you’ve already passed judgment on me.

That’s fine. Let’s lay it all out in the open for criticism, good and bad. Now, that image on the cover? That picture of me behind the serving counter at the Clovers was taken shortly after I officially ditched wearing clothing everywhere, school, home, and life in general.

Like everything in life, there are some exceptions to every rule. For me, that was my compromised minimalist uniform. Sitting here writing this and looking at the image I selected for the cover, what you see was a hard-fought compliance package consisting of exactly four items: a clover-leaf cap, a red-and-yellow striped choker, a name tag clipped to my left nipple ring, and a pair of ridiculous skin-tone shoes. (You can’t see the shoes on the cover, I know. But that’s entirely the point.)

I’m writing this because I want to give you my story straight, stripped of filters or curation. Honestly, since you’ve already seen everything the cover has to offer from the waist down, we might as well start this relationship from a place of total exposure. To be perfectly fair, it’s the only way I know how to live anymore.

But before we get to the counter, the cap, the name tag, or the piercing I got for the sole purpose of holding my credentials (following a long fight over the apron and that uncomfortable lanyard), you need to understand the morning routine of someone who has nothing left to hide. Because mornings are when being naked makes the least and most sense at the same time.

[Danielle]

This morning starts as most of them do: with the sound of Willow Finch swearing quietly at a stuck zipper.

I’m lying on my stomach in her bed, technically, since we split nights between her mom’s house and my apartment with a pillow mashed under my chest and the blanket kicked down to my calves. The radiator in Willow’s room hisses like an angry cat. Outside the window, the November fog is so thick it turns the streetlight into a soft orange bruise. I’m completely bare, because I’m always completely bare, and the sheets are cold against my thighs where the blanket doesn’t reach.

Willow is standing in front of the small mirror she taped to her closet door, wearing nothing but a pair of gray sweatpants and an expression of profound betrayal aimed at the hoodie in her hands. She’s been trying to pull the zipper up for about thirty seconds, and her dark curly hair is still wet from the shower, leaving dark spots on the back of her gray t-shirt. (She put the t-shirt on first. The hoodie is going over it. I’ve watched her get dressed enough times to know her system: t-shirt, then hoodie, then socks, then sneakers, then, if it’s really cold, a beanie that makes her look like a sad avocado.)

“Do you want help,” I say, my voice muffled by the pillow, “or do you want to keep fighting a piece of metal and cloth until one of you surrenders?”

“I want this zipper to go to hell,” she says. “I’ve been doing this all week. I think it’s personal.”

“The zipper doesn’t know who you are, babe.”

“It knows.” She finally yanks it up with a sound of strained triumph. “There. Victory.”

I roll onto my side so I can watch her finish getting ready. This is one of those small rituals I’ve come to love more than almost anything else. Willow in the morning, her movements still soft with sleep, her guard not quite up yet. She pulls her wet hair into a messy bun that immediately starts shedding curls around her temples. She finds her sneakers under the bed (left one first, then she has to get on her hands and knees to reach the right one). She checks her phone: no messages, which makes her frown slightly, because she’s the kind of person who wants the world to be awake when she is.

“You’re staring,” she says without looking at me.

“You’re star-worthy.”

That gets a smile. She turns around, and for a moment, she just looks at me naked, tangled in her sheets, still half-asleep. Her gaze isn’t sexual right now. It’s something softer. Something that’s been there since we were twelve years old, sitting next to each other in Mrs. Delgado’s English class, before either of us knew what any of this meant.

“You need to get up,” she says. “We’ve got fifteen minutes before we have to leave, and you haven’t even pretended to do your hair.”

“My hair doesn’t need pretending. It needs to be short, which it is.”

“Fair point.”

I stretch, letting my arms reach over my head until my spine pops in three places. The cold air hits my ribs, my stomach, the undersides of my breasts, and I shiver automatically, the same shiver I’ve felt thousands of times now, so familiar it’s almost not worth mentioning. Almost. Because the thing about being naked all the time is that you never stop feeling the air. You just stop being surprised by it.

I swing my legs out of bed and stand up. The hardwood floor is freezing. I hissed.

“Socks?” Willow offers, holding up a pair of thick wool ones.

“No.”

“They’re just socks, Kate.”

“They’re fabric. And once I start with fabric, where does it end? Socks today, leggings tomorrow, a full snowsuit by December. Next thing you know, I’m back in jeans, crying in a dressing room because nothing fits right.”

Willow laughs, but there’s a thread of something else underneath it, not to worry, exactly. Recognition. She’s heard this speech before. She’s heard variations of it for the past two years, ever since I first told her I was going to do it. Get naked. Stay naked. Stop hiding.

“Okay, you dramatic disaster,” she says. “No socks. But you’re not allowed to complain about your feet being cold.”

