Chapter 9

Two weeks later, the siblings went with Angela to the new school for their interview, tour, and audition. There were to be two parts to their vocal audition; one was to sing two songs of their choice, first doing it a capella, and then to a musical accompaniment of their choice. The second part was sight-reading a song from sheet music. Both Tom and Lynette had taken a choral music class in school in Munich, where choral music was a big deal, and had become familiar enough with written music to follow the notation. The interview and audition went smoothly and they were told that they would get a formal letter in about two weeks, after the admission committee met, but were informally assured that they were qualified for attending the school.

Meanwhile, Tom kept up with his video classes. But over the past few months, the rumor that Tom got freaked out when he encountered nudity had been quietly circulating among the students and a couple of times, several of the more pushy girls who had been selected for the Program decided to try to embarrass him somehow. One tried to crash the library with a few friends during period changes to get a reaction from him and others tried to find ways to confront him when they thought that he would be in the school halls. However, the librarian kept any encroaching naked students out of the library during school hours and Tom found ways he could hide during class changes. So gradually the pranks which some of the girls were trying to play became boring and it soon stopped.

Something better was happening to Tom’s nudity panics as a result of his romance with his step-sister. He found that her nudity had no effect of causing panic or even anxiety on him at all anymore. He was becoming far less anxious at being naked with her and he looked forward to the occasions when they had privacy at home to satisfy each other; this was happening more frequently since their mother now had an extensive clientele and they were alone during their afternoons at home. But despite their growing intimacy, they agreed to limit their sex play to oral stimulation only. He noticed at school, when he got some infrequent glimpses of naked kids, his reaction was becoming less intense, and reported that fact to Lynette, who grinned and happily took the credit for his successful “psych treatment.”

Tom had begun running with the track team when school started in the new year. It was mid-February and the cross-country season had just four more weeks to go. In his first two meets, he didn’t run as well as he wanted, finishing in eighth and then seventh place, but his coach was still pleased with his performance. Tom had been watching the running strategy of the best runners and noticed that they tended to run in a pack for the first two-thirds of the course, pacing each other, and then letting the true race begin in the final third where conditioning and stamina would be the difference between a scoring finish and an also-ran. Up to now, Tom had been running his own race, not paying much attention to the others, basically using the clock as his race opponent and pushing for his best time. He found that when he kept to a steady pace, he got passed during the final mile and didn’t have enough energy left to catch the faster runners.

So for the next race, he decided to modify his tactics. Practicing on the school track, he ran the first two-thirds of the 5 K with a slower, loping stride, one which allowed him to breathe deeply but was only about fifteen seconds slower than his normal pace. Then on the last two laps, he opened up and tried to run like hell. He was amazed when he realized that technique had shaved about 45 seconds off his best time! It was a 17:50 run. That would have put him in third place in the last meet.

With his new tactics in mind, Tom began the race and hung back with the fastest guys on his team. Two of them looked over at Tom and nodded. The loose grouping of about nine boys just tooled along, each glancing around at each other, gauging the potential competition and jockeying for position when the time for their breakaway came. The two-thirds mark came up and Tom noticed that a long, steadily rising slope began on the course right after the distance marker. He realized that a breakaway at that point would leave a runner with fewer resources for a strong finish and, as many of the other runners sped up at the mark, Tom, along with two others, one of them a teammate, held slightly back. The two shot a quick look at Tom and then bore down, with Tom pacing them. Where the ground began to level out at about 600 yards later, the two of them took off and Tom dug in too. A dozen seconds later, they rounded a curve in the course as it left a stand of trees and they were now twenty to fifty yards behind a very spread-out group of lead runners. The finish line was still about a half-mile ahead, but Tom felt he had plenty of strength, so he picked up his pace again as the two others running near him did too.

The three began to pass runners from the original larger group, the tight pack had dispersed greatly as each runner was now running as hard as he could. Tom kept passing runners until only two were still in front of him, the two who had held back with him. He resolutely tried to close the gap with the closer runner but now the finish line was less than a hundred yards ahead. Suddenly he heard a runner closing on him from behind; the boy was running furiously and threatening to overtake Tom. Finding energy he didn’t know he had, Tom bore down again and tried to lengthen his stride while keeping his rhythm. In the last fifty yards, he was now closing on the runner in second place! Maybe he could catch the guy! It didn’t happen, though; Tom crossed the line just a second behind the second-place finisher and only five seconds behind the winner.

