The opening chapter of a sequel to my novelette 'April Fooled' - but it should be possible to understand and enjoy without having read the first book.
April Schooled
“Hurry, April,” called my new foster-Mum “You don’t want to be late for school on your first day.”
Just like hundreds of seventeen year old girls across the country this morning I ignored the parental voice of doom calling up the stairs to focus on my outfit.
My satin underwear felt chilly, smooth and a little slippery. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to it, but I wanted something stylish in the event of my getting hit by a car or some other emergency which would result in strangers seeing me in my knickers and bra. OK, the car was pretty unlikely, but other emergencies, who knows?
An above the knee skirt swished about my thighs as I posed. Pretty, but not too over the top I decided. A tightish, stretchy top drew attention to my torso in what I fervently hoped was an attractive but non-slutty way. Smooth, bare legs emerged from under the skirt to make their way down to strappy platform heels. I felt draughty, and unsteady with it, but there was no denying, my legs looked good.
I hadn’t touched my clear skin with makeup but it was massively layered around the eyes and lashes, to give that big, blue eyed, deer-caught-in –the headlights effect. Smooth, dark hair was gathered up at the back of my head, with tendrils deliberately allowed to escape and frame my delicate features. Finally, I’d painted my lips a deep red.
It’ll do, for a start I decided. Finally! The first two outfits had respectively suggested that I was setting out for a busy day (a) distributing evangelical tracts or (b) standing on street corners in dubious company, but this looked just right for a teenage girl.
Of course, I wasn’t a teenage girl, I was an adult man, but that really couldn’t be helped. I had a mission to complete and the consequences of failure didn’t bear thinking about. Abduction and literal torture would be the least of it, torture using the unspeakable, inescapable, unblockable Pain whose source I had never been able to determine. That was how the aggressively male and heterosexual Adam had been forced to become April in the first place!
Not, I had to admit, staring at my reflection, that I looked very male at the moment, in fact I blushed at the sight of myself. Manhood, muscle, adulthood and above all, freedom, all had been whipped away by my kidnappers, a brutal organisation known only as the Organisation. No, really.
Their modus operandi was simple. 1 Kidnap a victim, preferably young, healthy and with no family ties 2. Use The Pain to make them co-operate. 3. Train as domestic and sexual slave, give enforced sex change 4. Sell to someone whose personal qualities or sexual proclivities are so vile that even though they’re richer than God they still couldn’t get a girl – trans or original – to stay with them 5. Rinse and repeat. Simple.
The people who’d bought me, however, had a slightly different agenda in mind. That was how I ended up in the foster care system instead of a specialised dungeon and why Mrs Turnbull was now calling me to breakfast with increasing emphasis.
“Coming!” I called. Mrs Turnbull was a nice lady who had no idea who or what I was, or that I was any different from the legions of children she and her husband had fostered. Why should she? All the paperwork to prove that I was April Elizabeth May, seventeen years old, traumatically orphaned at fourteen years old, existed. So did the evidence of her eyes. If anyone was still looking for Adam Bell, top salesman, twenty-one years old, also traumatically orphaned at fourteen and sold to human traffickers by his rivals aged twenty they were on a hiding to nothing. No one would ever find me now.
With a sigh I grabbed my bag and pelted down the stairs.
“Hi Mrs Turnbull, hi Russell, how’s things?”
Mrs Turnbull gave me the hairy eyeball
“Things is me worrying whether you’re going to have time for breakfast is how things is. For goodness sake, get it down you. Not that it’s much, but it’s what you asked for.”
It was indeed. Special K and orange juice. I was going to be starving by mid-morning, but I was on a diet. Not my idea originally but, the Organisation’s, an ideal way to get rid of my unwanted muscle (unwanted by them anyway: I missed it) and introduce me to the joys of being a young woman and starving myself lest I commit the unspeakable crime of becoming a fat girl. Now I was continuing it for reasons of my own. It had been made very, very clear to me that if I failed to meet the tasks that the Dacres, my new owners, had set me I would be reclaimed by The Organisation so fast my feet wouldn’t touch. The next stop might be a specialist brothel for octogenarian rubber fetishists with bad breath. There wasn’t a lot I wouldn’t do to avoid that so I was staying slim, hunger or not.
“You know, you don’t have to be slim to be attractive, April.” commented Mrs Turnbull, giving me a worried look. My God, she could read thoughts. I was in trouble!
“Don’t you think, April is skinny enough already, Russell?” Russell swallowed and stirred himself from whatever daydream had held him fixed since I walked in
“I think she looks terrific. I wouldn’t care if she was fat.”
Oh dear. Russell, thirteen years old and fellow foster-child had been unable to look at me without his eyes bulging since I arrived just a few days before. I didn’t know how to deal with this; no one, as far as I knew, had ever had a crush on me before. He was basically a nice kid, who’d come from a truly awful background.
Russell wasn’t here because his parents were dead, he was here because they were such utter bastards that even a social care system awash with guidelines on how to keep dysfunctional families together, while dysfunctional parents tormented their children into dysfunctionality, couldn’t leave them in charge of a child. Every few months the parents were given another chance and sure as fate,within days Russell started turning up to school covered in bruises, hungry and smelling of unwashed clothes and cat pee – or not turning up to school at all. Then he was brought back to the Turnbulls.
So I tried to cut Russell a lot of slack, but I couldn’t help finding it very unnerving that I was clearly the subject of teenage boy fantasies. Maybe regular girls cope with this easily or don’t even think about it, but unlike them I’ve been a thirteen year old boy: I know what those fantasies are – euwwww!!
“Are you cold?” asked Mrs Turnbull, misinterpreting my shiver
“No, no I’m fine thanks. I’ve just got to run if I’m going to make it” I reassured her, scooting to my feet and downing the last of the orange juice.
“Well you make sure you wear a jacket. It may look sunny out there but there’s nothing to stop it turning cold later.”
She was such a Mum: I bet she’d been reminding people to wash behind their ears when she was six.
What sort of mother will you make? A little voice deep inside me said, and I shuddered. The very last thing the Organisation had done to me before planting me here was a piece of experimental surgery. To my knowledge it had been achieved once in the whole world before me – a complete uterus and ovaries transfer.
I had a womb, I could get pregnant, I would have my first period soon. I really, really wasn’t looking forward to it at all. As for the prospect of being a mother, I’d literally had a fit when they first told me it was possible – I’d had to be sedated. Part of me kept reminding myself that I’d lost my testicles, not my eyes: I wasn’t sick, I wasn’t crippled and three billion people coped with being female every single day. Part of me was still screaming.
Enough already I said to myself you have today to cope with before you worry about the future. Suiting words to actions, I headed for the bus stop. (I wasn’t allowed a car; if I wanted a ride, I’d been told, I’d have to persuade a boy to give me one.) School was close enough to walk to but for my first day I didn’t want to have to worry about being lost or late when the bus could drop me off a hundred yards from the gates.
The bus, when it arrived, was an unexpected challenge. I’d wanted to make an impression with my outfit and I clearly did. The bus had at least twenty school children on it aged 11 to 18. This was where I made a discovery. Most school boys don’t really bother to hide it when they’re staring at you, or maybe they haven’t yet learned how. A couple of them barely even bothered to lower their voices while commenting on me. Apparently my body passed muster. How nice. The thing that really got to me because it seemed so unfair was that they were the ones behaving badly but I was the one who got embarrassed. I glanced around surrepititiously to see how other girls (Other girls! Dear Lord how did I get into this situation?!) coped. Mostly by studiously ignoring the boys it seemed. Of course, all of them had got seats, where they could tuck themselves away with a bit of privacy. I was holding on to a pole in the middle of the aisle for everyone to see and my skirt suddenly felt a lot too short. None of the boys checking me out thought to offer me a seat. So much for chivalry! Tomorrow I was walking.
