The day after the lakefront etiquette lessons, Robin left the dining hall early during breakfast, something she almost never did. She moved resolutely, as someone might if they felt they had already delayed something too long, perhaps through no fault of their own.

Her path took her to the headmistress’ office. Headmistress Gunderman did not often eat with the students, but it had still become common knowledge that she had finished eating and settled at her desk well before the first scheduled classes of the day.

The same, it turned out, wasn’t true for her receptionist. Robin hesitated - interrupting someone more important than her didn’t really feel like it fitted the Northrop way - but it was too important to leave any longer. She knocked on the door.

The quiet in the room seemed somehow to intensify for a moment. A few moments later, she heard Gunderman call “Enter.”

Robin pushed open the heavy door and stepped inside. Her footsteps took her, almost automatically, to the circular rug between the two guest chairs, where she took up position standing.

From one side of the room she heard a click, as of a wooden door fully closing. It was not a side of the room that held any doors, though, so it must have been something else; perhaps a trunk or something else with a heavy lid, closing slowly on oiled rails after recent use.

“Well, Miss Kilner,” Gunderman said, leaning forward across the desk and clasping her hands. “What seems to be the trouble?”

Robin took a deep breath. “I don’t like to speak badly of people, Headmistress,” she said. “And it’s not ladylike to tell tales out of turn.”

“Of course.” Her attention had sharpened on Robin. Was this something that she expected once or twice across a year, then?

“It’s Angelica Thornhill,” Robin said.

“What is?”

“Well, nothing I can pinpoint, exactly,” she said. “But I don’t…” She slumped, her breath hissing out of her in frustration. She keeps saying wrong things was what she wanted to say, but it sounded too weak. The words were important enough - terrible things for someone to say, in fact - but the accusation sounded flat. “She doesn’t seem to have the school spirit,” she finished instead. It felt lame.

“Really?” Headmistress Gunderman drummed her fingers on the desk, frowning thoughtfully. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll deal with this.”

Robin felt lighter suddenly. She hadn’t realised how true it was that burdens could weigh on you physically until, with that moment past, she felt it lift. She smiled warmly. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s been tiresome.” And once she had said so, she knew that this was exactly the right word for Angie’s behaviour.

“Is there anything else?”

“No, ma’am,” Robin said. “Thank you for your time.”

Gunderman nodded approvingly. Robin smiled, turned, and left. The problem was no longer hers. She could focus on her studies once again.

*

By the end of the first semester, Robin was beginning to understand why Jocelyn Russell had laid stress on accomplishment and how the Northrop Finishing School could contribute to it. Some of her fellow students had clearly been accomplished already, having embarked on careers of one sort or another. A couple of others came from wealth. Most, like Robin, had seen Northrop as an alternative to college.

“I didn’t know what I was getting into,” as Eva had said one night. “But I knew what college was going to be, and I knew what the opportunities near me were without either. I chose Northrop because of the possibility it would be better.”

Robin understood now how much better it was, and how lucky she was to have the opportunity. Only fifty spaces were available in any class; someone, she thought Romi, had mentioned hearing about a sister school somewhere deep in rural France, but if so it was presumably of a similar size.

She also understood now why the sophomores and the upperclasswomen (although only half of those still seemed to be around) had walked differently than they had been taught in deportment.

A week before the end of the semester, Madame Meredith had provided the exemplars (as Robin and the other more successful students were now referred to) with a small but prettily decorated cardboard box each.

“Wear these,” she had said, “to our next lesson. They are our secret weapon in achieving a proper Northrop strut.” She had then looked around the half-dozen women in front of her. “Do not speak of these to others,” she said firmly. “Am I understood?”

“Oui, madame,” they had chorused. The air of secrecy around the project had piqued Robin’s interest, but like the others she had still refrained from investigating the box’s contents until she had got back to the privacy of her own bedroom.

She had opened the box lid and seen inside a pair of panties with a small dildo attached to the inside of the front, such that anyone wearing them would have to invite it inside.

It is, perhaps, a measure of how far Robin had come in learning Northrop’s lessons that she didn’t scream or even gasp; her mouth certainly gaped for a moment but she didn’t exclaim. She was shocked, but not scandalised.

