As they sat in the cafeteria having breakfast -- Linda and Laney sat, that is, while Amy, her buttocks smeared underneath her panties with a salve Linda had produced from her bathroom cabinet, got marginally comfortable with one knee on the chair and the other foot on the floor -- the loudspeaker crackled to life, in Gail's voice. "I need all First Year students to come to the Demo Room at 8:30 am. Demo Room, 8:30."

The clock on the wall said 7:50. There were no classes until 9. Linda looked at Amy. "You guys had a demo a couple of weeks ago."

Amy returned Linda's puzzled look. "I remember. Better than anybody else, in fact. Do they..." Her blood ran cold. "No. Oh no. Shit." She jumped to her feet and ran out of the caf.

She pounded down the hallway and threw open the door of her room. "Megan?" She whipped her head around, looking for signs Megan had been there. Nothing was visible in the bedroom, but Megan rarely left anything lying around. In the bathroom, she felt the towel. Wet. Megan had showered, but now was gone somewhere.

She ran back up the hall, rounded the corner, and pounded on the dorm sisters' door. "Gail? Bridget?" No response.

Where is she, where is she, what is she doing? She's volunteered for a demo, hasn't she? Is that what all that talk last night led her to? Where is she?

Amy ran to the Hall of Honor, running breathlessly past the first aisle of heads, looking down each successive aisle as she came to it. No Megan.

She stopped at last, bent over, to catch her breath. She walked up the last occupied aisle, stopping at Susan's head. "I wish you guys could tell me what happened here last night. What did she say to you? What's she going to do? Did she promise she'd do one last service to the school and make up for the shit she's done? DAMN it!" Amy turned to run out, but stopped herself. She turned back to Susan and petted Susan's hair softly, bending to kiss her late former roommate's cheek. "Love you, hon. I'm not going to let another roommate join you in here just yet."

As she ran out of the Hall of Honor, it occurred to Amy at last that, if the meeting in the Demo Room had anything to do with Megan, she was probably there now. She took the next turn in the corridors and ran down to the Demo Room.

She burst through the door, obviously startling Gail, Bridget, and Megan, who seemed all to be making adjustments on the noose hanging in the center of the currently-empty circles of seats. Amy shouted, "Megan, there's no reason to..." She stopped suddenly and blinked. "What the hell is that?"

It wasn't a noose they were adjusting. Hanging where the noose should be, there was instead a neck trainer suspended by the rope. "Megan, what's happening? Gail?" Amy felt completely out to sea. Linda and Laney had never mentioned demos like this. And they had been as befuddled as Amy at the call for an unscheduled meeting.

Megan beckoned Amy over. "We're almost ready here. I was about to come and find you. I want you to be here with me for this."

"Ummmm... for what?" Amy walked to her and stared up at the neck trainer. She couldn't imagine what its intended use here would be. Obviously the neck trainers could be used to support a Hanging Girl's full weight, but it didn't seem to Amy that a demonstration of that was really necessary.

"I'll need some help. And..." Megan looked directly into Amy's eyes. "I just need you here with me. Okay?"

Amy tried to see what was behind Megan's eyes, and saw no sign that she was about to do away with herself. She did see, not just in Megan's eyes but in every muscle of her body, that she was going to do something she found very hard. If Megan was, for one time in her life, asking for support, Amy was willing to give her all she could. "Sure."

The door to the room opened, and three First Year girls came in, looking curious, seeming to notice simultaneously the neck trainer, and stopping to look at it and whisper to each other while finding seats. Gail and Bridget left the central area and hovered near the door, leaving Amy and Megan as the centers of attention. The fact that it was those two girls in particular, the subjects of last night's punishment, standing by the platform was not lost on any of the students as they came trickling into the room, and Amy knew that most of the whispers and probably all of the giggles involved speculations as to whether there was some further punishment not mentioned in the student handbook. Amy moved closer to Megan, not only for purposes of support but also in hopes of picking up some vibration from her that might shed some light on what was happening.