My discomfort was made worse by the fact that the Organisation, for all its terrifying array of brain washing techniques had failed utterly to undermine my heterosexuality by direct attack, so much so that they’d been stumped until someone had a brain wave. Now, due to post-hypnotic suggestion, every time I got embarrassed I got turned on. Since everything about being a girl embarrassed me, from wearing skirts and dresses to smelling my own scent, to the feel of make-up on my face or jewellery on my person and above all, being treated like a girl by other people I was permanently a little turned on. This morning I was starting to be more than a little affected; I wasn’t just a girl, I was a school girl, being openly checked out by half a bus. What could be more embarrassing than that?
Stop panicking I told myself You’re a girl now, whether you like it or not, so be glad that people find you attractive. If everyone thought you were ugly you’d still be just as stuck and life would be a lot harder. You sure as heck couldn’t carry out your mission. So be proud of being pretty.
I tried to listen to my own good advice, but all the same I was relieved when the school gates hove into view. I was starting to see why girls would voluntarily choose to wear a burka. (I’d always known why men favoured them – they’re exactly what every father of teenage girls would like his daughter to wear.)
I managed to be first off the bus and then came to a standstill in front of the school gates. I had left school at sixteen and glad to get out. I’d hated school, not the academic side but the stupidity, the childish cliques, the mindless bullying. Being orphaned and then dumped in a frankly lousy school to rebuild my life from scratch had traumatised me. Physical bullying had stopped after I’d gone coldly, clinically berserk and used my rudimentary martial arts skills to flatten a boy who’d been happily rubbing my face into a pebbledash wall. The verbal bullying, the hatred, the exclusion had, if anything, only got worse. Now here I was, back again, a friendless orphan but smaller, weaker and female. I felt a little shiver of fear, before pulling out my map and timetable, squaring my shoulders and marching firmly in.
I got all of five yards before a voice shouted
“Hey,you. New girl.”
I looked round to see a girl of about my own (official) age bearing down on me brandishing a clip board. As she came closer I could see she also had a badge marked ‘Prefect’. I couldn’t be in trouble yet, surely? I’d only just arrived.
“Um, yes? What’s up?”
“Don’t look so worried. I just wanted to tell you’re heading the wrong way. Since you’re the only new pupil in your form, you need to go to the reception office over there. They’ll whistle somebody up to be a native guide for you until you get used to the place.”
“Oh, um, thanks?”
“No problem. My name’s Shelley. If you run into any problems with bullying or the like, just let me know.”
I headed in the direction Shelley had indicated, feeling just a tiny bit reassured. Maybe this place wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
The office made me think again. On the first morning of the first term there were already two goons of the sort I remembered from the first time round waiting to be dealt with along with a scatty looking girl who’d probably lost her gym kit or something. On the other hand the goons WERE waiting to be dealt with instead of roaming the corridors spreading havoc. That had to be a plus.
“Uh, hi. Mrs Routledge?” I said to the formidable looking lady on reception with the name plate on her desk “I’m April May. I’m new. Mrs Thistlewood, the Headmistress, knows about me, but I was told to come here before classes start?”
Maybe she was the hard nut with the soft centre because she gave me a dazzling smile.
“That’s right, dear. Mrs Thistlewood wanted to make sure you had someone to help you settle in. Maddy, this is April.”
The scatty looking girl rose from her chair, scattering books and instantly dropped to her knees to collect them – whereupon her long wavy hair made a successful escape attempt from her silver clasp and she ran out of hands.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. This doesn’t normally happen. Um, Madelaine, but everyone calls me Maddy, pleased to meet you.” She managed an embarrassed beam at me.
“April, and likewise.” I replied, slipping to my knees to help her gather up her belongings. “If you just hold still a minute, I think I can sort out the clasp, it hasn’t fallen out just come unclasped – ow, Ok that’s got it.”
Great going! You’ve been back in school two minutes and you’re already in deep girly mode. At this rate we’ll be braiding each other’s hair by lunch time.
I ignored my inner voice. The more girl I was the better my chance of succeeding in my mission. Besides, where did my inner monologue get off bullying me, anyway?
“You have great hair,” I added “I think you’ve just got more of it than any clasp can cope with. I wish I had this much volume.”
“Thank you. I can’t bear to cut it, but if I don’t use a clasp it falls all over my books every time I try to read and write. I don’t think you need to envy my hair though – or anyone’s.” Maddy added looking at my hairstyle. I couldn’t help it, I preened, just a little. I wouldn’t have chosen to be a girl, but since I am it’s nice to know I’m doing it properly.
“Come on, let me show you to the form room. We’re with Mrs Kerr; she’s nice but we still don’t want to be late.”
“Lead on MacDuff” I misquoted and we departed down the corridor.
The corridor distinctly reminded me of the bus but I was doing fine, taking in my new companion and trying to take note of where we were so I could find my way around later, when I let out a squeal of shock and outrage and almost hit the ceiling. Someone had just grabbed my bottom and squeezed me, hard!
“Hey! Who did that?” I was glaring around wide-eyed but there was a such a river of people going by it could have been anyone. Maddy had turned to look with me and an instant later we did a synchronised squeak as someone ahead of us in the corridor squeezed us both.
This time I whirled round in time to narrow the suspects down to three or four smirking youths who turned under my gaze and sniggered their way up the corridor.
“Them!” said Maddy in exasperation. “Honestly, they never grow up! Did you see which one it was, April? Mrs Thistlewood will throw the book at them if we can identify the culprit, but there isn’t much she can do otherwise.”
“I..er...uh!” I managed to reply
“Oh my goodness. Are you all right?”
No, was the answer to that one, but I wasn’t sure I could articulate any more. Maddy turned out to be a lot more practical than I had given her credit for. She grabbed me by one arm and bustled me into the ladies toilets. Wow. I’d finally penetrated the inner sanctum of school age womanhood. It was a lot cleaner than the boys’ bathrooms had ever been which was handy because I collapsed in a heap almost as soon as we were through the door.
“April, you’ve gone white as a sheet!”
“I just can’t do this! I can’t cope with being stared at and groped and leched after and – and I don’t want to be a – a school girl!” And with that, having had just enough presence of mind to insert the word ‘school’ so Maddy wouldn’t guess my secret or think I was mad, I completely lost it and burst into tears. Stupid hormones!
“Shh! It’ll be OK, I promise,” Maddy crouched down beside me and put a hand on my knee “We’ll tell Mrs Thistlewood. She can’t suspend anyone because we don’t know which one it was but I’m sure she’ll scare the life out of them. They’ve got to grow up sooner or later. They aren’t even that bad, once you get to know them. It’s just boys, you know? Once they know you they start realising you aren’t just a –a –a “
“Sex object?”
“I was going to say ‘transport system for a pair of breasts’, but sex object works just as well.”
Little do you know, Maddy, I thought, I AM a sex object. The only reason those rude, immature, sexist, adolescent, little scumbags can’t bend me over this washbasin and take me is because they haven’t paid my captors the fee. Someone else bought me first. Someone who placed me in this school to seduce their son, marry him and use my feminine wiles to push him into a high powered career instead of wasting his time on his band and smoking pot and generally be his sloe-eyed helpmeet, adoring wife and lifelong support system. Of all the dangers in life that could have happened to me I never, never dreamed that becoming a hausfrau was one of them!
