Well, I couldn't. I mean, I couldn't toughen it up.

This is the worst chapter of the whole book. Of the whole series of books. You made it. Hooray! Things will only get better from here. Well, with some problems, but nothing as rough as this.

This is when I stopped naturism. This is when I move away from most of my friends. This is when I become a ghost compared to who I was.

This is also when I became a goddamn math wizard in addition to winning a stupid poetry competition and ranking high as a mathlete.

Those 18 months that I am about to casually jump over are when my pills took control of me. This is when I became possessed by the medipharma industrial complex.

Oh, it didn't happen all of a sudden. I wasn't playing Nerf in a warehouse nude with my naturist friends one day, and the next, a textile pseudo-hermit. But that process basically occurred.

Now, in real life, I completely gave up on naturism, on a whim, for several years, and you will soon know why.

In the real life, I became super boring, and well, who wants to read that shit?

Except, I can't pretend I wasn't. I know I am not fully reliable. I know I lie a little. I make the story a little more interesting, and well, I am not perfect in my recollection.

But those next 18 months? It's all a blur. Honestly. And I can't even ask Edith or my parents for ideas, because I was basically living inside my own head.

So this is a time jump chapter. I will fill you in as to what happened in those 18 months so that I can close this book and open the next one. So that you find out what happened to me, but don't get bored by it and thus stop reading if you made it this far.

The pill helped me with school. Like I said, not only did my math skills skyrocket. I scored in the 97th percentile on the state math exam. I was second for my school. My mom framed it. I wish I could say I cared then, but I didn't. At the time, it just meant fewer questions to answer at parent-teacher night and fewer questions from my parents, period. Perhaps even more ice cream trips. That I liked.

But I was more able to perform in other subjects. The impression that the world became slower and quieter pretty much stayed. I feel like I was just too slow, and then, thanks to that pill, I was running at my proper speed.

Why do I get that feeling? Because today, I haven't been on Ritalin for what, over 5 years, and I still feel like the world is slower than when I was 12.

I do know that we spent far too much time on the Civil War, on the Reconstruction, and on the American Revolution. In math, we got deep into functions, linear equations, and exponents. I actually liked that. More than the Pythagorean theorems I used to struggle with. Science was a lot about memorizing in grade 8. Atoms, molecules, the periodic table. My parents got me playing cards with the elements, and I ended up using Blu-Tack to recreate the periodic table on my bedroom wall. That helped me a lot. Not just seeing them every day, but the act of placing them properly. It taught me things about the elements that I might have missed otherwise. It also helped me with my visuospatial dyspraxia. Mr. Klein, my science teacher, once gave me a sticker that said 'Periodic Table Pro' when I recited all the noble gases with their atomic numbers. It was silly, but I kept it in my pencil case all year. As reinforcement, even if I knew way more elements. We even did some astronomy from the class, not outside, but I appreciated that. Especially when we studied the seasons. That was well within my future career as an environmental engineer. Yes, it was still my life goal, even with the pill. I even had my first computer class, learning to code some basic scripts. That was fun!

Even in English I had some fun too, notably writing fictional stories. I did want to become an author as a side gig, but the Ritalin really made me suffer when it comes to creativity. I had Mr. Cook both years. In fact, I had Mr. Cook 4 years in a row. It's a career decision he made, apparently. Another reason he is one of my favorite teachers.

What else did it cost me?

Most of my friends. Marge stayed close, but we were close in a non-verbal way. She was my friend because we could basically parallel play together.

When I stopped being nude at home, she would stay dressed in my house. When I came to her house, she would sometimes be nude, but rarely. Her parents would also wear clothes, but I didn't ask if it was for my sake or if they stopped being naturists.

I didn't return to the non-landed club, even if my parents still went, so I don't know if Ellie and Richard returned. I don't even know if Marge returned. We didn't talk about those things. Not then, not now. I do talk to Marge, but it's like that period is off topic. Banned from conversation.

I lost Mindy again. Billy and she created a new bubble of some sort, and for a brief moment, I thought that Billy moved in for the summer at the naturist resort with his father, but I only heard because sometimes, I still spoke to Mindy. Like at parties with Marge.

Edith became more serious with Charlie, but I didn't see him nude another time. Edith followed my lead and remained clothed in our home. Even my parents, starting with my mother, resumed wearing clothes. It's like I was bringing them down to my level, but I couldn't do otherwise. The pill took control of me.

On the plus side, I became closer to Olivia. She even got permission to visit my house somehow, and she and Edith got along fine enough. Maybe Mindy's absence from my world made it easier to mix Edith and Olivia, or perhaps I was just emotionally numbed from my pill.

I made other friends who came and went. Mainly in the mathlete world, but none really mattered, and Olivia didn't participate even if she was in every way better than I was. In math, at least. I did tutor her in English, which was a fresh change of pace. Somehow, I convinced my father to still pay her $20 for when I was tutoring her. I don't know why I cared that much, maybe because I needed rescuing from my problems in the form of pills, and she needed money for her eventual rescue.

