Tales of the Season: Kendra's Story by Tigger Copyright 1999, All Rights Reserved

Archiving and reposting of this story *unchanged* is permitted, provided that no fee be charged, either directly or indirectly (this disclaimer includes so-called "adult checks") *and* provided that this disclaimer and attribution to the original author are maintained.

Based on the characters and situations presented in "Seasons of Change" by Joel Lawrence, Copyright 1989. This story is archived in its entirety at the Nifty Archive and at Fictionmania.

With sincere thanks to (in alphabetical order), Brandy DeWinter, Denise Em and Vickie Tern, for slogging through this story several times each, and finding myriad ways to make it better each time.

 

Tales of the Season: Kendra's Story                    by: Tigger

 

Part 1.

As she had so many times before, Jane Thompson stood on the small, weather-beaten train platform and watched the blue, red and silver behemoth squeal ponderously to a stop. She looked down at the slender young woman standing patiently at her side and smiled quietly to herself. So much was the same, and yet so much was so very different.

Darla, or Darryl (which was her ward's given name), was turned out in true debutante style -knee length white dress and coordinating hat. Old-fashioned petticoats made the dress stand out prominently from her opaque-white stockinged legs. Modestly heeled black-patent pumps and a matching shoulder purse completed her costume.

Jane herself was dressed in her most austere black business suit, with her hair swept back ruthlessly into a tight chignon and her cosmetics subtly harsh. She was rather pleased with the look. Such little power game tricks were just the thing to put her new guest immediately on the defensive. Which was just where Headmistress Jane Thompson wanted him.

It had been too long, she thought, far too long since she'd had a student upon whom she could bring to bear the full dimension of her program methods. By all accounts, this one was going to require just that to turn his life around and Jane was anticipating the challenge. As ever, there was also that familiar, tiny, niggling frisson of shame, telling her she really shouldn't enjoy the fear and humiliation her training method imposed on her students quite so much.

That did not change the fact that she *did* enjoy watching her boys quiver fearfully with their hair all but standing on end. And since it was always ultimately to their benefit and betterment, she felt her small pleasure was not *too* bad of her.

Of course, her recent experiences with her last few boys had given Jane cause for more caution than she might have exerted with past students. Michelle's suicide attempt and Stephanie's father threatening her with public exposure and humiliation had given pause to reflect, and had made her doubt herself more than she had in the past.

Jane steeled herself against the emotions those memories evoked. She'd always thought she was so fully in command of her boys and their situations, always felt that nothing could go wrong as long as she adhered to her tried and true formula. In truth, she'd become too complacent and had forgotten just how close to their psychological edge she pushed the boys in her keeping. The result of her inattention had been two near tragedies, one falling right upon the last.

Never again, she firmly told herself for what was most likely the millionth time. This time she was better prepared for surprises because she had learned that she needed to expect them. Over the past few months, Jane along with Marie had carefully reviewed and analyzed every detail of their program. As a result, Jane had specifically included more careful attention her charge's mental and emotional states, particularly during the most intensely emotional times immediately before or after any of her more stressful or humiliating exercises. She'd also planned on stretching out the early lessons a little more so that she had more time to get to know her new student's foibles and reactions better before she began in earnest.

Of course, that planned "slowdown" did nothing to change her standard program for her new student's first two days with her. That intentionally and necessarily hard indoctrination was when the boy was stripped (quite literally in some cases) of everything familiar and masculine, and then cast adrift in the alien, feminine world of skirts, makeup and petticoats. She firmly believed that those first forty-eight hours were critical to the final success of her curriculum. Jane *had* to establish herself as the "bad cop" to Marie's and Darla's good cop with this student right from the start.

For just a moment she started to reexamine the problem one more time, trying to find some other way, but caught herself. No, Jane Thompson told herself firmly, it had to be done that way. There simply wasn't another kinder, gentler way to impose the necessary mind set on the student. He had to be taken completely off-balance, emotionally and mentally, as quickly as possible. Jane needed him to be reacting, not thinking when faced with her stern, seemingly arbitrary orders.

Or else nothing good or positive would come of the other torments she was going to inflict on this teenager.

Be honest, she chided herself. The real problem was that she was just a little afraid to do what she knew had to be done and that was something new and unwelcome in her experience. Jane had always needed to deal with her charges' fears and anxieties - hell, she was the one who fostered those emotions - but she'd never had to deal with fears of her own about how to proceed with a student before.

Until now.

Jane had very nearly refused to accept this student for that very reason. In fact, she had eventually consented to take on this project only because *two* of her oldest friends, Judge Ruth and the boy's mother, were involved.

There was absolutely no reason that this all-important phase of her program could not go on as before without any real danger to her student. For one thing, she was better prepared than she had been in the past. If he reacted as all her experience indicated he would then there was no problem. If he did not react as she expected, well, she knew how to recognize and deal with that contingency better than she had in the past.

Particularly in the *recent* past.

And she *would* rediscover the joy of her long time mission in life again with this student. Everything would fall back into place again. There was nothing out of the ordinary about this student. Surely, he'd fall into her traps like so many had before him.

Before Michael, Stephan and Darryl, that is.

So many things had been out of kilter for her of late, thoroughly disrupting her efforts with her young men. Michael had reacted very badly to his first experience of being "out" in skirts and had nearly succeeded in taking his own life. Stephan's father had stormed into Jane's home and had dragged his son out of her control, threatening her and her boys with nationwide media exposure and public humiliation. Worst of all, Darryl had been ready to run off into the night to protect her from his murderous brother. *After* he'd told her she'd been *good* to him.

Jane still wondered at that.

The train's occupants began to disembark from their respective railcars. Jane made another quick check of Darla's appearance and smiled softly. Her mind flew back to the day her old friend had called to ask for her help.

"You're actually dithering, Aunt Jane." Darryl, wearing his Darla masquerade had accused. "Is it because I am here? Am I an impediment to you helping this mother and her son?"

She'd had to think carefully before she'd answered. "Only minimally if at all, dear. Mostly, the problem is me. My little program has not gone all that well of late."

"That's garbage and you know it. You've had some oddballs lately and things haven't gone as you've expected. How many times had that happened before Michelle?"

Jane had smiled at the pugnacious, determined look on the perfectly made up face. "I think we've had this discussion before, dear. I have only lost two boys in some twenty years of this work."

"Okay, of us oddballs, are there any of us you are ashamed of having had as students? Do you believe that you failed with any of us?"

"But . .but . ."

"But nothing, Aunt Jane." Darryl's voice snapped with Darla's mouth.

"Okay." she smiled. "So I got lucky with you guys. Nothing really disastrous came of my failure to deal with you and those other wise guys properly."

"Maybe it was luck, maybe it wasn't. I don't think so, but that is beside the point. What is to the point is that now you are more aware. You won't miss those danger signs and clues again and you will be able to adjust your program in time to prevent the crisis. So, what other problem could there be? You don't want to do it without a big sister and you don't think I can do the job?"

"You've not been through the whole program, dear. You've only seen the barest beginnings of what I put my boys through. Not only that, but you got a very mild taste because" Jane said sourly, "you were just so damned biddable. I couldn't find anything that I could seriously discipline you for. . .not legitimately, anyway."

"And your point?"

"By all accounts, dear," Jane sighed thinking of her friend's son, "this one is going to be a very tough nut. He will either shatter quickly, perhaps within the first few hours of starting his indoctrination, or he will require some of my harsher treatments before he makes the turn."

"And you're afraid of how I will react when the going gets tough?" Jane closed her eyes and nodded. "You *honestly* believe this is what you need to do to help the kid?" Jane nodded again, with more certainty this time. "Then explain to me what needs be done, and we will do it."

"You're sure?" this time it had been Darla's turn to nod her agreement. Jane had started to say something, hesitated, and then, unbelievably, blushed brightly. She'd coughed to clear her suddenly tight throat. "I have been told, Darla, that I might enjoy tormenting my girl-boys a little too much. Will that bother you?"

"Sounds like Michelle." Darla had opined softly. At Jane's abashed, affirmative response, Darla had grinned broadly. "Given her experiences, I might agree, but I don't share those experiences so I don't share her opinions, either. Might as well enjoy your work, Aunt Jane. It's not really malicious on your part, is it?"

Fierce joy had warmed Jane's whole person at that point. "No, it isn't." she had breathed to herself in wonder. "It really never has been. Even Michelle called it 'tough love' once."

"Then what do we need to do to help your new student, Aunt Jane?"

~--------------~

Darla's acquiescence had slipped just a little bit when the prissy, fussy petticoated little-girl doll-dresses had reappeared in her wardrobe and her few boy clothes had disappeared into storage. She'd recovered quickly enough, Jane smiled at the memory, once she had understood the danger of the new student finding boy clothes in Darla's room when he needed to feel completely alone as he faced Jane's feminine prison. Darla had to be completely convincing as a female until it was time for the boy to learn the whole story of his new existence under Jane's regime.

A slender boy of average height and fashionably long black hair stepped down from the train carrying a large duffel bag over his shoulder. Jane recognized him immediately as her new latest project from the pictures his mother had express-mailed to her. She took the opportunity to watch him for several moments as he scanned the small station for some sign of the woman he'd been told to expect.

Taking a deep breath, Jane schooled her features into her strict Victorian Schoolmistress persona. Looking to Darla, she whispered, "It's show time." and then strode out toward the young man standing quietly in the center of the windblown train landing.