More tears flowed, quieter now. “I’m sorry Maddy, I must look like such an idiot. On my first day, too.”
“Don’t be silly,” she smiled at me “No one likes being felt up by perfect strangers. We’ve still got time before registration; I’ll help you clean up your make up and no one will even know.”
I hiccupped and smiled at her, getting up off the floor.
“I look like a panda!” My mascara had run in great streaks down my face while I was crying.
“Don’t worry,” Maddy said, handing me a facial wipe from somewhere in the depths of her capacious ethnic bag “It happens to all of us; I don’t care what they say, tear proof mascara is a myth.”
At that precise moment the door opened and two more girls breezed in
“Hey Maddy – oh. What happened to your friend?”
“She met the Grope Patrol on her first day. April, this is Jenny and Tori.”
“Those creeps. This is ridiculous. I don’t care what Mrs Thistlewood says about identification and individual responsibility. If she doesn’t do something about it this year I’m going to get my father to. What’s the point of having a parent who’s a barrister if you don’t take advantage of it occasionally?”
It looked like I could count on sympathy at least – but then sheep are probably sympathetic to the one that gets chased by a dog – doesn’t mean they’ll help.
“Why waste time?” asked Tori “Just do what I did.”
“Get your boyfriend and his mates to threaten them you mean? It’s a solution, I suppose.” Replied Maddy doubtfully
Is it really? I wondered Protect yourself from men treating you like a possession by getting one to mark you as his territory. Is that still where women are in the twenty-first century?
“Or we could just do something nasty with a stiletto heel and pretend it was an accident” said Jenny. That was more like it. OK, I was starting to feel better.
I finished repairing my face, put my make up away and zipped up the bag.
“Ready to go?” asked Maddy sympathetically.
“Absolutely” I smiled at her
“We’ll join you,” said Jenny “Any trouble in the corridors and we can have a synchronised high heel accident.” I giggled, wincing a little internally at how easily a giggle came to my lips now and we headed for class.
Class had an assortment of people scattered around several rows of desks, and, fortunately, a teacher just arriving, presumably Miss Kerr herself. I got a few stares going in but not really any more than you’d expect being the new girl. I followed Maddy to a pair of desks at the back of the room. Thank goodness, now I would be able to see everything, but people wouldn’t be able to stare at me without craning their necks and making it really obvious. Score!
“Settle down now class,” began the teacher, with an air of cheery energy “We have a new student starting today, who I’m sure would like to introduce herself to you. April – it is April, isn’t it? – would you come up here please?”
What could I do? I’d never been shy before – it was part of what made me a good salesman – but that was when the audience didn’t consist of teenage boys mentally undressing me while teenage girls made comparisons and awarded points for my hairstyle and outfit. Slowly I made my way to the front of the class.
“Alright April, tell us a bit about yourself.”
“My name is April May-“
“April may – so ask her.” said a clear, carrying voice
Smothered laughter ran through the class and I went pink as I realised what the Organisation had done to me, giving me the name I had. Those words would be on the wall of the boys’ locker room in hours I was sure.
I composed myself and looked steadily at one of those laughing loudest, who by coincidence happened to be one of the four from the corridor earlier, though his loathsome little friends were nowhere to be seen.
“April May,” I repeated softly, once the silence had begun to grate “But not with you.” That got a much louder round of laughter. From the corner of my eye I could see Miss Kerr bridling but she said nothing.
“I’m seventeen years old. I’ve just moved here to stay with foster parents. My own parents died three years ago in a car accident.” That stopped the laughter. Smiles faded away into looks of shock and sympathy.
“I study English Literature, Art, Music, Drama and Domestic Science.” All true, all selected for me as either things my ‘target’ studies or suitably feminine accomplishments for me to have. Never mind the massive workload, no one cares if ‘April May’ leaves school with any qualifications, so long as she gets her man.
“I like all sorts of music, Victorian novels, parties, chocolate, swimming and sunbathing. My idea of Heaven would be a pool party in a Victorian mansion with a live band nearby.” Not strictly true; my idea of Heaven would be waking up to find I’d dreamt the last few months, but what the heck.
I scanned the class. OK, no one looked hostile, some looked interested and – Oh my goodness, there he was. Vincent Dacre, my future Lord and Master. If I was lucky. This was the first time I’d seen him in the flesh since his parents had bought me to be his ideal woman. (Parents choosing a teenager’s ideal partner; there was a flaw in this plan somewhere). Tall, dark, imperfectly shaven and clad in battered jeans, leather jacket and heavy boots he was obviously going for the urban rebel look and pulled it off as well as any seventeen year old schoolboy could hope to. He was gazing at me with what looked like a friendly expression – at least, it was certainly an interested one and I could see what looked like a smile turning up the corners of his lips, so I smiled back as I concluded
“That’s pretty much all I have to say, so if you want to know more, ask me.”
“Thank you April,” said Miss Kerr as I resumed my seat “That was very enlightening.” She looked a little bit shaken – obviously no one had warned her I was an orphan, but then it serves her right for being cheery first thing in the morning on a school day! I resumed my seat, noting from the corner of my eye that Vincent Dacre’s eyes followed me as I did so, apparently lingering a little on certain areas. It looked like I had chosen the right outfit.
“That was sooo cool, the way you handled that thing about your name.” whispered Maddy, as I slid back into my seat “Have you done this before?”
“Nah,” I whispered back smugly “I’m just spontaneously witty. On a good day.” Maybe this was going to be a good day after all.
Chapter Two: Fourteen girls grabbing balls
I tried to hold on to that thought as I made my way to my first class – PE, or physical exercise. Yes, English schools let you drop out of this at sixteen but I wasn’t working to school rules but those set by The Organisation and the Dacres and for some reason one or other had decreed that I was going to play sport as a girl. Of course, my new school held that rugby, soccer or even hockey just weren’t ladylike enough. I was about to open my school girl sporting career by playing my first ever game of netball.
Netball, for the uninitiated, is played by two teams of seven, each member of which is allocated to a specific area of the court, which she (and it is a she, mens’ netball is about as popular as mens’ embroidery classes) is not allowed to leave.
No one is allowed to tackle – it’s a completely non-contact sport – but that doesn’t matter because you aren’t allowed to keep the ball once you’ve got it either, you have to pass almost immediately or it counts as a foul. At either end of the court is a hoop, set considerably lower than a basketball hoop, into which you make ladylike throws from a short distance to score a goal. Slam-dunks are NOT allowed. Netball is also habitually played in little pleated gym skirts and matching T-shirts like the ones I had in my bag.
Netball teams do not usually have names the way American high school teams do, but for some strange reason the school had overturned that tradition, so now our school team was the St Blasius of Cappadocia Academy Tigercats. Fortunately I wasn’t going to make the team; I’d seen the uniforms and they looked like they’d been designed by a cheerleader on a sugar high.
I was already going red as I wended my way down the corridor, keeping a careful eye out for any boys sneaking up on my butt. I was just about to go into a girls’ changing room. Regardless of what I looked like, I defy anyone to spend a lifetime as a man and then feel relaxed about that. Add in the fact that I was really twenty-one and it just felt inappropriate. Maddy, the only person I knew in the whole place, unless being groped counts as an introduction, had abandoned me, having given up sport the year before. So much for my native guide! Still, she had promised to meet me in the library later.
“Who are you?” blared a leathery, angry looking woman of maybe forty as I came through the changing room door. On top of the thoughts I’d just been having this was almost enough to make me turn and run.
