All The Way In

"So I'm in charge on this floor, Mrs Julian is upstairs with most of the girls. Lights out at ten. It's eight now, so that gives you two hours to watch TV, unpack, work on your skits and packets, whatever. You can watch TV, but if you try to unlock the pay-per-view, Mr Bourne will suspend you when you get back. Understood?" She looked hard at both of us, and got nods in return. "Jeff?" A strangled affirmation came from beyond the bathroom door. "Excellent. Mrs Julian and I know what the pay-per-view is for."

She crossed nimbly toward the mini-fridge, stepping over our bags, and opened the door. I saw her finger bob several times as she counted the little bottles in there. "Missing bottles on Monday morning? Also a suspension." She wrinkled her forehead, trying to think whether she'd missed anything, then flashed her usual bubbly grin. "I think that's it. We'll peek in to do a bed check sometime after ten, so we only want to see three male heads on those pillows. Right?" Jeff flushed. "We might even be in here more than once, to keep you people honest!"

I blanched. She was going to peek in on us sleeping? The idea was vaguely arousing. When I glanced over at Ryan he was grinning slyly, as if he wanted to make some kind of joke about female heads under comforters, but thank God he chose to keep his trap shut. Ms Dubinsky stood there, her pretty nose wrinkled, looking off into the distance. "What stinks in here?" she asked us finally, standing right over Ryan's lacrosse bag.

Ryan giggled, and around that time the bathroom door opened and Jeff walked out, looking uncomfortable. "Um, Ms Dubinsky, what about my cot?"

She checked her clipboard. "Manager's sending it up soon. If it's not here by 9:30, call me in Room 118." She wrinkled her nose again and glared at Jeff. "Jeff, really? What did you eat?"

"What?" Jeff's face flushed scarlet.

"Forget it. Mrs Julian or I better see you guys at after ten." She flashed us each another of her effortlessly radiant smiles, and then she was out the door.

* * *

I couldn't sleep, and as the clock marched past 10:30 I could feel myself getting tense. Jeff lay snoring on his cot in the corner by the TV. Ryan, who had disappeared between 9:00 and 9:59 and come back smelling like Leah's hair, was similarly exhausted.

I was almost asleep myself, finally, when the lock clicked shortly before eleven. I saw the crack of light around the door. It eased open slowly, my eyes slitting into something that looked an awful lot like sleep, but I was still watching with bated breath as Bretta Dubinsky stole into my hotel room.

The door closed with a vague little click, Ms D clearly making an effort not to disturb us, but the brief flare of light from the hallway had been enough to show me a fleeting glimpse of running shorts and a cut-off sweatshirt. She tiptoed into the room, her hair up in a messy bun, and leaned over toward us as she squinted, making sure she saw three heads and no long hair, and then she was gone; I saw her body one more time, silhouetted against the hallway light, her bare legs gleaming, and then the door closed.

There was nothing for it. I whacked off furiously in the bathroom.

* * *

When the bus left the next day for the Polar Dip, it carried a bunch of nervous kids who weren't from New England. Hence, the nervousness.

A dusting of snow had fallen the night before. My dad had taken us to the mountains once when I was ten, but other than that I'd never seen snow. I stared out at it as the bus trundled toward the beach, lost in thought, worried about how this was going to go. I had my board shorts on under a pair of tracksuit bottoms, and the post-lunch chill in the air after a morning of overly peppy StuGov workshops had been hard to deal with.

"So, like, why are we doing this again?" Jeff was feeling glum. He most decidedly did not want to go into the ocean today.

I shrugged. "I guess it's a popular fundraiser up here. A lot of schools and stuff do it, the organizers said." I glanced over at him. "Dude, you know you shouldn't go in there in pants, right? Then, you'll just come out wearing wet clothes."

"I don't care." Jeff was convinced pneumonia was in his future. "I'm fucking freezing. I'm not taking anything off until I get back into a heated room." I shook my head; the kid was crazy, then. He'd freeze after he got out. Me, I planned to go in nothing but my shorts, so that I'd have something dry to put on afterward. "They say they'll have blankets there, anyway," he sulked.

I looked back out the window. The Georgia kids were in the back; they didn't live near the ocean, so they were busy gabbling excitedly about waves and sand, but to me the beach looked just like a rockier version of what we had back home. Ahead of us, the first bus was pulling in; the moment of reckoning had arrived.

