Chapter 9: Chapter 9
The corridor outside the east-wing classroom was empty by the time Voss called the break. Chloe walked fast, because she had a plan and very little time. The lavatory at the end of the hall was one of the old ones, high windows, brass taps, six sinks under a smudged mirror.
She went into the stall, sat, and pissed, relief flooding warm through her. She took her time wiping, pressing the paper between her lips until the last damp traces were gone. Then she stood, pulled her knee-highs straight, and went to the sink.
She ran the warm tap until it steamed faintly, cupped water into her palm, and slid her wet hand up under her skirt and into her panties. Two fingers, dragged slow through her lips from front to back, one long deliberate swipe. It felt strange and good, water-slick against skin that was still faintly tacky, and she drew her fingers out and inspected them. A trace of her own taste still clinging there, she could feel it more than see it.
She rinsed her hand again, hotter this time, and did it a second time, slower, spreading herself with one finger and wiping through the whole length of her with the other. Trying to touch everything in one pass, the folds, the hood, the soft skin at the entrance. Her clit was clean and cool under the water. She wanted everything fresh. She did not know what the next test was, but there would be one. There was always a test.
"You're cleaning up," Ruby said from the doorway, "and not your hands."
Chloe froze, fingers still inside her panties, then laughed and pulled them out. Ruby crossed to the sink beside her, watching in the mirror.
"Word of advice, rinse after, not during." Ruby turned the tap, washed her own hands like a normal person, and shook them dry. "Also, I'd have helped. Free of charge. There's a whole closet of clean warm mouths in this school and you went with plumbing."
"I'm rinsing, not drinking."
"Sure you are." Ruby leaned against the sink, folding her arms, and her voice dropped into something quieter. "You want to know what's next. I can see it in your shoulders."
Chloe looked at her in the mirror. "Will you tell me?"
"I'll get in trouble if I tell you." Ruby smiled. "So don't make me. It's measurements today. They'll want you clean, fresh, no perfume, nothing on the skin. Which is exactly what you're doing, so stop fussing, you're fine." She straightened Chloe's collar with two fingers. "You're going to do great. Better than great. And afterward everyone will be talking about something new for dinner, so enjoy your last hour of quiet."
"That's not information, that's a horoscope."
"Take what you're given." Ruby kissed her own fingers and pressed them to the mirror between their reflections, a silly little blessing. "Go. You'll be late, and late girls get noticed for the wrong reasons."
Chloe walked back down the corridor with her heartbeat quicker than it had any reason to be. The lavatory tap had been warm, her lips cool and fresh under the skirt, and she carried the strangeness of that cleanliness with her all the way back to the door.
Inside, the twelve first-years were settling into their seats, half of them still half-dressed from the mirror work, pulling blouses straight, refastening. Dot sat with Liv, whispering. Marguerite had saved the seat beside her own, and Chloe dropped into it, and Marguerite gave her a small private smile.
The door opened and Voss came in carrying a wooden case, and the room went quiet. She set it on the demonstration desk and lifted the lid.
Two objects lay in fitted velvet. The first was black, rubbery, long, and ended in a hose, a round brass gauge, and a squeeze bulb. The second was double-ended, a foot at each side, one end slimmer, the other broad, marked along its length with fine engraved lines and numbers.
The second thing she laid out was two flexible tape measures, the kind a tailor would use.
"What are those?" Dot whispered, and Liv shook her head.
Then the door opened again, and the room changed. Professor Vance walked in. Behind her came two men. Chloe recognized the first at once: younger, broad, dry-eyed, one of the supervisors who had stood at the edge of Monday's social while Ashworth boys graded them. The second man was older, sixty at least, grey-haired, wearing spectacles and a soft brown jacket. He looked like he should be holding a book, not standing in this room.
Vance took a position near the window. She said nothing.
"Close the door," Voss said, and Renata did. Voss stood in front of the case with her hands loose at her sides.
"This morning you learned what your bodies do. This afternoon is about what your bodies are." She let that sit. "Appearance drives attraction. So does the physical fact of you. Both can be assessed, and both can, in time, be adjusted. Today is not a grade. Nothing said in this room goes into the impression book. It is a measurement. Baseline data. We will track it across your time here, and it will tell us what changes and where to make them."
She turned to the case. "There will be two parts. First, appearance. Second, capacity and control. Nudity throughout. Answer directly, hold still when told, and do not touch the instruments."
