Eight days ago, Samantha had woken up with a feeling of butterflies in her stomach, at the thought of seeing all the boys (seeing ALL of all the boys). Now she woke in a similar state of nervousness and excitement, but this time mixed with trepidation. She was going to confront them with the truth of who she was and what she had done.
How would they react? Would they accept her? Did they know already? Samantha was certain Harry would keep her secret, but she wasn’t so sure Nathan or Charlie wouldn’t have told the others, after what had happened at the pool the day before. Would they want to get even? It was best to take precautions, she thought, as she dressed. Outside in the park was a good place for it. If it all fell apart, she could jump on her bike and ride away, but she hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She realised that she enjoyed the boys’ company, and didn’t want to lose them as friends.
Samatha quietly sang the K-pop theme from her favourite movie to herself, as she dressed. “I lived two lives, tried to play both sides…” She took courage from the strength in the familiar lyrics, and solace in how she was able to relate them her own current situation. She put on a purple t-shirt with a sequined star pattern on it, and a pair of neon pink leggings. No boys’ clothes for her today. “Finally live like the girl they all see,” she continued her song. She spiked her hair up and assessed herself in the mirror. “No more hiding, I'll be shining…” She pointed her fingers like a gun and winked at her reflection. You got this, girl, she mentally told herself.
“Can I go ride my bike to the park this morning?” she asked her parents over breakfast. “I guess that depends what plans your mum has for you,” her dad replied, gulping down a mug of coffee. He would be at the office all day, leaving Samantha and Isobel with their mum. “I was hoping you and your sister could keep each other entertained while I work from home,” said her mum, “but I suppose you can go to the park. Just be back home by lunchtime, and make sure you wear your cycle helmet. No more head injuries!”
Samantha was still sporting a sticking plaster on her forehead, and the skin around it had formed into a purplish bruise that was almost the colour of her t-shirt. It was an impressive-looking wound, but it no longer hurt unless she put pressure on it. She had to be careful when putting on her cycle helmet.
Isobel wanted to go with Samantha, but she hadn’t yet learned to ride a bike unaided, so she had to content herself with settling in front of the television instead. Once again, she felt she was missing out on her big sister’s adventures. She put on Mulan, a movie she had already watched twice in the last week. Isobel had taken a renewed interest in the story of a girl who disguised herself as a boy to join the army. She especially liked the scene where the soldiers all went skinny-dipping and the heroine tried to avoid looking at them.
Samantha was amused by Isobel’s choice of cartoon. She promised, once again, that she would tell Isobel all about what happened with the boys later, when she returned. She gave her younger sister a goodbye hug, and set off on her bike.
It was a warm and sunny day, not at all suited for what could be a reckoning. Samantha rode the cycle path that led her a mile from home and into the nearby park. She looked around and found the boys after a couple of minutes. They had gathered in a corner away from other people, where they had space to play in, next to a clump of trees.
Two of the trees were serving as makeshift goalposts as they kicked a ball around. All the boys were dressed in sports shirts and shorts, as they often seemed to be. It looked like Nathan was in goal, with the others forming two teams of three, Charlie and Rafi as team captains once again. Samantha heard them shouting orders to tackle and to pass the ball. Only Kaito was missing. She supposed there was no reason for him to hang around with his younger brother and his classmates all the time, since they weren’t at home or going anywhere with their mother.
Samantha saw a group of bicycles leaning against a few of the other trees. She recognised Harry’s red one among them. Evidently some of the boys had cycled here too. Samantha tried to steady her nerves. There was no backing out now. It was time to face the music. “It's our time, no fears, no lies…” she sang, one last lyric to herself under her breath. She dismounted and wheeled her bike over to lean it next to the others. She removed her cycle helmet, took one last deep breath, and called out cheerfully, “Hey guys, how’s it going?”
It was Theo, normally the quietest one of the group, who answered first. “Sam? What are you WEARING?” he asked incredulously. “Nice bike, Sam!” Charlie remarked casually. He knew her secret, of course, but was surprised to see her arrive like this. He supposed they weren’t going swimming again before school started, so there were no more clandestine trips to the boys’ changing room for Samantha. Nothing to be gained from hiding the truth any longer. He wondered if she was here to gloat.
