Chapter 8: Chapter 8
Thursday opened the same way Wednesday had, with the bell rolling down the corridor at seven and the radiators ticking in the cold. Chloe dressed in the tailored uniform, second button open, hair down, and caught her own eye in the mirror for a second longer than she used to. The girl looking back at her was famous now. She could feel it in the stairwell, where two second-years stopped talking when she passed and one of them smiled at her teeth.
At breakfast the attention had weight. A senior with cropped red hair looked her up and down across the hall, unhurried, the way a buyer looks at fabric. One of the kitchen staff, a heavyset woman in a white apron, set Chloe's coffee down and let her hand rest on the table an extra moment, watching her. "You eat well," the woman said. "It shows." She went back to the kitchen without waiting for an answer.
Dot slid into the seat beside her with toast in one hand. "That's Marta. She's been here eleven years. If Marta likes you, the kitchen tells you things before anyone else hears them." She bit the toast. "Also, the red-haired one is Thea. She's been asking about you since Wednesday. That's two staff and a senior before nine o'clock. You're becoming an economy."
"Ruby said something like that."
"Ruby says everything like that." Dot wiped butter from her thumb. "Are you nervous about class? I'm nervous about class. It's our bodies. I don't know what there is to grade about my body."
The morning classes passed in a blur of ordinary things, a history lecture on the Habsburgs, a Latin translation, Voss's name unspoken in every room. Marguerite caught up with her outside literature and walked with her as far as the east corridor, braid swinging. "Whatever it is today," she said, "sit near me again." Then she peeled off toward her own classroom and Chloe continued alone down the hidden corridor to the unmarked door.
The east-corridor room was arranged differently today. The demonstration table at the front was bare except for a folded white towel and a tray of surgical-looking instruments laid out on green cloth. A full-length mirror stood against the side wall. Twelve chairs in a semicircle, no desks in front of them.
Voss stood at the front in black, hair loose over her shoulders, reading a card. When the last girl sat she set the card down and looked at them all in silence for five full seconds.
"Yesterday you learned women," she said. "Today you learn yourselves. Care, health, and the mechanics of your own bodies, and what those bodies do to the people looking at them. Undress. Blouse and skirt, everything, and stack it on your chair. Towels are at the front if you run cold. You have one minute."
The room filled with the sound of buttons and rustling wool. Chloe unbuttoned slowly, watching the others. Dot got naked quickly and unselfconsciously, big pale shoulders rounded. Liv crossed her arms under her breasts while she waited. Marguerite folded her blouse with small precise movements, pink from her ears to her sternum. Within the minute twelve first-years sat in a semicircle with nothing on but their socks and their lockets and their watches.
Voss walked the line of them once. She did not touch anyone yet.
"First, ordinary medicine. Yeast infections, UTIs, what a healthy discharge looks like through the month, when something is wrong and when it is nothing." She picked up a swab from the tray and held it up. "You will all give me a sample at the end of the hour. This is not a test you can fail. It is information the school keeps." She put it back. "Any questions so far?" Nobody spoke. "Good. Now the interesting part."
She set the mirror on its stand and angled it toward the front row. "Stand up, front row, and look. All of you, in turn. I want you to know exactly what you look like, because every person who ever takes you to a bed is going to look, and you should not be guessing."
They filed up one by one. Chloe went third. The mirror showed her herself, small breasts with pale pink nipples already tightening in the cool air, the brown strip between her legs, the soft line of her stomach. It was strange and clarifying, like reading a letter she'd written long ago. Behind her she heard Dot say, "Huh," and Liv say nothing at all, studying herself the way she studied everything.
"Now the part people pay for," Voss said, when they were seated again. "What this body does to a brain. You've all felt it from the other side this week. When a woman undresses, a man's pulse rises before you touch him. Not metaphor. Twelve beats a minute, on average, in untrained men. And women are not immune; half my subjects on Wednesday came in wet before the exercise began, watching you." She paused. "Your body is a weapon with a safety catch, and the catch is your own comfort. A woman ashamed of her body hides it, and hiding reads as weakness. A woman who knows her body shows it, and showing reads as intent. Which would you rather be read as?"