The man with glasses cleared his throat softly. Voss gestured to him.
"Doctor Weller," Vance said from the window, "is a plastic surgeon. Some of you, in your senior year, may be eligible for cosmetic procedures. It will always be your choice. He is here to give you an honest assessment of what you have and what might be done. You will not be asked to decide anything today."
A ripple went through the class. Anouk's pale face went pale further. Dot whispered something to Liv that made Liv cover her mouth.
"We'll begin with general appearance," Voss said. "Undress fully. Leave your clothing folded on your chair. First girl, when I call you, you'll stand at the front, pose as directed, then bend forward over the desk. All four evaluators will examine you. They will touch you. You will not react away from it."
The room moved. Chloe pulled her blouse over her head, unhooked her skirt, stepped out of the black lace, folded everything on her chair. Around her, twelve girls undressed with the quick self-conscious efficiency of people who had spent all morning naked already. The air of it was different now, though, with the men in the room and the velvet case open at the front.
Voss called Renata first.
Renata stood at the front, chin up, tall and dark-nippled, and posed as Voss moved her arms. Then she bent over the desk, elbows on the wood, feet apart, and presented herself. The four evaluators came close. The supervisor crouched behind her. Weller put on a second pair of glasses, magnifying lenses, and bent to look.
They touched her. Rubbed the inside of her thighs, spread her lips with thumb and finger, pulled them outward and measured with a tape pressed against the fold. A finger slid into her from behind, slow, twice, then withdrew and rolled her clit between wet fingertips. She made a small sound. Voss said, "Hold." Then a thumb prodded at her asshole, rubbing the ring, pressing in not quite to the first knuckle, feeling the clench of her response.
"You're not getting your assholes penetrated today," Voss said to the room, conversationally, while Weller wrote. "That's a little later in the term. Today we only feel how you respond to being prodded."
Renata was told to lie back on the desk, knees up, feet flat, and the whole examination began again from the front. Lips spread three ways. Measurements taken and called out in numbers. Then the double dildo, the slimmer end chosen, greased, and Renata herself, following Voss's hand, pressed it into her own cunt, inch by inch, the engraved lines disappearing into her.
"Deeper," Voss said. "Push. As far as you can take it. Hold there."
Renata pushed, breath shaking, until her hand flattened against herself, and held it while Weller looked over her shoulder and wrote the number.
"That's enough. Out. Turn over, knees on the chair, present the same depth from behind."
She took it again in the second position, further this time or the same, Chloe couldn't tell, and then the black device replaced it. The supervisor squeezed the bulb. Renata gasped.
"It fills with liquid, not air," Voss told the class. "It's custom-made. It isn't an inflatable toy. It is an instrument for measuring muscle control, and you will all feel it."
They watched the gauge. Relax, Voss said, and the supervisor pumped it to a mark. Then squeeze, only the muscles around it, nothing else. Release. Squeeze. Release. The needle jumped and fell, jumped and fell. Then it slid out of Renata, glossy, and Voss called the next name.
They went one by one. Anouk took the slim end and barely half of it, her small freckled body folding over the desk, and the gauge needle barely moved for her. Dot went pink all over when the supervisor pressed a finger into her from behind but held her position, and her depth surprised Weller, who looked pleased about it. Liv lay back on the desk with her swimmer's calm and took the thick end of the double dildo to a mark that made the supervisor raise his eyebrows.
"Chloe Bennett."
She crossed the room naked and stood where Renata had stood. Four pairs of eyes. She posed with her arms where Voss put them, and her skin prickled in the draft from the old windows, her nipples hard, aware of every one of them looking at the exact place she had spent the break cleaning. She bent over the desk and spread her feet.
The supervisor's hands first, big and dry, rubbing her thighs, spreading her open. She felt the air on her inner walls and hated how much she didn't hate it. The tape measure pressed cool against her labia. Weller's fingers were precise, gloved, pulling one lip and then the other, prodding the hood of her clit until her breath shortened and she heard him note it. A finger pushed into her cunt from behind, crooked, finding nothing gently, testing grip, and she heard him say a number to Vance. Then the thumb at her asshole, rubbing, pressing against the tightened ring, and she held still the way she had held still for everything this week, and felt her own body answer him without her permission.
"Lie back."
The desk was warm from Renata. She lay on it, knees up, and was spread and measured again. The double dildo, the slimmer end, was put in her hand.
"You insert it," Voss said. "As far as you can. Push, and hold."