He ran a dozen more paces and then sank to the ground and lay there on his back, deep breathing for a minute, then got back to his feet.

“Hey Armstrong!” he heard behind him.

Turning, he saw Roland Crawford coming up. He was his teammate, the guy who was in first place.

“Shit, mate, you ran a brilliant one!” Roland shouted as he embraced Tom. “Perfect race strategy, mate, glad you’re on the team.”

Their coach had jogged over to congratulate them. “We got 1-3-6-7-8 in the race, guys, 25 points, and that’s a win!”

The other team members had come up and began congratulating Roland and Tom.

“You ran a great race, Armstrong,” the coach said. “I was concerned when I didn’t see you in the pack when they came out of that last turn. Then three of you just roared out like you had jetpacks on. What happened?”

Roland smirked and poked Tom in the chest. “This bloke saw it, coach; he’s got potential. The last mile started on an upgrade. We haven’t seen that before, it’s nasty. Who laid out this course? Doing that was really tricky. My dad told me what to do when that happens; you hang back and let the others waste their breath on the uphill race. I kept my distance pace going till the grade leveled, then I dug in. So did Armstrong and that third bloke. We just powered through the others—they didn’t have the kick, they wasted it on the hill. How did you know what to do, mate?” he asked Tom.

Tom shrugged. “I saw what you said. If I took off going uphill, I’d have nothing left at the end.”

“Smart running,” the coach praised them. “You others, see what I’ve been telling you? Running speed, pace, posture, and rhythm are all important, but sometimes it’s strategy that will win the race.”

With his strong finish, Tom found himself a popular team member now; the other members had been a little aloof, mainly because of Tom’s strange reputation around school. He seemed to be a kind of an outcast who was somehow being shielded from the rest of the students. But he actually turned out to be an okay kind of bloke—except when he disappeared at shower times. It seemed that he didn’t want to use the locker room either. Very strange. Still an okay bloke, though.

In fact, it was Tom’s reputation as a strange kid which led some of the boys to want to try to humiliate him somehow. Two of the girls who had been unsuccessful in ambushing Tom had mentioned their plans to tease Tom to their boyfriends. The girls had thought it would be fun to try to embarrass or humiliate him by coming onto him while they were naked but then leave him horny and hanging. It wasn’t quite common knowledge why Tom was being shielded from the other students, but it had become strongly suspected that it was because he was embarrassed by nudity. Many of the kids reasoned that if the Program had been invented to wipe out excessive modesty among the teens in secondary school, and they themselves had been forced to go through that ordeal—which wasn’t at all pleasant—then why wasn’t Tom singled out for Program treatment as a prime example of excessive modesty?

The students in the school knew that kids were put in the Program for various infractions, even for some trivial ones or ones completely unrelated to the Program objectives. Tardiness, language use, teasing, and in one case, when a boy was reluctant to closely examine a girl during a health class studying anatomy, the teacher put him on the Program for the rest of the day, because of what appeared to be his excessive modesty. He objected, insisting that he was simply showing the girl some respect as she was being treated like an object and not a person. His protestations went for nothing and he had to spend the day naked. But in Tom’s case, obviously he must have somehow been exempted from selection for the Program, which seemed to be an impossible answer—no one had ever been exempted, for any reason, to anyone’s knowledge, but regardless of his special treatment, he was also being isolated from everyone else in the school. So what was it with this Armstrong bloke, anyway? Why was he getting this special treatment?

Their jealousy over Tom’s apparent special status led a few boys to try to figure out a way to get him put into the Program. Some of the ideas they considered were to get him framed for a school infraction, one which would generally result in a Program punishment. Another idea was to try to implicate him in some kind of scheme like making it appear that he was trying to sell pictures of Program kids to websites; another was to plant fake rumors about his mistreating a girl in the Program—they’d need a girl’s help to pull that one off. They even talked to a student office assistant to see if she could somehow sneak Tom’s name into the Program selection process. They spent weeks trying to find a way to make any of these ideas work. But Tom’s almost complete isolation from the students in the school made it seem impossible to come up with any plan which wouldn’t also get themselves into trouble.