Nobody answered. Voss nodded as if they had.
"Homework, written, half a page, due Friday: the physical details of your own body that you believe are your strongest assets, and why. Be specific. 'Nice breasts' is worth nothing. 'My nipples harden visibly within thirty seconds of attention, which reads as eagerness' is worth a grade."
She moved to the tray again and picked up nothing this time, just talked with her hands. "Hygiene. Wash, daily, entirely. Shave or don't, but decide, don't drift. Your scent is information, and it is partly under your control. Diet changes it within three days. Garlic, asparagus, alcohol, all of it reports through your skin. Some men and women love a strong natural scent. Some are repelled. You will learn to read which, and adjust. Your flavor is the same. You should know what you taste like today. Some of you do. Some of you don't." Her pale eyes found Chloe for half a second and moved on. "That will change."
Then her voice changed register, dropping into the clinical tone Chloe was learning to listen for.
"Now, muscles. Every one of you knows what a mouth is worth. Tongue, throat, breath control, lessons, practice. You've all seen this week what a trained mouth can do to a man's rating sheet." A few girls shifted in their chairs. "But nearly everyone neglects the other half, and it is entirely yours. The muscles of your vagina and your anus are skeletal muscles, in part. Voluntary. Trainable. The woman who can clench and release on command is doing to a man's cock what you did to his nervous system Tuesday, except from the inside, and silently, and while looking bored."
Someone laughed, briefly, and smothered it.
"Demonstration requires partners. Pairs. One lies back, knees up. The other uses two fingers, index and middle, palm up, shallow, and watches. The lying girl clenches around those fingers and releases, on my count. Then you swap. You will do this until i tell you to stop, and you will pay attention to everything you feel, because at the end I will ask each of you to describe what you noticed."
Voss walked the semicircle pairing them off with a look and a point. "Marchetti, Sorensen. Dot, with Liv. Chloe." She stopped. "Chloe with Anouk first, then we rotate."
Anouk was a girl Chloe had never paired with, a small wren of a girl with pale red hair and a scattering of freckles down her chest. She lay back on the towel Voss provided, knees up, and Chloe knelt beside her with Voss standing over her shoulder.
"Lubricate first," Voss said. "Never enter dry, even for an exercise." Chloe slid her fingers down through the reddish curls. Anouk was already faintly slick from the mirror exercise, or the talk, Chloe couldn't tell. She pressed two fingers in slowly and felt her way up the front wall.
"Count of four clench, four release," Voss said. "Begin."
Chloe felt it immediately, a soft ripple around her fingers, grip and let go, grip and let go, like a hand squeezing a present and setting it down. Anouk's face was calm, lips parted, breath even.
"Harder," Voss said. "Clench as if you're stopping yourself from peeing. That's the right muscle."
The grip tightened. Not much. Chloe looked up. "She's got decent tone," she said, and then, without deciding to, kept analyzing aloud. "Tight but weak. The muscle fires but it doesn't have much behind it. There's plenty of grip for a finger but I don't think she could hold against much thrust." Anouk's mouth curved, half embarrassed, half flattered. Voss nodded once, approving.
"Note it. Swap."
They swapped. Anouk's fingers were thinner than Chloe expected and went in easily. Chloe lay back, knees up, and clenched on the count, feeling Anouk learn the shape of her from inside. Four in, four out, four in. Anouk was careful, almost timid, her free hand resting light on Chloe's thigh.
Voss came around and stood over them. "Faster," she said. "Flicks. Short ones. Imagine gripping a man mid-stroke and squeezing him still." Chloe did it, short hard pulses, and heard Anouk inhale. "Feel that?" Voss asked her. "That's what wins ratings."
Then Voss had them change partners. This time Chloe was paired with a girl called Renata, tall and dark, long-limbed, with a deep voice she'd never heard used in class. Renata lay back and Chloe knelt between her knees.