I saw frizzy hair bob a couple of rows ahead of me as Mrs Julian told Ms Dubinsky to get up and give us a pep talk. She was more than equal to the task, for it seemed she was coming into the water with us after all. "Listen up, Seaborne kids!" she called loudly, looking exhilarated. "Everyone goes in! I want to see water up to your thighs at least!" She glanced out the window. "Here's the plan. We all line up holding hands, and we charge into that freaking water together! No fear!"

Tracey was glancing back at all of us, her eyes shining. The Georgia kids seemed uninterested. "No fear!" Tracey hollered. "I'm going all the way in! Who's with me?"

All the way? Her? Not a chance; she was a pencil. The cold would kill her, literally. She still got a rousing response, though, the kids around me all drunk on bravery they hadn't yet been called on to show. Even the Georgians seemed to like her, and we all trooped off the bus, chanting "No fear! No fear!" like a battalion of Celts getting ready to charge the Romans. I was last off, my lesson learned after that long, humiliating wait in the airplane aisle, sighing to my feet behind a Jeff who looked almost too morose for words.

Ms Dubinsky leaned casually against the front seat of the bus, checking people off as they went charging by. She shook her head at the sluggish Jeff, then caught my eye with a wink. "He looks like he's about to go face a firing squad," she observed, checking my name with a flourish. I stopped and gestured at her to go ahead, and she grinned. "My! Aren't you a gentleman!" I followed, shaking my head along with her, and we walked together onto the snowy sand behind the yapping crowd.

"Are you, uh, going to follow Tracey's advice?" I asked her shyly, mostly because the silence felt awkward. "You going all the way in?"

She glanced up at me. "Are you?"

"I will if she does," I said, and I forced a smile that, amazingly, Ms D returned with her usual dimpled warmth.

"So, no." We laughed, the snow-dusted sand already sneaking into our shoes. "Tell you what, Toddster," she went on, looking out to sea, "I will if you do."

"Well!" We passed a long folding table where the college kids had put an insulated cooler full of hot chocolate, Ben among them looking bored. "In that case, I guess I'll hold you to that, Ms D." Kids ahead of us were stripping off their sweats and shirts, leaving them piled on towels and blankets, talking far too loudly to cover their nerves. "Do we raise any more money if we get our hair wet?"

"No," she shrugged, "but we get bragging rights, like if we go in further than anyone else." She looked sideways at me. "As short as I am, I'll probably drown."

The reply came rolling out without me even thinking about it. "I'd save you, Ms D." Fuck me! Had I said that? She'd think I was a creep! "I mean, that is..."

"I believe you, Toddster," she replied simply, with another of those full-dimple grins, and suddenly we were in the thick of the crowd, where the sand grew firm and wet, and there was nothing in front of us but the cold, grey waves. "Come on. Let's get this overwith!"

Ryan, next to me, was already in nothing but a pair of shorts, pretending he wasn't freezing his nads off; who the fuck was he trying to impress? He already had a girlfriend. I looked around and realized that many other kids, especially the ones from the South, were following Jeff's lead and leaving on as much clothing as they could get away with. In the distance, safe from the water, a local TV crew watched in bored disbelief.

I ripped my shirt self-consciously off, then glanced around to be stupefied by the sight of Ms Dubinsky, carefully peeling her yoga pants off her legs. I'd seen those legs before, running or under skirts or last night, by the slivered light from the hotel hallway, but these legs failed to stop until they reached the blue one-piece she had on, her thighs and hips sleek and well-defined, the swimsuit leaving nothing to my fevered imagination.

Shit. She was luscious. I stared hard at her, knowing she'd eventually turn my way and that I'd need to pretend like I'd seen nothing, but holy shit. Her ass was flat, but who cared? It was Bretta Dubinsky's ass! Above that her waist closed in tightly, with nothing at her belly but flat, well-worked abs, toned by what must have been hours in the gym. Her boobs were not massive, but they were perfect anyway. Her skin was already red and blotchy from the cold, but I couldn't have cared less. She was less than two feet away from me, both of us surrounded by cold and hyperactive flesh, the chatter rising to a crescendo as Tracey and the main Georgia girl and the rest of the Executive Board, all girls, all in their briefest possible swimsuits, grabbed a bullhorn and started getting this rabble into some kind of order.

Abruptly, I found my left hand being grabbed by cold, strong fingers. "Hold hands!" people were yelling, laughing, and with a flush of confusion it slowly dawned on me who it was holding my hand.

