The Academy Ch. 08

Each lap I did I looked up at her, but she didn't look back at me or anyone else. She did not take her eyes off Mr Lawrence, glaring fiercely at him with a look of determination on her face. Every lap was the same and with each lap, my admiration for her grew.

Huyen could already speak French, so she was assigned to Mandarin with me. This should have been next period, but with David away we joined another class for beauty with Mrs Lane. Today we were doing manicures and Huyen and I paired together. It gave us a chance to talk some. During that lesson and the rest of the day, I learnt about her in bits and pieces. Focusing on her story gave me something to occupy my mind other than David. Huyen was twenty-two and had been born in Vietnam.

"Do you speak Vietnamese?" I asked.

"I grew up with it, but I'm very out of practice, do you?"

"Not a word, but our Mandarin teacher does." I shouldn't have brought David up, now she'd ask me what he was like and what would I say? I couldn't tell her the truth, for a start I couldn't explain a relationship I didn't understand myself. For a second "Welcome to sex slave school, sorry you don't want to be here but I'm fucking our teacher" wasn't the best way to make friends with a new classmate. But she didn't ask about him.

Her mother had died when she was young, that was something we had in common. Ordinarily, that would be a strange coincidence, but to spirit away girls like the academy did they had to choose ones who people were unlikely to go looking for. Huyen's father was French, so he'd moved back home with her.

"Which is how you speak French?" I asked. She nodded.

"Did your father sell you then?" I asked.

"Hardly," she told me of how she, her father and her grandmother had been in a car accident when she was fifteen. Huyen had been the only one wearing her seatbelt, and the only one to walk away alive. A custody battle had followed, with various distant relations interested in the impressionable young teenager who had just inherited a substantial trust fund.

"But I wasn't an impressionable young teenager," she said. "And I didn't trust any of them, so I ran away and I never stopped."

"So who you think sold you then?"

"No one I can think of, mainly because I haven't had any contact with any of my family in years. To my knowledge, no one knows where I am. I've been a nomad, a free spirit never staying in one place long enough to make enemies. Why do you think someone sold me?"

"That's how everyone else got here. Someone must have sold you."

"That doesn't make sense. Why buy what you can take for free?" I didn't have a good answer for that. "How do you know you were sold? Does your stepmother even care about you enough to raise a fuss if you go missing? Does she even need hush money?" Ouch.

"I was told on my first day that the academy paid a large amount for me."

"Maybe they lied?"

"I don't think so, I mean, I wasn't told it to me directly, it was a conversation between the headmaster and Mrs Duckworth."

"Same answer. This place will be playing mind games to break you and make you compliant. Trust nobody."

Huyen was still naked at breakfast the next morning. After taking her vitamins she picked at her food and rejected attempts at conversation. After breakfast the rest of the class had French so we parted ways, heading to deportment aka how to walk in stupidly high heels and look sexy rather than idiotic. We passed the toilets on the way and Huyen nodded with her head, indicating she wanted to go.

"Be quick," I said, following her in. The toilets were empty, and she made her way to the first stall, and without bothering to close the door she bent over the toilet and spat. I heard a little ping ping ping as the sound of something small and hard hit the side of the toilet bowl.

"You spitting out teeth?"

"No, whatever those drugs were." She flushed and then came out of the stall. "Had them hidden in my mouth." She turned the tap on and bent over the sink, filling her mouth with water and rising it out.

"They're just vitamins."

"You believe that?" Well, I had. But they weren't just vitamins. Mine also contained a contraceptive pill. If they'd been sneaking me contraceptives, what else had they been sneaking me?

"Let's get to class." I said; I didn't want to try and answer her question right now. "One thing you can trust us you do not want to be late in this place.

After deportment we had my least favourite class. This was Huyens first class with Mr Rogers and it looked like he was viewing her as fresh meat. After the dildos were issued Huyen refused to practice with hers and sat doodling in her exercise book.

"Think you know all there is to know about sucking cock?"

"I think I'm good enough that sucking a lump of plastic won't improve it."

"Well, let's see how you do with a real one. Pop quiz time." Mr Rogers gave his slimy smile and then ordered Huyen up to the front. She stood up, slipping her pen into her skirt by hooking the clip over the waistband then walked confidently up to him. He unzipped his trousers and Huyen looked down.

"You call that a real one?" she said. I successfully muffled my snort of laughter, but I felt a ripple of something through the classroom as some did the same and others shifted uncomfortably.

"Kneel," Mr Rogers ordered.

"I'm not putting that thing in my mouth, it looks nasty." Mr Rogers grasped her shoulders and forced her to the ground. But she wouldn't open her mouth. He even tried pinching her nose, but to no avail.

"Last chance," he warned her.

"You put that thing in my mouth and I'll bite it off." She spat.

"Nooo..." Jennifer softly whispered beside me.

"You asked for it." Mr Rogers said. He grabbed her arms and dragged her to his desk, then all but threw her on it so she was lying on her back, legs spread. He held her down by her hips and pressed his body forward.