"Kenneth?" Jane said firmly by way of introduction. "I am your Mother's friend, Jane Thompson. You may call me Jane, Aunt Jane or Ms. Thompson. This is my niece, Darla Smith. Darla, this is the young man I told you about, Kenneth Roberts."

The two young people silently shook hands with Darla making a graceful curtsey while holding the boy's hand. Pleased, Jane decided to get on with the real work. "Is that all the luggage you have with you?"

"No, Ms. Thompson," was the soft, courteous reply. "I have two larger bags in checked baggage."

"Very well, give me the claim checks. I will arrange to have them delivered to my home later on, Kenneth. For now, we have much to accomplish today and your train was late." Jane spun imperiously on her heel and began to stride away towards the rustic New England station house. "Come along, children. I insist on prompt compliance." she shot over her shoulder without a backward look.

Still, she was pleased to hear the rhythmic tapping of Darla's heels against the concrete of the train-loading platform, knowing that meant Kenneth was following her instructions.

For now, at least.

~---------------~

The drive from the train station back to Jane's home was passed mostly in silence, which suited Jane. Silence, in her experience, was a most unnatural state for the type of young male sent to her for help. Normally, a lack of audio stimulation set them on edge, which in turn made them even more susceptible to her frontal barrage once she had them safely in her house. For that reason, Darla had been directed to avoid most conversation with the lad. She could answer his questions as quickly and concisely as possible, but she was not to initiate anything with him until it was time for her to "help" the boy with his first experience with petticoats.

But Kenneth hadn't asked any questions nor had he made any attempt at further conversation. Jane had expected him to begin to fidget at some point during the drive and to attempt to fill in the void of silence with his own voice, but he hadn't. Instead, Kenneth had sat quietly the entire trip, keeping his own counsel.

 

Odd, Jane thought, but so far the boy has displayed excellent manners. He obviously knew *how* to behave properly, so his acting up at home and school must be by choice on his part. Still, he had done better than most of her students. Holding doors for her and Darla, asking Darla whether she preferred to ride in the front or back seat and then deferring to her wishes, responding to Jane's own carefully planned and worded probes politely and respectfully. Not at all what she expected. Kenneth's unanticipated behavior since his arrival had effectively defanged several of Jane's favorite and most effective opening gambits against a new student.

Most boys preferred to ride in the front seat of a car or reacted boorishly to her senior student because of her admittedly prissy and fussy outfit. Ordering the new student to ride in the back seat or reproaching them sharply for their lack of basic courtesy typically made the boys feel juvenile which in turn further opened their fragile little egos to her psycho-dramatic games.

Jane decided that she'd have to take another look at the boy's records before their initial confrontation. If he was going to be this mannerly, she'd have her work cut out for her getting him into sufficient "trouble" to justify her taking the already-planned first steps into femininity. Jane had learned long ago that a young man who felt he was being unjustly punished fought her all that much harder. One of her two failures had been one who had never trusted her again after she had used a patently false accusation to start her campaign.

She wouldn't make that mistake again. She'd just have to be patient - that was all.

Stopped at a traffic light, Jane surreptitiously assessed her newest charge in the Lincoln's rearview mirror. A quiet frown of extreme concentration marred his otherwise smooth facial features. He wasn't happy to be here, but that was to be expected when the choice was here or incarceration. Jane could already see that he was intelligent which meant he knew his experiences with her were bound to be unpleasant given the alternative. She might have wished for a little more obvious anxiety, but that would come soon enough, she told herself. That would come.

He had good bones, she mused, pleased with the observation, a clear though dark complexion, and a nice slender frame, too. From a purely physical standpoint, he'd be able to carry off the masquerade without any difficulty. That meant she'd be able to put him into some of the more public and therefore more humiliating of her special training situations. Some of her boys could never have "passed" under the closer scrutiny associated with those games and therefore had never been exposed to them. This one would pass easily, although he'd be terrified every daintily shod step of the way. Jane would see to that!

Too bad about that lovely black hair, Jane told herself, but it would back out after she had given him his release from her silken prison. With that olive toned complexion inherited from the Italian side of his Mother's family, he'd look a little exotic once they'd bleached him into a blond, but not so much that he'd draw too much notice. Just enough to frighten the poor darling into nearly wetting his, soon to be her, panties. Besides the obvious and humiliating male stereotype of the "dumb blonde", bleaching a dark haired boy had other advantages from Jane's point of view. Not the least of which were black roots, the control of which would require regular trips to that bastion of feminine mystery and male terror, the Marisha Chalet beauty salon.

It was going to work this time, she told herself as she began to accelerate away from the intersection, just like it had all those times before. She was going to help this one and he was going to hate every bloody minute of it until he understood what it had really been all about.

~----------------~

Kenneth Roberts looked around the rose-pink room. He'd nearly asked the girl who'd shown him up here if there had been some mistake, but he'd managed to restrain himself. Whatever this Thompson woman, his mother and that judge-friend of theirs had planned for him was going to be bad enough. No way was he going to add to his problems by making waves right from the start. There would be much more important battles to fight before this was all over and he'd learned the hard way that it was better to conserve your ammunition and other resources for when it really mattered. He had his mother to thank for that painful little life's lesson, too.

A bitter smile crossed his face as he caught a whiff of the cloying rose fragrance that thickly pervaded the room. It would not be long before he and everything he owned would smell like that, too. Not long at all.

Sighing against the inevitability of whatever was planned, he decided to take a few moments to put away his things. He especially wanted to find a secure place to hide his wallet. He might need it in the days to come.

Kenneth opened the large, ornate armoire and instantly stilled. It was filled with feminine attire and only feminine attire. He stood there; trying to make sense of what he saw when he heard a soft knock at his door.

Moving quickly, Kenneth did his best to hide his wallet and closed the armoire door. "Please come in." he called out politely.

In response to his invitation, the pretty young female who had accompanied the Thompson woman to the train station stuck her head inside the room. "Aunt Jane would like to see you down in her office now. It's the room just off the stairs to the right."

"Thank you." he responded. "I will be right down." Kenneth went over to the chair where he'd hung his suit coat, slipped it on and headed for the door where the girl, Darla was it? Yes, that was it, Darla. Where *Darla* waited for him.

He allowed her to lead the way as they silently descended the ornate stairway. It occurred to Kenneth that the clothes might well belong to this girl. She was certainly turned out to the nines in that obviously expensive, but unusually frilly white ensemble. If all of her things were like that, she'd probably need extra storage. The outfit seemed a little young for a girl of her age, but then, what did he know? He decided that the issue of closet space was another question he could hold off asking, at least until his own baggage arrived.

At the foot of the stairs, she motioned him to a closed door. Kenneth took the hint and stepped up to the door. He almost opened it, but caught himself at the last moment. This wasn't his home and he was a guest. He rapped sharply on one of the hardwood panels of the door. There was a moment's pause before his knock was answered by a very authoritative command to "Enter."

Taking one last deep, calming breath, Kenneth took the antique door handle in hand and turned it to open the door. Maybe now, he thought grimly, he'd find out just what the hell he'd gotten into *this* time.

~------------~

 

Part 2

Jane watched the carefully groomed young man make his way across her office to stand before her desk. She waited in vain for him to do something she could call him to task for. Other than asking "You wanted to see me, Ms. Thompson." after she'd bid him enter, he'd merely nodded at her sharp affirmative and closed the door behind him. He hadn't even taken the seat so obviously intended for him, but instead had waited to be invited to be seated.

Well, that merely meant that Sheila, his mother, had trained him properly in polite behavior and good manners. Which made his failure to behave properly at home and at school all the more inexcusable in Jane's opinion. It was one thing to be ill trained for society as indeed many of her former students had been; it was quite another thing to know how to interact acceptably with other people and refuse to do so. This one *knew* better and that was all the more to his discredit.

Jane waited a bit longer, hoping the boy would at least fidget, but was again disappointed. Finally, she sighed at the momentary setback, and then gestured toward the painfully uncomfortable "chair of honor" at the front of her desk. "Please be seated, Kenneth. We have much to talk about."

"Thank you, Ms. Thompson." he replied quietly as he unbuttoned his jacket and then seated himself before visibly giving her his full and undivided attention.

Jane began to flip through the detailed dossier that Sheila had express mailed to her the previous day, pausing several times to glare at Kenneth over the top rim of her half-lens reading glasses. The third or fourth time she thought she might have seen a tiny flinch on his part and decided that was as good an opening as she was likely to get from this one. The boy's composure was beginning to alarm her.

She slipped the gold-rimmed spectacles from her nose and stared at Kenneth for several moments. "Do you really want to spend the next three years of your life in an institution for delinquent young males, Kenneth?" she demanded.

Kenneth jumped at the sudden sound, but quickly regained his composure - too quickly for Jane's tastes, and considered his answer. She was about to demand an immediate answer when he finally spoke. "If I wanted to do that, Ms. Thompson, I would not have agreed to come here and put myself under your control."

The voice Jane heard was soft, yet controlled, betraying none of the emotion she would have expected after her aggressively worded question. "Well, everything in this record indicates that you are very likely to end up there if you don't turn yourself around, Mister. Notes from teachers, letters from your principal, even police reports all point to the fact that you are a boorish, out of control and ill behaved lout. And *yet*, you have exhibited superb manners since I first saw you earlier today so it is *not* as if you can't behave properly. No, you must *choose* to behave the way that these," and she waved a hand over the thick folder, "prove that you do."