The differences hit at first contact. Renata's lips were fuller, darker, already wet, slick enough that Chloe's fingertips skated before finding purchase. She pressed in and her fingers went deep without any resistance at all, and then, at the top of the stroke, she felt it. A firm round nudge against her fingertips, untouched, unhurried.
"You're shallow," Chloe said.
"I get that a lot." Renata's smile was slow. "Is that a bad thing?"
"It's information." Chloe curled her fingertips against the firm bump and Renata's breath changed. "Your cervix is right there. I didn't even reach for it." She worked her fingers back down and started the count. "Clench." The grip closed on her fingers like a fist, strong, quick, controlled, release, clench again, clean rhythm. "Oh, that's good. Your control is excellent. Better than mine probably."
"But."
"But you're shallow and that muscle tone won't open much. You'd struggle with a big cock unless you learn to relax and open deliberately. That's a fixable thing, but it has to be trained or it'll hurt and you'll tense, and tensing makes it worse."
Renata considered this, lying there with her knees up and Chloe's fingers inside her, and then said, "Say that again in your report. I want it on record someone told me before I found out at a social."
Chloe huffed a laugh and they swapped. Renata's fingers were longer, reached further, and Chloe clenched on the count while she catalogued the sensation: grip, release, the wet sound of it, Renata's eyes narrowed in concentration.
Then Voss changed the format entirely.
"Rotation," she announced. "One girl stays lying down. Every other girl in the class comes to her in turn, inserts two fingers for ten seconds, notes what she feels, and moves on. Then the next girl lies down. Everyone goes under everyone's fingers tonight. Line up."
The room turned into a circuit. Chloe went first, lying on her towel with her knees up while eleven girls filed past her, each pressing two fingers into her for ten seconds, each one different. A girl with cold rings she'd forgotten to remove. Dot, who whispered "sorry, I have short nails, is this okay?" and whose touch was rounded and apologetic. Liv, whose fingers were sure and unhurried and who watched Chloe's face the whole ten seconds. A girl whose fingers trembled slightly. The red-haired senior's protégé, whoever she was, who hooked her fingers hard and dragged a gasp out of Chloe before the count was up.
Then Chloe joined the line and went under the reverse process, kneeling in front of girl after girl. She kept her analyst's mind running.
The lips were all different, inner folds darker or paler, thick or thin, one girl's hardly visible until she spread her, another's pressing out even closed. The wetness varied enormously, one girl barely damp enough to admit two fingers, another soaked the moment she was touched, the slick heat of her startling. The depth varied. The grip varied. One girl was velvet-loose and Chloe's fingers swam in her; another was so snug Chloe had to press steadily just to seat two fingers, and the tightness closed around her knuckles like heat.
She told them what she found. To the loose girl: "Work your muscles daily, you have range but no strength, squeeze my finger, no, harder, there, that's it, do that fifty times a day." To the tight girl, a small blonde who flushed deeper with every word: "You'll need to learn to open. When it happens, breathe out, don't brace, let it happen slow." To the soaked girl: "Your scent's strong today, musky, I'd call it an asset with most men, verify first." The girl licked her lips and said, "Voss said the same."
Voss circled the room throughout, correcting fingers, adjusting angles. Twice she stopped behind a girl and took the girl's wrist, guiding her fingers deeper. Once she pressed a fingertip to a girl's anus, without warning and without entering, and said, "This is voluntary muscle too. We cover it next week," and the girl yelped and the class laughed and Voss waited out the laugh.
Then it was Chloe's turn to lie down and Voss's turn in the line.
Chloe knew it was coming when the room went quiet around her. Voss knelt between her knees. Up close her pale eyes were almost colorless, her black hair slipping forward over her shoulders.
"Ten seconds, instructor," Voss said, dryly, to the room. "Grade me."
Chloe laughed and then the fingers went in and the laugh stopped.