“I er um”
“New girl?”
“I, um”
“Don’t say ‘um’. I detest people saying ‘um’? Are you any good at netball?”
“I er”
“Don’t say ‘er’ either. You must know if you’re any good or not. Just don’t be one of those deferential girls. ‘Oh, I don’t know Mrs Davidson, I don’t like to admit to being good, people might not like me. In fact I don’t even like to get sweaty in case it puts the boys off’ “ She rolled her eyes exasperatedly “So are you any good or not?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never played.”
“Oh. What have you played?”
“Soccer.”
“God help us. Right you’re with Kirsty’s team. Try not to commit too many fouls.”
Kirsty was presumably the tall girl now making a ‘don’t panic’ face at me from behind the woman’s shoulder.
“Hi, there...?”
“April.”
“Hi there, April. As you haven’t played before I’ll put you in defence. All you have to do is try to catch any balls going by and pass them to someone else on our team. We’re red today, so don’t forget to grab an armband.” She leaned close and whispered “Don’t worry about Mrs Davidson. She just likes to keep people on their toes.”
And with that she began to strip off. I was in a room full of healthy teenage girls unconcernedly taking their clothes off and you know what? Nothing. Alright, not nothing, twenty-one years as a heterosexual male doesn’t go away all at once, but between embarrassment, a deep desire not to be anything like the boys from the corridor and having had my system flooded with massive doses of female hormones for months it wasn’t a problem.
Sadly I realised that it wasn’t inappropriate for me to be in a girls’ locker room at all. I really was a girl and a pretty one too. My knickers lay snug and flat over my pubic mound, my full breasts invited the gaze of the passerby, my hips and bottom curved enticingly. I wasn’t even the tallest girl in the room, or the heaviest built. Nobody could tell I wasn’t born this way. I was going to be the ravishee, not the ravisher. My new role in life was as a girlfriend, wife and arrgh!
I shook myself. There was no sense getting maudlin. I’d known for a while now there was no escape from my female status, and I’d promised myself to be the one thing no Organisation, no brainwashing, threat or blackmail could ever take away from me. I was going to be a good person, to give friendship and love, whether I received it or not. I was going to be nice to people, make the world a better place and the first step to that was to get changed, get out there and stop moping. Go Tigercats!
Besides, I reminded myself as we filed out to the netball court, there were far worse things I could be. Better a girl than one of the Grope Patrol!
Chapter Two: Fourteen girls grabbing balls
I tried to hold on to that thought as I made my way to my first class – PE, or physical exercise. Yes, English schools let you drop out of this at sixteen but I wasn’t working to school rules but those set by The Organisation and the Dacres and for some reason one or other had decreed that I was going to play sport as a girl. Of course, my new school held that rugby, soccer or even hockey just weren’t ladylike enough. I was about to open my school girl sporting career by playing my first ever game of netball.
Netball, for the uninitiated, is played by two teams of seven, each member of which is allocated to a specific area of the court, which she (and it is a she, mens’ netball is about as popular as mens’ embroidery classes) is not allowed to leave.
No one is allowed to tackle – it’s a completely non-contact sport – but that doesn’t matter because you aren’t allowed to keep the ball once you’ve got it either, you have to pass almost immediately or it counts as a foul. At either end of the court is a hoop, set considerably lower than a basketball hoop, into which you make ladylike throws from a short distance to score a goal. Slam-dunks are not allowed. Netball is also habitually played in little pleated gym skirts and matching T-shirts like the ones I had in my bag.
Netball teams do not usually have names the way American high school teams do, but for some strange reason the school had overturned that tradition, so now our school team was the St Blasius of Cappadocia Academy Tigercats. Fortunately I wasn’t going to make the team; I’d seen the uniforms and they looked like they’d been designed by a cheerleader on a sugar high.
I was already going red as I wended my way down the corridor, keeping a careful eye out for any boys sneaking up on my butt. I was just about to go into a girls’ changing room. Regardless of what I looked like, I defy anyone to spend a lifetime as a man and then feel relaxed about that. Add in the fact that I was really twenty-one and it just felt inappropriate. Maddy, the only person I knew in the whole place, unless being groped counts as an introduction, had abandoned me, having given up sport the year before. So much for my native guide! Still, she had promised to meet me in the library later.
“Who are you?” blared a leathery, angry looking woman of maybe forty as I came through the changing room door. On top of the thoughts I’d just been having this was almost enough to make me turn and run.
“I er um”
“New girl?”
“I, um”
“Don’t say ‘um’. I detest people saying ‘um’? Are you any good at netball?”
“I er”
“Don’t say ‘er’ either. You must know if you’re any good or not. Just don’t be one of those deferential girls. ‘Oh, I don’t know Mrs Davidson, I don’t like to admit to being good, people might not like me. In fact I don’t even like to get sweaty in case it puts the boys off’ “ She rolled her eyes exasperatedly “So are you any good or not?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never played.”
“Oh. What have you played?”
“Soccer.”
“God help us. Right you’re with Kirsty’s team. Try not to commit too many fouls.”
Kirsty was presumably the tall girl now making a ‘don’t panic’ face at me from behind the woman’s shoulder.
“Hi, there...?”
“April.”
“Hi there, April. As you haven’t played before I’ll put you in defence. All you have to do is try to catch any balls going by and pass them to someone else on our team. We’re red today, so don’t forget to grab an armband.” She leaned close and whispered “Don’t worry about Mrs Davidson. She just likes to keep people on their toes.”
And with that she began to strip off. I was in a room full of healthy teenage girls unconcernedly taking their clothes off and you know what? Nothing. Alright, not nothing, twenty-one years as a heterosexual male doesn’t go away all at once, but between embarrassment, a deep desire not to be anything like the boys from the corridor and having had my system flooded with massive doses of female hormones for months it wasn’t a problem.
Sadly I realised that it wasn’t inappropriate for me to be in a girls’ locker room at all. I really was a girl and a pretty one too. My knickers lay snug and flat over my pubic mound, my full breasts invited the gaze of the passerby, my hips and bottom curved enticingly. I wasn’t even the tallest girl in the room, or the heaviest built. Nobody could tell I wasn’t born this way. I was going to be the ravishee, not the ravisher. My new role in life was as a girlfriend, wife and arrgh!
I shook myself. There was no sense getting maudlin. I’d known for a while now there was no escape from my female status, and I’d promised myself to be the one thing no Organisation, no brainwashing, threat or blackmail could ever take away from me. I was going to be a good person, to give friendship and love, whether I received it or not. I was going to be nice to people, make the world a better place and the first step to that was to get changed, get out there and stop moping. Go Tigercats!
Besides, I reminded myself as we filed out to the netball court, there were far worse things I could be. Better a girl than one of the Grope Patrol!
Minutes into the game I was starting to realise that there might be more reasons than being ladylike for the rules of netball. I wasn’t Dolly Parton but I was quite buxom enough that – sports bra or not – I, well, wobbled. Not just up top either, my bottom was trying to join in the fun, though not quite as urgently.
On top of this, although I’d brought a sports bra to school, I hadn’t changed my knickers. This meant that every time I jumped too high or too fast to try to intercept the ball I risked giving everyone watching an eyeful of my purple satin underwear. That included the spectators. I hadn’t known that quite so many boys would develop an interest in watching netball on sunny mornings. Vincent Dacre didn’t appear to be among them. I wasn’t sure whether that was good, because it meant at least I wasn’t going to be married to a lech or bad because it meant he wasn’t unable to resist my charms. Or maybe it was neither and he had class?