The boys stopped playing and gathered around as Samantha walked over to them. “Is this a dare or something?” asked Max, thoroughly confused. “No dare,” Samantha said firmly. “I’ve, erm, got a confession to make to you guys.” She bowed her head and paused, trying to find the right words. The boys stood in a loose semicircle around her, a couple of metres apart from each other, waiting. This was awkward. Samantha wished she’d rehearsed what she had to say in front of her bedroom mirror.
“None of you ever asked me what ‘Sam’ is short for,” she continued. “Well, it isn’t ‘Samuel’ or ‘Samson’. It’s short for ‘Samantha’. That’s me, that’s who I am.” She stated it as simple, casual fact, as if she were introducing herself to them for the first time. She hoped that the boys couldn’t hear the thumping of her heart, the way she could hear it pounding in her ears. “Wait,” said Yuto, absorbing this bombshell. “You mean you’re a…” his voice trailed off.
“Uh huh,” Samantha replied. She gripped her leggings on either side of her crotch and tugged upwards, pulling the pink lycra tight against her body to show there was no bulge between her legs. Not so tight as to reveal the shape of the slit down there, of course. That would be shamefully undignified! She remembered what Chloe had told her in the car, the day before. She wasn’t here to show off the personal parts of her body. She was just showing them enough to prove that she was, indeed, a girl.
Rafi, Theo and Yuto, who were closest, all leaned down to get a closer look. A stunned silence had fallen. None of them spoke. Samantha looked at their faces and tried to gauge their reactions. Rafi seemed angry. Theo appeared hurt. Yuto looked like he was trying to solve a difficult puzzle. Nathan looked like he had just solved one. Charlie had an expression of quiet amusement. Max looked shell-shocked.
Harry gave her a smile of gentle encouragement, but with an undercurrent of worry beneath. Samantha realised this could go badly wrong for him, as well as for her, if she said the wrong thing. Don’t worry, Harry, she thought. A deal is a deal. I’m not going to make you take the fall for this. “I’m sorry I tricked you all,” she continued, pouring genuine contrition into her voice. “I wanted to have a bit of fun, but after what happened yesterday, I realise it was mean of me.”
Max’s face had turned white as a sheet, in stark contrast to his ginger hair. He pointed at Samantha. “He… I mean SHE… got changed for swimming with us. She saw us all NAKED!” he exclaimed, horrified. Max had cut right to the heart of the matter. Samantha knew this was serious, but she couldn’t quite control the smirk that formed, unbidden, at the corner of her mouth.
She forced herself to stay serious, regaining control. “I did,” she confirmed. She had more to say, she wanted to explain, but several boys started shouting at once. “Let her speak!” said Harry, with a force she wasn’t used to hearing from him. The shouting subdued. “You guys are all such close friends with each other, I don’t know if you can understand this,” Samantha went on. “I was lonely at my last school. I didn’t have as many friends as you do. I was bullied for being one of the smallest, especially by the boys.”
“Worst was when they used to lift my skirt up and laugh. It made me feel even smaller and shameful. It was horrible, but I didn’t even tell my parents about it. That would be admitting defeat. I stood up to the boys, of course, but they would just tease me about seeing my knickers. They were secure, dressed all the time in their belted-up trousers. They knew I’d never be able to get my own back on them…”
Rafi interrupted her. “So, you thought you’d take it out on US instead?” he accused. “We’re not those boys. We never did anything to you!”
“I know,” said Samantha quietly, tears starting to well in her eyes. This was going badly, like she'd feared, but she was strong. She fought her tears back. “But I didn’t know you then. I thought most boys would be like that. I figured that if I’d seen you… you know… then you wouldn’t be able to bully me like the kids at my old school.” She chewed her lip nervously.
“So, it was all some sort of insurance?” Charlie said, eyeing her sceptically, with his hands on his hips. He still looked amused by her confession. “I suppose you didn’t do it because you LIKE to see boys’ willies?”
Some of the tension in the air broke. Yuto, Nathan and Harry all snickered at the remark. Max, Rafi and Theo did not. Samantha couldn’t help herself. She wiped the tears from her eyes and giggled too. “Well, yes, that too!” she admitted. “I’m a girl! What do you expect?”
“I expect some fairness,” insisted Rafi, adjusting his glasses and drawing himself up as imposingly as his short stature would allow. “You saw us naked. We should see you naked too.”