Jane stopped, waiting for him to try to defend himself against her charges so she could really lay into him, but was again chagrined as he said nothing. "WELL???" she finally snapped. "Have you nothing to say for yourself?"

Kenneth sat there, wondering how he should answer that challenge. He desperately wanted to swallow back against the threat of nausea, to wipe at the sweat he felt beading at his forehead, but he knew from painful experience that showing any sign of weakness to someone like this Thompson woman would lead to disaster. "I am not sure that there is anything I can say, Ms. Thompson, other than that I have done nothing wrong."

Finally, Jane crowed to herself. Now she had caught him in an out and out lie. Now she had the wedge she needed to start splintering that male ego like an old dead tree. An almost feral smile crossed her face as she prepared to unleash her assault.

"Nothing wrong? Oh, really?" Jane scoffed with heavy sarcasm. "Am I to assume that this police report for vandalism is incorrect?" Jane asked holding up stapled sheaf of paper. "Or this suspension record for continued disrespect and abuse of a female teacher? Or this one for what is practically sexual harassment of one of the young ladies at your school? *Those* are 'nothing wrong'? If such things are 'nothing wrong', what in your mind constitutes something wrong, young man?"

The boy's face momentarily clouded in anger, but he quickly controlled it. "I have done nothing wrong." he reiterated firmly.

"This," Jane snapped, holding up the thick file, "Says otherwise, Kenneth. Am I to presume that these incidents are just "boys will be boys"-type acts of mischief in your mind? Your Mother obviously doesn't think so, and neither do I. And this record shows a continuing pattern of increasingly unacceptable behavior on your part. I suspect," she said with a mocking half smile, "that you are likely trying to prove your . . .manhood," and the word dripped cold derision, "in light of your, shall we say, less than manly stature and handsome, almost pretty looks?"

Kenneth stared at the file and then at Jane, not saying a word. He was so bloody tired of fighting, but he couldn't let himself give up; couldn't let himself give in. Why couldn't someone believe him for a change? He knew, however, that this woman, this friend of his mother, would *never* be that someone.

Finally, Jane spoke again. "How do you conclude you have done nothing wrong when faced with the facts in this file, Kenneth?"

She watched in fascination, then admiration and finally concern as her student considered her question and then drew himself upright in the hardbacked wooden chair. Cold grey eyes locked on her own. "Perhaps because nothing you have read to me from that file is true, Ms. Thompson. If that really matters to you."

He's not going to admit that he was and still is in the wrong, even in the face of the overwhelming evidence of this file, Jane thought in wonder. Well, he would eventually confront that lie as well as his other many failures before she was done with him. She'd seen cases like this before. Sometimes they were hard to break, but when they finally did break, they broke quickly and completely. In many ways, such students were the easiest to turn around.

"I see. So I am to believe you and not the records provided by your own Mother, my friend, and a court judge who is also my personal friend?" A challengingly cocked eyebrow showed exactly how likely the former schoolmistress thought of that leap of faith occurring. "Tell me, Kenneth, do you fully understand what your alternatives are? What options you have left if you do not enter into my program?"

She saw him begin to shrug and catch himself. Such control, she thought yet again, for a fifteen-year-old male. "My mother has arranged with your friend the judge to put me into a home for delinquent boys until I reach my eighteenth birthday."

"And a slightly built," Jane exaggerated for effect, "young boy like yourself would suffer greatly in such an environment, don't you think? You'd be an outsider, the one who didn't fit in and likely the one least able to defend himself." Jane looked down at the record open on her desk. "Given your loutish behavior towards the women and young girls at your school, I would say that might almost be poetic justice, in and of itself."

This time Kenneth did shrug, trying to set aside that especially dark fear that had taken seed when his Mother had first told him of the unholy choice he had to make.

Jane could see her new student growing uneasy as the full implication of her words became clear to him. Of course, Jane knew that such goings-on would never be tolerated at any institution used by her friend Judge Ruth, but the boy did not know that. The threat, however, would help ensure his ultimate submission to Jane's will.

"Nothing to say? I am still curious, Kenneth, as to what prompts a young man to do such things as are in this file. You obviously know better as you have amply demonstrated since your arrival." At least she wouldn't have to drill him too hard on basic manners, she mused, and could get down to the hard lessons more quickly.

As Jane had expected, his silence lingered permitting her to press on with her favored opening gambit of this little chess game. Time to start making this pawn/would-be king into a queen.

"Well 'boys will be boys' and proving false manhood at the expense and pain of others are no longer acceptable excuses, Kenneth. Still, the pattern begins to give me an idea. Maybe that's the key. There is a practice in England for curbing defiance such as yours called 'petticoat discipline'. Have you heard of it?"

If she had any doubts that the boy did understand from the look of resigned disgust on his face his next words removed them. "So that's why she did it." He said resignedly.

Jane set aside her reading glasses and stared out the window, trying to look contemplative as she worked to make some sense of what was going on. She was absolutely certain he fully understood that relatively archaic term, but that was absurd. How many young American males could conceive of such a thing, let alone instantly understand the implications? Most of her boys initially concluded that it mean some type of submission to a feminine will and none had ever understood at the first confrontational interview.

She decided to press on. "Yes," she announced with a resolve she was far from feeling, "that will be exactly it. Kenneth, if I am to help you avoid being sent to that delinquent's home, I must have your word of honor that you will unhesitatingly obey every command I give you, no matter how unpleasant or disagreeable you may find that activity to be. Our goal will be, at least at the start, to see if we can instill some self-restraint in you." As if this boy needed to become more self controlled. "If at any time I detect resistance, I will wash my hands of you completely and advise the Judge and your Mother accordingly. Is that agreed?"

"No, it's not." Kenneth said quietly.

"All right then, we will be. . . .*What* did you say?" Jane goggled, so amazed at his response that her voice broke two octaves.

"I said that don't agree to your terms. I have a fairly good idea of what awaits me if I leave here and take my other option. You are the devil I don't know, Ms. Thompson. I won't be bound indefinitely by my word of honor until I understand better what you intend and what those 'unpleasant or disagreeable' orders might entail."

Jane could only stare at him as he watched her intently. *This* was a fifteen year old boy??!? She'd faced down corporate CEO's who had shown less reserve than this . . this child. With some effort, Jane managed to regain some of her own composure. "So, where does that leave us, Kenneth? Your Mother is a long time friend and I told her I would try to help you and her, but I cannot do that if I do not have your cooperation."

The solemn faced young man sat quietly as he considered that. "Very well, I agree to your terms." Elated, Jane started to rise and end this difficult interview before anything else unexpected happened, but Kenneth raised a hand to stop her. "I am not finished. I agree to your terms, up to and until I decide that the boys' home is the lesser of the two evils. At that point, I will stop and you can, as you say, wash your hands of me. Until I reach that conclusion, you have my word." The boy stood and offered her his hand.

Still stunned by this fifteen-year-old going on fifty, Jane instinctively took his hand. Why did she feel that she could rely on his word completely? The record said he was a skilled liar who folded, spindled and mutilated the truth to suit his own ends, and yet, Jane's every instinct told her his word was as firm and as solid as the handclasp that sealed their bargain.

Jane excused her charge to go back to his room and clean up for the midday meal. One last time, she was struck by his manners as he acknowledged her direction, thanked her and then left with quiet dignity.

"That," she said aloud to the empty room, "has to be the most unusual first interview I have ever conducted, and I am not sure just which of us is on the defensive."

Jane called Darla into the office to go over one last time the plans for her to serve and act as hostess for the very formal meal Marie planned for a student's first day. Normally, such a meal provided Jane with endless opportunities to pick at the new student's table manners, but somehow, Jane figured that she'd have to be extremely vigilant and extremely picky to find fault with this one. So much for enjoying her own meal, she grimaced. She'd just have to ask Marie to fix her a plate for her to eat while Kenneth was sleeping off the sedative-laced after-dinner wine. Desert, too. Jane really felt the need for some sugar after that quietly fierce battle of wills.

~------------~

Kenneth sat on the frilly, overdone canopy bed, staring into the open armoire. He had his hands locked together in his lap to keep them from shaking. He felt so very cold - whether that was from fear or anger - Kenneth wasn't quite sure. He'd known going into this that this was a setup, but the full scope of his Mother's plan was just becoming clear to him.

He had not all that surprised to find that his extra baggage had not been delivered to his room when he returned from his talk with Jane Thompson. After all, his Mother was the one who sent him here, leaving him with only two choices, neither of which was particularly palatable.

*What was that trial in Homer's Odyssey called?* he asked himself. The one where either choice was bad, but one of the two was unacceptably horrible? Scylla and Charybdis? That was it. One was a monster that would catch and eat some sailors if the ship ventured too close, but the other one was a huge whirlpool that would kill everyone onboard if they tried to avoid the man-eating monster.

Which one of his two options, Kenneth mused, was the whirlpool and which one was merely a bloodthirsty monster? He didn't know, but he would definitely find out soon enough. Kenneth only hoped he didn't find himself being flushed down the porcelain throne before he could make the other choice.