Ms Dubinsky, of course.

I fumbled on my other side for Leah, her face shining up at me from where she stood shivering next to her boyfriend, but I was busy staring loose-jawed at where Ms D's hair crackled beside my face. Shit. I had it bad. Really bad. She shuffled her bare feet in the frozen sand, bouncing up and down like a boxer about to unleash herself, her whole body taut, and I swallowed as I forced myself to look away.

"On your marks!" A roar from the Executive Board people, clustered before us in cheerleader poses, asses outthrust with the bullhorn no longer needed. Both hands tightened on mine, and I felt my throat tighten.

"Get set!" Ms Dubinsky turned toward me, her eyes massive without her glasses, pink with excitement and cold.

"All the way in, Toddster!" On her other side was Kaylen Taylor, her mouth a wide black O, screaming. "Let's go."

"Sure!" I replied lamely, unable to process any of this; it was happening so quickly, and I didn't even hear anyone call "Go!" before the whole line was surging forward, mouths wide open, arms straining from the pressure of each others' fingers as we sprinted for the sea.

The waves surged, in and out, like foamy grey rolling pins flecked with seaweed, and between the ominous-looking water and the gritty snow on the sand under my feet, I couldn't help but wonder what the fuck I was doing here.

Ah, but then I felt the chilly fingers gripping my left hand, and I glanced that way to see the woman in the blue swimsuit, and I knew. And before I could even think rationally, the shouts and yells were erupting into a vast, percussive gasp as our feet and ankles hit the cold water, and then our knees, and the line disintegrated like a riot before a police line as kids stepped high or fell over or stopped short or just stood there, bouncing in the shallows.

But not Ms D and I. She was pulling me in, and when she looked back at me I saw gritted teeth and narrowed eyes, and I felt Leah slip out of my grasp as I went with her. She'd left Kaylen far behind, but on the far side I saw scattered groups of kids still plodding forward toward the rollers. I blew out a harsh, sharp exhale and followed the blue swimsuit, and the water hit my abs and holy shit, Ryan had been right: my goolies suddenly felt like they'd been kicked, hard, straight up into my body.

"Jesus," I gasped, but then the wave hit and Ms Dubinsky was flying back, barreling into me. Instinctively I grabbed for her, my hands grabbing whatever they could, and as I tumbled to the seafloor she was straight on top of me with her hand fumbling down, panicked, to gain leverage. It was the shock of my life when I realized where that chilly and ended up: straight in my lap, directly on top of my tortured balls, and for a moment time stopped, my world all silence and bubbles and ice and the flailing teacher on top of me.

"Fuck!" I heard her grunt as the water raced back out, leaving her perched in my lap with her mouth and eyes wide, her wild hair raining salt water. She glared at me wildly, blinking the water out, but I could see over her shoulder as another wave was already gathering itself, and still her little hand was shoved into my lap. I glanced down, stupidly, and then so did she, and we both twitched to our feet coughing.

"Come on," I called, and I headed back toward the sand like a refugee, her frozen fingers gripping at my upper arm as we tumbled up out of the water. We were the last two out, it looked like. I heard heaving, gasping, spluttering, and I realized it was me, and suddenly it was freezing, colder in the open air than it had been in the water.

"Fuck," Ms D said again, quieter, and we stopped right where the sand began to get loose. She turned toward me with her hair all over her face, her mouth a wide-open grin. "That was fucking amazing!" Then she clamped her hand over her mouth. "Sorry!"

"That's okay." My teeth were a pair of castanets, and it wasn't Ms Dubinsky's face I was looking at. Her swimsuit was vacuum-formed to her body, every part of her sleek and shiny, and suddenly she had a pair of nipples that must have stuck out half an inch into the sky-blue lycra. "You all right?"

"Yup." She seemed curiously subdued all of a sudden, her eyes drifting lower, down past where my chest hair was just starting to wisp out near my nipples and under my belly button, and I saw her little pink tongue come slipping out to collect the salt water from her lips. "I'm fine." I got a sudden urge to hug her, but then she was dragging her eyes back up to my face and there was something new in her eyes as she winked. "Nice job, Todd-o."

"Toddster," I corrected automatically, but then the dimples were back and she was turning away, sauntering, shivering, yelling for Tracey, and I was left gulping in great gusts of frigid air. Someone spoke beside me, and I blinked myself back into consciousness. "What?"