Samantha knew this discussion was likely to go there sooner or later. She had an answer prepared. “You already all saw, like 99% of me naked yesterday, when you took my towel away.” She blushed at the memory.
“Yeah,” said Rafi, a familiar, mischievous smile breaking through his anger, “but it’s the other 1% that we really want to see!”
“Besides, that doesn’t count!” complained Max. “We thought you were a boy then!”
“I guess that just proves you wouldn’t know a naked girl if you saw one!” Charlie told him, punching Max playfully on the arm.
“Oh? And I suppose YOU knew?” Max challenged him, delivering another punch in return.
“Sure did,” said Charlie, casually. Max looked around at a mixture of murmurs and knowing nods. “Who else knew about this?” he demanded. Nathan and Harry both raised their hands. Charlie did as well, for form’s sake. So too, to Samantha’s surprise, did Rafi.
“You guys SUCK!” Max complained. “Did everyone here know about this but me?”
“I didn’t know,” Yuto replied, grinning. “I think it’s hilarious though!” Unlike the others, he was overjoyed to learn the truth about Samantha. He felt a thrilling tingle in his private parts at the thought of all the times Sam had seen them. This was much better than being seen by the younger girl in the showers!
“I didn’t know either,” said Theo, “but I guess I don’t mind so much. Now YOU all know what it’s like to be seen naked by a girl in our class. It’s not so bad for me. Sam didn’t actually see my willy.”
“Erm, actually I did,” Samantha interjected. “Sorry Theo. I saw it for a second when you ran out your cubicle to get away from that leaking pipe, then I saw it again when Yuto pantsed you in the showers after.” She looked at each of the boys in turn. Her imaginary x-ray vision was still working, better than ever. She had apologised, but the point of the plan had been to give her a position of strength over the boys. She wasn’t ready to surrender that, and she was done with keeping secrets. “I saw ALL of your willies,” she told them, matter-of-factly.
“Great,” Theo sulked, sarcastically. “We’re getting a new girl in our class, the only one who wasn’t there for all the ‘tiny willy’ teasing, but now she’s seen it too! And she knows it’s so much smaller than all of yours,” he complained to the other boys.
“I’m not going to tease you about it, Theo,” Samantha said earnestly. “There’s no need to feel embarrassed. I like seeing all shapes and sizes. You’ve got a nice willy.” He stared back at her, probing, trying to sense the mockery beneath her words. He found nothing but sincerity. “You mean that?” he choked. She nodded. “All of you have nice willies!” she complimented.
Theo looked relieved. Yuto laughed, delighted. Charlie and Nathan laughed too, more tentatively. Harry blushed and gave Sam a shy smile. It was, however, the wrong thing to have said to Rafi and Max. Rafi’s expression hardened again. “All the more reason to return the favour,” he said, folding his arms. “I bet you have a nice slit down there, Sam. Why don’t you show us?”
Samantha thought back, digging through her memory of the past 24 hours. “Wait a minute,” she said to Rafi. “You KNEW. That’s why you kept your shorts on in the shower yesterday. That’s why you hid in the corner and got so cross when Yuto pulled your towel off in front of me.” Yuto chuckled at the memory, now laden with extra meaning. Samantha continued, now more accusingly, regaining some of the moral high ground that she thought she had ceded. “And THAT’S why you were so determined to show off my fanny to everyone! How did you know?”
“My dad works in the school admin office,” Rafi answered. “It was after I saw you at Harry’s house. I mentioned meeting the new boy in our class. My dad told me there was no new boy called ‘Sam’ joining us, but there was a girl called ‘Samantha’. Then I remembered seeing that pink bike of yours, next to Harry’s.”
Rafi had learned this over dinner at home. He’d felt a sinking pit where his stomach should be, at the realisation he had been tricked into showing himself naked to a girl. He’d excused himself from the table, unable to finish his meal. As he went to his room, he’d remembered the way ‘Sam’ had stared at his circumcised willy. It was the same way that other girl, Priya, had stared at it on the beach, two years ago. Rafi remembered it as if it happened yesterday. He had gotten even with Priya by seeing her girl parts. He had been determined to do the same with Samantha when they returned to the pool, but it hadn’t worked.