“I never complain about my feet being cold.”

“You complained yesterday.”

“That was a factual observation, not a complaint.”

She throws a pillow at me. I catch it, drop it on the bed, and head for the bathroom to brush my teeth. On the way, I pass the mirror above Willow’s dresser, and I catch my own reflection the way I always do, a glance, a check-in, a confirmation that I’m still here.

I’m sixteen years old. Third year of high school, which sounds weird to say because I skipped a grade in elementary school, so I’m younger than almost everyone in my classes. That’s fine. I’m used to being the youngest in the room. I’m also the nakedest in the room, which takes some getting used to even after two years.

My body: average height, lean from walking everywhere (I don’t have a car, and my mom’s apartment is a mile from school, so I walk naked through the streets of our small Washington town every morning). Pale skin that flushes bright pink when I’m cold or embarrassed or angry, which is often. Short auburn hair, because long hair felt weird against my bare shoulders when I first started this, like a curtain that was trying to hide me from myself. Gray eyes that people say look older than the rest of me. Small breasts with pierced nipples: the left one has a silver ring, the right one a small stud. The ring is functional now because of work. The stud is just because I liked the way it looked when Willow took me to the piercing shop on my fifteenth birthday, before I’d even applied for the program, back when the idea of being naked in public still felt like a dream I’d never actually live.

I brush my teeth. I run a hand through my hair to flatten the sleep-mussed parts. I don’t put anything on my skin, no lotion, no makeup, nothing, because that feels like another kind of hiding. (Willow says this is a little extreme. I tell her she’s probably right. I don’t change anything.)

When I come back to the bedroom, Willow has her backpack on one shoulder and my backpack in her other hand. She’s wearing the defeated hoodie, now zipped all the way up, and the beanie that makes her look like a sad avocado. Her sneakers are tied. She’s ready.

“You’re beautiful,” I say.

“You’re biased.”

“I’m accurate.”

She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. She holds out my backpack. I sling it over my bare shoulder, the strap rubs against my collarbone, a familiar friction, and we walk out of her room together, down the hall, past the closed door where her mom is still sleeping (she works late shifts at the hospital, three nights a week, so mornings are sacred silence in this house).

The front door. The porch. The cold.

November in Washington doesn’t announce itself. It just gets darker, one minute at a time, until you realize you’ve forgotten what sunlight feels like. Today, the temperature is hovering around forty-two degrees, which is practically balmy compared to what’s coming, but the fog makes it feel colder. It sits on my bare skin like a wet cloth, seeping into my pores, raising goosebumps along my arms and thighs before we’ve even made it to the sidewalk.

Willow glances at me. “Cold?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to?”

“No.”

She doesn’t finish the question. She knows the answer. She’s known it for two years.

We walk. Side by side, not quite touching Willow’s hands in her hoodie pocket, my arms crossed over my chest, mostly out of habit than actual modesty (I stopped caring about modesty a long time ago). The neighborhood is quiet this early: a few cars, a few dog walkers, a few people who’ve seen me enough times that they don’t stare anymore. That’s one of the small mercies of living in a small town. Eventually, the novelty wears off. You become part of the background. The naked girl is just the girl who’s always naked, and people have better things to do than gawk.

Not everyone, obviously. There’s always someone new, someone visiting, someone who hasn’t gotten the memo. But for the most part, the walk to school is uneventful.

“You’re thinking about it again,” Willow says.

“Thinking about what?”

“The day you first told me.”

She knows me too well. I was thinking about it. I’m almost always thinking about it, in the same way you’re always thinking about the scar on your knee or the way your grandmother said your name, not constantly, but in the background, a low hum of memory that never fully fades.

“I was,” I admit. “I was thinking about Mrs. Delgado’s classroom.”

“The blue chairs?”

“The blue chairs. And your shoes.”

Willow laughs. “My shoes?”

“You were wearing those ridiculous purple sneakers with the glitter laces.”

“They were not ridiculous. They were cool.”

“We were twelve years old, Willow. Nothing about us was cool.”

She bumps her shoulder against mine, a small, affectionate collision. “Fair point.”

Flashback: Seventh Year of School, Age Twelve

I need to take you back. Because you can’t understand why I’m walking through a Washington winter with nothing on if you don’t understand what it felt like to be twelve years old, wearing clothes that felt like a lie.

I met Willow Finch on the first day of seventh grade, in Mrs. Delgado’s English class. I was the new kid, not new to the town, but new to the school district, because my parents had just separated and my mom had moved us across town to a smaller apartment, which meant a new school, new teachers, and new hallways to get lost in. I was small for twelve, with hair I kept long because I thought it made me look older, and I was wearing a hoodie three sizes too big because I’d started to notice things about my body that I didn’t know what to do with.

