Page 194 of Forbidden Lessons

She doesn’t bother with the stickers or the body paint. She plucks up one of the modified trash bags, yanks it over her head, and pushes her way past me and Melissa to exit.

I hear her yell, “Baby! Baby I’m done! Baby, where are—“ before the pounding music swallows her voice.

Melissa is slathering body paint over herself. “This’ll go faster if you help.”

Groaning, pull my dress over my head. But I admit, there’s a twinge of satisfaction as I dump the dress into the bin. Like I’m metaphorically dumping control-freak Bastian.

Then the cold hits me, and I wish I had the skimpy thing back.

“No one heard of pneumonia?” I mutter as I try to apply the pasties on my boobs. One keeps sticking to my finger instead, so I have to shake it off and try with a new one.

“Just keep dancing,” the girl behind me says as she and her friend push past us.

They let out a, “Whoop!” as they disappear into the night.

“That could have been us,” Melissa says, squirting me with a tube of body paint.

“What are you?—”

She slaps her hand onto my stomach, smearing the paint over my skin as she hands me another tube with a different color.

“Pink? Really?—”

She slaps her hand over my mouth, then my cheek.

“This had better be non-toxic.” I glare at her, spitting out body paint.

Then I squeeze a big gloop of pink paint into my palm and slap her with it. We have to stop our impromptu cat fight when three girls crash into the change area, practically pushing us out.

Melissa snags two trash bags and a handful of glow sticks on the way, and I can’t believe I’m still laughing as I try to wrestle the thin plastic over my head.

It’s not like I’m naked or anything.

But it’s dark, no lamps to be seen, so it’s not like?—

My arms are glowing.

I hold them out, staring at the pretty pink and blue smears on my skin.

Melissa points up, her arm glowing just as brightly. There’s a purple fluorescent light glowing above us, barely illuminating anything except the UV body paint.

She wipes her hands on her trash bag dress and then manipulates a few of the glow sticks into a belt for my waist. Another for each wrist and ankle, and a final one around mythroat. I help her do the same, but the girls who came in behind us barely have a streak of UV paint when they come out as we head for the music.

“Come on!” she yells, picking up speed. “There won’t be anything left!”

Is she talking about food? Because I can eat.

The paint and the trash bag cover me up pretty well, but I still know I’m naked underneath it all. And while I hardly ever wear a bra inside my car when I’m just chilling out, it feels weird to be out in the open without one.

There’s a hint of ozone in the air. When I tilt my head up, not a single star is visible.

I don’t know if it’s the approaching storm or the approaching party, but there’s a charge in the air that’s making the hair on my arms stand up.

There’s another guy in a mask standing on the side of the trail up ahead, a kerosene lamp lighting them from above. As we come up to them, they reach into a cooler box and pull out two bottles of water.

Melissa grabs one and hands it to me.

But she pushes back the second one. “Gatorade.”

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