The cross-country season wound down at the end of March and by then, Tom had competed in two more races. He didn’t match his third-place finish in either race, but he did finish in fifth place in the next race and fourth in the following one and those finishes were enough to cement his good standing with his team. His coach told him that his times were excellent for a newcomer to the sport, and if he kept working on developing good running mechanics, continued to improve his stamina, and kept up with learning racing strategy, he could become a top level runner. The coach also asked Tom if he’d be interested in joining the stadium track team but Tom had no interest in sprints or middle-distance running. Besides, he would be changing schools after year’s end, but no one needed to know that...

^{[Dialect Note: Hear them down in Soho Square, dropping haitches everywhere... As in the musical “My Fair Lady,” I chose to highlight the wonderful variety of British dialects in this story of Tom and Lynette. But two particular dialects, Cockney and Brum, are quite difficult to render in writing and therefore to understand—as they are, too, in actual speech for the ear unfamiliar with these colorful dialects. So to help you understand the conversation between Tom and Lynette and the British pupils in this chapter, dialect “translations” of Liz’ and Jess’ dialog are shown in green italics.]}

With the coming of warmer weather, Tom and Lynette began to go on lengthy weekend bike rides, taking their lunches along. Late in April, the two siblings rode out to Lee Valley Park to spend the day riding on the park’s extended bike trail, riding from Waltham Cross to Ware along the Lee River. They were riding near St Margarets when they passed a group of teens standing on the riverbank, tossing little stones into the water.

“Hallo, there,” one of the teens hailed them from a distance when he saw them riding on the trail.

“Hi!” Tom and Lynette called back.

They stopped as the small group came up the bank and across the meadow to the bike path.

“Y’rite mates?” one boy said as he approached

“Sure...?” Tom responded uncertainly while Lynette called back, “All right.”

Lynette smiled at him. “Tom,” she whispered, “The guy asked, ‘Hi, how are you?’—it’s Brit slang. You really need to socialize with the natives!”

There were three girls and two boys in the group.

One of the girls spoke. “‘Ey, I’m Jess. Tha’s Sarah an’ Liz. Da blokes are Mark an’ Rich.”

Lynette answered, “Good to meet you guys. I’m Lynette and this is Tom.”

Sarah was looking at them sharply. “Haven’t seen you in school, you new here?”

Tom shook his head. “Not from around here. We live in North London, over by East Finchley. Our school is Friern Barnet and we’re year tens.”

“Cor ... that’s a hike away,” Mark commented.

“About 18 miles from here, we figure,” Tom answered. “We’ll bike maybe 40 miles today. Lynette and I love to ride; this is our longest ride this year.”

“‘Ey, you blokes go’ ‘ime ‘o ‘alk?” Jess asked. “We’ve bin ‘alkin abou’ school an’ wonderin’ abou’ ‘hings in o’her schools?”

“Hey, you blokes got time to talk?” Jess asked. “We’ve been talking about school and wondering about things in other schools?”

Lynette looked at Tom and he nodded. “Sure,” she said. “Sit here on the grass? We’ve got ground cloths in our bike panniers ... but can you talk slower? It’s hard understanding you, you know.”

The others laughed. “Jess has a really strong Cockney accent,” Mark grinned. “We tease her about it sometimes, but she’s cool with us. Doesn’t hurt that she’s the smartest one in our class neither, isn’t she.”

“Oi, we got some blankets to sit on too,” Rich interrupted. “Over there with our bikes.”

He ran to get the blankets.

When they got settled, Tom asked where they went to school.

“It’s Haileybury sgool,” Liz said. “It’s in Hertfordshire, a mile frum eya, an’ it’s a boarden sgool, so many of us liv’ the’er. Soy, we got that Naked in Sgool cobblers in ar sgool an’ we wanna hear what happens in other schools. Liven at the sgool with the Program ain’t loike normal because we’re always on sgool grounds duren the week—most weekends too. We heard abart in other sgools sum nasty rot happenen an’ I read in the news an’ on lion abart other potty or horrid things; really horrid.”