In the meantime I was on display for the edification of a lounging, laughing, occasionally leering audience and I was getting hot and bothered. I tried to ignore it and with an ever so slightly unladylike jump managed to score from way back. The cries of surprise and congratulation from my team mates were good to hear – I’d missed feeling like a success.
Unfortunately they were almost drowned out by the whoops and whistles from the audience. I flushed scarlet. No wonder girls did better in single sex education. I couldn’t do a thing without an appreciative and disrespectful commentary. In this case one that was openly debating whether the colour of my knickers was a sign of sexual repression!
“Clear off you lot!” shouted Kirsty. “We’re trying to play sports here.”
“Sport is for guys. Go and have some babies.”
I gaped. I couldn’t believe someone had actually said that. From the look on Kirsty’s face neither could she. And worse, it had had the desired effect. It had shut her up, leaving her speechless and open mouthed. Me too. That was when I realised; sexist put downs don’t have to be something a guy believes as long as he learns that they work.
“You! Head’s office. Now!” Mrs Davidson was heading straight for the offender and he blenched and turned away without another word leaving us to get on with the game under the gaze of an at least a moderately quieter crowd of lecherous youths.
The whole thing had had an effect on me though. I could still throw but when it came to jumping, for the rest of the game the most I could bring myself to do was a little knees-together bunny hop. Mind you, I noticed that I wasn’t alone in that; clearly I’d discovered a hidden reason as to how the rules and tactics of netball had evolved in the first place.
Still, I wasn’t too bad at it, better than average, I thought, a thought that was confirmed at the end of the game as Mrs Davidson came up to me.
“New girl. April. You lost it for a while there but overall I was impressed. If you can keep your thoughts off what the boys think of you, you might shape up. We’re one short for the next game so I’m going to put you on the reserves. You should get at least part of a game. Practice is tomorrow afternoon at four – don’t be late.”
She walked away leaving me speechless as three thoughts hit me simultaneously
Oh my God, that is so unfair. It’s not like I asked the boys to distract me!
Oh my God, I’m on a school team!
Oh my God, I’m going to have to wear that stupid uniform!
Chapter Three: A Red Letter Day
Showers. They’re different for girls. Now, I’m not talking about some soft-porn shower room scenario here, but outside of keeping clean there are strict limits to how far I’d explored my new body. It was at moments like this that the shock of contrast really hit me. OK, not just moments like this. I’d been post-hypnotically conditioned to be scared of spiders. I was starting to wonder if I’d also been post-hypnotically conditioned to never quite get used to my condition. I kept thinking I was getting used to things, a few hours, a day, sometimes even two would pass and then the utter contrast between what I once was and who I had become would hit me like a breaker crashing onto rocks. The trigger this time was when I realised that my breasts had become full enough that I had to lift them up and clean underneath or fall victim to sweaty boob syndrome. The curse of care and upkeep of my curves had struck. I was going to have to do this for the rest of my life.
Or maybe not. I realised. Soon, even the right to take care of my own body might be a thing of the past. A month from now I might be sharing a shower with Vincent Dacre, looking up at him as he soaped my small, soft body all over, possessively, smoothly, carefully, his big rough hands roaming freely, heating me up for, for...for something that would mean I needed another shower! I emitted a little groan.
“April, are you OK?”
I jumped and turned scarlet. Kirsty’s concerned face was peering at me.
“Uh, just easing the shoulder muscles.” I lied. I hope she believed me. I hope she hadn’t heard the moan. I wasn’t sure if that groan was fear or despair or something else. Really. Honestly.
“OK, well, be careful. If you think you’ve got a strain Mrs Davis will let you cry off the game you know. She’s not an ogre, for all that she barks at people. In fact she’s really nice underneath.”
I believed her, but right now the gym teacher was the least of my worries. What was happening to me? My first day of school as a girl was always going to be a strain but so far I’d suffered nervousness, anxiety, tears, mood swings and now inappropriate shower thoughts. I surely couldn’t go on like this. I fled the shower as soon as I’d got the last of the soap off me, towelled off vigorously, thanking heavens that at just past shoulder length my hair was still short enough that I could mousse it damp and leave it to its own devices. Then I fled down the corridor still blushing furiously. I hadn’t made it to my next class before it happened.
A painful cramp hit me, like a jab to the kidneys and I winced. Something suddenly wasn’t right in my abdomen – not exactly painful but distinctly uncomfortable. I ran the rest of the way to the bathroom, locked myself in a stall and sat down. I didn’t need to go. So what did I need, what the heck was going on? That’s when I noticed the tiny darker spots against the purple of my knickers.
I was having my first period.
I sat there a long time and let it sink in. I was having my first period. Like the Lady of Shallott, the curse had come upon me. Mother Nature was punishing me for not yet having made her Grandmother Nature. The lining of my womb was renewing itself, so that it would be ready to have a fertilised egg – my egg- settle in it to grow into a baby. I said it four or five times in different ways just trying to accept what I couldn’t possibly deny.
Yet again I’d been served up with indisputable proof that I really, truly was a girl. No, I was a woman. I could have babies. The chances were I would have babies. Vincent Dacre’s babies. A teenage boy who I didn’t even know yet was going to impregnate me as part of his insane well-meaning control freak parents’ plan to buy him the perfect life and he didn’t even know it yet. What the Hell was I going to do? I think that was the point where I realised I was crying.
I let myself cry for a little. The traumas of the last year or so had taught me that sometimes tears could be a relief and whether the reason was trauma or hormones they came easier nowadays. Then I pulled myself back together. There’s a fine line between a therapeutic weep and becoming a cry baby and I was determined not to cross it. Vincent was only a teenager and hopefully headed for University. Provided I remembered to take a few elementary precautions it would be years before the workings of my new womb became an issue for the purposes of anything other than PMS. Take that, Mother Nature!
And who knew, there might still be a way out of this. I frankly doubted it, but still. Or Vincent might not want children, or – a hundred things might save me.
And if not? Then I would scream and pray and rage and curse God and the Dacres and the Organisation and the hour that I was born and the night on which it was said, ‘There is a child conceived’ . And after that?
Then I would love my children, never, ever let anything hurt them and never let on that the mere thought of them had once been enough to send me into hysterics. I would do everything I could to ensure they were raised in a stable, happy home. Children didn’t ask to be born. They deserve every bit of love and support and help we can give them, whatever the cost. Yes, I am aware I am both over-protective and over-emotional when it comes to parenting. I’m an orphan, it goes with the territory. Sue me.
Oh my God! They knew! They knew I’d react like this!
I suddenly realised that this had probably been a factor in the Dacres’ decision to pick me. The Organisation, whatever else could be said about them, knew everything about manipulating human psychology, so they knew that I was a deeply unlikely candidate to ever neglect or hurt a child. I started laughing, because I had to laugh or cry and I’d cried more than enough. I, the former Adam Bell, thrustingly ambitious and successful salesman, womaniser, black belt in Shi-Kon Karate was sitting with my knickers round my ankles in a girls’ bathroom because someone had looked at me and known I’d try my best to be a good mother.
With the mental conditioning the Organisation had given me, embarrassment meant I became turned on. I braced myself for a knee-trembling burst of lust – and didn’t get one.
I wasn’t ashamed, I realised. I wasn’t ashamed at all. Being a good parent was a good thing to be. Granted I’d be the father if I had my choice, but I didn’t. But male or female, being a good parent was a thing to be proud of.
