Raven did not live up to her name.
Picture someone with that title and you'd probably imagine black hair, maybe with some purple streaks, dark clothes, dark eyeliner, and a generally piercing look. You probably wouldn't imagine who actually stood in front of you -- a petite, nervous girl with a face full of freckles and messy ginger hair which wouldn't behave no matter how much it might be combed and straightened. Nor would you expect that your mental image of t-shirts with rock band logos and black jeans with shredded fabrics to be replaced by the denim dungarees of a farmer's daughter. But that was who she was.
There was another thing about Raven which didn't match her namesake, though -- she wasn't proving very good at problem-solving. And that, in itself, was quite a problem, because of where she was.
Whitehead Academy, an esteemed institution for science, technology, engineering, and maths in Bedfordshire, was nestled deep into the green utopia of the Chiltern Hills. Named for Sir George Whitehead, the 16th Century cleric who founded the school from his riches transporting slaves across the Atlantic (the school didn't tend to advertise that fact), it wasn't the only place in the country which could get you into places like NASA or Apple but it was the only place which could guarantee it. Raven had nearly screamed the house down when her acceptance letter arrived. Here, on one piece of paper, was a ticket to anywhere in the world. Four years of tutelage under the finest experts you could find and then she could be at CERN, where she belonged, developing fusion power and saving the world as a consequence.
But before she could save the world, Raven had a problem to solve. And she saw no way to do it.
Molly, her new roommate, curvy with olive skin and frizzy hair and never out of her blue pyjamas, was stood against the kitchenette wall with arms crossed and occasionally blowing her gum into a little pink ball, regarding Raven with some amusement.
"You've got to be kidding," Raven was mumbling.
"I'm not," said Molly.
"Why wouldn't they put that in the letter?"
"Well," chuckled Molly, "it'd probably be a bit of a downer: 'Dear student, congrats on making it into the most prestigious science academy in the country. By the way, on your first day you've gotta strip butt naked for us and get examined.' No wonder it's kept on the website."
"Where I never saw it," said Raven, mournfully. "I've gotta find a way out of this."
"Well, there isn't one," Molly replied. "Sorry. You can't get validated as a student without it -- something about the Biology Department needing the data and how you signed away your rights to bodily autonomy when you joined. Not the exact wording but that's what they mean."
"I'll never skim-read the terms and conditions again," mumbled Raven. "I'm really gonna have to do this, aren't I?"
"Yeah, guess you are. It's really not that bad."
"No?"
"Nah -- they'll put you with a female medical student and I'm sure she'll be perfectly nice. Mine was. Ran into her at the pub a week later and she bought me a cider. Her way of apologising for putting a rod up my ass." Raven stared at Molly.
"You can't possibly think that's making me feel better." Her roommate just blew another pink bubble -- Raven flinched when it popped.
So it was that, plastic ID swinging in its lanyard from her neck and dressed as always in denim dungarees with a red-black striped shirt beneath, with her morning classes over and her afternoon ones immediately after whatever ordeal this would prove to be, Raven trudged across campus with her eyes on her shoes and towards the Biology Department. It was a glittering cube of glass, probably reflecting the Sun so dramatically that the shimmer could be seen from space, and became quite a foreboding picture as Raven approached. She felt a sticky sheen of sweat on her back as she went through the automatic doors and, every now and then, Molly's words reverberated in her mind: "Her way of apologising for putting a rod up my ass." Would Raven really have to go through the same thing? Was that seriously the price of Whitehead Academy?
Raven stepped into the chilly, aid-conditioned reception area and approached the desk. A bored looking bald man looked up at her.
"Hello?" he asked, gruffly.
"Erm, hi, I've got an appointment today?" she asked, trying her damnedest not to stutter. "My name's Raven Smith?"
"One second." After a bit of clicking at his desktop, the man looked back up at her, his face just a little brighter.
"He knows," Raven thought. "He knows what's gonna happen to me. Oh, God, what is he's the one doing it?!"
"You're in Room 2-13," the man said, instead. "Up the stairs to the second floor, then follow the signs. You'll be with Freya, it says here."
"Okay, thanks!" squeaked Raven, hurrying past the desk and through the double-doors into the stairway, glad to be beyond his eyes. With every step up the stairs, students and academics passing by in such numbers that she felt pleasantly anonymised, Raven's body was consumed by anxiety. She'd had sex a couple of times, sure, but that had been under blankets in the dark. Nobody had ever seen her naked -- at least not since she was a small child -- and now she had to change that to stay at the school of her dreams? A sense of injustice burned inside her.
Reaching the second floor, Raven followed the signs as instructed until she found a wooden door with '2-13' written on it. Unsure if she was meant to knock or just walk in, Raven chose the former. After all, maybe another student was having their examination and the absolute last thing either of them needed was for Raven to burst in.
The door opened at Raven's knocks -- there stood a young woman, maybe just a few years older than Raven, dressed in white lab coat over a fuzzy yellow sweater and jeans, her blonde hair long and curly and her face pale but kind, with crinkles around her bright blue eyes.
"Hi!" she said. "Raven?"
"That's me," Raven mumbled back.
"I'm Freya," the woman replied, offering her hand, and Raven meekly shook it. "Come in, come in."
"Thanks." As Freya stepped aside, so did Raven step inside into what seemed much like a doctor's office. There was a white examination table against the wall, a desk in the corner with several desktop computers, an overloaded bookcase, and a few medical-themed posters. It was all very disconcerting -- and, suddenly, very real. Raven became acutely aware that, if Molly's story was anything to go by, she'd soon be stood here stark naked with Freya's eyes, and maybe hands, all over her. Her brain whirred through a rapid-fire analysis of every inch of herself -- would Freya find her breasts too small, her tummy too flabby, her butt too big, her vulva somehow broken? She didn't even really know what would happen once her clothes came off and she didn't want to ask in case, somehow, they didn't need to and this time round Freya just wanted to get a look at her tongue.
Freya, who had walked past Raven and now stood in front of her computer, tapping something out, glanced up.
"Everything okay?" she asked.
"Bit nervous," Raven mumbled, her arms crossed and legs pressed together, struggling to maintain eye contact.
"That's perfectly understandable," Freya said, with a smile that would have seemed motherly were she older. "I remember how I felt when I had my exam when I first started. But it's really not a big deal. Every student does it."
"So I've heard," said Raven, quietly.
