Vestiphobia

Chapter Three: Uncovered

In the two weeks since Lisa had stopped attending lectures, she and Shelly had become very close. They talked for hours on end about everything, and Lisa would forget her nudity for long stretches. If Shelly resented anything about her role as Lisa's caretaker, she didn't show it.

One afternoon, as Shelly was telling her a story about something that had happened over lunch in the canteen, Lisa realized that she could not picture any of the faces of the people whose names Shelly had mentioned. Some of them were people she'd never met, but others she had, and those were the most distressing. She had been at college for four weeks now. Two of those weeks had been spent in her room, with just Shelly for company, and during the week before that, her every thought had been about what clothes she could comfortably wear and how long she could go between stripping. So far, she'd had exactly one week of normal college life.

Her condition was worsening. She had found herself taking longer and longer showers to avoid putting her towel back on, and then sprinting back to her room to get it off again. Soon she wouldn't be able to wear anything for any amount of time, and would be forced to streak to her shower and back.

Lisa burst into tears.

"What's wrong?" asked Shelly, placing a hand on her friend's shoulder. "Was it something I said?"

Lisa wiped her eyes. "N-no. Well, kind of. It's just... you're having all these fun experiences with all these cool people, and I... I can't even leave this room. It's not exactly what I thought college would be like."

Shelly looked down at her feet. Then, after a pause, she said, "I'm sorry none of my ideas have worked so far. How's the counselling going?"

Lisa had signed up for sessions with the college psychologist a few days before, following the latest failed experiment. "I'm too embarrassed to say anything about this... clothes thing. It's too weird. She just thinks I'm a shut-in."

"Lisa..."

"I know! I know! I'll tell her in my next session. But she'll probably just tell me that my lifestyle choice is valid and I should continue being a nudist hermit. She's... really open-minded."

Lisa got up from her position, lying on top of her bed, and stomped across the room, limbs filled with restless energy. "I need to get out and do something, Shelly! I hear all about your friends and I really want to meet them! I'm going crazy in here by myself..."

Shelly put a hand to her chin. "How long can you stay clothed right now?"

Lisa glanced at the open notebook on her desk. "Ten minutes, roughly." At Shelly's suggestion, she'd been timing herself with a towel on every day.

"I could invite some of my friends to the room, and then you could meet them?"

Lisa considered this. "I'd be too focused on my discomfort to really pay attention to them, probably. And it would be hard to think of a reason to chase them away after ten minutes. Just another reason to call Shelly's shut-in roommate a weirdo!"

Shelly paused for a moment before speaking again, a pensive look on her face. "Um, if I invite just girls over, then maybe you could be, well... maybe you could stay comfortable?"

Lisa's eyes widened and her face reddened. "I really don't know about that! All those people meeting me for the first time... either they'd be offended, or they'd think I'm a freak."

"I would definitely tell them about your condition first!"

"Then they'd just spend the whole time feeling sorry for me."

"Uh, I could have them strip too? To make things more equal?"

"Then they'll really think I'm weird!"

Shelly bit her lip. "I guess. If only there were a way for you to be comfortable without people thinking... oh, of course!"