Of course, first, I had to get my man! That did get my knees trembling. The whole concept still gave me the willies. Pun unintended!
I focussed on what I knew about Vincent Dacre, casting my mind back to the day his parents had taken me to their home and let me loose in his room so that I could scope out his secrets and learn everything about my target as part of the great sales campaign that he could never, ever find out was being aimed at him.....
I have never seen anyone with this big and this varied a music collection was my first thought as I stepped into Vincent Dacre’s room and nearly tripped over the guitar leaning against the bottom of the bed as if it had been hastily put down by someone who’d been strumming away up until the very final moment before they left. Even from across the room I could see the mass of shelved DVDs that lined the whole of the far wall. Vincent appeared to have everything. Rock, indie, heavy metal, thrash metal, rave, acid house, folk, country, Country and Western, Blues, pop, punk, the Clash, Fugazi, Chagall Guevara, Kate Bush, Fairport Convention, Johnny Cash, Kenny Rogers, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Muddy Waters, Nirvana, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, – the only things missing, so far as I could see were rap and trad jazz. They were probably stacked under the bed.
“I’m so sorry about the mess.” Mrs Dacre murmured from behind me. “He doesn’t like me poking about in his room, even to tidy it; you know how boys are.”
Since I used to be one, yes, I do. I thought but all I said was
“Please don’t worry about it. I’ve seen far worse.”
“I’ll leave you to it then. And please don’t let the mess put you off. I’m sure you’ll be a civilising influence.”
I certainly hope so I thought, as the door closed behind me Since I’m going to be responsible for clearing up after him, and something tells me you’re going to be the sort of mother-in-law who’s more house proud about your son’s place than about your own. Argh! OK, that’s a later problem. Focus!
The walls that weren’t devoted to music had bookshelves flanking a little computer table, but the books seemed to have bred on the shelves; they overflowed into teetering piles scattered everywhere like the spoor of some giant beast that crapped literature. A look at the titles revealed, at first, absolutely no discernible theme. History, Shakespeare, Dickens, fantasy, science fiction, historical literature, legends, thrillers, politics, mingled indiscriminately.
I was going to have to widen my circle of interests. Either that or perfect a wide-eyed “You’re so clever, tell me more” look.
The second was probably easier, but life would be more fun if I genuinely made an effort to take an interest in his interests. Of course, I could still use the second method to learn. Would he be pleased or not if I took notes when he was talking? Ok, that was completely over the top! Maybe I was getting a little light headed what with all I’d been through.
I looked under the mattress. No porn mags. Hey, maybe he really was classy! Or maybe his imagination did better things than a photographer could. Or maybe, not growing up in an orphanage – oh, I’m sorry ‘Childrens’ Home’ – he had unsupervised internet access and didn’t need to shell out for magazines the way a lot of the lads in the Home had done.
No, not me. I’d always worried about how a girl would feel if she saw me with them. Having subsequently been the subject of some very dubious photos for The Organisation’s sales brochure had only confirmed my opinion. Nothing else was under the bed either except more books, a lost plectrum and a sock that had obviously gone there to die.
I moved a mingled mass of old books and suppurating clothes from a chair and stood on it to access the top cupboard. Too tall for me or his mother to reach unaided, surely this was where he would keep the incriminating secrets that would tell me the way into his affections. A mass of odds and ends nearly fell on me and an exercise book bounced off my head as I frantically crammed things back into place, none of them, as far as I could see, of any interest to me. Stepping down from the chair – a chair, I realised, that Vincent wouldn’t have needed to reach the cupboard You really are going to be the little woman a voice whispered in my head – I picked up the exercise book.
Paydirt. Or at least, a start. It was full of poems – some of which were song lyrics really, judging from the repetition and non sequiturs – interspersed with musings on various topics obviously written by Vince himself. And those topics, as you’d expect, included women! Now, all I had to do was find Vincent’s ideal woman, mould myself into her and I was all sorted. There is something so profoundly wrong with this idea that the mind boggles. But then it wasn’t my stupid idea in the first place, I’m just doing as I’m told. Which I hope isn’t part of being Vincent’s ideal woman.
A few poems later, I wasn’t entirely sure. The lyrics or verses or whatever were ambiguous, but there were plenty of references to sweepings off of feet, passionate ravishing, ties of love etc to make two things certain.
Firstly, he liked brunettes. Hurrah! At least I wasn’t going to have to go blonde.
Secondly, unless he lived entirely in imaginings that he didn’t dare put into practice – and if he did it was my job to overcome that – then the first girl to truly inspire Vincent Dacre was going to be subjected to a level of burning, passionate, possessive desire that would leave her –me! - not only breathless, but sitting down carefully for months.
On the other hand better to be a young man’s darling than an old man’s slave. Or is that the other way round? Wait, slave, oh no!
Dropping to my knees I burrowed under the bed again. I must have subconsciously noticed the first time round and blanked it because now I knew what these books under the bed were.
“Oh no! Why me?!”
Copies had circulated round the Home, usually worn half to pieces and inclined to fall open at certain passages. They were a series of fantasy novels written by a teeth-grindingly bad writer whose butchering of the English language could only be justified by the fact that apparently in real life he was a professor of German philosophy who spoke English as a second language. It didn’t matter, no one read his books because they thought he was a good writer, it was purely and entirely because of the plot – and with a few minor alterations in detail it was the same plot in book after book.
On a pre-technological world a beautiful woman, either one from that world or brought from Earth by aliens for their own purposes, it made no difference which, was enslaved. She would be locked into a metal collar with her name and that of her new owner engraved on it. Usually her name would be changed just to make it clear to her that she was just an animal now. She would be branded, literally, with a red hot iron. Then she would be stripped, or given a very brief, translucent piece of cloth as her only clothing, then whipped, then...well, you get the general idea.
Invariably, usually in identical, pedantically precise, unnaturally stiff, dull terms, the girl would be raving about how much she loved all this by the end of her first good orgasm. That wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst of it was what dull lives the girls seemed to lead after this point, rarely saying anything other than “Yes Master” or “No Master”.
So, did Vincent read these because they were around and they were books about sex, a topic in which any healthy adolescent has an unhealthy interest, or did he want to...had I just discovered the real reason why none of his relationships lasted? Was I doomed to be just a plaything? Submissive, humiliated, displayed, docile, obedient? The whole idea was just so...so.. Embarrassing.
“Oh no!”
I was vulnerable to any kinky desires Vincent had in the worst possible way. Firstly, I didn’t dare run or resist. Secondly, and far, far worse, the Organisation’s brainwashers had tied my sexual desires to my sense of embarrassment. Every time I got embarrassed, I got turned on. I’d thought nothing could be more embarrassing than being a girl. What about being a slave girl?
Sure enough, I could feel, even without slipping a finger inside those oh, so embarrassing frilly lace knickers I wore, that I was wet. Wet and ready for whatever my new lord and literal Master, whether he knew it or not, wanted to do to me. I was going to be a cook in the kitchen, a lady in the drawing room and a –
“I am not a whore!” I admonished myself, ignoring the warm throbbing that seemed to have crept into a vital part of my anatomy and the twinge in my stomach.
“I am a good person. That means I will do the only good thing open to me in my situation and try to make this poor boy, whose parents are helping a complete stranger to manipulate him by letting me in here, happy. And if I have to be passionate, abandoned and –and-and- spanked, to do it, so be it!”
And the fact that you are actually trembling a little with emotion at the thought has nothing to do with that decision whispered my inner voice.