One way or another, he promised himself grimly, he was walking away from all this when he reached eighteen, and he was walking away still a man.

A knock on his door broke through his somber mood. The younger female opened his door when he called for her to enter. She was still rigged out in that frilly thing that made her look like a satin church bell with the way her skirts flared out from her legs. She dropped him a quick curtsy and said. "The noon meal is ready to be served. Would you please accompany me to the dining room? Aunt Jane is a real stickler for being on time."

Kenneth again slipped on his suit coat, straightened his tie and checked his hair one last time before moving to follow the girl. As he closed the door, he noticed that the "keyed" side of the door lock was on the inside of the door whereas the "knobbed" side of the deadbolt was on the hall side. Doubly odd, Kenneth mused. He'd never seen bedrooms with security-throw-length deadbolt locks before, either. Well, so much for privacy he thought with some resignation.

~-----------~

The meal had gone precisely as Jane had feared. The extensive, formal tableware setting had not bothered Kenneth a bit. As Darla had served each course, he had unerringly chosen the correct implement each time, without once looking to see which fork or spoon Jane picked up. He'd even skipped the provided shrimp fork when no shrimp cocktail was served.

Worse, he'd politely seated Darla after she had served each course and had waited until she had served herself before he began to eat each new course. Had someone sent this boy to a summer camp run by Emily Post and if so, why hadn't Jane been apprized of that fact?

As Jane had expected, she had not been able to do more than nibble at her own food before it was time for Darla to clear away and serve the next course. They were on a schedule and they needed Kenneth asleep in very short order if they were to have him arrayed in his first dainties by dinnertime.

Finally, the desert course was finished. Jane made her typical spiel about how deeply in trouble Darla had been before coming to Jane and how she was now the epitome of genteel ladylike behavior thanks to Jane's tuition and to the strict Victorian code of behavior that Jane demanded of all her students.

Darla returned with a tray containing several small glasses and a crystal decanter filled with a dark, richly colored liquid. Kenneth watched with some interest as she filled the three glasses and then offered one to Jane and one to himself before placing the third in front of her own seat. Yet another oddity, Kenneth thought. Why is the stem of one of the glasses blue and the other two red? Whatever else he could say about this Jane Thompson, friend of his Mother, she was extremely well off financially. Why would she permit that Darla to use such an obviously mismatched set? Well, he wasn't going to call Jane's attention to it if she did not see it. No point in embarrassing the girl in front of her Aunt and making an enemy he did not need on his first day.

"I enjoy a nice glass of sherry after lunch, Kenneth." Jane said, recapturing his attention. "I bid you welcome to my house and offer the hope that together we can help you find your true path."

Kenneth picked up his glass, raising it in answer to Jane and Darla's offer of the toast. Then, he watched as the two women sipped their wine before setting his own glass down untouched.

Oh no, Jane almost groaned. "Is there something wrong, Kenneth? Do you object to my toast?" she demanded aggressively.

"No, Ms. Thompson," he hastily reassured her, "it's just that I am underage - for drinking alcohol, that is."

*He's afraid I am trying to set him up by having him drink.* Jane concluded. Which of course was precisely what she was trying to do though not in the way he had supposed.

"Kenneth," Jane said soothingly. "I will never discipline you for accepting something I freely give you. It is not abnormal for young people to take a small glass of wine at the family table. In fact, many families do that so that their children grow up with an appreciation of fine wines. Go ahead and taste the wine. I am sure you will find it quite nice." And quite fatiguing, she added in her mind.

"Thank you, Ms. Thompson, but I don't drink. Not at home and not here."

*Damn*. "Come now, Kenneth, we both know that is not true." she chided gently. "At least three of the entries in your file document your underage abuse of alcohol. One of the things we may accomplish here is you learning not to abuse such beverages."

"And since it is in that file," Kenneth flared, showing signs of angry emotion for the first time, "then it must be true. Well, I have already told you that I have done nothing wrong which includes *not* having . . . how did you put it? Oh yes. . .not having abused alcohol. I don't like the taste and it tends to make me nauseous."

"I see." Jane said, frustration rippling through her from this yet another unexpected barrier to her goals. She was trying to find an alternative when Marie entered the room and whispered to her that one of her business clients was on the phone and was very upset. *Damn again!* "I have to go to my office, children." Jane said as she stood. "Darla, please clear the table and help Marie with cleanup. Kenneth, you have had a long, stressful trip. Perhaps you would like to go lay down for a while, maybe take a nap" *Please take a nap*

"Yes, Aunt Jane." Darla replied as she too stood.

Kenneth followed suit and then remembered. "Ms. Thompson? Any word about where the rest of my things are? From the train?"

Jane stopped at the door. She knew precisely the disposition of Kenneth's luggage. Marie had put his bags into the locked attic just before lunch had been served. "I will make inquiries, Kenneth, and let you know. In the meantime, I think we can provide you with something suitable. That suit has seen better days." With that, she bustled off to try to calm her client.

Kenneth found himself momentarily alone in the dining room. He looked at his untouched glass of wine and decided there was no point in wasting what was probably a very expensive spirit. Carefully, he removed the stopper from the decanter and began slowly pouring his glass back in.

He was just about finished when the woman Jane had called Marie reentered the room and came to complete halt. "What are you doing??" she demanded.

Kenneth gave her a sheepish grin. "I didn't drink any of it and it seemed like a shame for it to go to waste. I figured that since the glass was clean, there was no reason not to put it back."

"I see." the older woman said in a very soft voice.

"Do you need any help before I go up to lay down, Ma'am?" he offered.

"No. . . I mean, no thank you. Darla and I are just fine. You go on up and rest. You have a full day ahead of you."

He smiled, excused himself and then left the room thinking that at least one person in this mausoleum had some innate warmth.

Marie stood there, watching Jane's newest project stroll off, obviously not under the influence of Jane's sedative. Shaking her head, she picked up the decanter and went to pour its drugged contents down the sink. Despite Jane's wealth, it felt obscene dumping one hundred twenty five dollars worth of wine down the drain like so much dirty dishwater.

And Marie had just decanted that bottle yesterday.

Then it hit her. How was she going to raid Kenneth's room to make off with the last of his boy clothes if he wasn't out cold from Jane's little potion??

~-----------~

The hall clock was striking three p.m. when the three conspirators gathered in Jane's office for a short breather.

"So, you were able to get the last of his male things even without him having taken the sleeping draft?" Jane asked, relaxing for the first time since she'd gotten out of bed that morning.

Marie sipped her tea and gave her long time friend a devilish smile. "The little darling was just plain tuckered out, Jane. Travel fatigue."

"Yet another benefit of having them travel by train instead of more rapid forms of transport. He was on that train for most of eighteen hours by the time he arrived and Sheila wouldn't pay for a first class seat or for a sleeping compartment." Jane smiled over her own cup.

"First boy we've ever had who turned down the chance to try drinking with the grown ups, Jane." Marie observed, still somewhat surprised.

Jane paused to consider that. "Yes," she said pensively, "that was a surprise. What concerns me is his adamant refusal to concede the truth of those files. His supposed "not drinking" is another case in point. I went back and checked - he's been punished several times for underage drinking, one time spending the night in a jail cell. And yet, he steadfastly denied that he drinks, just as he refuses to acknowledge the other charges in that book."

"Is there any chance at all that the records aren't true, Aunt Jane?" Darla asked, entering the conversation for the first time.

"I don't see how." Jane's answer was immediate and unequivocal. "If I were working with anyone other than Judge Ruth, I might have doubts. He is just so . . . so convincing, isn't he, dear?"

Darla nodded emphatically, making the intricate hairpiece adorning her head bounce wildly.

"A little less enthusiasm and a bit more decorum in your gestures, Darla. We need him to think you, like Marie and I, are fully female for the next couple of weeks. Dainty young misses do not nod their heads like a jack in the box." Jane smiled to soften the criticism of this special child, "Still, it does pose problems that he won't admit his crimes. Until he confronts them openly, we are not going to make very much progress with him."

"You going to have Darla work on him tomorrow?" Marie asked.

"Hmmmm. .. Yes, that is the normal plan." Jane said, almost to herself before focusing on the youngest participant. "Tomorrow, after her first skin-out dressing up, you will go in and coach her on the finer points of dealing with the vicious Ms. Thompson."

"Like Stephanie did for me?" Darla asked with a soft smile.

"Just so. Play it straight with her, dear. Help her all you honestly can, but it won't be enough. She'll be too emotionally mixed up and mentally off balance to absorb more than the smallest fraction of what you will impart. There will be more than enough real deportment failures for me to use to get into her head. What she will need to remember is that you tried to help her and that everything you told her was true."

"So what does that have to do with him not admitting to having done all that stuff his Mother told you about?"

"Ah, therein lies the challenge for you, Darla. In the mental state we should have her in by then, you should be able to get her to admit things that she wouldn't otherwise. If we can get a recording of her confessing to the contents of those records in her own voice, we will be able to take away that defense mechanism. She will then be forced to deal with her actions and their consequences."

"And the biggest consequence of all is you, right, Aunt Jane?" the pretty teen teased.

"Just so." Jane replied smugly. "Marie, if he isn't awake by then, wake him up at four thirty. That will give us a couple of hours before dinner to give him the final ultimatum so that what happens tomorrow can be laid at his door as if he had really had agreed."

