ACADEMY GIRL - Book 4: Departures

Chapter 3


MONDAY NIGHT

Amy stroked Linda's hair, as they lay naked facing each other, their bodies pressed together, their faces so close that Amy suddenly became conscious of Linda looking as if she had a single, enormous eye in front of Amy's. Amy giggled at the image, and pressed her lips against Linda's once more, feeling Linda's lips move to return the soft kiss.

Beyond Linda and below her, on the rollaway bed, Amy could just glimpse Megan and Laney sixty-nining, making soft moaning sounds as they licked, looking like a mysterious new animal that was all legs. The thought made Amy giggle again.

Linda rubbed her hand against Amy's back idly, and whispered, "You know it's going to go okay, right? All the girls today got through it. If they can, you know you can."

Amy's and Megan's turn at the Fifteen was coming up Wednesday, the day after tomorrow. They had both agreed to spend tonight with Linda and Laney. Tomorrow night would be theirs to spend alone together.

Amy's lips curled upward against Linda's. "I know. In my head I know that. But nothing's ever for sure. If, if, if, the big if... If anything bad does happen, I'd be so mad at myself if I hadn't said goodbye to you."

"You think you'd be mad? I'd throw a shoe through the tv. Well, one of Laney's. I might need mine for my show."

Amy's eyes shot open. "Did you get an offer?"

Linda shook her head, making her lips rub Amy's. "I'm just thinking ahead. Oh! Tammy did, though! She's so pumped about it. First one in our class! She'll be hanged a week from Saturday."

"That's so neat! I'd better stop by her room tomorrow."

"Oh, I wasn't supposed to tell. I just kind of overheard her saying something to Hayden." Hayden was Tammy's roommate. "She made me swear I wouldn't pass it on to anybody. You just dragged it out of me."

Amy laughed. "So why's she want it to be a big secret?"

"She's going to have a party in the caf this Saturday, and make everybody try to guess who's hosting it and then spring it on them. So could you wait before you see her?"

"But..."

Amy could see Linda roll her single eye. "Amy, would you quit thinking tomorrow is your last chance to do anything? Nothing's going to happen!"

From the other side of Linda, Amy could hear Megan's moans rising in pitch, and knew she was getting close to orgasm. She was good at clamping down on it and letting Laney get caught up, though.

Amy laughed. "Okay, let's make plans for Wednesday night then."

Linda grinned. "Hey, tonight's not over yet." She rolled over on top of Amy and kissed her hard, her tongue licking at Amy's teeth.

*   *   *   *   *

TUESDAY MORNING

Amy looked around the demo room, pointing and counting under her breath, "Twenty-six, twenty-seven..." Her attention was caught by the entrance of two more students at the door. "Twenty-eight, twenty-nine." She turned to Megan. "Okay, that's everybody."

Megan gave her a shrug and a smile, and gave her a go-ahead gesture. Amy looked up at the Third Year girls seated now in one of the semi-circular stands of seats. She was standing where a dozen of her classmates had died in the last two years so that their peers could learn more about the art and science of hanging -- beginning with Amy's own first roommate. Amy remembered how nearly all of the seats had been filled at their first demonstration. Now the whole class fit on one side of the stands, facing Amy. The special Fifteen platform and noose were right behind her. She cleared her throat, and the murmurs died out.

"I'm sorry, I know this was a day nearly all of you wanted to sleep in, with no classes this week and all that. But we're all going through the Fifteen this week, and Megan saw something yesterday that we thought was really important to pass along."

Before going down to Linda's and Laney's room the previous evening, Amy and Megan had secured permission to use the demo room, then tacked notes to the doors of all of the occupied rooms in the Third Year dorm, asking the students to assemble there at 8 am. Amy was glad everyone had come, though some of them looked a little bleary, some grumpy.

"Before she does that, I see Donna, Renee, Paula, Brooke, Lisa, Shawna, and Monique are all here. They're here, and not inside our stomachs, which means they got through the Fifteen yesterday!" Amy grinned and clapped her hands, and everyone else started applauding the seven girls who had passed the previous day, those nearest them patting them or otherwise congratulating them while they beamed happily at their classmates. Amy caught Shawna's eye and gave her a thumbs up, returned by Shawna with a grin.

As the applause died down, Amy stepped back as Megan came forward.

"I'm sorry about the early hour too," Megan began, "But it's hard to get everybody gathered together in the evening, and I wanted us somehow all to come together before any more of us went through the Fifteen. And that's starting up again in less than an hour." All of the background murmuring ceased now, as the issue that completely occupied all of the girls' attention this week came to the fore.