Leah stood there in a long fluffy towel, shaking and smirking. She gave a harsh snort. "Most guys get smaller in cold water," she observed smugly. "You're, uh, not."

I looked down, horrified to see that she was right: my cock crossed my upper thigh like a fat cucumber, plain to see in the soaked board shorts. "Jesus! I'm sorry!" I scrambled for a blanket, but Leah just shrugged.

"Sorry for what? Why should I be offended if a guy gets a hard-on around me?" She shook her head sadly. "It's no big mystery why you can't keep a girlfriend, Todd. You clearly have no understanding of girls. Besides," she added meaningfully, nodding sideways at Ms Dubinsky's retreating back, "I'm pretty sure I'm not the one you're popping for." She waggled her eyebrows. "Right?"

I looked in disbelief at my growing erection, then at that slim freckled back with its blue swimsuit. When I finally looked at Leah, she was unsuccessfully hiding a grin. "You can't tell anyone, Leah."

She giggled. "Who would I tell, Todd?" She batted her eyelashes, then looked around until she saw her boyfriend. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go warm up with Ryan. You, uh, have fun." She winked. "Alone."

I shook my head after her, wrapping myself up like a burrito. Fucking Leah. She was a great girl, and pretty sexy, but I'd been friends with her since forever and she was Ryan's girl, so I always found her a little intimidating. I watched now as she disappeared into Brett's towel, giggling as he wrapped her up; no doubt what was going on under there.

* * *

I collapsed into my seat on the bus, a different one than before, still tubed into the blanket; I was far too cold to unwrap and put my clothes back on. I closed my eyes and rested my soaked hair against the back of the seat, listening vaguely to the blessed roar of the bus heater as the driver just sat in front of me and leered at all the girls coming aboard. There were still seats all over the place, so it surprised me when Ms Dubinsky stopped at my row. "Seat taken?" she asked lightly in her jacket, water soaking through her yoga pants.

"Uh, no! Please," I insisted, nodding down at the aisle seat. She smiled at me as she sat.

"Not going to put your shirt back on, huh tough guy?" She wasn't mocking me, though; just making conversation, and she accepted my shy smile as a reply. "You're okay, right?"

"Absolutely." Amazingly, she seemed to want to talk to me. I searched for something to say. "Thanks for, uh, inspiring me. You know, to go all the way in."

"Oh!" The dimples deepened. "It was my pleasure, Toddster." Then she looked away for a moment, her voice losing a bit of its usual verve. "Um, but I did want to apologize," she told me, her voice very low. I had to lean in to hear her, flinching as her freezing wet hair touched my face. She looked around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping. "I didn't mean to, you know... touch you. When I fell." Her eyes were still huge; she looked so very, very different without her glasses. "Shouldn't have dropped an F-bomb, either."

I must have blushed; in any case, my face felt warm. "Oh, no no, Ms D," I protested, holding my hands up. Like I was surrendering. "I'm the one who's sorry." I cut it off immediately, furious with myself for even opening my mouth. I'd been about to apologize for staring at her tits, which of course I couldn't do. She looked at me quizzically.

"For what?" Shit. She wasn't letting me off the hook.

"Uh, falling."

She raised one eyebrow, realizing it was bullshit. "Underneath me? That's hardly something to apologize for." Suddenly I realized she was looking at my chest. There was a weird pause while I moved the blanket up onto my shoulder, as surreptitiously as I could, and then she was speaking again. "Really. You should put a shirt on. You'll catch cold."

"Uh, okay." I obeyed. She looked away, chatting with someone across the aisle, but there was a weird feeling now; all I was doing was putting on a shirt, but it seemed almost... well, intimate, doing it with her right next to me. Weird. I felt very nervous.

* * *

But as awkward as things had gotten at the Dip, and then on the bus ride, they got a whole lot worse before dinner that evening.

I'm not going to blame Jeff. Really, truly, I'm not. Sure, he'd done three monster shits in the hotel bathroom, but he claimed it was just the plane ride. Plus, when the hotel manager came up later to investigate, he tried to assure us they'd had a problem like that before, that it was something to do with the slope of the ground outside, and that it couldn't possibly have been caused by just one person shitting.

But regardless of the cause, the effect was a sickly smell of raw sewage in our room, a tidal wave of disgust wafting faintly out into the hall even before we were able to put our keycards in the door. We'd been driven back by the stench; Leah, moving with us, had vomited right there in the trash can in the hallway, and as soon as Mrs Julian had been informed, she exploded at the staff.