She had closed the box again hurriedly and set it away, certain that Madame Meredith must have made some kind of mistake, and shuddering at -

No. She had not shuddered at the idea of wearing it, she suddenly realised.

Over the semester, she’d come to rely on that instinctive reaction to things. Whenever there were two possible decisions, it seemed like she felt either delight at the right choice or shuddering revulsion against the wrong one. Where it came from she didn’t know, but she was convinced that the academy was helping her hone her instincts somehow. Maybe it was something about the surroundings.

And the idea of wearing that underwear didn’t actually unsettle her.

It hadn’t been enough immediately, but she had slept on the question, and the following morning she had opened the box again and picked up the panties themselves, and a sudden flush of pleasure had gone through her.

So she had slipped away after their first morning lesson and changed into them, and the moment they were in place and covered by her other clothes she had felt satisfied that she was on the right path.

It turned out that this encouragement had led to herself and the other exemplars walking with a natural, satisfying roll to their hips. This had made keeping her head straight enough to balance a book on it much harder than before, but Robin had just taken this as another challenge to overcome.

She felt much more like the sophomores, walking with that roll to her hips.

Robin had noticed that, as one of the exemplars, she could sometimes see when others in her class reached each of the aids that she already had access to. She always looked forward to those little insights; no grades were given, so aside from seeing whether exemplars changed (Cassidy had fallen behind in recent weeks) it was the only real indication she had of how well everyone was doing.

She was looking forward to seeing some of the other students advance along this path. Especially Angie.

Robin had started to take much more interest in Angie’s ongoing performance as time had gone by. She wasn’t sure what headmistress Gunderman had said or done, but just a couple of days after Robin had reported her, Angie had showed real signs of a change to her behaviour.

She was no Jocelyn Russell yet but her attitude had improved, she was more engaged in each class, and most importantly, when they had conversations outside classes, Angie sounded actively positive about the prospect of learning more and better.

It didn’t seem to be just Robin who was elated as they approached the end of the first semester; Cara Kendall, who had left Northrop early around the same time that Robin had reported Angie, had just been announced as having received a role in the upcoming Chris Waterford movie, having met him and a number of other wealthy, powerful men when they paid a call on headmistress Gunderman.

Robin had been sorry to have missed a movie star, but she didn’t regret it too much. She’d been deep in lessons while he was there, and she certainly wouldn’t change that.

Cara wasn’t the only one who had left at around the same time, but she was the only one where the students knew where she had gone and why. The sophomores and the other upperclasswomen had simply started referring to them as ‘graduates’ and showed no further curiosity.

Many of the first years couldn’t bring themselves to be incurious about the changes. Robin and the other exemplars had discussed this privately, wondering whether to simply rise above it or to confront and correct them. It had been decided that they should quell discussion whenever they saw it, reminding their fellow students that a Northrop girl knew what she needed to know, and did not need to learn anything they didn’t need to know.

“When did you get told that?” Eva had asked, but Robin had tutted and changed the topic, not wanting to dignify such a silly question with a response. Like many lessons she had learned within Northrop’s bounds, Robin felt as if she had always known it; in any case, if she deliberately ignored any discussion she didn’t need to take part in, she felt that same tingling pleasure that was now her biggest guide.

With a week to go before the end of the first semester, Robin privately applied to stay at Northrop throughout the vacation. She had a nagging sensation that she would be embarrassed to see her family again, knowing better as she now did.

*

Robin sat down and picked up the virtual reality headset again. There were tests, twice a week now, administered through these systems so that everyone could be assessed individually and nobody could cheat. They incorporated anything theoretical about the previous week’s lessons.

She could barely believe how strange this had all seemed at first.

She slipped it into place and felt for the controllers. In the headset she saw a three-dimensional reconstruction of the Northrop logo, slowly revolving. By this point she knew that it would go away when everyone else had loaded in, to be replaced by the test.

The music in the background was as catchy as ever.

Unbeknownst to her, the helmet now also read the chip implanted at the base of Robin’s skull, wirelessly providing software updates. At Northrop, the Pavlov routines could be fired to provide pleasure or discomfort through remote monitoring. Once she had graduated, internal rules would have to provide any ongoing correction for themselves.