~----------------~

 

Part 3

As so many young men had before him, Kenneth awoke to find the remainder of his clothes missing. Only an absurdly feminine confection of a bathrobe in slick pink satin was immediately visible, hanging from the armoire door where he'd carefully hung up his travel suit.

Kenneth took down the robe to see if his own clothes were hanging behind it, but of course they weren't. There was no sign of the suit inside the armoire, either. Only the same girl clothes that he'd originally thought might belong to the Thompson woman's niece. At least his wallet was still in the pocket of that skirt where he'd hidden it before going to bed. Perhaps they'd unpacked his duffel and put his other clothes into the bureau, he thought with little hope of that being so. His fears were confirmed when he opened the various drawers and saw that these were filled with feminine clothing items from lingerie to sweaters to stockings in a veritable rainbow of colors.

"Well," he told himself grimly, "suspicions confirmed. Now what am I going to do?"

Just then, a knock on his door was followed immediately by the sound of the deadbolt rasping open. Jane walked into the room without another sound and reached over to turn on the lights.

Kenneth instinctively hid his nudity behind the only barrier he had to hand. . . the pink robe.

Jane smiled with satisfaction at the sight of her new student cowering behind that satin robe, and moved in to press her advantage. "Stop hiding, Kenneth. Put that on and come out. I wish to talk with you some more."

Kenneth looked at her for a moment, then stepped behind the armoire and donned the garment. The slick feel of the fabric felt strange against his skin - like it might slide off him at any moment. He belted it tightly and then moved back into the center of the room to face the woman he was coming to think of as the warden.

*Remember,* Kenneth told himself, *losing your temper never works in situations like this. You cannot give a woman like this that kind of edge. Control, remember you have to stay in control!*

"You took my clothes." he accused in a quiet, direct tone. "I would like them back. I need them to wear."

"Don't be ridiculous!" Jane snapped, following her time proven script although he did not seem to be nearly as angry as she had expected him to be. "What you have on is perfectly acceptable. Aren't you covered completely? Yes, you are. Is your so-tender male modesty in anyway endangered? Of course not. Why, I can't even tell you are a boy you are covered so completely."

"You want me to wear this girl's robe?" He asked, still without any display of emotion.

"Of course. That's why it was laid out for you, so you could wear it. Now, come with me, please. No, don't bother to look for anything else. Button that up and come with me or go as you are. You won't be the first underdeveloped male body I have had to look at. Suit yourself, but you will come with me."

He stood there, staring at her for several moments and for one frozen moment in time, she feared that he was going to balk before she even had given him the final ultimatum. She had to remember the conditional nature of the promise he'd given her. She needed to get him past that quickly, force him to surrender or it would cause her major problems later. Then, his face seemed to relax and he began buttoning up the top of the robe, only once fumbling because the buttons were on the "wrong side".

"Very nice, Kenneth. You look lovely." she told him when he finished, her voice taking on that too sweet tone often used by a grade school principal when falsely praising an erring child. "Now, come with me."

Moments later, Jane had him inside her upstairs study. As planned, neither Darla nor Marie had been in sight during the boy's first walk across the fiery coals of semi-public sissy dress. Time enough for that once he was well and truly caught in Jane Thompson's satin and silk web.

"As you may or may not know, I have been and still consider myself to be a teacher, Kenneth. I just teach different subjects now and it is time for you to begin to learn the hard lessons I have to teach you. I hope you have thought about our conversation today while you rested. I must tell you that I am *not* at all fooled by your display of gracious manners since your arrival and especially during the noon meal. All you've done is exasperate me because it is patently obvious that you do not have even the unacceptably feeble excuse of not knowing any better for your past activities."

"I will now lay out the program of studies I have planned for you and I will remind you that you gave me your word to obey my directions."

Kenneth held up his hand. Frowning fiercely at him, Jane acknowledged him with a sharp nod of her head. "I gave you my word, Ms. Thompson, to obey you until I decided whether you were Scylla or Charybdis - whether you were the lesser of the two evils my mother and her judge friend have imposed on me. Rest assured, if I think you are the whirlpool, I will feel no guilt whatsoever about ceasing to obey you."

*Scylla or Charybdis?* Jane thought in amazement - *a fifteen year old male comparing me to the monsters of a classic Greek epic?* Jane visibly shook herself back to the task at hand. "So be it." she growled. "Until such time, you are bound by your honor - *if* you have any, to comply with my wishes."

She had him there, Kenneth realized, as much as he'd wish it otherwise. Other than putting him in this absurd robe, she had not yet done anything to him other than taunt him and make a few threats. Surely, he'd see that more at that boys' home. Kenneth decided he'd continue to bide his time. Grimfaced, he nodded his concession on that point and it was all Jane could do not to sigh in relief.

"All right, let us begin then. You didn't like putting on that very lovely garment just now, did you?"

"Not really." Kenneth responded in the same, even tone that was beginning to really grate on Jane's nerves. *As if that is any great surprise to you, Ms. Thompson.* "I would like to know where my own clothing is, please."

"Gone until I deem you fit to wear them again." Jane said airily and was pleased to see at least a quick flash of hot anger in the normally icy grey eyes. "What's wrong with that pretty robe? As I said, it looks quite lovely on you."

"It is not mine." was the flat response. "It is a girl's robe."

"Just so," Jane said triumphantly. "Your boorish, disrespectful behavior, particularly towards the female sex, has cost you the right to dress in male clothing. While you are here, under my tuition and supervision, girl clothing is all you will be permitted to wear. By the time you have finished my program, you will as sweet, as adorable, as courteous as my lovely Darla."

Jane waited to see the time proven reaction, but she waited in vain. "I see." was all he said.

*Bloody hell!* Jane fumed. *Where is the outrage, the anger, the accusations, the _threats_. I know I am pushing all the right buttons, but except for short spurts of anger that he's quickly put under control, he hasn't reacted at all.*

"Not only that," she pushed on, trying to undermine his seemingly unnatural composure, "but we start your indoctrination immediately. Darla and Marie are preparing your first steps to girlhood even as I am speaking to you. By dinner, the boorish lout who terrorized that young girl by dragging her into the boys' lavatory will be nowhere to be found in the cute, winsome little doll we will make of you."

"And if I refuse to play along?"

Jane made a slashing motion with her hand, precluding any further protest. "We just reminded ourselves that you have promised to obey me, young man! If you refuse to follow my orders, then leave now if that is what you think you want...but you leave here dressed as you are. I will not help you. Call someone...your Mother perhaps . . .I am sure she will happily come to your rescue out there on the roads. This punishment is my choice for you and you will bow to this decision or face the consequences."

Jane's heart nearly stopped as the self possessed young man stood and made his way to the door of her study. "And just where do you think you are going, young man? I have not dismissed you yet. Marie will not be ready for your makeover for another few moments."

He paused at the door and turned to face Jane. "Pardon me, but I believe you just said I could leave so long as I left dressed in this thing. I choose to leave." And then he was out of the room.

This had *never* happened to Jane, not in over fifty students strung out over the past fifteen years, and she *wasn't* prepared this time! In the early days, Jane had always ordered Marie to be ready to stop a boy who took her up on that offer, but she'd never been needed in that capacity. Now, Marie was on the other side of the house getting ready for a boy who just might not show up.

This was *not* supposed to happen! The entire purpose of this gambit was to force his unconditional acquiescence to her program, to gain at least the semblance of consent from her charge, by giving him only one acceptable course of action. It was *not* intended to actually be a *real* choice for him.

Jane *had* to stop him. Whatever it took, whatever she had to do, she had to stop him from trying to leave. After all, she *was* responsible for the boy and first and foremost, she *had* to see to his safety. The court order from his mother appointed Jane as the boy's legal guardian and she had just put him in danger because she hadn't been prepared. She'd gotten complacent and now this boy stood to get badly hurt because of her negligence.

*Oh, God, please let the front door be key locked.* The deadbolt lock required a key to unlock it from both the outside and the inside. Why hadn't she remembered to ask Marie to lock the front door and pocket the key while she conducted this interview?

Unfortunately, the key was still in the lock and the front door was standing open by time Jane had reached the head of the stairs. Terror gave her feet wings and she ran down the stairs, reaching the front door just as the barefooted figure in ankle length pink satin made it to the driveway. *Thank goodness it is June* she thought. *His feet would be frozen if this were December.*

"Kenneth!" she screamed. "Stop right there, young man." To her relief, he did, turning to look up at her standing on the raised porch. "You have no money. Where do you think you will go?"

"The police will eventually pick me up. Dressed as I am, they'll have to. After that, who knows? Child protection services perhaps? Surely telling me to leave without anything more than this on constitutes some type of child abuse or abandonment on your part."

Where did the boy come by his unreal control and composure? How was it that he was thinking rationally about all this? What had she done wrong? *no time to worry about that,* she thought. "Well, you might wish to know that the local police are fully aware and supportive of what I do here." It wasn't quite a lie. Caro's husband, one of Jane's former students, was a deputy in the local sheriff's office. Hopefully he'd be on duty if she had to make a panicky call. "And have you considered just how dangerous it is for you to be out dressed like that?" Which was the absolute truth and what Jane truly feared.