“You could’ve told us!” insisted Max. Like Rafi, he was struggling to come to terms with Samantha seeing him naked. Up until a week ago, no girl had ever seen him that way, and now he knew that TWO girls had. At least the young girl in the shower had been a stranger. Samantha was going to be in his class. He would have to face her, every day, knowing that she had seen all the parts of his body that were supposed to be private from girls.
Ever since he accidentally stripped Theo, all those months ago, the thought of girls making fun of his boy parts had haunted Max. Now he knew what it felt like. He was too upset to realise that Samantha wasn’t actually making fun of any of them, not maliciously. Hadn’t Max apologised enough? Why was the universe punishing him further for his accidental crime?
Theo, however, seemed to have gotten over his latest exposure to a girl remarkably quickly. Sam’s antics made his embarrassment from months earlier pale into insignificance, and she had seen the other boys more than she had seen Theo. Without meaning to, she had helped him regain some of his status. “How long have the rest of you known?” he asked Charlie, Nathan and Harry. It wasn’t an accusation, he was simply intrigued.
“I bumped into Samantha in town after we went swimming the first time,” Charlie replied. “She was dressed as a girl then.” He paused, turning to Sam. “We should call you ‘Samantha’ now, right?”
Samantha thought about this for a second, then shrugged. “You can call me ‘Sam’ if you like. Kids at my old school used it as a nickname. I hated it back then, but I’ve kind of gotten used to it these last couple of weeks. Now that it reminds me of better times with you guys, I’m owning it!” Charlie grinned at that. So did Samantha, or Sam.
“I only found out when I, erm, pulled Sam’s towel off yesterday,” Nathan said. “Sorry about that!” he added, to Sam. Nathan hadn’t fully known what it meant at the time, but now he did. He hadn’t managed to discuss Sam’s anatomy with Harry after their swim. There hadn’t been an opportunity with none of the other boys within earshot. “I guess Harry saw at the same time,” he said.
“No, that doesn’t track,” said Rafi slowly. “Sam’s bike, a GIRL’S bike, was at Harry’s house a few days before. Plus, Harry kept himself covered the first time we went swimming with Sam. I reckon he’s known all along! He let Sam see all of us naked without her seeing him naked as well.”
Now it was Harry’s turn to feel the spotlight. He held his hands up in surrender. “Yeah, I admit it. I’ve known Samantha… Sam longer than the rest of you. But you heard her, she saw ALL of our willies, mine too!”
“Twice,” Sam interjected, backing him up, in typical Sam style. Evidently no one else remembered Kaito pantsing Harry in front of her in the shower.
“In fact, that’s pretty much how all this started,” Harry went on. “Sam saw my willy before she saw any of yours! She got me good too! Yes, I played along with her trick,” he stuck his chin out defiantly. “So what if I didn’t tell you? Rafi, Charlie and Nathan didn’t tell you either!” Rafi and Charlie both shrugged. Harry had them there.
Charlie took charge again. “The way I see it,” he said, “Sam fooled us ALL big time. Yeah, she saw my willy. So what? She got us all good. We’re boys, we’ve got the balls to handle it, right?”
“You certainly all do!” Sam sniggered.
“Yeah,” said Nathan, chuckling. “Sam may be a girl, but she’s got more balls than any of us, to have pulled something like this off! I say she’s earned our respect.”
Max wasn’t ready to forgive yet, however. “That’s easy for you to say, Nate,” he argued. “You just told us you’ve seen her privates, and I bet you’re not even interested in seeing them again.” Nathan flushed at the remark. Sam wondered what Max mean by it, but before she could ask, Max rounded on her again. “Rafi’s right. You need to show the rest of us, to make it fair.”
Sam poked a finger in Max’s chest, challenging him. “How would it be fair? You were seen by ONE girl in your class. I’d be seen by SEVEN boys. That’s way worse! You all already saw me naked, and you all saw my bum. That was quite embarrassing enough, thank you! Would seven girls seeing your bum be worse than one girl seeing your willy?”
Theo agreed with her, but he was torn. He knew, all too well, the shame of being seen by multiple classmates. He found himself wanting to defend their new friend, especially since she’d been kind enough not to make fun of his willy. On the other hand, she wouldn’t have SEEN his willy if she hadn’t tricked him (and everyone else). He did want to see a naked girl as much as any of them. Theo’s conscience won out, barely. “Sam’s right,” he said. “That must’ve been pretty embarrassing for her. I think we’re even. We should call a truce and leave it there.”