“Well, of course not. That tremble is mostly fear.” I murmured aloud
Sure. .
I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that my inner voice was a meanie.
Abandoning the memory and focusing on the here and now, trapped in a girl’s bathroom , I decided I was probably worrying unnecessarily. Vincent might not be into this kind of thing on any scale to worry about. After all, I’d read a couple of the same books and I wasn’t. In any case, it didn’t matter, what I had to work out was how to get close to him. Unless any bright ideas or handy encounters came up I would have to start with either books or music. I was going to have to find out when his next gig was and in the meantime get cracking on reading some of the books I’d seen in his bedroom - when I wasn’t stalking him through the corridors waiting for a chance to do a smile and a hair flip at him without looking like a stalker.
Or I could just go up to him and say something submissive, if I really wanted him to think I was crazy.
“Yes Master, no Master, three bags full Master.” I murmured derisively.
“April?”
“Ahhh!” I shrieked and nearly jumped out of my skin, flushing a fiery crimson. Someone else was in the bathroom!
“Who’s that?!”
“It’s me, Maddy. I got worried when you didn’t meet me in the library. Are you all right?”
Oh Lord, please, please don’t let her have heard me! How loud did I say that? What possessed me to say it at all?
“I – I’m alright, I’m just stuck. I’m sorry, I did mean to meet you.”
“It’s OK, really. I was just a bit worried about you. Shall I fetch the nurse? Are you ill?”
“Not exactly. My, my period started and I haven’t got...anything” I finished lamely.
“Don’t worry. I have.” I heard the sound of Maddy rummaging in her capacious ethnic bag and the inevitable clatter of items falling to the floor. Thank goodness this was a girls’ bathroom; if it had been a boys one then she really wouldn’t have wanted to pick any of them up again.
“Are pads OK?”
“Yes! Oh thank you Maddy, you are a life saver. I feel like such an idiot, I just wasn’t expecting this.” A moment’s awkward fumbling and I could emerge, safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t going to leak through my knickers and leave a bloody trail everywhere I went. Periods are proof positive that God is a man!
I was still almost purple with embarrassment. I just prayed to the God I now considered a sexist brute that Maddy hadn’t heard what I’d said just before she spoke. If she had though, I would have expected her to be as purple as I was. She looked a little pink but gave me her familiar, helpful, slightly worried smile.
“Feeling any better?”
“Infinitely better. You are such a lifesaver.” Maddy went a little pinker, but beamed. She was so nice and yet the way she reacted to compliments suggested she wasn’t used to them. I would worry about Maddy, except that she was coping with life far better than I was today so it would have been patronising.
Of course, she had a lot more practice being a girl.
“Have I missed class?”
“No such luck I’m afraid, we’ve got about ten minutes to get to Domestic Science. If you’re feeling up to it, that is. I can still take you to the nurse’s office if not.”
“Thanks Maddy, but I feel a lot better knowing why I’ve been so tense. I’m sorry I’ve been so flaky with you today.”
“Don’t be silly. You got a period and a first day of school and a close encounter with teenage perverts all together. In your shoes I’d have gone completely mental. All you did was get upset when you were groped. Come on, let’s get there early and grab some decent seats.”
Chapter Four: Where Are You Going, Said Meet-on-the-Road
A few hours later I was walking out of the school gates reflecting that life could definitely be worse. Maddy and I were becoming firm friends and I seemed to get on well enough with her immediate circle. I know I wasn’t at school to make friends but it was better than the alternative. Also it meant I didn’t have the added hurdle of trying to persuade Vincent to date a complete social outcast.
Most tangible of today’s achievements, I was carrying an apple and rhubarb crumble which I’d made in Domestic Science class and was now bearing home in triumph to Mrs Turnbull. We could have it for dessert , meaning I wouldn’t have to make a dessert this evening – frequently one of my chores. Mrs Turnbull was very traditional about chores for girls. Russell had chores too, but his mostly involved helping Mr Turnbull rake leaves or chop logs for the fire.
It seemed very unfair; I was only a few hundred yards from home and had suffered nothing worse than the discovery that it was very difficult to stop your skirt riding up when you were holding a crumble when a large figure stepped out of the patch of scrubby thorn bushes and woodland that bordered the road causing me to jump and send my culinary masterpiece crashing to the ground!
“You!”
“Yeah, me. “ said Mr Tait, scumbag, pervert and worst of all, muscle for The Organisation, whose bulldog jowled face I had hoped never to see again.
“Come with me.” He gestured into the patch of wood from which he had emerged like a low rent version of Banquo’s Ghost.
“Why?” I was still shocked but not so shocked that I’d forgotten to mistrust everything this guy did and said.
“Because I got a message for you. Because I got this and because I’m telling you to, you stupid cow.”
‘This’ was a flat black box a little smaller than a man’s palm with a button on it and the sight of it told me I was beaten. All he had to do was press that button and I would be in mind-scrambling, wordless, screaming agony for as long as he chose. Silently I abandoned the sad remnants of my afternoon’s work on the pavements and followed Mr Tait into the woods –an activity any girl in her right mind would normally be well advised to avoid. Although I didn’t want to admit it, and certainly wasn’t planning to show it I was afraid. Being groped this morning had well and truly reminded me that I was vulnerable in new and different ways now that I was female.
We stopped behind a little cluster of thorn trees maybe a foot or two higher than a tall man – quite enough to hide us from the road.
“Now what do you want?” You may have twigged that Mr Tait and I did not get on. Of all The Organisation’s minions I’d met he was the only one who I had every reason to suspect did this out of choice. Everyone else I knew or suspected had been put under intolerable pressures. Tait, I was pretty sure, did this because he enjoyed tormenting people. Of course, I may have been misjudging him.
“Kneel down first, slut.” Then again, maybe I wasn’t.
“Why?”
I hit the ground shrieking before he turned the Pain off.
“That’s why.”
I struggled to my knees.
“That’s better. You look way prettier that way, bitch.”
Did I mention that when I was first captured I’d put Tait down for the count with a blow to solar plexus? Something told me he was still holding a grudge. When I’d been waiting to be ‘deflowered’ on the orders of The Organisation he’d volunteered and been prevented by one of his colleagues in a public and humiliating way. I suspected he was still holding a grudge for that as well.
“I’m not a bitch.” Risky, but Tait was making my skin crawl. I had to say something.
“Yeah, you are. You’re a bitch to me and a whore for everyone else. I know you spread your legs for Elliott.” I flushed. Technically true, though not by the choice of either of us. Geordie Elliott was as trapped by threats to his children as I was by the Pain and the new body that had been forced upon me.
“The alternative was being tortured to death. And he was still way nicer about it than you. What do you expect? Do you think I could ever like you? Just give me the damn message!”
“There is no message from The Organisation. Just one from me. You’re a whore. They’ve been too soft with you and if you don’t get put in your place you’re going to fuck this mission up. It’s time to learn that mouth of yours isn’t for speaking. You know what to do whore, so do it.” He pulled his trouser zip down.
I was trembling with fear and disgust now. I’d once been strong enough and fast enough to flatten this man but that was when I was the salesman and martial artist Adam Bell not the schoolgirl April May and worse, before I’d had the implant that meant one press of a button could render me helpless and agonised. I calculated the chances of getting to my feet and disabling him before he could press the button. On a generous estimate, no chance at all. Shuddering, I reached forward to free a thick, stubby organ from Mr Tait’s pants, opened my mouth, winced at the thought of the taste – and prepared to bite down hard!