The logo went away, and with it Robin’s awareness also dropped away into something not unlike a waking dream.

Not long before, Robin had criticised and shunned Angie for suggesting that the sophomores and upperclasswomen were well-masked sluts. Now she mostly didn’t think about the question. That was also due to the chip, and the chill that ran down her spine whenever she did allow herself to think about it.

From Robin’s perspective, she didn’t think about it much because she didn’t like to think about it. One reason for that was because she genuinely was finding herself thinking in much more sexual terms as time went on; she had found herself occasionally stealing lingering glances at Karl and the other grounds staff (though she wouldn’t dream of initiating anything with them) and she knew for a fact that some of the other students were involved in lesbian liaisons now.

Her sex drive had never been as high as it was now, a little over a semester into her time at Northrop. And yet she never tried to take care of it for herself when she had peace and privacy in her room.

Under the headset, though, Robin dreamed.

She dreamed of waltzing with a man, she wasn’t sure who, in a ballroom; they moved as one, in sync, because she was moving as he led, her body pressed against him. He steered her through the dance with one of her hands in his, the other hand on her buttock.

Robin felt at peace dancing like that. It was natural to be led, to be steered. She was a companion for this man, offering him not just pleasure but status. She could be shown off, she could be left to her own devices; she could even be left to entertain colleagues or their wives, making polite conversation or doing whatever else might be needed. A perfect helpmeet.

Just like Jocelyn Russell.

Robin imagined that Jocelyn would not be receiving quite so much pleasure from the fact the hand guiding her was on her ass. She’d watched the intro video carefully and, after becoming an exemplar, she’d gone back and watched it again, considering Jocelyn her own personal exemplar of how things should be.

Jocelyn surely wasn’t affected by anything so common or base as the urges and arousal that filled Robin in these fantasies.

The man leading her dance spun her out, and Robin pirouetted away. The ballgown she had been wearing melted away from her as she did so, leaving her standing in thigh-high opaque black stockings and a navy blue lingerie set with garter belts and her high heels.

Robin moved happily around a capacious kitchen. The dream didn’t make clear what she was cooking, but certainly she was cooking for many. She drifted from countertop to countertop as if she was still dancing, and loitered at one where dough needed to be made and formed.

She was engrossed in her task when she felt a hand clap against her buttock.

A jolt went through her, and in that jolt time seemed to stand still. Robin felt like this was as good as life could possibly get. She bit her lip against the moan she wanted to give out, then looked back over her shoulder.

The man she was with smiled at her. She couldn’t make out his facial features, but she smiled back warmly, both because she felt so happy and because she knew she should. He squeezed her buttock, and she purred, looked down, saw a floury handprint over her buttock. A claim. A mark of ownership.

Robin felt giddy.

The man passed on, and she turned back to her work, thinking of other ways he could claim her.

She worried idly that she wasn’t yet experienced enough, hadn’t built up knowledge enough of techniques and tricks to please him.

Even then, some part of her felt confident that she would, in due time.

*

“Give me a status report.”

“So far, we’re not seeing any sign of anyone having deterioration in conditioning over the holiday.”

“Even those who went home?”

“That’s correct, sir.”

“And any issues with family members?”

“Nobody’s spoken about them specifically, sir. We’re ready to add the probes to their assessments.”

“Do it.”

“Roger.”

*

In the dream, Robin continued to move. Her lingerie and stockings now accepted as the thing she was wearing, she skipped briskly down the stairs and along a corridor, walking jauntily, her head held high and steady, her hips rolling as she had been taught in deportment. She could practically feel the dildo inside her, even though she knew there wasn’t one, but that was alright; the dildo was a state of mind.

The corridor was some stately home, wood panel lined walls rather than paper or paint for decoration. Part of Robin felt comfortable there, following the logic that dreams often did. Another was secretly excited to be walking in the kind of room she’d only ever seen in movies.

As she walked along, she was startled suddenly by a phone next to her. An old-fashioned rotary phone on a small cabinet, a light blinking red on and off beside the numbers. Someone was calling her.