The classroom had those plastic blue chairs that stuck to the backs of your thighs if you wore shorts, a poster of Maya Angelou on the wall, and the smell of old coffee and whiteboard markers. I sat in the second row because I didn’t want to be in the front (too visible) or the back (too cliché). Willow sat next to me because her last name started with F and mine started with O, and alphabetical order is the great unifier of middle school misfits.

She was wearing purple sneakers with glitter laces. I remember thinking: Those are the ugliest shoes I’ve ever seen. I want to be her friend.

Mrs. Delgado made us go around the room and say our names and one interesting thing about ourselves. When it was my turn, I said, “I’m Kate, and I used to live in Oregon,” which was true but not interesting, and the boy behind me whispered “Boring” loud enough for everyone to hear.

Willow turned around and looked at him really, the way she looks at things she’s about to draw or paint or photograph, and said, “She’s not boring. You just don’t know how to listen.”

That was it. That was the moment.

We were best friends by the end of the first week. We traded lunches (her peanut butter sandwiches for my fruit roll-ups), walked home together (she lived four blocks from my new apartment), and stayed up late texting about teachers and crushes and the mysterious horror of puberty. She was the first person I told when I got my period. I was the first person she told when she realized she might like girls, not boys, not yet, maybe never.

“I think I’m gay,” she whispered to me in my bedroom, both of us lying on the floor with a bag of pretzels between us, the summer after seventh grade.

“Okay,” I said. “Is that scary?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? I think it’s just ... true.”

“Okay,” I said again. “Then it’s true.”

She cried. I held her hand. Neither of us knew, yet, that I would be the girl she’d fall in love with. I don’t think either of us believed we deserved that kind of story.

Present: The Walk to School

“You were crying,” I say to Willow now, as we turn onto Maple Street. The school is two blocks away. I can see the flagpole.

“I was not.”

“You were. In my bedroom. The summer after seventh grade. You told me you were gay and then you cried.”

“I wasn’t crying because I was sad. I was crying because I was relieved.”

“I know. That’s why I didn’t let go of your hand.”

Willow is quiet for a moment. Then she reaches out and takes my bare hand, cold from the November air, and laces her fingers through mine. Her hand is warm. It’s always warm, even when mine are freezing.

“You never let go,” she says softly. “That’s the thing. Even when we were just friends. Even when I was too scared to say anything. You just kept holding on.”

“I’m very stubborn.”

“I know.”

We walk the last block in silence, holding hands, my naked body and her clothed one, a pair of sixteen-year-old girls who’ve been sharing a bed for the past year and a half, who’ve already started talking about what comes after high school, who’ve already promised each other that whatever happens, we won’t become the kind of people who forget how to hold hands in public.

The school appears through the fog: a brick building from the 1970s, with windows that don’t close all the way and a gymnasium that smells like feet and failure. There are already students milling around the front steps, some in jackets, some in sweatshirts, some shivering because they thought November would be warmer.

And there’s Fern Olympia, standing by the bike rack, wearing nothing but a pair of sandals and a nervous expression.

Fern is one of the other students in the Prolonged Nudity Pilot Program. She’s fifteen, a sophomore, and she’s been nude for about eight months. She’s quieter than I, more anxious, the kind of person who keeps her arms crossed over her chest even though she’s not trying to hide anything; it’s just a habit, the ghost of modesty. Her hair is long and blonde, and she’s always tucking it behind her ears, a nervous gesture that makes me want to protect her.

“Hey, Fern,” I say as we approach.

“Hey, Kate. Hey, Willow.” She gives Willow a small smile. “You’re wearing the avocado hat again.”

“It’s a beanie,” Willow says. “And it’s not avocado-colored. It’s olive.”

“It’s avocado,” Fern and I say at the same time.

Willow sighs. “I’m surrounded by comedians.”

We walk into the school together, the three of us, and the temperature shifts immediately from cold fog to stale warm air, from the smell of rain to the smell of floor wax and cafeteria pizza. The fluorescent lights hum overhead. The lockers click and slam. The morning rush of high school swallows us whole.

I’m naked. I’ve been naked for two years. And somehow, that’s the least strange thing about any of this.

Backstory: The Body I Was Trying to Escape

You need to understand what came before. Because being naked isn’t just about the absence of clothes. It’s about the presence of everything you were trying to cover up.

My parents divorced when I was eleven. That’s not the whole story, it’s never the whole story, but it’s the place where the cracks started showing. My dad was a contractor who worked too much and drank just enough that my mom stopped pretending it wasn’t a problem. My mom was a paralegal who smiled through every holiday dinner and cried in the bathroom afterward. They fought about money, about time, about the way my dad looked at the waitress at the diner where we ate breakfast every Sunday.