Megan continued, "Yesterday at one point, Paula started having a little trouble. Paula, do you remember what I'm talking about?"

Paula grinned shyly, reddened a little and put her hand up to her face, finding herself the sudden center of attention as all heads turned to her. "Sort of. I know you and I talked about it last night, so I know what you're going to talk about, but honestly it's all still kind of a blur."

"Your heart started racing, right?"

"Yeah, and I do remember everything kind of felt... weird, like... like I suddenly forgot how to ride a bicycle, or something. Everything was just... off."

Megan nodded. She looked around the room. "The Fifteen is not like any situation we've ever been in before. When we practice, it's not life or death, but you get in here for the Fifteen, and no matter what else you've done in the last two years, you can suddenly fail out of the program, and not even see it coming." She heard the murmurs starting up again. "You know I'm not saying anything you haven't all thought about, right?"

There were several nods. Megan went on, "Now obviously, what I'm talking about here won't happen to everybody. But it could happen to any one of us. A panic attack. Your heart starts pounding a mile a minute, and it doesn't feel like any practice session you've ever had. You haven't run into this problem before. You try to adjust to it, but you can't find the timing, and that makes it worse, and everything falls apart. Paula, do you remember how you ended up handling it?"

Paula shook her head, biting her lip. "I wish I could help. I really don't know. I just don't remember it all that well."

Megan, contrary to what Paula was no doubt expecting, smiled. "No, that's okay. That's good. And the fact you can't remember might be what saved your life. That's going to be the point I want to make."

You looked from side to side, trying to make eye contact with every girl. She said slowly, emphasizing each word, "If you get in a panic attack, you can't think your way out of it."

Lucy, frowning, spoke up, probably echoing the thoughts of many of the girls. "So what do you do?"

Megan smiled again. "This is hard, but just remember to tell yourself to do it -- trust your body. Trust your training. Trust your instincts. And stop thinking! You've been working on this for two years. Your own body knows when it's doing it right. And it knows when it's doing it wrong. When you're off, it's like static on the radio, and your body fiddles with the tuning knob and pretty soon a radio station comes in. And a Hanging Girl doesn't have to think to do that tuning.

"Look, how the hell do we know how to get our breath rhythm, our heartbeat, and our head movements all in synch? Are we able to do that because we read it in a book? Are we up there calculating how to make all those different things come together when we're hanging? We can't. Nobody has a conscious mind that can do that. But we do it. We don't even know we're doing it, let alone know how we're doing it. That part of the process is something our bodies do for us. Not without all the training, but the training fine-tunes something inside us that's beyond any conscious thought.

"If you're up there today, or later this week, and you find your heart has suddenly started going nuts, tell yourself this, and make yourself believe it: I'm a Hanging Girl! I can hang when my heart is going a mile a minute, because my body knows how to find a way. And then just... stop... thinking!

"Paula did something like that yesterday, and that's why she can't remember it -- there's nothing to remember! Somehow she let her Hanging Girl instincts take over, and they did it all for her. So she's here today." Megan smiled and looked around the room again. "I hope everybody here is around Friday night for the post-Fifteen party."

Amy saw Marianne, the graduate who would supervise this morning's Fifteens, wave to her from the doorway, and said to her classmates, "Okay, they want us to get out of here so they can start getting ready for the morning sessions. So what are you going to do in the Fifteen if your heart starts racing?"

At least a dozen girls shouted "Stop thinking!" and they and the rest started laughing as they began filing out of the rows of seats. Paula stepped down from the stand of seats and approached Megan, looking a little stunned. She looked at Megan and shook her head wonderingly. "Yesterday I felt like I'd just kind of stumbled through it, and almost made a total mess of it. I... kind of feel better about it now."

Megan smiled at her. "You should. You did exactly the right thing. Some of the other girls might not have. I'm hoping they will now. You saved your own life, and maybe you saved some others too."

Paula's jaw dropped, and she rushed forward to throw her arms around Megan.

Amy was stunned as well. For all the changes in Megan's behavior in the last two years, and after all the time they'd spent together, Megan still had the capacity to take Amy by surprise. Amy had some doubts that she herself could have done for Paula anything like what Megan had just done.

Amy saw Marianne wave at her again, and point to the clock on the wall. She tapped at Megan's elbow. "We all better get out of here, hon."