Jane moved down the stairs to where her almost-lost student stood. Cautiously, recalling that one of the reasons he'd been sent to her was a propensity for violence, she put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. "Trust me on this, Kenneth. If you do leave, one of three things will happen. You will either be brought back here to me or you will be sent off to your home for delinquent boys, or you will end up hurt or worse. It could happen, Kenneth. We've had several cases of sexual assault locally the past few weeks. You really could get badly hurt. Whatever else happens in my house, I promise you that you will not be physically harmed in any way. If not for yourself, reconsider for the sake of your mother."

The boy went rigid at the mention of his mother. At a loss, Jane continued massaging the tense muscles. Finally, he turned to face her. "So, was your statement that I could just leave was a lie?"

Jane shook her head, thinking very quickly. "No, I will allow you to leave, and wearing what you are wearing, but I will have Marie drop you off a good ways from here so that the local attacks we have been experiencing are not a risk to you." *Please, please, don't take me up on that. I don't know if I could really do it and live with myself afterwards. Who are you kidding, Jane? You know you couldn't do it. Please, give me a chance to help you, Kenneth!*

"You're saying the threat of assault is real?"

"Yes, very real." Jane affirmed. "I cannot promise you will not be attacked, even well away from here, but the risk should be less. Of course, it will also mean that there will be no turning back for you; no returning here for the safety of my house. And it will mean that anyone who finally takes you in will be very unlikely to believe any stories you may try to tell about me. I will, of course, deny ever having seen you. Eventually, you might get someone to believe your wild stories. But most will not."

The frill-dressed boy stared at Jane for several moments, considering her words. Finally, he shrugged and turned back towards the house. "Very well. I will stay . . . .for now, under the same conditions as before. However, if I find out you've lied to me about this assault story, I am leaving if I have to walk out of here naked in a hailstorm."

Jane steeled herself to match his hard-eyed look without flinching, but her guilt made it difficult. "I haven't lied to you about that, Kenneth, and I will try to find the articles to prove it to you. There are and will be some things I may choose not to tell you during your stay with me, but I promise you that I will not deliberately lie to you." *And I will pray that I can keep that promise now that I've made it because I've never had to make it to a student before.*

~------------~

An hour later, Jane was busy in her office, digging furiously through the newspapers she'd retrieved from Marie's recycling bin. It had taken a while, but she had finally gotten the boy back into his room for his thirty-minute bath from hell as one of her students had described the floral-scented experience. She'd have to be heading back to his room soon as the time she allotted for the bath was nearly over.

A sharp knock was followed by her door swinging wide and a very upset Darla sticking her head into the opening. "Jane, Marie needs you. Now."

Jane was running down the hall before she realized just how frightened she was. Memories of another boy - one who tried to end his life because of his reaction to her treatment - flashed vividly in her mind's eye.

What she saw in the room brought her up short and all she could do for several moments was stare. Kenneth's luxuriant hair was gone, down to bare stubble - almost white stubble. "What happened?" was all she could ask.

"What does it look like?" Marie blurted, her wildly gesticulating hands filled with locks of fine blond hairs; her normally imperceptible French Canadian accent coloring every syllable she spoke. "He shaved his head after the shampoo solution had done its work."

*Now what do I do?* Jane wailed in her mind, but in the end, all she could come up with was to ask, "Why?"

The sardonic look she got in return was of the "you have got to be kidding" variety. "I asked you a question, Kenneth." she tried again, her voice firming as she strove to regain control of the situation.

"Your nasty little trick with the shampoo made me angry, so I decided that whatever you planned to do with that mess, you'd have to find another way."

"You are forcing me to make a decision I'd rather not make, young man." Jane fumed. "Do you *want* to go to that delinquent's hall? You are about five minutes from that."

Acid burned in Kenneth's gut, and he almost regretted the rash act. He'd been so damned angry, he'd nearly pulled it out by the roots instead of merely attacking it with the razor. Should he apologize, he wondered. *No, can't do that. Can't afford to give her any advantage she doesn't already have.*

"That is your decision, Ms. Thompson, and doing this," his hand raised to brush across the peach-fuzzed head, "was my decision. I knew there was that possibility when I did it."

For one of the few times in her adult life, Jane Thompson was speechless. Every time she opened her mouth to say something, words failed her. She couldn't find any word, any phrase that was adequate to express her emotions at that moment.

She'd have to deal with this later, she decided, and continue with the plan as best they could for now. "Marie, do what you can to dress him properly. Have him at my study door in thirty minutes." she ordered in a low, angrily intense voice before striding out of the room.

~-------------~

The wig Marie had put on him was a little too sophisticated for the delicately little-girlish, petticoated, taffeta sailor outfit she used as her students' first full dressing, but it was all she had brushed out and ready to wear. Per her standard script, Jane had ordered him to seat himself on the parson's bench while she "finished" her work when he'd knocked at her study door.

Now Jane was sitting quietly at her desk, contemplating the small speaker that was connected to the hidden microphone carefully secreted beneath the bench.

"Hi." Darla's voice came through clearly on the box as the second phase of this recurring drama in many parts began anew. "You missed afternoon tea. Would you like a ladyfinger? They're very good, even if Jane did make me bake them myself." Jane could easily visualize the sweetly smiling face, the small pastry and the boy in girl's clothing sitting awkwardly on the bench, wrinkling her petti's and skirt.

"Didn't Jane tell you to sit while you waited?"

"She did, but I decided I would stand. If I am any judge of women, Ms. Thompson plans to stand me up and put me through an inspection that would do a Marine general proud." *Damn the boy,* Jane fumed. She *had* ordered him to sit down for precisely that reason - so she could subject him to just such a humiliatingly intimate and *thorough* inspection. And now she couldn't even take him to task for disobeying her because that would compromise Darla in her role as the "good cop" in this little farce. Worse yet, Darla would have to continue his instruction so that he would learn the lessons anyway, but without the fault-finding.

After that, Jane listened with only half an ear as Darla instructed her "little sister" in the fine arts of sitting in a skirt, of mincing delicately and other such feminine mysteries. Then Darla went into her "Oh, Jane's not that bad once you get to know her and learn to follow her rules." speech. One thing Jane did notice, to her increasing frustration, was that the recording device was picking up a near monologue by Darla. Kenneth was adding almost nothing to the conversation other than affirmative noises at key points in Darla's explanations and to ask a few polite if uncomfortably pointed and insightful questions that Darla managed to sidestep for the most part. Fortunately.

Jane decided that she needed to call today's exercises to a quick end. She needed time to regroup, time to figure out just what the hell to do to get past Kenneth's wall of composed control. She had obviously failed to put him on the defensive and he was still thinking rationally instead of emotionally; he was analyzing instead of reacting - a state of affairs that did not bode well for Jane's immediate plans.

"Did you really tell Aunt Jane that you didn't do any of that stuff in that record?"

"Yes, I did." was the Kenneth's curt reply.

"You have to admit that it's kind of hard to believe. . . I mean, Judge Ruth and Jane are very good friends. I mean, what do you have to gain by lying? You're already here and she has that file."

Jane's senses went on alert as she awaited the answer. "I have nothing to gain by lying."

"Well, then why did you? I mean, all Jane has to do is call Judge Ruth to confirm those records. And trust me, you don't want to make Aunt Jane angry."

"A better question is why would your Judge Ruth lie about me. Your Aunt Jane's not the only one who knows her. My mother is friends with her, too." Jane's hand slammed down hard on the polished hardwood desktop. How *dare* he accuse Judge Ruth of lying. Raw fury colored her vision. That damned delinquent's school was looking better and better to her every minute.

No, she told herself, she couldn't make such a far reaching decision after only one day with the boy, and most especially not when she was this furious with him. Deciding that they had learned all they were going to from this episode, Jane strode to the door and opened it. The two girlishly attired boys looked up at her.

"Kenneth, please come in. Darla, go see if Marie needs help with dinner. Tell her I want it served on individual trays tonight. You and Kenneth will dine in your respective rooms."

Jane saw the surprise in Darla's face at the unexplained change of plan, but she hurried off to comply with Jane's direction nonetheless.

Inside the study, Jane gestured Kenneth back into the wooden seat before sitting down herself to glare at him over her desk. She tried to make all the snide, embarrassing little "compliments" that reduced her feminized young men to near tears, but it quickly became apparent that they were having little or no visible effect on Kenneth and that her mind was not in the game.

"That is enough for today, Kenneth. Go to your room. Marie will serve you dinner there and then assist you in getting ready for bed which will, I am sure, take much longer than you might expect."

"Yes, Ms. Thompson." he responded before standing and mincing out of the room. He did it so well Jane nearly screamed.

~------------~

"He already had his make up mostly cleaned off and his dress hung up when I brought his dinner in, Jane. I don't think we've ever had a boy who came to us who was this. . . fastidious."

Jane removed the glasses she had been wearing as she continued to scan the papers and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Except when he shaves his head." She shook her head, still amazed at that. "How did he react to the dressing and making up?" Jane finally asked.

"That's something else that was really spooky. He was absolutely deadpan throughout, Jane. He did not smile, frown, grimace or anything. He just sat there staring at himself in the vanity mirror as if it wasn't anything out of the ordinary for him. Almost like he was bored with the routine of it all."

Shaking her head, Jane smiled ruefully at her old friend. "Sometimes, especially after these latest students, I think that maybe we have been doing this too long, Marie. Do you think something fundamental has changed in young men that we don't know about or am I just getting too set in my ways, and unable to react when things don't go perfectly according to plan?"