By about 8:25, Gail signaled that everyone was present, and Megan cleared her throat, immediately quieting the by-now loud murmurs that filled the room.

"I asked Gail and Bridget if it was okay if we could all meet together like this. I just have some things I want to say, and then there's something I wanted to show you."

Amy could see Jackie with her jaw set in irritation, her eyes rolling, obviously wondering how Megan could be allowed to summon the whole class for a meeting and wondering what new outrage she might be hatching.

Megan went on, "I want to say that I'm sorry about last night. I know you all had to suffer a little for something I did, and I never meant for that to happen. I promise I'll never let it happen again."

It occurred to Amy that, for last night at least, the class was equally mad at her. She broke in, "I'm sorry too. For the rest of my life, if any of you ever lose any privileges, I promise, on my honor, it won't be because of me."

She looked at Megan and saw Megan giving her the tiniest smile. Amy could read that smile: Megan's acknowledgment that none of the trouble had been Amy's fault this time either.

Around her, Amy could see the students relaxing a little, even Jackie. A mass apology was something they could all live with, even at 8:30 in the morning.

Megan spoke again. "After just a month and a half, you're probably all better at what we're all trying to do than almost anybody in the world outside these walls..."

Amy now caught several pairs of eyes shooting wide open in surprise. Some of them may not have looked at it quite that way before, but beyond that, the last person in the world they would have expected to point it out would be Megan.

"...and I know all of you want to be the best Hanging Girls you can be. We can all get there by sharing with each other..."

Dropping jaws now were joining the bulging eyes. Jackie was looking directly at Amy, as if she suspected Amy was responsible for substituting a fake Megan in place of the real one.

"...and I've got something I can share, and I thought it would work simplest to show all of you together instead of one at a time. I've seen a lot of you trying to do some of the hanging moves I've been doing, and I know you're running into the problem of trying to breathe while you're doing it, like you were trying to recite the alphabet while writing the numbers from one to ten."

Amy saw several stunned nods. The soft background whispers had vanished entirely. The room was in dead silence other than Megan's voice.

"There's some training you can do to help you get past that." She stepped up onto the platform. She was fully dressed, but no one commented on the breach of etiquette -- not even making jokes about why Megan didn't want to show her butt uncovered today.

Megan secured the trainer around her neck. "I'm just going to hold my hands behind my back, but when you practice it, have your partner tie your hands or use the handcuffs or whatever you usually do. And strip naked like for any practice, so it all feels normal. The important thing is to do everything exactly the same way you would if this was a noose. Roll your head, do everything you'd normally have to do to get air and blood circulation. But because it's the trainer and not a noose, you'll be able to breathe easier and stay up longer -- a lot longer, until your neck just gets tired. You need to get used to the feeling of doing those two independent sets of movements, and this will give you the freedom to do that without running out of breath."

Megan put her hands behind her, clasped one wrist with the other hand, and nodded to Amy. As absorbed as any of the other girls in what Megan was saying, it took Amy a moment to realize she was expected to do something. Hurriedly, she reached out and pulled on the lever to make the platform descend, her eyes glued to Megan.

It looked just the way it did in their room during practice, the hip thrusts, the sensuous leg movements. At first that was all she did, and then, continuing those moves, she began taking care of the movements of her head she needed in a noose to prolong her life. She kept it up for several minutes. Even in clothes, Megan was simply the most erotic thing any of the girls had seen, and Amy noticed several of them reaching between their legs to rub.

Amy had adjusted to the display far enough that she noticed Megan's foot-waggle -- sensing the signal was, for Amy, the equivalent of a motorist sensing a red traffic light slightly below the conscious level and automatically applying the brakes -- and she pushed the lever back to raise the platform.

As soon as Megan had her feet planted, she said, "Did you see how I started? I was just doing the hip thrusts for awhile, then I added the head movements. At first you'll need to get into the rhythm of one before you add the other to it. But before long you'll have the feeling for doing both sets of moves together. When you get to that point, stop doing it with the neck trainer and try it with the noose."