He was going to rape her. In front of us. I couldn't watch and looked away.

There was a blood-curdling scream. High pitched, but not the voice of a young woman. My eyes snapped back to the desk where Mr Rogers stood, staggering back from the desk, his hand clasped to his face. Blood ran through his fingers and down his face and the pen Huyen had slipped into her skirt now protruded from his eye.

Two guards were there in moments, one grabbing Mr Rogers and the other one tasering Huyen as she sat on the desk calmly watching Mr Rogers stagger in agony. Then more guards entered. Two whisked Mr Rogers out of the room and another two dragged Huyen.

"That was all my dreams come true," Natalie said softly.

"No it's not," Jenifer said, "Mr Rogers can be replaced by someone who is just as bad or worse. Who knows what they'll do to that girl. And mark my words, none of us will be allowed a pen again." Huyen... would she be okay?

"Silence!" ordered one of the remaining guards. We obeyed. More guards entered. One by one we were escorted by two guards each back to our rooms. Once in my little dorm room, I sat on my bed. Guilt. I was feeling pangs of guilt. Like somehow I was somewhat responsible for Huyen's actions, like I should have warned her or coerced her compliance. Dick Rogers getting stabbed in the eye was the best thing that could ever happen to him, short of getting his dick bitten off, but whatever they would do to Huyen to punish her might be a price too high to pay.

My door flew open and my head snapped towards it. Mrs Duckworth stood there flanked by two guards.

"Strip," She said.

"What's happening?" I asked as one of the guards came in and put an empty cardboard box on the bed.

"We're removing everything potentially dangerous," She said.

"Like my clothes?"

"Are you going to put up a fuss?" well, I knew how that ended. So I stripped and dumped my clothing in the cardboard box as indicated. One of the guards kept an eye on me while the other and Mrs Duckworth went through my room. All my spare clothes, in the box. My books, notepads, pens and so forth, in the box. Pillow, bedsheets, in the box. Everything in the bathroom except for toilet paper, in the box. They did replace my towels with one very small towel, barely large enough to dry my hair and they replaced my liquid handwash with a small bar of soap. Mrs Duckworth started on my bedside table.

"Where did you get this?" she asked, holding up the vibrator.

"Um..." I felt warmth rising to my face.

"Speak, girl."

"Sòng lǎo shī, that is, my Mandarin teacher, he gave it to me. He had, uh, reasons..."

"Oh I'm sure he did," Mrs Duckworth said. I couldn't quite pick if her tone was disapproving or not.

"Who?" one of the guards asked.

"She means Mr Sòng." Mrs Duckworth said. "If he gave it to her, I'm not sure if we should take it."

"You never know with him," the guard agreed. "Can you check?"

"No," Mrs Duckworth shook her head, "He's already on his way to the airport and he'll have more important things to worry about before his flight back."

The way they were talking about David caused little flickers of unease to dance about my belly and chest. Of course, like his father, he would also be Mr Sòng, in English, but there was no distinction over which Mr Sòng they were speaking of.

"Show me that cord." The guard gestured to the charging cord and Mrs Duckworth handed it over. It was ten centimetres long, if that. Not even long enough to reach the charging port on the wall above the nightstand without having the balance the vibrator on something higher.

"Mrs Duckworth," I said. "It was the Mr Sòng who's my Mandarin teacher," I said.

"I know he's teaching you," she answered. "First time he's ever done that in a long time, not since the old days when this place was new and they were still finding teachers."

"Okay... just..." I tried to think of a way to ask which was subtle.

"I think we leave it," The guard said, "it's really too small for a girl like that to use it to strangle anyone. Ask Mr Sòng on his return, if he wants it gone we'll remove it." He passed the charging cord back to Mrs Duckworth who placed it back on my nightstand. She must have noticed me squirming a little uncomfortably because she sighed.

"Just spit it out girl, what is it?"

"Just, my Mandarin teacher..."

"Yes?"

"He's, I mean..." I had nothing to do but spit it out. What's the worst thing that could happen from a question? "He's the son of the owner, right? I mean, his father owns... own this," I gestured my hand around.

"His father? I don't even know if he has a father. Well, he must have at some stage, but I've never known him."

"But... then there's only one Mr Sòng?"

"And thank goodness for that! One of him's more than enough. What did you think there were two of them for?"

"No, never mind, I just got confused about something." Mrs Duckworth gave another little sigh and shook her head. They did one last sweep of the room and took the box with them when they left.

I stood there. Naked. Almost all my meager possessions gone. All the thoughts which had been chasing around my head about Mr Rogers and Huyen and been chased from my head by one overbearing thought.

David. Mr Sòng the owner. They were one and the same

David was the man who my classmates referred to as sick. Twisted. Perverted. Inhuman. He owned this place; how could he possibly be on my side, my ally? He's the one who bought me in the first place! And the one who insisted I remain a virgin. For what? For him to deflower.

I like being first. he'd said to me once.

That fucking bastard.