I was eleven. I didn’t know how to hold all of that. So I held my body instead.

I started wearing oversized hoodies in July. I stopped swimming, even though I’d been on the summer swim team since I was six. I cried in dressing rooms when nothing fit the way I wanted it to fit, not too tight, not too loose, just ... wrong. I didn’t know the word dysmorphia yet. I just knew that when I looked in the mirror, I saw someone who didn’t belong in her own skin.

The divorce was final the week I turned twelve. My mom moved us across town. My dad stayed in the house I’d grown up in, the one with the blue shutters and the oak tree in the backyard. I saw him every other weekend, then once a month, then not at all for a while. (He sends me birthday cards now. They always say Love, Dad, in handwriting I barely recognize.)

Middle school was a blur of bad haircuts, worse feelings, and Willow’s hand in mine. She was the only person who made me feel like my body wasn’t a problem to be solved. She hugged me without hesitation, sat next to me without flinching, and never once made me feel like I needed to be smaller or quieter or different.

But I was still wearing the hoodies. I was still hiding.

Flashback: The First Time I Took Off My Shirt (Not Like That)

It was the summer after eighth grade. Willow and I were at the lake, the small one on the edge of town, the one with the rope swing and the muddy bottom and the sign that says Swim at Your Own Risk. We’d been going there since we were kids, back when swimsuits were just something you put on because your mom said so.

That day, I was wearing a tank top and shorts. It was ninety-four degrees, the hottest day of the year, and I was sweating through everything. Willow was already in the water, floating on her back, her dark hair spread out around her like seaweed.

“Come in,” she called. “It’s perfect.”

I sat on the dock with my feet in the water. The tank top was sticking to my ribs. The shorts were too tight. I hated all of it.

“Kate.”

“I’m thinking.”

“You’ve been thinking for twenty minutes.”

“It’s a lot of thinking.”

Willow swam to the dock and pulled herself up, dripping, so she was sitting next to me. Her swimsuit was a one-piece, navy blue, with a small rip near the strap that she’d safety-pinned together. She smelled like lake water and sunscreen and something underneath that was just her.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

I didn’t know how to answer. I still don’t know how to explain it, except to say that I was tired. Tired of hiding. Tired of feeling like my body was something to be ashamed of. Tired of putting on clothes every morning that felt like armor against a war I hadn’t started.

“I don’t like the way I feel,” I said. “In my body. I don’t like it.”

Willow didn’t say You’re beautiful or You’re fine or any of the things people say when they don’t know what else to say. She just sat there, quiet, her knee touching mine.

“What would help?” she asked.

I looked down at my tank top. My shorts. My stupid sandals with the broken strap.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe nothing.”

But that was the first time I thought about it. The first time the idea crept into my head, small and impossible and terrifying: What if I just ... took it all off?

I didn’t, of course. Not that day. I sat on the dock for another hour, then put my suit on, then swam until my fingers pruned. But something had shifted. A door had cracked open. And Willow, without knowing it, had been the one to hand me the key.

Present: First Period English

We’re in English class now in a different room, a different teacher, but the same blue chairs from seventh grade, because this school never throws anything away. I’m sitting next to Fern, who’s sitting next to River Seattle, who’s one of the other nude students in the program. The river is tall and lanky and completely unbothered by everything. He’s been nude since he was fourteen, which makes him something of a veteran. He doesn’t cross his arms. He doesn’t fidget. He just ... exists, like his skin is no more remarkable than his hair.

Mr. Park is at the front of the room, talking about The Great Gatsby, which we’re supposed to have finished last week. I did not finish it. I read the first three chapters and then got distracted by the register discrepancies at work. (We’ll get to that. The secrets. The counter. All of it.)

Fern passes me a note. Are you okay? You look tired.

I write back: Didn’t sleep great. Willow had nightmares.

This is true. Willow has nightmares sometimes about her dad, who left when she was nine, about the eating disorder she struggled with in freshman year, about the general terror of being a teenage girl in a world that doesn’t always want you to survive. When she has them, she thrashes. She whispers things I can’t quite hear. I hold her until she stops shaking.

Fern writes back: You’re a good girlfriend.

I don’t know how to respond to that. I just tucked the note into my backpack and tried to pay attention to Mr. Park’s lecture on the green light.

Backstory: Willow’s Nightmares (And How We Started Sleeping in the Same Bed)

We didn’t start as girlfriends. We started as best friends who couldn’t stop touching each other.

It was freshman year. I was fourteen, Willow was fifteen, and we were both navigating the weird purgatory of high school. Willow had just come out to her mom (who said, “I know, honey, you’ve been drawing pictures of girls since you were six,” which is the most Willow’s mom response imaginable). I was still wearing hoodies, still hiding, still pretending I didn’t hate every piece of clothing I owned.