Robin understood, without knowing how, that the call came from her parents. She hadn’t talked with them much since going to Northrop - the wifi privileges they had been promised they could earn had never materialised, and in the meantime they had forgotten these had even been asked for. It made sense that they would want to talk to her; she wanted to talk to them.

Her eyes flitted down the corridor. Nearby, she knew with the same instinctive dreamlike understanding that told her the call was from family, was the drinks cabinet, and her man (whose identity she was unclear on) wanted a drink.

A drink was not urgent, she thought. A dutiful daughter could be forgiven for answering the call, even if only to arrange a time for a longer call.

She reached out to lift the handset, but hesitated before her fingers closed around it.

In the classroom around her, the other Northrop students were each faced with a similar dilemma. Some made the choice easily, driven by instinct. Others, more torn between the two impulses, had to ask themselves what mattered more, without ever realising their choice was watched and would be assessed in planning future treatment.

For Robin, the question was whether she considered herself a dutiful daughter, or whether her duty was foremost to her man. Whoever he might be, and whatever their arrangement was.

She turned from the phone and started walking down the corridor, in search of the drink he would want.

Whatever her family wanted was only a secondary concern, she felt. If it was important, they’d call back in the end.

*

A week into the second semester, word came down that the freshers were to be split into two smaller classes, with those who were taking to the Northrop way of doing things more easily undergoing advanced training, while the others were drilled on what was needed. As proud as she was of how far Angie had come, her friend was still in the other class.

Headmistress Gunderman visited the advanced class during their first lesson. “I want to impress upon you all that this is natural,” she began. “You are all, I know, already on friendly terms with the senior years.” And, of course, this was true. “We had to separate out classes at a certain point there, too. This is one reason we do our weekly assessments, and one reason we work so hard to ensure that nobody can cheat on them.”

Remembering how much she’d relied on watching for patterns in the first couple of quizzes, Robin flushed. She couldn’t be too upset that she’d done so, all the same; she had probably needed that early rush of recognition to give her the momentum she’d needed to get where she was. Now as an exemplar she wanted to learn. Wanted to be better.

She had even begun to dream that maybe, one day in the future, her name might be mentioned in the same breath as names like Jocelyn Russell.

There were no specific classes on academic subjects, but Northrop girls were expected to be able to hold their own in casual conversation on a wide range of topics, and so they were given concentrated lessons regularly which touched on the basics of science, politics, and art; enough that their opinions were not easily dismissed.

Now that the top flight were learning apart from the others, Robin was quite happy to have been moved into a smaller room. Just inside the door were a set of lockers and a series of hooks mounted on the wall.

Robin entered the classroom and stepped to one side, such that she couldn’t be seen if someone happened to walk by the corridor before other new arrivals closed it behind them. Without realising she was doing it, she began to unbutton her blouse. Her fingers worked away easily until it could be removed and hung up. She next unfastened her skirt, opening her locker as she did so.

By now there were three other early arrivals to the class who were doing the same thing. Robin didn’t register the other women stripping down to their underwear, either, except to think contentedly that she was being joined by her peers.

Robin shut her skirt away in the locker and moved to take her seat. It still did not occur to her that anything out of the ordinary had taken place, except that she felt that same lovely bubbling up of positive feeling.

Robin did not know that she would have felt a familiar discomfort had she not stripped down. She did not think about any of it. Meeting Elizabeth’s eyes, she flashed the other woman a warm smile before settling her headset into place and beginning to navigate her way through the test, a dazed smile on her face.

She was soon joined by the others of the top flight. There were no qualms in the heads of any of them about their state of undress. If anyone had pointed it out to Robin, she might have said simply that there were no gentlemen in attendance.

Their eyes wide, their mouths slack, their minds open, they continued to absorb information apace.

*

“I feel like things have changed,” Angie said later on, leaning in the visitor chair of Robin’s accommodation. There were cooking classes the following day, and both of them held a large binder full of recipes. Their attention was mostly on the reading, but they had found that information sank in more easily if they were not too focused. As such, they met up regularly to read together and to converse.

“In what way?” Robin asked.

“Since we split into classes,” Angie said. “The way we’re being taught has changed.”