Over time, most of the side effects faded, leaving only two main ones: stomach issues and emotional numbness.

For the latter, I just surrounded myself with people who didn't mind. Marge, the autistic teenager. Olivia, the neglected math genius who just needed a friend. Edith, the traumatized foster kid.

Mindy, the most adjusted of us, was the least willing to compromise and went her own way. I know Edith and Marge still hung out with her often, but they spared me news from my former best friend.

My main issue was my stomach. At first, I didn't mind. Eating snacks helped. A lot. It also helped with the crash that I had at the end of the afternoon and the evening when the pill gave up. It gave me more energy.

At my nudist birthday party in the warehouse, I only measured 5 feet. I weighed a completely unrealistic 85 pounds. I laugh at that number. 85 pounds! I was basically a skin bag over bones. It's ridiculous. And yet, if prebuscent, it's within the range. It's apparently between 85 and 95 pounds, and I was smack on the lower end of the range.

18 months later, I was 14 and a half, and I had gained 2 whole inches in height. I also entered the B4 stage of puberty, with breasts, wider hips with more fat on them, and a lot more body hair. Still no periods, even if both Edith and Marge both went through it, but I wasn't 85 pounds anymore.

I was 143 pounds at only five foot two. Check any way you want. That's in the chubby category and not near the low end.

I gained 53 pounds in 18 months, or almost 3 pounds per month.

It's no wonder that I slowly no longer wanted to be nude in front of others. I found my body grotesque, disgusting, and repulsive. I dreamed of becoming a woman like Sandra, the lifeguard, not like Olivia's obese mother.

And I checked... there were obese girls at school, of course there were. Even Edith was a little pudgy when I met her, but she actually lost some weight. Perhaps because we eat healthier or because she began doing more sports with Charlie. In all cases, Mindy stayed almost as slim, Marge certainly was underweight, and Olivia perhaps not, but certainly not overweight.

Despite Edith being the tallest of us, I was heavier than she ever was, despite her being taller than I ever will be.

So I began wearing baggier clothes that hid my body. I would dread gym class. I even got pajamas to sleep in at night so even I wouldn't have to look at my body.

And yet, I was excelling in class. I was every teacher's favorite student. My grades went up, and I will dare say it: In class, I was happy. There. That's what you have to understand.

The student I was felt happy. Fulfilled and accomplished. The person I was outside of class? That girl, I hated her. I couldn't stand to be with her, much less to be her.

It didn't help that in the evening, my last Ritalin dose was so far away that I was dozing off without more calories. Without eating what I knew would add 3 more pounds that month.

And yet, I still hate it, and afterward I still hated me.

It didn't help either that I would see Edith happy with Charlie in our home, or she would be gone, leaving me alone.

Marge was imploding on herself, and I couldn't even help her. It's like we were both disconnecting from each other, and I don't just mean her from me and me from her. I mean from our own individuality.

Normally, I would be there, helping Marge, but I couldn't. I couldn't even be there for me, let alone her.

I know she did try to date, but I got no real insight. There was Dave, a guy we knew. I didn't know when it started, and I didn't know when it ended. I just knew it happened. I know she had another heartbreak, but I didn't get the guy's name, and to be honest? I don't think I was there enough to care.

Well, that's unfair to my past self. I did help her pick up the pieces when that second relationship ended. I was there so she could cry on my shoulder. But I was there physically. I even said some of the right words, like a tape recorder. But I wasn't there emotionally.

Honestly? Maybe if I had taken that autism test during that time, the results would have been different. Possibly I would have been diagnosed on the spectrum.

Nonetheless, I am not on the spectrum. And I was not. I was emotionally numb.

I know now why Olivia was my best friend during that period. It's easy to see with hindsight. She wasn't available for friendship. Between her parents, her tutoring, and now a part-time job, she didn't have time for friends.

It's funny how she never had the friendship abilities and built a life with, as her only friend, a girl who mostly lost that ability in a drug-induced trance.

Just because it's prescribed doesn't make Ritalin any less of a drug.

Now, don't think I hate Ritalin. I love that it let me have good enough grades to eventually get a scholarship. I love that I learned under it how to compensate for my form of dyspraxia enough to no longer need it.

And to be fair, Robert didn't prepare me enough. My parents didn't prepare me enough. The world didn't prepare me enough.

Starting your puberty when your friends are all adults physically doesn't just hurt. It's pure torture.

And perhaps, the only reason I managed to avoid most of that pain is that Ritalin made me emotionally numb.

Perhaps I can even thank the pill for that.

Don't worry, the next book will be more fun than this episode. Still with ups and downs, but more ups than downs.

And my era of Ritalin, is almost over.

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