Max was sure there was a hole in Sam’s logic somewhere, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He decided on action instead of reason. He lunged for Sam, aiming to pull down her pink leggings. This wasn’t the same as it had been with Theo. Sam wasn’t some innocent victim. She had deceived Max and stolen his privacy. He meant to get even.
Sam’s reactions were as razor-sharp as always. She had guessed the boys would want to see her naked in return, and she had guessed they might try to act on it too. She had been poised, ready to make a break for it, which she now did, dodging Max’s grasping hands. She turned and fled, chaos erupting behind her as the rest of the boys all sprang into action.
Unfortunately for Sam, she had made a tactical error. She should’ve run further into the open, where she could be seen by other people in the park, some of who might come to her rescue. Instead, she ran for the trees, where her bicycle was. Too late, she realised there was no way she had time to mount it and ride away before the boys caught her. She carried on running in the same direction, which took her beneath the tree cover.
Max, Rafi and Yuto caught up with Sam and tackled her to the ground. She landed face-up. While Yuto was happy that Sam had seen his privates, he was equally happy to see her privates in return, and he was never one to miss out on a stripping game. He dropped to his knees on top of Sam’s right arm, pinning it to the dirt. On her other side, Max did the same on her left arm. Rafi sat astride her legs. Max’s initial attack had been clumsy, but together they had caught her. She tried to wriggle free, but she was trapped, unable to move. “Stop! Get off her!” Sam heard Harry shout, from a short distance away, as he ran to catch up with them.
Rafi ignored Harry. He wasted no time in grabbing the sides of Sam’s pink leggings and pulling them down forcefully. Underneath, Sam’s underwear was no less lurid than her outerwear. A bright orange pair of knickers came into view. The shape of them hugging her lower body revealed the truth of what lay there more obviously than when she had pulled her leggings tight, minutes earlier. There was no trace of a willy or a pair of balls in the smooth curves. All three boys felt a growing hardness in their own underwear at the sight, as did Charlie and Theo, who watched with interest, torn between helping the other boys and helping Sam.
Rafi turned to Theo, who was stood close behind him. “No truce, Theo. Get her shoes off,” he said. “Socks too.” Sam’s feet were sticking out behind Rafi on the ground, and he couldn’t reach them. Sam had seen Rafi completely naked in the changing room and so now he meant to strip her completely too. Theo hesitated. The conscience that made him take Sam’s side before was being tested to breaking point, now there was a real chance of seeing her naked right here and now. Apprehensively he did as he was instructed, and tossed Sam’s footwear aside.
Sam squealed, “Get off me!” but she was laughing. She didn’t seem at all embarrassed to have her underwear on show. It was almost as if its brilliant colour was shouting the fact of her girlhood proudly to the boys she had fooled. Well, Rafi was about to do something about that. He rose up off his heels into a vertical kneeling position, where he could get a better purchase on Sam’s leggings. Max and Yuto did the same, keeping Sam pinned while they worked her leggings the rest of the way off her legs, leaving her mostly naked from the waist down.
“Keep her still!” Rafi ordered. “Now, let’s see how YOU like being seen,” he said to Sam, grinning triumphantly. He grabbed the sides of her underwear and pulled downwards.
Nothing happened. The orange garment didn’t budge. Rafi’s grin faded. He pulled again, with more force. The fabric started to bunch up a little, but Sam’s girl parts remained defiantly covered. All Rafi was doing was revealing more orange material above where he assumed the waistline would be. Frustrated, he grabbed Sam’s t-shirt instead and pulled it up over her face.
The orange knickers weren’t knickers at all! They were a one-piece swimsuit! The shoulder straps had thwarted Rafi’s efforts to pull it down. Sam’s laughter was muffled by her t-shirt, but it was relentless. Rafi hesitated, unsure of what to do. Wrestling Sam out of a suit like this would be difficult. It was designed to stay in place and protect her privacy, even when thrashing around in a pool.