“It’s Haileybury School,” Liz said. “It’s in Hertfordshire, a mile from here, and it’s a boarding school, so many of us live there. Say, we got that Naked in School garbage in our school and we want to hear what happens in other schools. Living at the school with the Program ain’t like normal because we’re always on school grounds during the week—most weekends too. We heard about in other schools some nasty rot happening and I read in the news and on line about other potty or horrid things; really horrid.”

Lynette and Tom looked alarmed. “Really? Potty and horrid things? What happened?” she breathed.

“Well, fer ‘un, everybody learns abart what happened when the Program just started up ... cor, mates,” she interjected when she saw blank looks on Lynette’s and Tom’s faces. “Yaouw don’t knoo abart what happened at that fust sgool?”

“Well, for one, everybody learns about what happened when the Program just started up ... cor, mates,” she interjected when she saw blank looks on Lynette’s and Tom’s faces. “You don’t know about what happened at that first school?”

They both shook their heads.

“Blimey ... well, this ‘un wench, erm, tewthree ‘eass ago I fink, she committed suicide because she was well religious an’ thought that been picked fer the Program was God punishen ‘er fer summat. She wrote in ‘er diary that she couldn’t figure ert why she was punished, so she got a bunch of pills somehoo, an’ took them all.”

“Blimey ... well, this one girl, erm, two years ago I think, she committed suicide because she was very religious and thought that being picked for the Program was God punishing her for something. She wrote in her diary that she couldn’t figure out why she was punished, so she got a bunch of pills somehow, and took them all.”

“Oh hell, hadn’t heard about that.” Tom said, dismayed.

“Well, ‘hey make every schoolkid read wha’ she wro’e in ‘er diary,” Jess objected. “Hah come you didn’?”

“Well, they make every schoolkid read what she wrote in her diary,” Jess objected. “How come you didn’t?”

Lynette frowned. “Oh, I heard some kids in school mention something about a school girl’s diary, in passing. It didn’t seem important so I didn’t ask about it.”

Liz looked at her. “But everyone needs ter read that. It’s in the culture class in year nine.”

“Ah, okay,” Lynette said. “We went to school in Germany last year.”

Liz shrugged. “Oh. Well. It was really heartbreaken’. If only she ‘ad told someone ‘oo she felt. that’s why readen it an’ discussen it is required; ter let babboys knoo ‘oo ter terk abart their inner feelings an’ abart treaten’ babboys in the Program properly.”

Liz shrugged. “Oh. Well. It was really heartbreaking. If only she had told someone how she felt. That’s why reading it and discussing it is required; to let kids know how to talk about their inner feelings and about treating kids in the Program properly.”

Lynette asked, “What’s ‘babboys’?”

Mark smiled. “Means ‘kids.’”

Lynette shook her head. “Somehow I think that getting some kids to open up about their inner feelings would take more than reading and discussing a diary.”

There was a chorus of agreement to that.

“Liz? Where are you from?” Lynette asked. “Your accent isn’t like Jess’.”

Liz giggled. “Naaa, not suthe London. I’m frum Walsall, neah Burminum, an’ I proudly spek Brum.”

Liz giggled. “No, not south London. I’m from Walsall, near Birmingham, and I proudly speak Brum.”

Lynette looked blank. Mark clarified, “Birmingham. It’s hard for outsiders to catch all of our speech differences.”

Lynette nodded. “Same in Canada. Quebec has some interesting accents. The U.S. does too. You should hear the English some people in the southern U.S. speak.”

Rich spoke then. “Plenty o’ accents here too. Welch, Yorkies, Liverpuds, more. Cor, mates, you must got the Program, roight?”

Lynette nodded.

“Yeah, well, lots o’ kids in school heah hate it; they’s scared o’ the idea of being bollock-naked in front o’ everyone. Some blokes really freak out when they get picked. Happens lots in our school. What ‘bout youas?”