Voss used two fingers and did something no one else had done. She curled them immediately, found the roughened patch on the front wall without searching, and massaged it, a slow rolling pressure, the pads of her fingers moving in small circles against the spot, rhythm never breaking. It wasn't the count exercise. It wasn't clinical. Chloe's hips lifted off the towel before she could stop them.
"Squeeze," Voss said quietly. "As hard as you can."
Chloe clenched with everything she had. Voss's fingers didn't stop their slow circles, riding through the grip, and the sensation folded in on itself, pressure on the spot and pressure around the fingers, building a hot wire from her belly up her spine. Four seconds. Five. She was breathing through her mouth now. Six.
Voss withdrew at seven, smooth and unhurried, and held her glistening fingers up.
"Note," she said to the class, "that I gave her seven seconds and she's already lifted her hips. Squeeze for me once more, Chloe, just around nothing." Chloe clenched on air, and Voss nodded. "Strong. Now clean me off."
Chloe sat up, took Voss's wrist, and drew the two fingers to her mouth. She licked them clean, one then the other, slowly, holding Voss's eyes, tasting herself, salt and musk and something faintly sweet underneath. The room had gone entirely silent. When she let go of Voss's wrist, Voss's expression had not moved at all, but her pulse was visible in her throat.
"Report," Voss said. "What did you feel in my fingers that you didn't feel in theirs?"
"Control," Chloe said. "Everyone else was learning. You've done this ten thousand times. Your fingers never once hunted. They went where they were going."
"Write that down," Voss told the class.
The remaining turns went quickly. Two girls were too close to Voss's place in the circle, so Voss collected her fingers from them herself and had another girl clean them each time, a tall girl named Beatriz who took the fingers deep enough that Voss raised an eyebrow and said, "Noted." Once Voss had Chloe clean Anouk's flavor off her fingers, and once she had Anouk clean Chloe's off Renata's, and the room watched every exchange with the attention they'd given the photographs on Tuesday.
When the circuit was done, all twelve of them lay or sat around the room, flushed, dishevelled, smelling of each other. Voss washed her hands at the side basin and turned back.
"Three concepts before the break," she said. "First. Tighter is more intense and shorter. A tight pussy grips a cock beautifully and ends him fast. Looser is less intense and longer, and a skilled woman can make that last an hour and ruin a man with patience. Neither is better. But know which you are, and train toward what your work requires. Tight girls, practice opening. Loose girls, practice gripping. All of you, practice everything."
"Second. You will be tested on this regularly. Every few weeks, the same circuit, and I will keep your measurements and your progress on file. Improvement will show in your ratings and in what you're offered."
"Third." She dried her hands. "Your own flavor and scent. Today you learned what you feel like. Before Friday's reports, I want each of you to know what you taste like. Tonight, alone or with help, taste yourself. Know it, because the people who take you to bed will know it, and you should never be surprised by yourself. We will work on controlling it, what you eat, how you drink, what reads through your skin. That begins next week."
She glanced at the clock on the wall.
"Break. Thirty minutes. Return here at the half hour. There is a little more to do today, and I suspect you'll want to be rested for it." Her pale eyes swept the room. "The sample swabs are on the table by the door on your way out. One each. Yes, that kind of sample. You knew that."
The girls rose, laughing and groaning, reaching for their uniforms. Marguerite appeared at Chloe's elbow, blouse clutched to her chest, cheeks still pink.
"She had you seven seconds," Marguerite whispered, "and you lifted your hips. Everyone saw."
"Everyone did everything in that room," Chloe said. "You lifted yours for Liv."
"That's different. Liv's just Liv." Marguerite pulled her skirt on. "Chloe. What do you think is left? What's 'a little more'?"
Chloe was doing up her buttons, thinking about Voss's fingers rolling against that spot, about seven seconds and the wire up her spine. She took the folded swab from the table by the door, felt the weight of it in her palm, and looked at the clock above it. Twenty-nine minutes to find out.
"I don't know," she said, "but I'm not missing a minute of it."