“What are you waiting for?” Max demanded. “Just pull her swimsuit to one side!” Rafi supposed he could do that. If he grabbed hold of Sam’s suit between her legs, it would probably stretch enough that he could pull it away from her crotch, finally revealing the secret girl parts that he knew were tantalisingly behind that single layer of orange fabric. But that would mean actually TOUCHING Sam down there. Rafi imagined his hand burning at the very thought, the way he imagined it when his instincts warned him against touching a hot stove. His young mind did not dare to go that far, not even to settle the score and redeem his wounded pride.
Rafi’s pride was about to take another blow. Suddenly he felt a cool breeze around his lower body, as his football shorts and boxers were whisked down. To either side of him, Yuto and Max suffered the same fate. They had been focussing so intently on Sam, they hadn’t seen Harry, Nathan and Charlie sneaking up behind them to come to her rescue.
Unable to see what was happening, the first Sam knew of her rescue was when she felt the pressure on her arms disappear. Her wounded forehead hurt as she pulled her sequined t-shirt the rest of the way over her head, but she ignored it. She threw her t-shirt in Rafi’s face as soon as she was free of it. “I KNEW you would try to strip me!” she gloated. “That’s why I wore my…”
She stopped, unexpectedly coming face-to-face with three sets of semi-erect willies and balls at her eye level. She never thought she would see them again! Rafi and Max were hastily pulling their clothing back up to cover themselves. Yuto took his time, relishing Sam’s attention and the knowledge that she was a girl, and she was looking at his private parts. For Max, it was the first time he had been exposed to Sam with that knowledge too. His attack had backfired in the worst way. He rounded on Harry, who had been the one to pants him, burning with embarrassed rage. “Whose side are you on?” he demanded furiously.
“I said, get off her!” Harry was equally furious in return. “Three against one isn’t fair! I promised her we WEREN’T bullies!” Charlie, who had pantsed Rafi, backed Harry up. He remembered the anger he had felt, and the way he’d overreacted, when Sam had pulled his towel away in the changing room, revealing his hard-on to everyone. Sam had got physically hurt in the fight that followed. She still bore the bruises, and it could’ve been much worse.
Max was feeling the same way right now as Charlie had felt back then, but Charlie figured he would calm down and see sense, given enough time. “Harry’s right,” Charlie told Max, addressing Rafi and Yuto also. “We’re not bullies and we don’t gang up and strip girls. Face it, Sam’s outsmarted us all AGAIN. This ends now!”
Theo, a reluctant participant in Sam’s stripping, backed away. Harry and Charlie’s outrage made him feel ashamed at giving into the urge to see Sam naked, after suggested a truce. Now he regretted taking Sam’s shoes and socks. He certainly didn’t want be the next victim of her allies. One stripping in the park was enough for him for one lifetime!
Yuto backed away too. “Well played,” he told Nathan, high-fiving the boy who had just stripped him in front of Sam. The whole situation was still a game to Yuto. He would’ve loved to have seen Sam naked, but her seeing him was almost as good. He certainly didn’t want to upset any of his friends by pushing things to the point where they became no longer fun.
Rafi got to his feet, subdued at having been exposed by Charlie. It wasn’t quite so bad for him as it was for Max. He’d been knowingly naked in front of Sam before, but that didn't mean he wanted to be again. Sam had the weight of numbers on her side now, and Rafi was man enough to concede when he was beaten. The mischievous smile returned. “Okay, fine, you win this round,” he admitted. “I won’t try to strip you again, Sam. But don’t go thinking you’re off the hook. If the opportunity comes up to see you naked in future, I’m taking it!”
“Yeah,” Max agreed, with conviction. “Me too!” He was beginning to calm down. Sam had just seen his willy again, and that was embarrassing, but the world hadn’t ended. She could be mocking him about it right now, but she wasn’t. Max had to admit, wearing her swimsuit to foil their attempt to strip her had been a genius tactic. If the others weren’t bearing a grudge against her, Max decided he should at least try not to either. He wasn’t about to let a new girl ruin their friendships.
Sam gave Rafi and Max a wide, toothy grin. “Boys, I’d expect nothing less from you,” she told them. They should’ve been used to it by now, but they were still surprised at her audacity. Sam wasn’t cowed in the slightest by the threat of seeing her naked in future. She sounded like she welcomed the challenge. It was almost a pact between them. Max realised that Nathan had been correct too. Sam had earned their respect. “You’re crazy, you know that?” he told her, shaking his head in disbelief.