Paula let go of Megan, grinning. "See you at the party." She dashed out of the room. Amy took Megan's hand and kissed her cheek. To Marianne, she said, "Okay, we're out of here." She and Megan trotted out of the room back to their own, to switch on the tv for the nine o'clock session.

*   *   *   *   *

TUESDAY NIGHT

Carrying an impromptu sleeping bag made of some sheets and the mattress from the rollaway bed in their room, Amy led Megan through empty corridors. She hadn't told Megan where they were going, but it looked as if Megan knew.

As they reached the door that was Amy's intended destination, Amy pulled a note, lettered as neatly as she could manage, that read "CLEANING - PLEASE STAY OUT" and taped it to the door, then pulled the door open and led Megan into the Hall of Honor.

Megan smiled. "Lots of memories in here."

"No kidding." She continued back to the stacks where the most recent heads were kept, and spread the mattress on the floor of the narrow walkway between the stacks.

As Megan knelt to arrange the sheets over the mattress, Amy went to visit Susan's head, a few steps away. She kissed her late roommate on the lips, then opened Susan's drawer to see if there were any new notes left for her since the last time Amy had been here.

Megan stood as Amy fished one of the notes out of the drawer. "What's it say?"

Amy read aloud, " 'Dear Susan: I am going to join you here tomorrow, but I'm not sad. Thank you, so much, for showing us how to make the demos fun.' " It was signed "Cari."

Cari had been hanged at a demo in the middle of the last school year. Like most of the girls, inspired by that first demo by Susan, she'd staged a small skit before her hanging, a humorous one she and her roommate had written -- it involved being executed for shoplifting a bra, clearly a bogus charge given the small size of the bra and Cari's generous bust. The students had laughed and applauded before settling down to watch as the teachers hanged Cari with her feet tied together. On very rare occasions, the purchaser of a Hanging Girl wished to stage her hanging in that way, and the types of kicking used were different when the feet couldn't be separated. The students, of course, had been studying the techniques in their textbooks, and in their hanging classes they sometimes practiced them, though not, of course, to the extreme end. The purpose of the demonstration was to prove to the girls that, with proper kicking, a girl could last surprisingly long in that format, though not as long as they could in the normal way -- a fact understood by purchasers. Cari squirmed at the end of the noose, while the teachers reminded her and the rest of the students of the basic ideas. She died nine minutes into the demonstration. Her personal best practice time in the normal format had been eleven minutes -- not as long as most of the girls were going by that time, but that was part of the reason she was a demo girl.

Cari's head, of course, was further along on the shelf. Amy walked to her and stroked her face, silently thanking her for remembering Susan.

She moved another step to the left, to the first open space, the place where the next head would go. She stared into it for a long time.

She turned and looked down, and saw that Megan was already stretched out on the mattress, her uniform discarded on the floor beyond her head. Amy cleared her throat. "Sweetie?"

"Hmmm?"

Amy looked away. "I want you to do something if anything happens to me tomorrow."

Megan reached up with her hand extended, wordlessly.

Amy sat on the floor next to her roommate and took her hand. Megan finally said, "Amy, you know you're going to make it, right?"

Amy sighed. "I know. Just let me say this and I'll feel better."

Megan nodded, and Amy went on, "I want Melissa to have Miranda."

Megan smiled. "You know I would have known that."

Amy drew her knees up and hugged them with one arm, her other hand still holding tight to Megan's. "There's probably not much you don't know about me."

Megan shrugged, still smiling. "I know you want to sleep with her."

Amy blinked. "Who?"

Megan giggled. "The only live girl we've been talking about in the last few minutes. Anyway, you know it's okay."

Amy sighed. "Okay with you, maybe."

"Jana might not like it? We could invite both of them over some night. Movie and sex."

Amy shook her head, and gave Megan a small smile. "At least there's one insight into me you missed. The person it's not okay with is me."

Megan gave her a puzzled look. "Why?"

Amy was silent a moment. "Whenever I make love with you, I'm totally focused on you. Or when I'm with Linda, to me it's totally about Linda. With Laney, with Jackie, with anybody..." She sighed. "I can't be with Melissa just to pretend I'm making love with Miranda."

Megan looked at her a little longer, and finally nodded. Her smile came back, and she tightened her grip and pulled Amy towards her. "So let's do something totally about us for awhile."

Amy giggled as she settled on top of Megan, kissed her, and reached behind herself to unhook her bra. "All night, I hope."



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