Lynette shrugged. “I’m not sure why our school seems to be different than some others I’ve read about in the tabloids or on line. The first day in our school, back last fall, they actually got a bunch of volunteers to agree to do their week as the first ones. And in that first week, no one seemed to go crazy and the teachers didn’t do demos, but I didn’t get to see much that week ‘cause Tom was sick and he had to be on meds. I was kinda making sure he was okay and didn’t pay much attention to any Program stuff.

“Then when the second week began, something happened that kinda changed everything in the whole school. What happened that morning was the main school office got trashed, like it really got wrecked badly, and suddenly the attitude of the head teacher—all of our teachers, in fact—changed and teachers began paying close attention to the Program kids, like carefully monitoring the halls, keeping the kids safe, that kind of stuff. And other kids tell me that the classroom demos are really tame compared to what I’ve heard happens in other schools. None of my classes have had any kind of demo.”

“Why d’you think tha’ happened?” Rich asked.

“There was this rumor goin’ around in our school that a kid in the Program tore up the office in revenge or something and that’s why the teachers got so careful—maybe they figured that people could get seriously hurt if a kid in the Program went crazy and attacked a teacher or wrecked things, like what seemed to have happened in the office—crap like that. But no one who’s been in the Program knows what happened, and even more strange, it seems that no one was punished for the damage.”

Tom leaned over to Lynette and whispered, “Good one, sis. Nice misdirection.”

She whispered back, “Had a good teacher.”

Lynette went on, “So it’s a real mystery what happened then but the good part is that whatever the reason, the Program in our school hasn’t been all that terrible. Maybe it’s because of better security for the kids, I don’t know.”

When Lynette mentioned “security,” Liz scowled and shook her head with an angry expression. Liz and Mark began speaking simultaneously.

Liz said, “Yeah, kids’ security—that needs improven,” just as Mark began asking a question to Lynette, “Were you blokes in it...?”

“Oops,” they both said, looked at each other, and Liz motioned for Lynette to answer Mark.

“Thank God, no. I hate the idea of having to do it and I hope to hold out another four weeks.”

Mark looked puzzled. “Aren’t there six or seven more school weeks? And you’ve got, erm, three more years to go to the end of sixth form?”

“Well, yeah. But starting in mid-June, Tom and I will be in a six-week summer program back in Germany and other countries on the continent. It’s being run for some year tens at the end of their term at a school we’re gonna transfer to. Our school is letting us go on the trip so we’re finishing this term’s work early. The last two weeks of school are for revision and exams anyway, and Tom and I both have good marks in our classes. And next year, the new school that we’ll be going to doesn’t have the Program. They told us they have a government exemption from running it.”

“Huh,” Mark said. “How can that happen?”

“Something to do with being an independent school, I heard,” Lynette offered.

Liz broke in, “Well, ours is independent too but the soddin’ governors agreed with the berks in the Department fer Education ter run it eya. It’s ‘cause the government wanted ter see ‘oo it ood werk in a boarden sgool an’ gave them a pot of wodja as a grant ter persued them.”

Liz broke in, “Well, ours is independent too but the sodding governors agreed with the berks in the Department for Education to run it here. It’s because the government wanted to see how it would work in a boarding school and gave them a pot of money as a grant to persuade them.”

Tom was reluctant to get into the discussion since he didn’t want to have to reveal anything of his own situation, but he offered, “We heard that our new school also is running a special government project in place of the Program and we were assured that there was no kids’ nudity involved in that project.”

Jess looked at him. “So you weren’ in i’ nei’her?”

Tom shook his head, looking down, and Lynette, sensing Tom’s discomfort, jumped in to change the topic and asked, “How is the Program different at your school? Like, you live there, so someone in it has to be naked all day and night too? Can people demand reasonable requests after school is over?”

Jess grinned. “Oi, nah. Nippers can dress af’er classes are over. Tha’s a ‘iny benefi’; ‘he dawms are so close by ‘ha’ mos’ nippers wind up comin’ over starkers from ‘he dawms so ‘hey don’ ‘ave ‘o do ‘he public strippin’ each day.”

Jess grinned. “Oi, no. Kids can dress after classes are over. That’s a tiny benefit; the dorms are so close by that most kids wind up coming over naked from the dorms so they don’t have to do the public stripping each day.”