One night, Willow texted me at 11:30 PM: Can you come over? I can’t sleep.

I walked to her house in the dark, wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and sneakers I’d had since eighth grade. When I got there, she was sitting on her bed, knees pulled to her chest, eyes red.

“Bad dream?” I asked.

She nodded.

I sat down next to her. I didn’t ask what it was about that I already knew. Her dad. The way he’d left. The way he’d promised to call every Sunday, and then stopped. The way she still checked her phone on Sundays, just in case.

“Stay?” she whispered.

“Yeah. Of course.”

I lay down next to her. We were both still dressed in my sweatshirt, she in her pajamas. She curled into me, her head on my shoulder, her hand on my stomach. I put my arm around her. We fell asleep like that, and when I woke up the next morning, I knew something had changed.

Not because we’d done anything. Because I didn’t want to leave.

After that, we started sleeping in the same bed whenever we could. Weekends, mostly. Sometimes, on weeknights, if Willow’s mom was working late, my mom didn’t ask too many questions. We told ourselves it was just for comfort, just for nightmares, just for the cold. We told ourselves a lot of things.

The first time we kissed was the winter of freshman year. Snow on the ground, ice on the windows, the whole town shut down because Washington doesn’t know how to handle weather that isn’t rain. We were in my apartment, on the couch, wrapped in the same blanket because the heat had gone out again.

“I think I’m in love with you,” Willow said.

My heart stopped. Then it started again, faster.

“I think I’m in love with you, too,” I said.

She kissed me. It was soft and uncertain and perfect. I could feel her heartbeat through her sweater. I could feel my own heartbeat through nothing because I wasn’t wearing anything under my hoodie, and the fabric suddenly felt like a lie.

That was the moment I knew I had to take it off. The hoodie. The clothes. Everything. Not because Willow wanted me to, she’d never asked, never hinted, never made me feel like I owed her my body. But because I wanted to be seen. By her. By myself. By the world.

I wanted to stop hiding.

Present: Lunch Period

The cafeteria is loud, as always. The clatter of trays, the buzz of conversations, the smell of pizza that’s been under a heat lamp for too long. Willow and I sit at our usual table near the windows, along with June Miller (clothed, my best friend since kindergarten), Hazel Vance (clothed, sarcastic, my work bestie), and River (nude, unbothered, eating a banana with the intensity of someone who’s never been self-conscious a day in his life).

“I’m telling you,” June is saying, “the Winter Formal dress code is a disaster. They’re saying no bare shoulders, no visible midriffs, and skirts have to be knee-length or longer. It’s like they’re trying to make us look like Puritans.”

“Bare shoulders?” I say. “I’m literally all bare shoulders.”

June waves a hand. “You’re an exception. The dress code has a specific clause for pilot program participants. ‘Students who have opted into the Prolonged Nudity Pilot Program are exempt from standard dress code requirements, provided they adhere to all other behavioral guidelines.’”

“You memorized the clause?”

“I’m going to be a lawyer, Kate. I memorize everything.”

Hazel snorts. “You’re going to be a menace.”

“That too.”

I pick at my salad (iceberg lettuce, sad tomatoes, dressing that’s mostly water). I’m not hungry. I’ve been thinking about work, about the register discrepancies, about the way Piper’s voice tightens when she counts the cash, about the pattern I’m starting to see.

“You’re doing it again,” Willow says quietly, so only I can hear.

“Doing what?”

“The face you make when you’re thinking about something you don’t want to talk about.”

I try to rearrange my features into something more neutral. “I’m not making a face.”

“You’re making the face.”

“I’m not.”

“Kate.”

“Fine.” I put down my fork. “I’m thinking about work. The money thing.”

Willow’s expression softens. She reaches under the table and puts her hand on my bare knee. Her palm is warm. It always is.

“You’ll figure it out,” she says. “You always do.”

“That’s not true. I can’t figure out everything.”

“You figure out the important things.”

I want to believe her. I want to be the person she sees when she looks at me, competent, brave, capable of solving mysteries and saving the day. But most of the time, I feel like I’m just guessing. Putting one foot in front of the other. Trying not to freeze.

Backstory: Ditching the Fabric

The Prolonged Nudity Pilot Program started when I was fifteen, the summer after freshman year. I found out about it from a flyer in the community health center, the same place where Willow got her flu shot and my mom picked up her blood pressure medication. The flyer was beige, unassuming, with a headline that said: Live Authentically. Join the Pilot.

I almost didn’t pick it up. I almost walked past it, the way you walk past a hundred flyers a day, none of them meant for you. But something made me stop. Something made me read the fine print.