This was something Robin had seen too, but she reminded herself that it was likely that Angie had seen something different. She tucked her thumb into the book to mark her page and gave her friend more attention. “What kind of thing?”

“They’ve got really… intense,” Angie said. “I almost expected Ms Davenport to bring out a cane or something in the most recent lesson.”

Robin smiled gently. She wasn’t sure what Angie would have thought of an occurrence like that, but it seemed to her that discipline was being correctly used.

Fleetingly, it occurred to her that just a few months earlier the idea of corporal punishment as a means of discipline would have revolted her. The dizzying unpleasantness she sometimes felt when her thoughts strayed from what her instinct told her they should be quickly interposed itself, however, and with a shudder she released that idea without further inspection.

“Is it working?” she asked instead.

Angie gave the question due consideration before answering. It did Robin good to see her friend actually taking the Northrop education seriously; it certainly felt like there was a better future ahead of her as a result. “I think so,” she said. “On most of us, anyway.”

Robin’s attention further sharpened. “Do you have doubts?”

“Yes and no.” Angie set her own recipe book aside, giving the matter her full attention. “Yes, because I have to pay attention to the evidence of my eyes and ears. No, because we’ve seen the sophomores and the upperclasswomen.

“Even the sophomores are so accomplished. They clearly have no doubts. They’re already most of the way to…” Angie clearly wasn’t sure how to express the idea, and nor was Robin, but all the same she knew exactly what she meant.

“The finished product,” she supplied, and even though people were not products, even though it was just a near-enough description she’d thrown out on the spur of the moment, it felt right the moment her lips gave it shape. So right that it seemed like it emerged in someone else’s voice. Headmistress Gunderman’s, perhaps.

Angie was nodding, too, the same light of recognition in her eyes. “Yes, that,” she said. “By sophomore year, clearly, everyone is where they need to be, mentally. It’s just learning everything we haven’t covered yet.

“But even though I know that’s what’s going to happen, there are times when I look at the rest of my class and I wonder.”

“Is there anyone in particular you’re thinking of?” Robin asked. She wasn’t sure if she wanted the answer yes or no, but she knew the advice she wanted to give if the answer was less.

Angie gave this, too, thoughtful consideration. It was so good, Robin felt, that her friend was now taking Northrop’s requirements much more seriously. The focus came first, and the improvement followed; hadn’t she learned that for herself? “I think,” Angie said slowly, “that yes, maybe. I think maybe Katya is having second thoughts.”

Robin shuddered at the idea, a moment before the unpleasant shudder that had been such a mark of the last couple of months hit her. It was strange to react negatively to something twice in quick succession; perhaps the idea was just so vile her body was rejecting it as well as her mind?

Still, she had known what she would have to do if she heard this answer. “You should tell Headmistress Gunderman,” she said.

“You think she can help?”

Robin took a deep breath. “She did with you,” she confessed.

Immediately Angie’s eyes focused back onto Robin, having been staring into emptiness as she contemplated what was ahead. “You reported me?” she asked, and Robin was relieved not to hear hurt in her voice, just surprise.

Robin nodded.

“Well,” Angie said, after a long moment. “That explains a lot. Thank you.”

Robin smiled. She nearly asked what had happened as a result, but felt the dizziness rising and stopped herself. The workings of Northrop were proprietary, a voice seemed to whisper in her ear. It was not polite to try to learn more about them. “Of course.”

Angie looked thoughtful. “I’ll speak to the headmistress tomorrow,” she said decisively. “No time like the present.”

*

“That’s ten bucks you owe me.”

“Apparently so.”

“You really have to learn better than to bet against the system.”

“Hey. I’m not betting against the system, I’m betting on which of them will actually speak up. Didn’t think there was any chance Thornhill would be the one.”

“She’s probably taken to the role model programming better than anyone else we’ve aimed at Kliner, and Kliner was always going to recommend she get involved. She was the one who pushed on Thornhill.”

“Yeah, alright, point taken.”

“What’s Katya’s surname again? I need to update her notes.”

“Vervolk. Dutch-Canadien, of all things. And no, she wasn’t already someone we’d flagged.”