Lynette recalled a comment Liz had made earlier. “Liz, you said something about improving security?”

“Oi, right,” Liz said. “I’m proper leery of ‘oo bad the safety is fer Program babboys eya. Ain’t loike yaw sgool, frum what yaouw said. ‘Un of me cousins was in the Program in ‘er sgool in the Eus Midlands lus autumn. Rita’s terribly shy; she’s a lickle wench, just over foiv’ foot, an’ she’s a year eleven. She got picked the well fust doy of sgool in the fust group. The babboys didn’t knoo that the Program’d be starten in their sgool lus autumn so when a bunch of them was called, they didn’t knoo what was up. When she was told that she ‘ad ter strip off, she fainted. When she woke, she crack ‘erself in the nurse’s room, starkers. The nuss came in an’ examined ‘er, then told ‘er she was okoy an’ she ‘ad ter goo ter ‘er class—I fink it was the third period then.

“Oi, right,” Liz said. “I’m proper leery of how bad the safety is for Program kids here. Ain’t like your school, from what you said. One of my cousins was in the Program in her school in the East Midlands last autumn. Rita’s terribly shy; she’s a little girl, just over five foot, and she’s a year eleven. She got picked the very first day of school in the first group. The kids didn’t know that the Program’d be starting in their school last autumn so when a bunch of them was called, they didn’t know what was up. When she was told that she had to strip off, she fainted. When she woke, she found herself in the nurse’s room, naked. The nurse came in and examined her, then told her she was okay and she had to go to her class—I think it was the third period then.

“Rita told me she troid ter grab a sheet off the cot but the nuss bunted ‘er ert into the hall where the classes were changen. Sum guys grabbed ‘er an’ began gropen an’ maulen ‘r an’ she collapsed on the flower an’ ‘un picked ‘er up an’ held ‘er whilst anover boy began fingeren ‘er. The nuss came ert an’ chased the boys awoy, an’ even though me cousin was hysterical, the nuss sent ‘er off ter ‘er anunst class.

“Rita told me she tried to grab a sheet off the cot but the nurse pushed her out into the hall where the classes were changing. Some guys grabbed her and began groping and mauling her and she collapsed on the floor and one picked her up and held her whilst another boy began fingering her. The nurse came out and chased the boys away, and even though my cousin was hysterical, the nurse sent her off to her next class.

“Instead of guin ter class, Rita ran ert of the builden ter ‘oid somewhere an’ the equipment shed near the sports pitch wasn’t locked, so she crawled in an’ hid under sum sports gear an’ blarted ‘erself ter sleep. A bit later, a boy getten football gear ert of the shed noticed ‘er the’er an’ called a teacher, who got the yed teacher. Ee came ert an’ brought ‘er back into the sgool.”

“Instead of going to class, Rita ran out of the building to hide somewhere and the equipment shed near the sports pitch wasn’t locked, so she crawled in and hid under some sports gear and cried herself to sleep. A bit later, a boy getting football gear out of the shed noticed her there and called a teacher, who got the head teacher. He came out and brought her back into the school.”

Tom interrupted. “Wait, translation, please? ‘Blarted’?”

“Cried!” a bunch of kids exclaimed.

“What about the ‘yed teacher’?” he asked, confused.

Sarah giggled. “That’s the head teacher.”

Tom shook his head doubtfully but motioned Liz to continue.

“She told me that she was just abart panicken an’ was really messed up when the yed...” she grinned at Tom, “HEAD! teacher brought ‘er ter the classroom where she was supposed ter be fer that period, the lus of the doy. She was sat in the classroom all period an’ when it was over, she didn’t chip—erm, Tom, that means, erm, ‘leave,’—so the teacher brought ‘er ter the office an’ the... head teacher let ‘er sit the’er fer a whilst before ee told ‘er that because of ‘er unauthorized absence frum classes, she’d yav ter spend tewthree weeks in the Program. Ee told ‘er that ‘er clobber was set in a box outside the sgool an’ led ‘er ter the front door, sent ‘er ert, an’ locked up.