The Prolonged Nudity Pilot Program is a voluntary, opt-in initiative for residents aged 16 and older. Participants commit to maintaining complete nudity in all public and private spaces for the duration of their enrollment, with accommodations provided for extreme weather and medical needs. The program is supported by anti-harassment protections, consent laws, and community resources. To apply: visit the county health office or scan the QR code below.

I scanned the QR code. I read the entire website. I read the testimonials from other participants, the legal documents, and the FAQ page that answered questions I hadn’t even thought to ask.

Doesn’t it get cold? Yes. Participants report an adjustment period of 3-6 months. Many find that their tolerance for cold increases over time.

What about school? Work? The program includes accommodations for educational and professional settings. Employers and schools are required to make reasonable accommodations.

What if I change my mind? Participants may withdraw at any time, with no penalty.

I thought about it for three weeks. I thought about it while I was doing homework, while I was walking to school, while I was lying in Willow’s bed at night, listening to her breathe. I thought about my body, the one I’d been hiding for so long, and the life I could live if I just stopped.

I told Willow first.

We were in her room, sitting on the floor, doing absolutely nothing important. She was always drawing, and I was pretending to read a book.

“I want to do something,” I said. “And I need you to not freak out.”

Willow put down her pencil. “Okay.”

“I want to apply for the nudity program.”

She didn’t say anything for a long moment. Her hand was still resting on the sketchbook, her fingers smudged with graphite.

“Okay,” she said again.

“That’s it? Just ‘okay’?”

“What do you want me to say? ‘That’s crazy? ‘You’ll get arrested’? ‘People will stare’?” She shook her head. “You already know all of that. You’ve been thinking about this for weeks. I’ve seen the website on your phone.”

“You have?”

“You left it open on the kitchen counter. I wasn’t snooping.”

I felt a weird mix of relief and embarrassment. “So you knew.”

“I suspected.” She reached over and took my hand. “Kate, if this is something you want, something you really want, then I’m with you. I don’t understand it, not completely, but I don’t have to. I just have to be here.”

I started crying. I don’t even know why. Relief, maybe. Fear. The overwhelming sensation of being seen, really seen by someone who loved me.

“You’re not going to think I’m crazy?”

“I already think you’re crazy. This isn’t going to change that.”

I laughed through the tears. “That’s not comforting.”

“It’s honest.” She squeezed my hand. “You’re the one who wanted to live without filters, remember?”

The Application

The application process took six weeks. I had to get a physical exam, a psychological evaluation, and written consent from both of my parents. (That last part was the hardest.)

My mom cried when I told her. Not because she was angry, she was scared. She was scared of people staring, of people saying things, of someone hurting me because I was different.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said. “You’re beautiful the way you are. You don’t have to prove anything.”

“I’m not trying to prove anything,” I said. “I’m trying to stop hiding.”

She signed the form.

My dad didn’t cry. He didn’t do much of anything. He read the form, set it down on his coffee table (the one from the old house, the one with the water stain from the time I left a glass without a coaster), and said, “This is your mother’s influence.”

“It’s mine.”

“She’s put these ideas in your head. This whole body positivity thing. It’s not.”

“Dad.”

He stopped.

“I’m not asking for your opinion. I’m asking for your signature.”

He didn’t sign it that day. He called me three days later and said he’d “think about it.” A week after that, the form arrived in the mail, signed, with a note that said: I don’t understand this. But I don’t want to lose you over it.

I didn’t know how to feel about that note. I still don’t.

The psychological evaluation was easier than I expected. A woman named Dr. Chen asked me questions about my body image, my family history, and my reasons for wanting to participate. I told her the truth: that I was tired of hiding, that I wanted to live authentically, that I had a support system (Willow, my mom, a few good friends) and a plan for dealing with harassment.

“You know this won’t fix everything,” Dr. Chen said. “Being naked won’t magically make you love your body.”

“I know.”

“Some days, you’ll feel worse than you did before. More exposed. More vulnerable.”

“I know.”

“And you still want to do it?”

I thought about Willow’s hand in mine. My mom’s signature on the form. The flyer on the health center bulletin board, beige and unassuming, was waiting for someone to pick it up.

“Yes,” I said. “I still want to do it.”

She approved my application on July 2nd. My sixteenth birthday.

The First Day

I woke up at 6:00 AM on July 2nd, in my apartment, alone (Willow had slept over, but she’d gone home the night before to give me space). The sun was already up, because July in Washington is golden and endless, and the air was warm against my skin.

I was wearing pajamas. Flannel pajamas with little dogs on them, because I have a sense of humor about these things.

I took them off.

I stood in front of my mirror, completely naked, and looked at myself. Really looked. The auburn hair, the gray eyes, the small breasts, the pale thighs, the knees that still had scars from falling off my bike when I was twelve. The body I’d been hiding for so long.

