All characters are 18 years of age or older.
18-year-old Maddie had always been pretty, but in recent years she'd blossomed into one of the most beautiful girls on campus, and the guys had taken notice. She'd always been well-respected and now she was more popular than ever, but at heart, she was still a modest, shy, academic girl. While her friends and female classmates had graduated to wearing thongs and lacy panties, Maddie still wore the cotton briefs and bikini-briefs she'd always worn, many of them adorned with childish patterns. They just felt safer and more comfortable. She never worried about anyone finding out: she didn't do much with guys, and after gym class she still changed in the privacy of a bathroom stall. (She was as self-conscious and shy about her underwear as she was about her naked body; to her, underwear was every bit as private and intimate, and in some ways even more so.)
*
Maddie's family had a lot of money, which had always made some of her peers resentful, but ever since the guys had started salivating over her, the popular mean girls had come to see Maddie as a true threat — a threat to be squashed. She was popular in her own right, but she'd never been one of the cool girls on the cheerleading squad, and truthfully they'd always frightened her. Still, she never thought she could be one of their targets, and she especially never thought that something as private and personal as her taste in underwear could be used against her to result in the greatest public humiliation of her life.
But things changed when Brett, the lacrosse captain, asked her to go with him to the homecoming dance. Two weeks prior, he'd broken up with Sarah, the cruel, conceited head cheerleader, and when she found out that Brett was going to the dance with Maddie, she immediately began scheming. "There's gotta be something we can use against her," she fumed. "Little Miss Perfect has gotta have some secret."
Even more sadistic than Sarah was Gretchen, her best friend, cheerleading co-captain, and most ruthless henchman. A few days later, the cheerleaders' phones vibrated with a text from Gretchen. It contained a grainy photo of an open gym bag. Inside were two pairs of girls' underwear: one was yellow adorned with pink teddy bears, and the other was spangled with pink rainbows. "I wonder what Brett will think when he learns that Maddie still wears preschoolers' panties," Gretchen had written.
For the next three weeks, they began enacting their plan. Maddie, a straight-A student, was famously responsible and cautious, always planning ahead, which is why her gym bag contained not one pair of panties but two, just in case she needed an extra on hand. Every day during gym class, one of the cheerleaders would excuse themselves to go to the bathroom. They'd then sneak into the locker room and beeline for Maddie's gym bag, unzipping it and carefully pocketing the spare pair of panties Maddie kept inside.
Two or three days into this scheme, one of them saw Maddie frowning down at her bag after class, having noticed that one of her pairs of underwear was missing. The cheerleaders had planned for this. "Miss Wilcox, my underwear is missing!" Sarah said to their gym teacher, loud enough for Maddie to hear. "Mine too!" Gretchen declared. "I bet some boys are playing a prank," Miss Wilcox responded. "The school won't allow us to lock the locker rooms or install security cameras, but mark my words — if anyone on this campus is planning to humiliate you ladies, I'll make it clear that they'll be facing expulsion."
A few times a week thereafter, one of the cheerleaders would dramatically announce in the locker room that another pair of her panties had been stolen. Every time, someone glancing over at Maddie would notice her blushing furiously at the thought of a boy sneaking into her gym bag to take her childish underwear, but she seemed reassured by Miss Wilcox's promise that nothing would come of this prank, and that "eventually the boys will get bored."
This went on for three weeks. Finally, the cheerleaders met up at Sarah's house one night after school. She dumped a duffel bag out onto her bed, and out spilled at least twenty pairs of the most embarrassingly childish panties they'd ever seen: decorated with cartoon characters, rainbows, hearts, bunnies, and cute pastel stripes and polka dots, all fringed with ruffles or lace. "Jackpot," Sarah declared.
The plan was set in action for the next day during gym class. "Miss Wilcox, I'm not feeling well," one of the cheerleaders, Lisa, announced. "I'll walk her to the nurse," her friend Haley said. The two left the gym, but instead of heading to the nurse's office, they went to their lockers to retrieve the duffel bag (straining against the sheer volume of the panties) as well as the clothesline one of them had brought from home. From there, they headed out to the front of the school.
What happened next had carefully rehearsed. Before gym class, Gretchen had snuck into the locker room and unscrewed the lock on the bathroom stall doors. After class was over, the girls headed into the locker room, and Sarah, Gretchen, and their friend Kelsey watched as Maddie grabbed her gym bag and made her way into the stall to change. From the edge of the bathroom, they watched the open space beneath the stall door, waiting for the opportune moment. They saw Maddie drop her gym shirt into her open duffel bag, with her bra following a moment thereafter. It was about to be the moment of truth. With their phones out in their hands, the cheerleaders smiled at each other, fixating on Maddie's legs beneath the stall door. Finally, it happened: they saw Maddie's red gym shorts slide down past her knees and down her calves. They pounced.
Gretchen had done her pre-gym job well: the metal lock bolt fell from the door and clattered to the tile floor, and the stall door opened effortlessly. Inside was Maddie, wearing nothing but her panties, bending slightly to pick up her gym shorts. She looked up at them, and for a few seconds she was like a deer caught in the headlights. The cheerleaders' phones captured her expression: her mouth open in a ridiculous 'O' of surprise and bewilderment, as if she hadn't fully processed what was happening.
But the best part exceeded the cheerleaders' wildest expectations. After three weeks of quietly amassing Maddie' underwear, they knew that many of her panties weren't all that remarkable. Many of them were simply plain cotton briefs or bikini-briefs in solid pastel colors: modest and innocent, yes, but not especially childish or embarrassing. Their plan wouldn't have been ruined if this had been the case that day — the reserved, inhibited, shy girl was going to be seen by the entire school as she'd never been seen before — but it would have lacked the true crux of humiliation that had set the plan in motion in the first place.