Chapter 77: La Leçon Interrompue
Agathe settled onto the plastic bench, and the seat was warm in a way that had nothing to do with the sun. She shifted her weight, felt the faint tackiness under her thighs, the residue of some girl who had come before her and not cleaned up properly. The room always carried that smell, ammonia and cheap disinfectant, but underneath it something richer, riper, a sweetness that clung to the metal frames like a second skin.
Sofia next to her was doing the math with her hands. Both arms wrapped around her middle, fingers digging into the soft fabric of her blouse. Her face had gone the color of old paper, and a fine sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead.
"Did you drink a lot at lunch?" Agathe whispered.
"Two bottles." Sofia's voice came out strained, barely audible. "I thought I could handle it."
Mme Dubois wheeled the mannequin to the center of the room and pulled the plastic torso open with a click. The coiled tubes of the digestive tract gleamed under the neon light, a garish rainbow of red and blue and yellow plastic.
"Let's begin with the small intestine," she said, tapping a long pen against the model. "The site of most nutrient absorption. The villi lining the walls increase the surface area by a factor of nearly six hundred."
She turned to the whiteboard and began to draw a diagram, her back to the class. Her beige suit stretched across her broad shoulders, the fabric smooth and professional.
Agathe tried to focus on the lesson. She really did. But the cramp in her own gut was building again, a low pulse that had been grinding at her since the pool. She had emptied everything during the swim. Everything. There was nothing left. And yet her intestines were still churning, still twisting, like they were looking for something to push out.
She pressed her hand against her lower belly through the damp fabric of her tank top. The skin under her palm was warm, slightly swollen.
"Once food reaches the large intestine," Mme Dubois continued, her pen scratching across the board, "water is reabsorbed, and the remaining matter becomes progressively more solid. This is where stool is formed."
Someone in the back row giggled. Mme Dubois ignored them.
"The rectum serves as a storage chamber, and when the pressure becomes sufficient, stretch receptors send a signal to the brain, and the internal sphincter relaxes involuntarily."
Sofia made a tiny sound, a whimper that was almost swallowed by the hum of the neon lights. Agathe saw her legs press together under the bench, and her knuckles had gone white where she gripped her own stomach.
"Do you need to go?" Agathe breathed.
"I can't." Sofia's eyes were glassy. "There's a queue for the cabins. Camille and three others are in there. I checked."
Agathe glanced around the room. Half the girls were shifting in their seats, crossing and uncrossing their legs. A girl near the window had slid down in her chair with her thighs spread, her hand pressed flat against her crotch through her jeans. She looked like she was in another world entirely.
The classroom was never clean. Agathe knew that. The benches and chairs were bolted to the floor specifically so they couldn't be removed for a proper wash, and the result was a permanent patina of old stains, dried and cracked and layered over each other like sediment. She had stopped looking at the details months ago. There was a dark bloom on the seat next to her that she tried not to think about, a brown halo that had soaked into the plastic and faded to a crusty ring.
Mme Dubois paused in her diagram. Her hand, holding the pen, hovered above the board.
The room went quiet.
The professor stood very still, her shoulders tight under the beige suit jacket. Her back was to the class, and Agathe could see the way her spine curved, the way her hips shifted just slightly, a tiny adjustment of weight.
"Madame?" someone called from the back.
Mme Dubois didn't answer. Her free hand went to her stomach, pressing flat against the fabric over her middle.
The change was subtle at first. The beige fabric of her skirt was smooth, unblemished. But then Agathe saw it, a faint shadow appearing in the center of the professor's backside, a small dark patch that spread outward like water seeping into cloth.
Chloé, two rows over, had gone very still. Her grin had died on her face, replaced by something else, a fascinated stillness.
The dark patch grew. It darkened from gray to brown, spreading across the seat of Mme Dubois's suit in a slow, inexorable bloom. The fabric of her skirt began to sag, to bow outward, pushed by something heavy.
Mme Dubois's pen dropped from her fingers. It clattered on the floor and rolled.
A wet, grinding sound filled the silence. Low and thick, it seemed to vibrate through the floorboards, and the beige skirt tightened visibly as the load inside it grew heavier. The professor's knees buckled, just a fraction.
"Holy shit," Chloé whispered.
Agathe felt her own gut clench in sympathy. The pressure that had been building in her belly surged, a hot knot that twisted and demanded release, and she clamped her thighs together under the bench, squeezing hard.
All around her, the girls were watching the professor with wide eyes. No one moved. No one spoke. The only sound in the room was the wet, groaning pressure of Mme Dubois's bowels giving way inside her beige suit.