Chloe pressed it in, working the smooth fat end through her entrance, feeling herself stretch around it in a slow burn that turned to ache and then to fullness. She pushed until her knuckles met her own body.
"Further. Relax and push."
She got a half inch more and held it, eyes closed, counting.
"Out. Turn over."
Doggy style, knees on the chair, she took it again from behind, deeper this time, her body easier for the angle, and the supervisor read the mark aloud. Then the black device, seated inside her, and the squeeze bulb, and a sudden sensation like a cock growing inside her, swelling against her walls, the gauge ticking up under the supervisor's finger.
"Relax completely. Every muscle."
The needle settled. Then, "Squeeze. Only the muscles around the cock. Not thighs, not stomach. Squeeze."
Chloe clenched, felt the resistance of the filled rubber, felt the needle shift. Release. Again. Five times, while the supervisor watched the dial and Weller wrote, and her whole awareness narrowed to the ring of muscle gripping the black length inside her.
"Good. Out."
It slid free with a sound she was glad the impression book would never record. She was told to dress, and she did, folding the last of herself away, and went back to her seat with her cunt warm and buzzing and her face perfectly composed. Marguerite's hand found hers under the desk and squeezed once.
They finished the last four girls. Weller filled two notebooks. The men conferred in low voices at the end of the desk, and then Vance stepped forward from the window.
"Before anyone makes this a competition, understand that it isn't one," she said. "Every body is a different instrument. However." She glanced at the supervisor, who gave her a slip of paper. "You'll be told where you stand, because knowing yourself is the point of the exercise."
She read from the paper. "Tightest: Anouk. By a clear margin. Loosest: Liv. Deepest: Liv. Shallowest: Anouk. Greatest muscle control: Renata. Least control, at present: Dot."
Dot flushed. Renata sat up very straight, unable to keep it from her face.
"Muscle control and hygiene," Vance went on, "are the only two things on this list that are entirely within your control. Depth is largely not. Tightness changes with practice, and yours will all be practiced." Her eyes moved across them. "This test will be repeated on a regular basis. Your progress will be monitored and you will be coached. Some of you have a great deal of room to improve and some of you have less, and every one of you will improve."
The supervisor gathered the instruments into the case. Weller closed his notebooks. The men left first, Weller nodding to Vance at the door, and then Vance herself paused at the threshold, said, "Reports are due, girls," and was gone.
Voss dismissed them. Chairs scraped. Girls dressed and whispered. Chloe gathered her books and drifted with the crowd toward the back, and had one foot in the corridor of leaving bodies when Voss's voice came from the front of the room.
"Bennett. Stay."
The last girls filed out. Marguerite looked back once, and Chloe nodded her out. The door closed. The classroom was very quiet, smelling faintly of the lubricant and of twelve girls' warm skin.
Voss came around the demonstration desk and stood in front of her. In the empty room she seemed taller, or the room smaller.
"You're especially impressive so far," Voss said. "I want you to know that from me, not from gossip. I've taught here four years. I've seen gifted girls. You read people the way the curriculum is trying to teach them to read, and you do it untaught, and it showed the first week and it shows now."
"Thank you," Chloe said, and meant it, and hated the smallness of it.
"I'm going to take a special interest in your progress. Private instruction, things I don't teach the full class. What I need from you is that it stays between us. If it becomes known, it becomes something I have to explain, and explanations blunt the work. Can you keep it?"
"Yes."
Voss studied her face for a long moment, pale blue eyes moving over it like she was taking a measurement. Then she stepped in, took Chloe's jaw in one hand, and kissed her.
It was not a clinical kiss. Chloe's mouth opened under hers and Voss pressed forward, tongue against tongue, one hand sliding from Chloe's jaw to the back of her neck, pulling her in until Chloe's books shifted in her grip and she had to drop them to get a hand on Voss's waist. The kiss went on, deepening, Voss tasting her slow and thorough like she was reading her from the inside, and Chloe felt her own body, already warm from the desk, tighten and lean.
Voss broke it gradually, an inch at a time, and didn't step back.
"That," she said, low, "was not a test."
She straightened, smoothed the front of her black dress, and bent to pick up Chloe's fallen books. She handed them over.
"Go on. Reports Friday. And Bennett," as Chloe reached the door, "the measurements today. You're exactly where a girl with your control should be. The interesting numbers come later."
Chloe walked out into the corridor with her lips still warm and a full sentence of questions she hadn't been given permission to ask.