"I don't know, Jane. We have had some strange ones recently, starting with Michelle, but this one? He scares me because I don't know what he is thinking, what he is feeling. Normally I can read them pretty well, but not this one."

"So where does that leave us? I won't call Sheila and Ruth and tell them we don't think we can help this one, but Lord above, Marie, if all he is going to do is follow orders precisely, without feeling any humiliation or any other emotion from the experience, there's not much we can do with him. We need him angry, humiliated, uncertain, and so far, he's not showing any sign of those emotions."

Marie considered the amber liquid in the crystal snifter she held in her hand before looking back up to Jane. "I know. So what do we do with him? Usual plan for tomorrow?" she asked softly.

Jane thought about it a moment and then gave a very unladylike shrug of her shoulders. "Might as well. I don't think it will make things worse, and who knows, maybe the furor of the rapid change drill will trip him off so we can start doing something with him. You did force him to wear cosmetics to bed?"

Marie nodded in reply. "Wasn't much I could do to put the hair rollers on him, though. He really couldn't wear the wig to bed and there just isn't enough left to roll."

"All right, then, we will go ahead with the morning quick change drill, followed by lunch in little girl party clothes and finally Darla introducing him to the staff as Kendra."

Her longtime friend nodded her agreement. "Just one thing, Jane." Jane regarded her dear friend attentively. "Let's make sure that all three of us are close by after Darla does that first outing with him. He seems much too cool about all this, but as I said earlier, I can't read him. I am really afraid he is going to explode and tomorrow is one of those hellish experiences that has turned some of our young men violent. I want to make sure there are enough of us close by to take him down if he really loses it and goes berserk."

"You think that's likely?" Jane asked wearily.

"He's too quiet, Jane, too blase about all this. And that file says he is prone to violence if given what he considers sufficient cause."

Sighing softly, Jane nodded her agreement. "Which, of course, is precisely what we are trying to give him. Lovely. Very well, then. We'll start with him getting the "this is why we don't wear cosmetics to bed" object lesson at breakfast in my study and start the real program by nine thirty. Plan lunch for immediately after the fourth change and we'll go on from there."

"I am going to go up to bed, Jane. You should, too. Tomorrow's going to be another very long day."

"I'll be up in a few minutes, dear." Jane said with real warmth in her voice.

She sat quietly until the door clicked shut behind Marie. Once she was certain she was alone, Jane eyed the phone on her desk, thinking about what had happened that day one more time and about what might go wrong tomorrow. This one felt wrong - very, very wrong. All it would take, she reminded herself, was one phone call to Ruth and she could stop feeling like she was carrying a flaming torch into a room filled with dynamite to take inventory.

None of this made any sense. Kenneth's records described a young male who would attack, perhaps physically, when his male ego was challenged or attacked. Males, especially fifteen-year-old males, like the one in that file, had no reason to develop the kind of control he'd demonstrated today. Still, those records had come from an absolutely unimpeachable source.

Jane felt drained, and just for a moment, she gave serious thought to calling it quits. It would be so very easy . . .so very, very easy. Judge Ruth was probably home already. Just one little phone call and the purchase of a plane ticket.

Except she'd never given up on a kid before. She'd failed a couple of times, but that was because one boy gave up on her and another lost trust in her when she'd been caught in a stupid little lie, but she had *never* given up.

Jane finished the last of her drink and stood up, stretching her long, tense body as she rose. No, she hadn't ever given up on a student, and she damned certain wasn't going to start with this one.

Making that decision lightened Jane's mood considerably. With a new spring in her stride, she moved quietly over to her own room and prepared for bed. Marie was right. They would all need rest to get through the next day.

~---------------~

 

Part 4

Kenneth lay awake in that rose scented jail cell. Jail cell was an apt enough description since that woman, Marie, had loudly locked his door from the outside after glopping make up all over his face. The old house was now quiet except for the creaks and other noises that gave such places their character.

Had he made a critical mistake by stopping when the Thompson woman had called to him? He wished he knew. God, but he felt alone. It would be so much easier to handle this if he did not feel so completely alone.

Maybe it would easier just to give in. Give her his word that he'd put up with whatever nasty little lessons she had planned. That would certainly simplify things. He honestly did not want to go to that damned home. The woman had been right about his size and his vulnerability in such an environment. Physical abuse by the larger inmates was a surety - sexual abuse was nearly as likely. What it really came down to was whether he was going to be forced to dress as a girl, or was he going to be used physically as a girl?

Scylla or Charybdis? Which of his options would merely take a bite out of his soul, and which one would destroy him utterly?

*That assumes, of course, that at least one of my options _won't_ destroy me.* he thought morosely, and finally lost his day long battle to control the tears. *At least that _woman_ isn't here to see me cry. I won't _let_ her see me cry! She's dangerous and would be even more so if she thought she had reached me this way.*

Kenneth rolled out of the bed and padded over to the vanity table and looked at his reflection in the mirror. His tears had cut wide tracks down his thickly coated cheeks. *Have to take care of that or she'll know.* he thought, and began looking for that stuff his mother used to clean off her makeup. Some kind of cream, came in a little jar shaped like a tub.

After finding none of the special cream, Kenneth had scrubbed his face as well as he could with just soap and water. *Well, it's not all gone, but at least the ravages I just inflicted hide the ravages of my little crying jag. . . .better get some rest. No reason to believe tomorrow's not going to be worse than today. I will need every resource to stay in control.*

It still took many hours for sleep to come to the lonely, depressed young man.

~--------------~

Jane regarded her newest protege as he consumed his light breakfast of dark tea and fresh muffins. He had been up when she'd gone to wake him. So much for her plan to get him up barely in time to start the day so that he would feel harried and rushed in addition to dealing with her little feminine tyrannies. Evidently among his other talents was an internal alarm clock which had gotten him awake in time to shower and remove most of the cosmetics from his face. She hadn't provided him with a decent cold cream or make up remover as yet, so he still had an oddly colored face, but he was clean.

And he was rigged out in the frilly gown and peignoir set that Marie had left out for him. He'd even put the wig back on, without being told or upbraided for not wearing it. She was going to have to do something about his hair. At this rate, it would be months before he would have enough hair to style if she waited for it to grow back out, and caring for attached hair and caring for a wig were entirely different prospects.

Jane waited to begin her script for the day's planned events until Kenneth had finished reading through the articles she'd found, proving her claim that it would have been dangerous for him out on the streets.

"Thank you, Ms. Thompson, for giving me those. I will be more careful in the future."

*I am not going to give you the chance to do that again, young man!* "Well, Kenneth, if you are finished, let us begin today's program of studies. Today we are going to concentrate on clothes and cosmetics. Your face is a disgrace. You have smudges of old make up making a most . . .interesting abstract artwork of your face. You should clean your skin more thoroughly in the future."

She watched as the femininely turned out young male continued chewing the bite of food he'd taken just before she'd spoken to him (intentionally, hoping he'd try to swallow it whole or respond with his mouth full) before swallowing. Only then did he attempt to answer her. "Yes, ma'am, I know. Unfortunately, the soap did not clean it all away and I did not want to keep you waiting. I thought I would ask Marie for something better. I seem to recall my mother buying some special cream by the case for just that purpose."

Despite her years of control, Jane momentarily goggled at the boy. "Umm. ..yes. . .I see. An . . .unfortunate oversight. Now, as to our lessons for today." Jane said quickly to regain control.

"My 'English method' is designed to put recalcitrant boys such as yourself, young man, into new, alien and uncomfortable situations as a means of deterring that recalcitrance. I use petticoat discipline to force them to learn to appreciate their feminine side, and before you say anything, psychologists have shown that every person has both feminine and masculine sides to their nature. I contend that you, and other boys like you, ignore that finer aspect of your personalities. If left on your own, boys such as you grow into men who are totally insensitive to feminine things and who are disdainful of the elevated role of woman. That is unacceptable in our modern world."

"Our first lessons today, and those we shall work through in the coming days, are all about what it takes to be like a young girl of your age."

Jane paused at this point to take stock of her student and of his reaction and saw nothing but attentive curiosity. How many times had she given this little speech, or one very much like it? Between her time at Eastmore working with boys whose mothers wanted them petticoated and forced to attend an all-girl school as punishment, and her work here in her own home subsequent to Eastmore, easily over a hundred times. Invariably at this point, the boys had horrified looks on their faces, or were fidgeting uncomfortably about in their seats. Some even had the temerity to talk back to her, which aided her cause. Such behavior gave her the opportunity to become truly scathing about their lack of deportment and manners.

But never in her experience had a student simply sat there, listening to her as if she was explaining some new and unusual scientific experiment in chemistry class. Jane's bad feelings about this whole project came back with a vengeance and she again found herself staring at the phone on her desk. Finally, she looked back at Kenneth and tried to finish the session.

"So we come to this morning's program. Young girls spend hours practicing with clothes and with makeup. Now while I don't expect you to display that same enthusiasm for the activity, it is a skill that I strongly believe is important to your development. So this morning you are going to practice getting yourself dolled up all darling and precious."

*Again, no reaction. My God*, Jane thought grimly, *what is it going to take to get through to this child and would I even have the nerve or the right to go that far if I do figure it out??*

She had to get him out of her room. She needed to think, to reflect. "Marie is now laying out your first ensemble. She has also obtained several wigs that will be appropriate to the age and style you will be wearing. She will guide you through this first session."

