Amy awoke with her lips brushing against Megan's. She gave Megan's lower lip a soft nibble, and felt, rather than saw, the corners of her roommate's mouth turn upwards in a smile, as Megan came fully awake and tightened her arms around Amy.

Last night they had showered together when they'd made it back to their room, excitedly exchanging summaries of the their experiences at the party, continuing as they went to bed, Megan laughing in delight as Amy told about her encounter with Andrew, and then had managed to make love only once before the exhaustion caught up with them and they slept through the breakfast hour. Both awake now, they stretched their muscles without letting go of each other. Amy felt Megan's thighs give her right one a squeeze, a preliminary to another lovemaking session. Amy felt a need for love right now, to clear away the unfocussed gloom she had awakened with. She sighed as she felt Megan's hands brushing up and down her back. They suddenly stopped. Amy opened her eyes in surprise. "What's wrong?" She saw Megan frowning at her.

Megan's eyes wouldn't let Amy's go. "Are you thinking he's going to file a complaint about last night?"

Amy's eyes popped wide open. "You reading minds now?"

Megan gave a small shake of her head. "Only works with you."

"How'd you know I was thinking about my brother?"

"That's the only thing that would give you that expression. You think I haven't seen that enough in the last week to recognize it?"

Amy's sigh this time was a symbol of deflation. "Okay, I guess I made it too easy for you. No, I'm pretty sure he won't complain to the dean. I know him well enough to know he'd rather be an alley bum than let anybody know he was gullible enough to be played like that. But the next time I'm on hostess duty for a party he'll be back. Even madder than before. And that trick will only work once." The First Years would host another party in two months, but Amy would be monitoring Wendy for that one. But the party after that... Amy shuddered. "Four months seemed like forever last night. But now it feels like tomorrow."

Megan gave Amy a comforting squeeze with her arms. "Four months is plenty of time to figure out what to do. We can make a plan, like we did for last night." She frowned and rolled her eyes. "Okay, I know that one didn't work..."

Amy smiled at her and reached up to brush a strand of hair back from Megan's eyes. "Well, we've got longer this time. But..." She drew up another sigh from what now seemed an endless supply. "Anybody I talk to at a party might be standing in for him. I don't see any way to know if he's going to suddenly show up for a private session, or what I can do about it if he does. And I've got to be a hostess for a bunch more parties before we graduate. The only way to get out of bedding down guests is to be the entertainment, like Sela."

Megan nodded solemnly, and then suddenly gasped, her eyes flying open, her body twitching with startlement. Amy said quickly, "No, hon, I wasn't thinking of volunteering to die just to get out of seeing Andrew. Kind of defeats the purpose..."

Megan shook her head emphatically. "No, that's not what I was thinking!"

Megan was excited, and Amy looked at her, baffled. "What are you thinking, then?"

"You were talking about being the entertainment. I'm wondering if the dean might be willing to approve something new along those lines."

Still at sea, but beginning to absorb Megan's excitement, Amy gave her a hand-twirling, get-on-with-it gesture.

Megan grinned. "I've been thinking since last night about that fantasy you did with Benjamin, about us being hanged together and making love while we did it. Don't you figure all the members would want to see that?"

Amy gaped at her. "What, do it in front of everybody at a party?"

"Yes! They'd pay to see that! That's why the dean would be willing to let us do it!"

"Megan, I'd love to go out that way, but I was just saying I'm not ready to be snuffed yet..."

"No, this is something different! Not a snuff show! They'd still hang a girl at the end of the party. We could be sort of an optional extra show. We'd live though it!" Her eyes glowed. "We don't need to die for it. Just being able to do it at all -- that's what people will come to see. We can do it! You know that!"

Amy had the idea completely at last. "Yes! We'd..." The paused as her mind spun around the possibilities. "We don't want to take anything away from the girl who's going to die. It's her special night."

Megan nodded emphatically. "Of course! We could be at the beginning, and the snuff would be hours later, the big culmination."

"Wait, wouldn't the dean still expect us to do private parties anyway, afterwards?"

Megan bit her lip, thinking, then her eyes lit up as she flashed another grin. "After our show, the guests who watched us can bid on us. We'd go as a pair, and spend the rest of the evening with whoever offered the most money. Could Andrew afford that? There's a lot of members a lot richer than he is."

Amy gasped and then laughed, then tightened her arms around Megan and pulled her closer for a long, long kiss. They both laughed as they came up for air. Amy beamed at her. "I love you."

"I love you too." The soft expression on Megan's face was not one any of the other students would have recognized.

Amy untangled herself from Megan and bounced out of bed, almost exploding with energy. "Let's figure out how to do this. We're going to need to work out a show and practice..." Her eyes caught sight of the clock. "Oh! We've got get ready for the luncheon!"

Megan scrambled out of bed as well. The whole class would be eating Sela at a noontime banquet in her honor. No student would forgive herself for missing it. "Okay. First Sela, then planning."

Amy and Megan stood side by side in their room after the banquet, both looking up at the safety drop built into the ceiling, the mechanism that released the rope in case of emergency during hanging practice. Amy absently fingered her lower lip as she thought. "I can't think of anywhere in the school where there are two of them close enough together."

Megan stood with her arms folded, barely blinking as she concentrated. "The dean could have the staff build us a second one."

Amy shook her head. "We don't want to tell him what we're doing until we have something we can show him. You know how he is about departing from the standard training regimen. We'll need to practice at least a few weeks before we go to him with it."

Biting her lip in frustration, Megan murmured, "We'll have to use one safety drop, somehow. It'll hold two ropes, won't it?"

Amy tapped her foot unconsciously on the floor, lost in thought, frowning deeply. "I think two ropes hanging down from the same point would keep us too close together. I mean, we have to be close, but if we're so smushed against each other we can't maneuver, it won't work."

Megan nodded. Barely audibly, she began, "Have to make the nooses hang about a foot apart..." She gasped suddenly. "Oh! Like this!" She spun around and yanked open the drawer of her desk, pulling out a piece of paper, and drew a quick diagram with a pencil, too excited to take time to sit in her chair. She whipped up the paper and held it up for Amy. "See?"

Amy nodded excitedly. "Right! What do we use for that?" She pointed at a horizontal line separating the ropes in the diagram. "Oh! Spreader bar! They've got them in a bunch of sizes in the toy drawers in the party pavilion."

"Yes!" Megan started for the door, and stopped. "Wait, they'd be suspicious if we started rummaging around in the pavilion now. Student store! They'd have them, and nobody would think anything about it if we got one from there. They'd figure they knew why we wanted it." She giggled.

Amy laughed. "Maybe we can use it for that too." She kissed Megan, and laughed again. "We've still got Sela breath. How did her breast taste?"

Megan shook her head in amazement. "That really meant a lot to me." Sela, it turned out, had asked that one of her breasts be cut into halves, Shawna and Megan each getting one of the halves. Her roommate Monique, of course, got Sela's other breast. Megan could still hardly believe she'd been held in that kind of regard by another student.

Amy kissed her again. "You earned it. Anyway, let's go to the store."