“Good for Thornhill, then. Let’s push a suggestion to the role models to get their disciples to press for any other resistors.”

*

Headmistress Gunderman visited the top flight again toward the end of the second semester.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” she said as she swept into the room.

“Good afternoon,” they answered. It was not a chorus, was not synchronised at all, and nevertheless they sounded united, all of them answering with the same warm enthusiasm in their tone.

“As you know,” Gunderman continued, “we will shortly be breaking for the summer vacation. When you return, the work begins in earnest.”

Robin looked to one side, met a similarly confused glance back. She raised her hand tentatively. “Pardon me, headmistress,” she said, “but I don’t think we fully understand. Haven’t we been working this year?”

“Miss Kliner,” Gunderman said. “Rise.”

Robin stood. She held herself upright, her hands clasped in front of her. There had been no thought involved in the process, at least not in her head; headmistress Gunderman had given a direction and Robin had obeyed. Really, nothing else needed to be thought.

“Come here, Miss Kliner.”

Robin obeyed without hesitation or consideration. Though she was not wearing her deportment aids, she nonetheless walked with the inviting rolling hips of a sophomore. Gunderman watched her approach with a knowing smile.

“Miss Kliner,” Gunderman continued. “Who should offer their hand for a handshake at a reception?”

“A man should never offer their hand before the woman has done so,” Robin said promptly. “However, the woman should be watchful for signals indicating that shaking hands is appropriate, especially if they are the social inferior. In same-gender cases, the host should offer first, and if neither are hosting, it falls to the social superior.” She hadn’t realised she knew that much information on the subject.

“Correct. Now, Miss Kliner, if your husband informs you he has taken a mistress, what do you do?”

“Ensure she is added to the household security arrangements so she can come and go freely,” Robin said with just as little hesitation. “Make sure she is made comfortable within the property and enough room is allotted for her wardrobe. And, of course, a threesome should be offered.”

“And why do you know that?”

Robin hesitated, The question had no answer, and thinking about it was causing her a familiar unease. At the end of the hesitation she instead simply smiled politely, almost simpering, to the headmistress, hoping this would be accepted as a response.

Gunderman returned her smile with a knowing smirk, then looked out at the rest of the class. “Miss Benjamin,” she said. “Rise.”

Nadine stood, just as swiftly and with as little question as Robin had done.

“Come here, Miss Benjamin.”

Nadine made her way forward and stood alongside Robin, standing in much the same stance, though Robin felt (with what she considered justifiable pride) that she had walked across with better deportment.

“Miss Benjamin, when are brown shoes acceptable?”

“At the weekend, if not working,” Nadine answered. “Black shoes during the working week. A husband should not be permitted to embarrass himself by this error.”

“Very good. Now, Miss Benjamin, how would you signal your availability for giving oral pleasure.”

“Approach your man, or surrogate designated by him, with proper respect,” Nadine answered promptly. “Settle to your knees within easy range of his hips. If he is seated, rest your hands on his thighs. Close your eyes, open your mouth, and await his decision with equanimity.”

“Class,” Gunderman went on. “Is she correct?”

“Yes, headmistress.”

“Do you know when you learned this?”

There was a general awkward silence. Robin, who had been imagining doing so for some eligible husband or owner, joined in with it.

“In your freshman year,” Gunderman said, “we prime you in as many ways as we can to be proper Northrop girls. In this coming vacation, you will be expected to sever any ties which may be unbecoming to a Northrop girl. We require,” and her tone had become suddenly firm, “that you do so in a way that conforms to our values, and which causes as little ill will as possible.”

She sounded so breezy as she presented this. Robin, as with the others listening, felt that cutting her connection to her parents and brother would be a simple task, and one she could easily warm to as part of her duty. “Next year we will help you to integrate what you already know without understanding.” Gunderman let that statement hang there for some time.

“Class?” she said firmly.

“Yes, headmistress?”

“Class of 2027, internalise and forget.”

Robin’s eyelids were fluttering, a pleasant shiver running down her spine. The headmistress had clearly just concluded a speech of some sort. Uncertain of how best to respond, she began to applaud on the grounds that this could not be wrong.

Gunderman smiled benevolently at her while the others joined in the applause.