I'll skip the bowling game. We played, it was fun. My mother made 189 points, I made 168, Beth did 132 and Clara 102. Fine, you got me, it's not those exact numbers, but it's close. I do my best to tell a truthful story, I do!

Once we were done, Clara offered us snacks, but when Beth declined, I proposed we take a walk, and stuff some of the proposals in our pockets.

Beth looked at me weird, but Clara and my mom laughed.

When Beth got it, she smiled.

I grabbed my towel, which I carried all this way, and Beth took hers from her backpack.

Outside, I asked her if she knew beforehand that she needed a towel to sit.

"Oh yeah, my parents and I called this summer and asked everything we needed to know, like to have enough sunscreen, a few towels, you know, the basics", she explains

"And they were ok with you being alone?"

"Not at first, but my parents weren't willing to undress, and you know, nudity is mandatory"

"Not if they visit Mindy. We have a friend who comes and is only topless"

"Yeah, well, my mom wouldn't be willing to be topless, and we didn't know Mindy", she replied, annoyed

"Sorry, I didn't want to pry", I told her.

She relaxes.

"No, sorry, it's tense for me."

"No worries. Hey, don't feel guilty or anything. I find you cool, and even if you weren't, I mean, my best friend, who I came to visit, ditched me to go God knows where with her boyfriend. I hang out with you, or I am alone or, worse, with parents...", I say, laughing

"The horror!", she says, laughing.

"Are you close to yours?", I ask

"Somewhat. Let's say we have an understanding"

"Fair enough. I got closer to mine since we returned to naturism."

"Right. You told me"

"I apologize for repeating", I told her as we spotted the three fathers playing horseshoes with an older gentleman, with the petanque balls on the grass near them.

"Did you ever play petanque?", I asked her.

"No idea what it is"

"I'll be honest, me neither, before coming here. I'll show you", I tell her, grabbing the set.

I am saluted by my dad, and I present Beth to her, as well as Peter and James.

I quickly notice that Beth is a lot more shy with them than with Clara and my mother. I suppose it is easier for her with an adult of the same gender as her?

I mean, let's be objective, what is scarier for a teenage girl? A nude man or a nude woman? Think about movies. When there is sexual violence, the woman is nude to receive the violence, and the man is nude to give the violence. It's stupid, it's sexist, but I don't make movies.

Anyway, I throw the jack while I explain the rules. We move away from the horseshoe game: the last thing I want is for either of us to get a horseshoe on our head.

We are playing one on one. I am not positive it is supposed to be, but we make it work. We simply have all the balls of our team.

Beth is about 4 years older than I am. She had more time to learn coordination. She is more mature, had more advanced gym classes, and has a more developed brain.

Playing against her was completely unfair as a game. The winner was predetermined. The game was won before the first ball was thrown. It was completely one-sided, a demolition, almost a humiliation.

She had no chance! I did tell her it didn't matter, it was just her first game, but guess what? She wanted to play again and had fun despite her crushing loss.

So we played again, and she was a little better. Not a lot, but enough to score a few points.

"I am not that good at sports"

"Me neither to be honest, the only reason I score is that I make it roll longer on the ground"

"Wait, that's not a bad idea!" she says, and on that, we made another game where it was more even.

It was also a lot more fun! We joked around more, and it was a lot more relaxing. But honestly? Both of us had enough.

We stored them back in their container and put them back next to the fathers, who were still playing a competitive game.

We didn't care, and I propose that we go take a walk.

Now, this is where I sort of stretched what I was allowed to do. Fine, I broke the rules, so sue me.

We walked around the resort, and Beth quickly noticed the stream splitting the resort in half. We ended up walking along its way to its source, and then, downstream again.

"It's sad we can't just follow it because of the fence", she said

"We went on bicycle this summer to a creek with clear water over rocks and a small waterfall"

"For real?"

"Oh yeah, but it's quite a ride"

"I bet. You had to get dressed, right?"

"No, the fields around the resort belong to the resort. As long as we avoid the street in front of the resort, we will be alright", I tell her

"So, is there a sort of backdoor?"

I nod, and we gently walk toward it. When I open it, she hesitates.

"I was fine being nude in the fence, but outside? I don't know"

"If you don't want to, I'll close the door, and we'll do something else", I tell her.

