The next morning I woke up feeling terrible. I was exhausted, though I remembered sleeping well. Everything ached. I was just... done. I didn't get ready nor ring the bell for Mrs Duckworth. Maybe I could have a sick day? I didn't know if they did sick days here, but surely they must have something in place. I rolled over in bed and tried to go back to sleep.
My whole body jolted as the door opened suddenly.
"Why aren't you up?" Mrs Duckworth snapped.
"Sick," I said.
"No you're not. Get up. Now."
Dare I refuse? None of my attempts to defy Mrs Duckworth had ever gotten me anywhere but worse off. Reluctantly, I rolled out of bed. She stood over me while I got ready then marched me off to the meal hall, deposited me at the wellbeing window and left. The wellbeing window is where we started all our meals. We were given any medications we were taking, which for me meant an array of vitamins, along with a card that we presented to the meal station. The card listed dietary requirements, by which I mean The Academy controlled what and how much we ate. I'd almost missed breakfast completely, so the wellbeing window was unattended. There was a bell to ring for such occasions, but I didn't think I could stomach breakfast. I could have done with a cup of tea but I hadn't had a decent cup since I arrived; it was served lukewarm. Rumours were that it was because some girl had once attacked a teacher by flinging hot tea on them, but nobody I knew had claimed to have actually seen it happen. Some other girls were leaving the meal hall already and so I followed them out and headed to my first class.
"You look terrible." Was how David greeted me when I arrived to class.
"I feel terrible." I plonked myself down at my assigned desk.
"Tough detention?" he asked. So, he knew about that. Teachers always say they don't gossip about students in the staff room, but honestly, who believes that?
"Yeah."
"Wanna tell me about it?" I wondered how much he knew, or rather, what aspects Mr Rogers had already bragged about. But on second thoughts, I didn't really want to know the answer to that question. Nor did I particularly want to relive yesterday.
"Don't you know already? Aren't you all omniscient and stuff?" To this David chuckled.
"Of course," he said, "But it will do you good to talk about it."
I tried to keep it brief, but he kept pressing for more and more detail. He seemed very interested about my time on the cross and what the young men had done to me, but not so interested in the men themselves.
"Do you know where they might have come from?" I asked, hoping I wasn't being too obvious in trying to find out more about my location.
"Sure," he replied, "and then what happened?" Well, I'd tried.
When it came to my time in Mr Roger's office, however, he didn't want detail at all and encouraged me to just summarise what I'd done.
"You don't want to hear about this bit?" I asked.
"Meh." David shrugged. "Too many sausages, not enough buns."
"What?"
"You know...
sausages
... like a penis? And
buns
, well, in this case only one--"
"No, I get that part. But the
sausage
to
bun
ratio didn't really change that much. What, three
sausages
and one
bun
is fine, but a fourth is a no-go?" David laughed.
"No, love."
"Then what? So what's the ideal ratio?"
"Well, for me, one sausage and lots of buns." He giggled rather shyly, "The one sausage being mine."
"Yeah, I figured."
"Heh. You don't approve?"
"Well... not that I don't approve, just, that's a little, I don't know..." I paused, wondering if I should continue down this line. But what the hell. "Selfish."
"Selfish? How?"
"Ok, so a man has one... um... penis, right?"
"Most do--"
"And don't you dare say you're God and have fifty billion penises or two of them or whatever. Just one." David cracked up laughing at this and I waited a moment for him to quiet so I could continue. "So a man can please, like, one woman, because he has just one penis. But a woman, well, she's got--"
"One pussy?"
"No, I mean, yes, but there's other... well, other holes. You know."
"Like the shitty one." David nodded like he was agreeing, but I felt he was teasing me somehow.
"Yes, or her mouth. So a woman can have, like, two or three penises in her, so she can please two or three men at once."
"I see." I felt he didn't.
"What I'm saying is, one woman can pleasure lots of men, but one man can't pleasure lots of women."
"I see. Very wise."
"Yeah, well, more