As it happened, I was saved by a whirlwind. A furious, screaming whirlwind in the form of a thorny branch lashing directly into Mr Tait’s face again and again in a frenzy driven by the stick thin arms of – Russell.
I was being rescued by my thirteen year old foster brother and as I struggled to adjust Mr Tait fell backwards, the black box flying off into a thicket of brambles and undergrowth. The branch Russell had chosen wasn’t thick or heavy enough to deliver a knockout blow, even if it had been in stronger hands but it was well equipped with thorns and spines and spiky twigs and a length of trailing bramble caught up in it only made matters better. As Russell struck again and again with hysterical strength Mr Tait’s face was becoming invisible under scores of tiny rivulets of blood. He wasn’t going to be happy about this. If he made it up I was in real danger – and so was Russell.
I scrambled to my feet, tights torn to ribbons and grabbed Russell by his shoulders.
“Stand back, stand back, or you’ll hit me.”
That was the only thing I could think of that might cut through Russell’s berserker frenzy and it did, if only for a couple of seconds of confusion. I used those seconds to step ahead of him and balance my entire weight one legged on the narrow edge of my wedge heel, right on top of Tait’s package. I’m not sure quite what he said but I think dogs could have heard it clearly.
“Next time you call me a whore, remember you’re not even fit to be a pimp!” I spat and then turned to flee, Russell and I supporting each other.
OK, it was more him supporting me. I don’t know how that undernourished, frail body of his did it, half hysterical and exhausted by reaction as he was. Tears were pouring down both our cheeks and I had to stop to be sick before we reached the road. God knows what I looked like but for once that was the least of my problems.
Now I had to worry about Russell.
Russell had done a truly heroic thing, in the face of potential death or serious injury, this neglected, unloved child who, before the Turnbull’s had never had so much as an example of decent behaviour, never mind heroism, in his entire life
Russell deserved thanks. He deserved a medal. He deserved anything he wanted. And I was going to have to hurt him, because what he wanted was me. I was the princess of his imaginings and he’d just been a genuine White Knight and rescued me. Everyone knows what happens next. I had to nip this in the bud before his heart got broken, because I couldn’t, for a thousand reasons, starting with the fact that he was only thirteen and including the fact that if he interfered with their plans for me to seduce Vincent The Organisation wouldn’t hesitate to do to him what they had done to me. If I hadn’t been crying already, the cruelty of it would have made me weep.
“Russell!” I grasped him firmly by the shoulders and looked him in the eye. “Russell, look at me and listen. You’re a hero, Russell. That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen, so much so that I’m scared. You mustn’t ever put yourself in danger like that again.”
“April, I had to, I saw him lure you off the road when I was walking from the bus stop. I love you, April.”
“I know. And I love you too. As my foster-brother. You saved me Russell, and I’ll always love you. But as a sister. I can’t be anything else to you.”
“But-“
“I know, it’s not fair. But you’re a hero Russell. You always will be one of the good guys. In a year or two girls will be old enough to recognise that and they’ll be flocking around you. Trust me, I’m a girl, I know these things.”
Liar. You know nothing sneered my inner voice.
I know I will help Russell, whatever it takes. If that means I have to teach him the social skills to get a girlfriend his own age from scratch, I will. I’ll start by spreading rumours about how he saved me. What kind of salesman can’t sell a hero to adolescent girls?
“I love you, April!” He repeated.
“I love you too. You’re my hero Russell. My brother, who saved me. But next time, call the police before you go charging in against four times your weight.”
“I did. I called them on the cellphone Mrs Turnbull gave me for emergencies. They should be here any minute.”
Sure enough sirens could be heard in the distance. Two cars, driven fast. We hugged, and I cried again. The crew of one car went to search the woods while Russell and I staggered into the second and went home to face the music.
“Russell saved me!” were the first words out of my mouth as the police escorted us through the Turnbull’s front door, scratched, tear stained, the ragged remains of my tights falling around my ankles, so while, after the police had finished interviewing me, I had to endure long lectures on the sheer stupidity of allowing a stranger to lure me into a deserted place, Russell got the full measure of praise due to his heroism from the police and the Turnbulls both.
I had to think on my feet, mind you. Russell had seen me go with Mr Tait so I couldn’t simply claim he’d dragged me off the street. I had to tell them that he’d told me there was somebody fallen unconscious into a creek and he needed help dragging them out before they drowned. At least I got credit for being good-hearted if a bit gullible. ‘Well meaning airhead’ was the phrase I heard one of the police officers say when he thought I couldn’t hear. ‘Silly goose!’ was the one Mrs Turnbull used. I swear, who calls anyone a goose in this day and age?!
The upshot of it all was that Russell and I both got wrapped in blankets and fed hot, sweet tea and then I was sent to bed early in disgrace! Whether you count from my real age of twenty-one or my official age of seventeen that’s still bang out of order. I would have protested, but after the day I’d had I suddenly realised that a warm bed and an early night sounded like paradise. An hour later, as I sat sipping hot cocoa in my nightie, warmly surrounded by the sea of frills the Turnbulls considered suitable for a girl’s bedclothes Russell popped his head round the door.
“Can I come in?”
“Of course, come over here.” I patted the surface of the bedcovers.
“I just wanted to check how you were.” He said, perching on the edge of the bed.
“I’m perfect. Home and safe and happy, thanks to you.”
Russell coloured with pleasure and embarrassment, but looked awkward. No one had taught him how to cope with compliments. Given his family background, maybe he’d never had any.
“April, what you said earlier –“
“I can’t, Russell. I know what you’re going to ask and I can’t. Even if I could think of you like that it would simply be wrong.” On more levels than I can possibly explain.
“Besides, you aren’t going to need an old bag like me. Soon there will be plenty of girls flocking around you.” I smiled at him.
“Girls my age don’t – I – they don’t seem to talk to me much.” Russell mumbled looking down at the bedpane.
“They will. You can’t force these things or rush them, but they will, and I’ll help with tips. Consider me your spy behind girl lines.” We both smiled at that. “Now I’m going to collapse. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Goodnight April.” I kissed him on the cheek as he got up to go and he walked out of the room floating on air. Good! He’d earned it. And I’d earned sleep. After I dug my mobile out of my bag and called The Organisation. On the second ring Miss Erinye picked up.
“April.”
“Miss Erinye. I thought the Dacres wanted their property untouched. Is there something about this assignment I haven’t been told?”
“No. But you may have been told something which wasn’t true. I know Tait approached you this afternoon. I know that he has been arrested and is now whinging for me to pull strings to get him out. Now suppose you tell me what I don’t know.”
So I did.
“Very well. I will get him out.”
“What? I thought he was acting without orders, against his instructions?
“He is. That is why I am going to get him out. I can do much, much worse than the police can. Treachery is the one thing The Organisation will never tolerate.”
It’s nice to know you draw the line somewhere I thought.
“Can I ask what you’re going to do? I’d like to feel safe walking the streets?” Safe from Tait anyway, I’m starting to realise I may never feel safe walking the streets as a small girl in a short skirt. Or a short girl in a small skirt, or, oh, whatever.
“I assure you the former Mr Tait will never be seen on a street in this hemisphere again. I won’t tell you exactly what I’m going to do, because you sound tired and I don’t want to give you nightmares.” And with that she hung up. I could guess part of it by the reference to the former Mr Tait. I shuddered a little. For all the adjustments I’d managed I still wouldn’t wish this fate on my worst enemy. Which Tait probably was. Enough. Time for sleep.
As I drifted off my very last thought was to hope that tomorrow wasn’t quite as busy!