"What the heck. But not far... just a little", she says, hesitant.

I followed her. I know I don't think I am supposed to go out without an adult, and Beth isn't one, but as long as nothing happens to us and none of the parents catch us, it's ok, right? Right?

At worst, I can ask to wait until Beth is gone and blame her. She is older, right?

Well, we went out, and while I was happy the first time, she was nervous. We found a rock nearby that was close to the fence, in its shadow, and laid our towels to sit on it.

"I am going to be an adult soon, and I feel like I am absolutely not ready for it", she says

I think about it.

"I don't think most girls your age feel ready for it"

"Do you think boys are any more ready?", she says, sarcastically

"Well, I don't think they are, but I feel like they think they are", I reply, which makes us both laugh.

"So you think it's my perception of it that is the problem?"

"Hey, I am much younger than you are, so what do I know? But you still have years before you become an adult"

"Less than two"

"And think about where you were two years ago? Were you ready to be where you are right now?"

"Outside a naturist resort with a nice younger girl who seems somehow more wise than I am?", she says

I know I said "Aww", as I was touched, but she didn't react to it, so maybe it was just in my mind.

"No, I mean in general. You must have classes that if you were to tell me about it, I would panic that soon I will have them. I mean, honestly, if just 2 years ago someone had told me about algebra, I would have hyperventilated, but today, I crush, like I will crush trigonometry when I will be your age", I tell her.

Now, this is where it hurts.

She believed me. She accepted it, and it helped her. She told me it did. She managed to think back to my age, thinking about her future and realizing that she managed to overcome most of her challenges that, only a few years ago, were tall, impossible-to climb mountains.

I know I made a difference. Perhaps that night, when she came home, she was strengthened by my words. Perhaps, hopefully, I helped her become an adult.

I am one today, and she is older than I am, so I dream that today, she is finishing college or at a job, and she thinks back to that conversation we had on that rock.

Because I still think about it.

And I sometimes cry about it at night. Because it's an utter lie.

Not the first one that I crushed it at school. No, I had good grades that year. The part about trigonometry. I didn't crush it at all. And it made me feel so stupid, so useless, so unprepared for life, and it's only by my parents hammering into my mind that trigonometry was useless for most people that eventually, I was fine. I did graduate high school, so there's that. And I got my trigonometry credits.

Only... my parents lied too. It wouldn't be useless for me, but that's another story. A story where I am older and wiser and get trigonometry. A story where I am also an aspiring writer, writing these words.

Well, I am bummed, so let's fast-forward a little. Not a lot, not like a time jump, more like us finishing our conversation and eventually making it to Mindy's house where she was back with Billy and the meal was being prepared.

And what a meal it was!

Not only did both Clara and my mom, who were quickly learning to work together, toil away on the meal, but James had brought food to pitch in and had no intention of letting the two women work alone.

This more or less forced my father to help in the kitchen and Peter to work the barbecue. I heard a dad joke that he couldn't leave a single nude man alone in the kitchen with the two hottest women on the resort, but my mom told him that there were kids around and it was an inappropriate joke.

The reality is that the only reason I even heard them was because Mindy and Billy were explaining how Mario Party worked to Beth, and I was bored. I knew how to play, so I listened to the adult conversation, fresh from the talk with Beth.

In reality, what I discovered is that adults didn't have everything all figured out.

Ok, fine, sue me. It was not that clear in my mind then. But fresh from the talk, I listened to wonder how adults work when only between adults, and it didn't impress me. Later, I paid more attention, and soon enough I knew that the only difference between them and us was confidence.

But made another realization then. That was not a rule of cool. Confidence is cool when you don't deserve that level of confidence. A teenager who is suave and calm under fire is cool. An adult who is as suave is just... well, an adult.

It's a constantly moving goalpost, and I realized that being an older cool person is probably the worst of all.

In short, are elderly people really grumpier, or did they just realize they couldn't remain cool and gave up?

No idea, not even today, as I am writing this.

