The Bare Necessities (Non-Profane Edition) Read Free

sister.
“You're always getting at me,” she moaned.
    “Yeah, and I know
why you want to wear it,” Paige spat. “To hide all the …”
    “That's enough,”
her mother interrupted sharply and turned the sausages on the
barbecue. Paige scowled and watched as the youngest member of the
family, the dumpy Jeremy, buttered finger rolls and put a small
portion of crisps on each plate.
    Paige shook her
head as Hazel readjusted her sarong, and the elder sister got up
from her patch of grass. She strode purposely around the smoky
barbecue to her younger sister and snatched the brightly coloured
garment from her grasp. Hazel shrieked. “Give it back,” the
teenager yelled and Paige backed away from her, holding the red
sarong in her hands.
    “It'll do you
good,” she teased. “Teach you that your scars are …”
    “Paige, give it
back to me.” Hazel shouted as she frantically covered herself with
her hands and advanced on her sister. “Everyone's looking at
me.”
    “Yes, 'cause you
are acting like a baby,” Paige taunted. The voice of her mother
ordering Paige to return the silky garment to her sister went
unheeded, and the tormentor skipped away as Hazel chased her
sibling through the pitched tents, who was jumping over guy ropes
with gleeful cackling.
    Paige wound her
way through the canvas shelters and the site; she was nimbler than
her younger and taller sister and her red hair streaked out behind
her as she ran. Paige mocked her emotional sibling as she jumped
over a sunbathing boy and held the sarong out in front of her.
“Scared of being seen, are we?”
    “Paige, I bloody
hate you,” Hazel screamed as she caught up with her sister and her
hand pushed the coltish tease in the face so that she fell to the
ground. Hazel snatched the sarong from her sister's grasp as the
red-haired soubrette landed with a bump and snarled viciously.
    Paige cried out in
pain as she landed, and swept her feet across the backs of Hazel's
legs so that she fell on the soft grass alongside her. “Don't push
me like that.”
    “Well don't take
my sarong then,” Hazel moaned, and their spat was interrupted by
their big-breasted mother striding across the camp site, to scold
her errant offspring.
    “This is the last
time we will be on holiday together,” she moaned. “You two are
getting too big to go away on holiday with us so don't spoil it for
us.”
    “But …”
    “But you're as bad
as one another,” she spat and dragged Hazel up by the arm. Paige
scrambled to her feet and walked back in silence, allowing her
sister and mother to walk in front of her.
    “What's up with
your friend?” The sunbathing teenage boy asked as Paige drew
level.
    “She's my sister,
and she's a prude,” Paige muttered and shrugged. “She doesn't want
people to see her body.”
    “Oh,” came the
response.
    “Yeah, I know.
Naturist place and the like. She's just weird.”
    “My sister's the same,” he told her. “Maybe it's
just younger sisters.” Paige nodded, and with the lingering eyes
and ears of her mother only a few feet away, decided that it was
unwise to comment too much more.
    “Maybe,” she
muttered.
    * *
* * *
    “Oh hiya,” Claire
called as the full-figured teenager walked past the two tents that
made up Paige's family's residence for the week. “I'm off to the
pool, my parents are sunbathing and my brother's in the woods, so
I'm alone. Fancy joining me?”
    Paige put the last
of the hot dog in her mouth and nodded, grunting with her mouth
full. “Yeah,” she said through her half-chewed sausage, and grabbed
the towel from underneath her, swinging it away from her
sister.
    “Don't go swimming
on a full stomach,” she was ordered but Paige grunted. “You'll get
a tummy ache.”
    “Mum,” Paige cried
in annoyance at the mothering. “I do know. I'm fine. I am
eighteen.” Paige waited until she was out of earshot of her mother
to complain to her holiday friend. “She fusses.”
    Claire shrugged.
“My mum does it