Nathan snickered. “I’m telling you, more balls than any of us!” he repeated. They all laughed, any remaining hostility between them evaporating into the outside air. Nobody tried to stop Sam as she got to her feet. “Thanks Harry, thanks Charlie, thanks Nathan,” she said to each of them in turn. Then she slipped between them, not bothering to retrieve her other clothes or her shoes. She skipped out from underneath the shade of the trees, the grass between her toes and the sunlight on her face, as it illuminated her swimsuit-clad body. Her OWN swimsuit, not Harry's borrowed swimming shorts.
Sam jumped for joy, feeling freer than she had done for a long time. In all the excitement of the forbidden sights she had witnessed over the past couple of weeks, she hadn’t realised the amount of anxiety and effort it had cost her to keep up her double identity. Now she felt it lift, like a weight she was no longer carrying. She was truly herself again, but changed, shaped by new experiences and a wider view of the world.
She had never been close friends with many boys before, but Sam felt a closeness to this group, that came from much more than simply knowing what every one of them looked like naked. They could have wanted nothing more to do with her, after learning of her deception and all that she had done to them. Most of them still wanted to see her naked in return, of course, but it felt to her like a friendly rivalry rather than bitter enmity. The boys had accepted her, the REAL her, in spite of everything.
Sam made a beeline for the abandoned football, which lay forgotten in the middle of the grass. “Hey Nathan, aren’t you supposed to be in goal?” she called. The boys looked at one another for a second, then charged towards Sam to tackle the ball from her. She kicked it as hard as she dared with bare feet. It went sailing between the trees before Nathan could get back into position to stop it.
The game was back on. Sam ran over to her shoes and slipped them on. She didn’t waste time putting on the rest of her clothes. To other people who saw them from across the park, it might’ve seemed odd that a girl was wearing a golden orange swimsuit to play football, but mostly what they saw was eight young friends laughing and playing together, without a care in the world.
Last edited by BareB4U on Thu Jul 02, 2026 5:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I’m in awe.
How you managed to pull this off WITHOUT Sam’s exposure is impressive, but it also preserves everyone’s innocence.
I still think Sam owes *someone, but I’m willing to wait.
This story has been beautiful, AND beautifully crafted.
(The one piece underneath was exactly what I had hoped for A brilliant pre-teen strategy worthy of Sam aka Samantha)
While I liked it overall, it does feel like this would permanently fracture the friend group into two, the ones out for revenge and the "sam supporters".
"Just give up, she got us good" isn't likely to convince most boys I ever met
Nonetheless a very fun story, very well written and with a ton of eventual sequel potential.
Thanks. Yes indeed, a lot of meticulous planning has gone into this story. My notes have tables in them!
Some parts of it have been a logistical challenge (keeping track of what happens when, who is in what state of undress, where everyone is physically in relation to each other). This part has been the biggest writing challenge from a character perspective, figuring out how everyone would react not only to Sam's bombshell, but to each other's reactions to that bombshell as well. And doing it in a way that's interesting and at least halfway believable, without everything falling apart into bitter acrimony, or Sam being stripped there and then in front of everyone.
Those would both have been ways it could've gone. There are stories by other authors on here which do bitter fallout well (Oh boy, do some of them do it well!), but I always intended this one to be more light-hearted and fun. "Everyone has seen everyone naked" is also a valid resolution, and it means more naked moments, which are the reason these stories exist in the first place, after all. But that's a less interesting dynamic than things remaining at least a little one-sided.
I agree that there are definitely some unresolved tensions that are likely to resurface in future. Those can hopefully exist without destroying the friendships. For now, the gang are in a pretty good place.
BareB4U wrote: Fri Jul 03, 2026 7:35 am
I'm not very good at tying things up.
When I wrote Sam's big exposure scene in the changing room, I thought there were maybe four more chapters to come after that.
I've since posted two more chapters.
Now I think there are still four more chapters to come!
Honestly, it's difficult to tie things up as what your originally envisioned.
My story Teenage Skirmishes was originally meant to be just a 2 parter, but I quickly realised this will open up a lot more.
I've ended up spending quite a while on writing Chapter 3 and it might take a bit more yet!
A brilliant pre-teen strategy worthy of Sam aka Samantha)