“Okay,” I said out loud. “Okay.”

I walked to the kitchen. Made coffee. Drank it standing up, because sitting felt weird. The counter was cold against my hips. The floor was cold against my feet. Everything was a sensation, a newness, a reminder that I’d spent years trying not to feel my own skin.

At 8:00 AM, Willow knocked on the door.

I opened it. Naked.

She looked at me. Her eyes traveled from my face to my collarbone to my chest to my stomach to my thighs to my feet, not in a sexual way, but in a seeing way. The way you look at something you’ve seen a thousand times, but never like this.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.”

“You’re naked.”

“I’m naked.”

She smiled. It was a small smile, a little shaky, but real. “How do you feel?”

I thought about it. The cold floor. The warm coffee. The sunlight through the window. The way my skin seemed to hum, like it had been asleep for years and was finally waking up.

“I feel like me,” I said. “For the first time, I think. I feel like me.”

Willow stepped inside and closed the door. She didn’t hug me. She knows I don’t like hugs when I’m feeling vulnerable, but she stood close enough that I could feel the heat coming off her body.

“You’re going to be cold,” she said. “Especially in winter. You’re going to get stared at. People are going to say things. Some of them will be nice. Some of them won’t. You’re going to want to give up. Probably more than once.”

“I know.”

“And you’re still going to do it.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m still going to do it.”

She nodded. Then she took off her sweater, not all her clothes, just the sweater, and handed it to me.

“For later,” she said. “When you need something warm.”

I didn’t take the sweater. I’ve never taken the sweater. But I’ve kept it in my closet for two years, folded neatly, a reminder of the first day I decided to stop hiding.

The Bra

The last piece of fabric I wore, the last thing I took off before committing to complete nudity, was my bra.

I’d been wearing bras since I was eleven, the same year my parents started fighting in earnest. I wore them because I thought I was supposed to. Because my body was changing and I didn’t know what to do with it. Because bras felt like armor, a way to contain something that felt uncontrollable.

The bra I took off on July 2nd was black, cotton, and comfortable in the way that sad things are comfortable. I’d had it for two years. It was stretched out in the band and faded in the straps, and I hated it.

I took it off in the bathroom, after my shower, before I looked in the mirror. I unhooked the clasp, the same motion I’d done thousands of times, and let it fall.

And then I stood there, naked from the waist up, and waited for something to happen.

Nothing happened. The world didn’t end. The mirror didn’t crack. I was just ... me. Without the armor.

I opened the bathroom door. Willow was sitting on my bed, reading a book, pretending not to wait for me.

“I did it,” I said.

She looked up. Her eyes flickered to my chest, not a stare, just a glance, a confirmation, and then back to my face.

“How do you feel?”

“Weird. Naked. Obviously.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

I sat down next to her. The bedspread was rough against my bare thighs. I wasn’t wearing anything on the bottom either. I wasn’t wearing anything at all.

“I feel free,” I said. “And scared. And like I just jumped off a diving board, and I’m not sure if there’s water in the pool.”

“There is,” Willow said. “I promise.”

She put her hand on my knee. Just her hand. Just a touch.

It was enough.

Present: After School, The Clovers

The rest of the school day passes in a blur of lectures, notes, and the occasional stare. (A boy in chemistry, Everett Hayes, keeps looking at my chest. I make eye contact with him until he looks away. He doesn’t look back.)

At 3:45, Willow walks me to work. The Clovers is a ten-minute walk from school, past the post office, the hardware store, and the park where we used to play on the swings. It’s a fast-service restaurant, the kind of place where you order at the counter and they call your number when the food is ready. Breakfast all day. Loaded fries. Soups. Grilled cheese. Seasonal specials that nobody orders.

The uniform, my uniform, the one you saw on the cover, is exactly what you’re imagining. Red cap with a green clover logo. Red-and-yellow striped choker. Name tag clipped directly to my left nipple ring. Skin-tone shoes. Nothing else. No apron, no shirt, no bottoms, no underwear. Just me, the cap, the choker, the name tag, and the shoes.

(You can’t see the shoes on the cover. That’s fine. Nobody wants to see the shoes.)

I change in the back room, which is really just a closet with a bench and a stack of napkins. Piper Campbell, the shift lead, is counting the register when I come out.

“Hey, Kate,” she says without looking up. “You’re on the counter today. Hazel’s on expo. Gus is in the kitchen. It’s going to be slow until about five, then we’ll get the dinner crowd.”

“Got it.”

I walk to the front counter, cap on my head, choker around my neck, name tag clipped to my left nipple ring. The metal of the clip is cold against the piercing, a familiar sensation, one that used to make me flinch and now just feels like part of the job.