One of the girls, Trudy, raised her hand, a surprising acknowledgment that, for now, Megan was the teacher. "Is that just an ordinary neck trainer, like from our rooms?"

Megan nodded. "It's the one from my room, in fact. Just rig it up in place of the noose, and put the noose back later."

Another hand went up. "Should we stop practicing with the noose altogether for now, or mix the trainer and the noose together?"

Megan nodded as if to say, Good question. "Until you get to where you can do this, just use the trainer only. You're trying to teach your body to do all the motions automatically, and you don't want to confuse your muscles with mixed requirements. This may take as many as... well, see how you're doing after a half-dozen sessions. That may work, or it could take more. You can do more practice sessions in a day, though, because using the trainer isn't as tiring."

Each time Megan finished responding to a question, she glanced over at Amy. It didn't appear to Amy that it was the sort of look that requested approval, or any gesture from Amy, and in any case it was only for an instant, before Megan turned her attention back to the other girls.

Another hand. "Are we going to be able to use the trainer in Hanging Class?"

Megan shook her head. "I checked with the teachers, and they don't want to change the structure of the classes right now. If you've got a class today or tomorrow, hold off on starting with the trainer until after that. By the time your class meets again, you should be off the trainer and back onto the noose. Oh! And you don't need to be doing all the things I do right away. This is just to get you started, to give your body a feeling for how it can be making organized motions below the neck while you're doing all you need to with your head. You're all experienced enough with hanging in general that you'll know when it starts feeling right."

From behind the rows of seats, Gail waved to get Megan's attention and pointed to her wristwatch. "It's 8:50, Megan."

Megan sighed with what seemed to be relief. "Okay, that's all I've got."

The students immediately started out of their seats and heading for the door, some going to their rooms, others to class. Jackie, on her way past, opened her mouth as if to say something to Amy but closed it without speaking, shaking in head with an expression of wonder.

As the last of the students passed through the door, Amy turned to Megan. "Megan, that was... ufff!"

Megan had turned towards Amy and almost collapsed against her, encircling Amy with her arms and burying her head against Amy's shoulder the same way she had the night before. Amy hadn't been able to tell until now that Megan's whole body was shaking. "Megan, you all right?"

Amy felt Megan's head on her shoulder nodding. Megan's muffled voice said, "Amy, I did okay, I think."

Amy suddenly realized that Megan had been doing something so alien to her instincts that it had taken every ounce of her will to bring it off. What she had done had required that she not only organize what she wanted to do and say, and consider what to say in answer to the student's questions, but that she also edit her initial speech and her responses on the fly to make sure there was no trace in them of any put-downs or insults, nor even any physical reaction that might suggest she thought the students facing her were enemies to be slapped down and conquered. And the only reason Amy knew this was the insights Amy had gained into Megan's inner being last night -- during the meeting there had been no sign Amy could see that any such internal struggle had been going on.

Amy put her hand on the back of Megan's head. "You were fantastic! It all just seemed so natural."

Amy felt Megan's head shaking. Voice still muffled, she said, "You know it wasn't. Is it going to get easier?"

"Megan, everything you've ever learned to do has gotten easier with practice. Just like what you told the girls about hanging, today. Right now this is something you're working on. After awhile it'll be part of who you are."

Megan lifted her head finally, brushing away tears and showing a shaky smile. "Thanks."

Bridget, with a puzzled expression overlaid with a This-is-none-of-my-business look, tapped Amy on the shoulder, and handed her the neck trainer. "You guys better get to class. We'll finish straightening up in here."

Amy nodded, took Megan's hand and pulled her at a dead run out of the room.

As they hurriedly grabbed their books and notes, Amy said, "I thought you told me you didn't know how you learned the sex moves."

Finishing gathering her materials, Megan started, "Did you think--" She seemed to cut herself off like a driver stomping on the brakes. She gave the shy little smile again. "I lied." She rushed out of the room.

Amy followed her, thinking: It's going to take a conscious effort for her, for a long time, to stop that reflex that spits out a sarcastic response to every question. But she's working so hard at it!