Still, the game started, and while Mindy was lucky with the dice rolls, Billy and Beth won most of the mini-games, with me in a close third to Beth. I did win a few of the non-random ones, but out of the 20 minigames, 15 were not bonus or random games, and Billy won 7 of them. Not quite a majority, but definitely a plurality. Look at me with my college-level words! Beth probably won 6 and I 5, with two going to Mindy. That's a total of over 20. How in the world is that possible? Simple! Two player team games and two 3v1 games. Billy lost the one where he played against the three girls, and I won the one where I was against the three older teens. Still, most of the games only give you 10 coins when a star costs 20, so it's not enough to tip the game, but it did give the victory to Billy, who got two bonus stars: most minigames won and most coins. Mindy got the bonus star for most blue spaces landed.

By the time the game ended with a victory from Billy, supper was served outside.

It wasn't hot outside, but it wasn't that cold. There was absolutely no wind, which helped a ton.

Beth didn't eat much, but she sat with us, between Mindy and me, on the second picnic table that the men brought to extend the one usually in Mindy's backyard.

Beth didn't talk much, but she listened to Peter talking about his job and James talking about his, or Mindy talking about the butterfly Billy and she saw and followed for a little while this afternoon.

But while she didn't eat much, Beth did taste a little bit of everything. Some of the marinated chicken from Clara, which was just mouthwatering. Honestly, I could have eaten three of those chicken breasts, but I was only offered one. Beth ended up sharing a burger with me, where one was cut in half, but she barely touched hers. Peter seemed to have been vexed and wanted to know what was wrong with it, but she kept saying she doesn't eat much and there is just too much food.

That, there was.

While in the middle of the meal, however, a car slowly drove down the street by Mindy's house and then backtracked and parked there.

You can't see the picnic table from in front of her house, but you can from the dirt street behind it. Technically, there is a small cabin on that lot, but it's small enough to spot the group of four nude teenagers and five adults eating a feast on two picnic tables.

Two fully dressed adults left the car and approached us. Beth apologized and stood to meet them.

They talked a little, but Clara joined the group and loudly yelled.

"Welcome back! Please join us, we made far too much food", she says, approaching the couple, which we all understood to be Beth's parents.

The conversations died down, so you heard Beth's mother reply. "We wouldn't want to intrude"

"Nonsense. Your daughter is having fun, and we like her. Come, sit with us. I am sure you can eat a little before going home"

Her parents looked at each other, her father nodded, and they approached the table.

"I apologize if we don't undress", says the mother

"Don't, you agreed to let your daughter spend some time here with us. You are good in my book", says Peter, who had stood up to welcome them.

They ended up sitting in front of us, the only place free at the table. Billy had sat in front of Mindy, next to his father on the other table, so that Beth's father was next to him and her mother in front of me.

Her parents seemed to be ill at ease, but soon enough, both had a plate in front of them with a marinated chicken breast, a burger, a hot dog, some homemade macaroni salad, a scoop of coleslaw, a serving of fries, and a seasoned baked potato, courtesy of James.

Beth's mother said it was beyond what's necessary, but her father just digs in.

They mostly listened to the conversation, which currently was a funny story my father told about a misunderstanding about an import preorder where the customer thought he ordered 40 bearings, but he placed an order for 40 boxes of 20 bearings. Sure, told like that, it's not funny, but my father had a way to insert twists and surprises in the story. I don't recall the details because it's not a story he often told, and that evening, I was mostly preoccupied by the conversation between Beth and her mother.

In short, she wanted to be certain that her daughter was ok, that she had fun, and that she was treated with respect, to which her daughter reassured her was all positive and good.

"You can continue at home, you know that, right?", said her mother

"I'll think about it. I think these 24 hours did more good than therapy. Julie, here, was just outstanding with me", she says, gently rubbing her shoulder against mine. Well, not exactly, since I was shorter than her, but you know what I mean.

"Thank you, Julie, it means a lot what you did for my daughter", said her mom.

"Anytime. She helped me too, you know? She can come back anytime, and if she wants, we can exchange numbers so we can hang out", you offer.

But I was thanked, and it wasn't reciprocated.

After the meal and dessert, Beth grabbed her things and got dressed. It's only when dressed that she hugged me to thank me, in Mindy's house.

"I will always remember you", she says, a little sad.

"This doesn't need to be goodbyes, you know? I can leave you my number"

But she left without giving me the number, and I realized that once dressed up, there were absolutely no traces of her burns.

Like that, I watched her drive away from Mindy's house and out of my life. Years later, I still haven't heard from her, but I do hope she is alright.

I know I won't forget her.

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