The restaurant is empty except for an old man in the corner, nursing a cup of coffee and reading a newspaper. (An actual newspaper. Paper. I didn’t know those still existed.)

I lean against the counter and wait.

Willow Speaks: The First Time She Saw Me at Work

I’m going to interrupt here. Kate doesn’t know I’m telling you this. She’ll probably be annoyed when she reads it, which is exactly why I’m doing it.

The first time I saw her at The Clovers really saw her, in the uniform, behind the counter, I almost cried.

Not because she looked bad. She looked ... I don’t know the word. Complete. Like she’d been a puzzle missing a piece, and that piece was a red cap and a stupid choker and a name tag clipped to her nipple ring.

She was handing a customer their food, and she was smiling that real smile, the one she doesn’t do for strangers, the one that means she’s actually happy. And I thought: She did it. She actually did it. She’s living the life she wants.

I wanted to run behind the counter and kiss her. I didn’t, because that would have been weird. But I wanted to.

That’s the thing about loving Kate. She makes you want to do things that are weird. She makes you want to take off your own armor, even if you’re not ready to take off your clothes.

Present: The Register

At 5:15, the dinner rush starts. Nothing crazy, just families and couples and the occasional solo diner eating fries at the counter. I work the register, taking orders, making change, and calling out numbers when the food is up.

Hazel is on expo, sliding trays across the counter. She’s wearing her usual uniform (jeans, t-shirt, apron, the works) and her usual expression (mild annoyance at the existence of customers).

“Table four wants extra ranch,” she says.

“Table four always wants extra ranch.”

“I know. That’s why I’m telling you instead of getting it myself.”

I laugh and grab a ramekin from the fridge.

It’s during the lull between rushes around 6:30, when the families have finished eating, and the late crowd hasn’t arrived yet, that I notice it.

The register is short. By fourteen dollars and thirty cents.

I count it again. Still short.

“Piper?” I called.

Piper comes over from the office, where she’s been doing paperwork. “What’s up?”

“The register is short. Fourteen thirty.”

She frowns. “Did you count it twice?”

“Yes.”

She counts it herself. Her frown deepens. “Again,” she mutters.

“Again?”

“Nothing. I’ll adjust it. Don’t worry about it.”

But I do worry about it. Because this isn’t the first time. I’ve been working here for two months, ever since I turned sixteen and got my work permit, and I’ve seen the register be short at least four times. Always small amounts. Always on the days when Silas Thorne is the manager.

Silas. Quiet. Mid-thirties. Always wearing long sleeves, even in summer. He’s in the office right now, doing something on the computer. He doesn’t look up when Piper adjusts the register.

I don’t say anything. Not yet. But I will make a mental note.

Fourteen dollars and thirty cents.

It doesn’t seem like much. But it adds up.

That Night: Willow’s House

After work, I walk to Willow’s. The fog has lifted, replaced by a drizzle that feels more like mist than rain. My skin is damp by the time I get to her front door. I don’t bother knocking. I have a key.

Willow is on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, watching a reality show about people renovating houses they can’t afford. She looks up when I come in.

“You’re wet.”

“It’s Washington.”

“Come here.” She lifts the blanket. “I’ll warm you up.”

I crawl under the blanket with her, my cold body pressed against her warm one. She wraps her arms around me, and I shiver not from cold, not entirely.

“Bad day?” she asks.

“Not bad. Weird.”

“Weird how?”

I told her about the register. The fourteen dollars and thirty cents. Piper muttered, “Again.” The way Silas stayed in the office, not looking up.

Willow listens. She’s good at listening without interrupting, without trying to fix things before she understands them.

“Do you think it’s him?” she asks when I’m done. “Silas?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s always on his shifts.”

“That’s not proof.”

“I know.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Then she says, “You’re going to look into it, aren’t you?”

I lean my head against her shoulder. Her sweater is soft against my cheek. “I don’t know. Maybe. Should I?”

“I think you should do whatever you think is right.” She kisses the top of my head. “But I also think you should be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

“You’re really not.”

I laugh. She’s right. I’m not.

We stay on the couch for another hour, watching the renovation show, not really paying attention. At 10:30, we brush our teeth together (she uses mint toothpaste, I use cinnamon, because I’m weird). At 10:45, we get into bed.

Willow takes off her jeans but keeps her t-shirt on. I don’t put anything on. I never put anything on.

“Come here,” she says, and I do.

We curl together under the blankets, her body warm and clothed, mine cold and bare. Her hand finds my hip, traces small circles there. My hand finds her chest, feels her heartbeat through the cotton of her shirt.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you too.”

“No matter what happens with the register thing. No matter what you find out. I love you.”

I press closer to her. “I know.”

We fall asleep like that. Tangled. Warm. Naked and clothed, and somehow the same.