Jane took a sip of her tea. "Today, Marie will be your teacher. However, I am going to be the one who appraises and grades your progress. I think the first phase will take about an hour. Learn well what Marie shows you the first time, for it will be important to you later."

"After she has finished with you, I will expect you to come back here for my inspection. Looking like a perfectly lovely little lady. Any questions, Kenneth?"

"No, Ms. Thompson. I understand what you are doing."

*Why do I think that you do, young man? I really do think that you do know. Oh, God* "Very well, then," Jane said briskly. "In my experience, it takes someone about half-an-hour to get dressed and made-up. After I have inspected you, you will return to your room and do it all over again. You will cleanse away all traces of the makeup you have on and redo it from scratch. New colors, new cosmetics...whatever Marie directs. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am," he relied softly. "Your directions are very clear."

She glanced at the clock.

"I want to have lunch at 12:30 today. That will permit you at least four practice sessions. Go back to your room, Kenneth. Marie is waiting for you."

~----------------~

Lunch was late that day and Jane was very unhappy about it. First, she was hungry, having had only a croissant and a cup of tea since rising from her bed, and hunger always made Jane irritable. The second reason for her displeasure was the reason lunch was late. The only part of the morning that had gone at all well had been the two transformations Marie had done personally.

Nor had the morning's exercises gone as well as Kenneth had wished. Kenneth had been very quick to note that Marie had needed every minute of the hour Jane had allotted to her to achieve a feminine appearance that first time. It was then that Kenneth had understood just how impossible complying with Ms. Thompson's orders truly was. There was simply no way he could replicate in thirty minutes what it had taken a very good, very experienced cosmetic artist almost sixty minutes to achieve. He'd just have to do his best and refuse to let her demands compromise his own self-image.

That resolution was much easier to make than to accomplish. Despite Kenneth's willing compliance with Marie's demands, Jane's sarcastic comments had found fault with every detail of his appearance. It wasn't his fault that his eyebrows were not slim and arched. It wasn't his fault that his fingernails were trimmed closely. It wasn't his fault the dress did not hang on his boyish figure like it would on a real girl. Yet Jane made it seem as though all these, and a host of others infractions as well were deliberate defiance on his part, soon to send him packing to the unimaginably evil reform school Kenneth's mother had selected.

The screaming, adrenaline-fueled demand within his body for action to fight this unfair attack on his dignity had no outlet from behind his rigidly calm exterior. Instead, his stomach began to churn with turmoil that would cause an ulcer if it continued. That sent discharges of excess acid into his bowels, which began to cramp and spasm. No sooner was he out of the Thompson woman's lair after his first inspection than his stomach lurched and he'd barely made it to the safety of his bathroom in time to lose his breakfast, mercifully without too much loss of dignity. Once he'd emptied his stomach, he'd had to drink some water just to hold off the dry heaves. That necessary detour had cost him almost ten minutes while repairing the ravages to his face had taken the other five - an effort which had been to no real purpose since the first thing Marie would make him do was clean off his make up.

By the time he'd left the safety of his bathroom, there was no way he could meet the half hour time limit, so he hadn't bothered to try. It was during that particular dressing that it had occurred to him that the only ones who would see him already knew what was going on. Regardless of what they said or did to him, it really didn't matter. Hadn't the Thompson woman promised that he would not be harmed here? All that left her were her sharp tongue and her "little lessons", and he had been through worse - much worse - in the past.

So he'd just played her game, albeit a little differently than what Ms. Thompson had likely anticipated. Being late instead of being sloppy left her having to ad lib her little tirades, which blunted their impact - at least somewhat.

Standing up under Jane Thompson's scathing diatribe about his lack of courtesy in keeping her waiting, his willful disobedience of her orders, and his incredible insensitivity in using that "women are always late" stereotype had stretched his control to the limits. God, but the woman didn't just chew him out, she chewed all around and let it fall out.

Then Jane had gotten really creative. "If you are going to continue to be late primping, young man," her words in the sickly sweet tone Kenneth already recognized as bad news, "then we will see to it that you have something worthy of the effort!"

Jane had accompanied him back to his bedroom that time and had huddled with Marie while he'd hurriedly cleansed his face. When Marie returned to the vanity, she had a small box and a tube of something that looked like and smelled like modeling glue. In very short order, Kenneth was sporting a set of fingernails only a teenage rock singer could love.

Those damned inch long nails had been impossible. He couldn't touch anything without snagging the bloody things on something. He'd destroyed the stiff laced collar of a Victorian blouse when he'd tried to button the thing, and broken off one of the nails in the process. After that had been replaced Marie had finally been forced to help him into his hose after he'd managed to run the first four pairs with those claws.

Upon entering Jane's study for his third inspection of the morning, she'd immediately set him to work doing some filing for her in her relatively simple file system. Simple that is, if a person could get the blasted drawers open. Which Kenneth had been completely unable to do, breaking two more of the seemingly fragile nails in very short order. Jane had really lit into him for that, after making him replace each one under the daunting stare of her basilisk eyes.

The terrible unfairness of that attack, when they both knew he had no chance at all of succeeding, had nearly set off his temper. Restraining himself had cost him another lengthy trip to the bathroom to vent his anger by trying to rend one of the towels with his bare hands as he unsuccessfully fought back against a desperate bout of tears.

Worse, Kenneth had poked himself painfully in the eye with one of the nails as he'd tried to take off the makeup. He'd been nearly blind in that eye for that entire dress-up session The only positive to that was that Marie had concluded that his eyes were tearing so badly because of the eye poke, and not because he'd been reduced to tears by the Thompson woman's vile tongue.

Kenneth was late arriving at Jane's study for his fourth examination, this time struggling not to keel over and break an ankle on the stilts Jane had insisted he wear for that presentation. The damned things had to be almost three inches tall. He just couldn't find his balance in them, and felt like he was always just one slight misstep away from falling. Jane had been at her very best during that session, berating him constantly for his lack of grace and for his inattention to learning any. She'd had him walk about her study for what seemed like hours (although the hall clock indicated he'd been inside her lair for less than fifteen minutes) with a large dictionary balanced on his head.

Well, almost balanced, Kenneth admitted to himself, since the thing fell off his head numerous times, twice falling onto one of his exposed toes and nearly toppling him. Only Jane's quick action on each of those occasions had saved him from serious injury.

Now he was sitting at the formal dining table, feeling incredibly foolish in this refugee-costume from a "Through the Looking Glass" production. Marie had been waiting to rig him out in that particularly frilly outfit after his escape from the high-heeled session. At least he hadn't been made to present himself in the study for a fifth inspection while wearing that dress. Jane had wanted her lunch more than she'd wanted to chastise him.

Kenneth was trying to appear interested in his food, but he wasn't. The morning's trials combined with the effort he'd put forth to hide his reactions from Jane and Marie had left him a very uncertain stomach. To compensate, Kenneth had carefully selected the blander offerings while pushing the less digestible morsels around his plate. Jane had noticed, of course, and had taken that opportunity to compliment him on his dainty appetite "So very necessary for keeping your cute girlish figure, dear." but that had been her only really pointed dart of that meal. Ms. Thompson had been far more interested in her own meal than in sniping at her new student.

Thank God.

Jane recognized that lunch had been an unusually quiet affair for a training meal at the Thompson table, but she'd simply been too hungry to keep up her normal banter and social corrections. By the time she'd taken the edge off her own appetite, the meal had been for all intents and purposes complete and she had to shoo the children back to their rooms to put on their sun dresses for Kendra's introduction to the groundskeeper staff.

*Well, at least he has not exploded like Marie had feared he might, but as she also said, what comes next is the most likely trigger for such an eruption. I will have to make sure Marie knows when they make the turn back towards the house.*

~----------------~

"What happened, Marie?" Jane asked as soon as the two girls were out the front door. "Why did you let him change the schedule?"

The other woman snorted and gave her friend a little shrug. "He spent the first ten minutes after each of your sessions in the bathroom. I checked and the odor was unmistakable. Either you were reaching him to the point of nausea or he was fighting some type of stomach ailment."

"Which do you think it was?" Jane asked excitedly, hoping that this was a sign her program had worked better than she had first thought.

"I'm still not sure, Jane. At first, I thought it was his reaction to you, but then he ate so poorly at lunch - like every bite might come right back up. You weren't badgering him at lunch, so wouldn't he have wanted to eat if you had been the cause of his upset?"

*Damn* "Perhaps. Or perhaps he hadn't fully recovered by the time we sat down to table. So, that is why he was late? You gave him the full half hour after he exited the bathroom? Because he was sick and you knew he couldn't make the half hour under any circumstances?"

"Not quite, Jane. I actually tried to press him on time, to get him to hold to the original half hour regardless of his time in the bathroom. I hoped that if he was particularly unacceptable, you might be able to really cut him down, might finally begin to reach him." Marie's shoulders drooped, "It didn't work. He just continued on with his dressing and making up as if I had not said a thing to him. He just stayed focused on what he was doing and left when he thought he was ready. Jane, I have never had a boy do that before. By the time we get to this point, they are so terrified of you and the browbeating you will give them, they just panic when the time limit approaches."

"As you well know, that panic is the intent of this exercise. So, even if the boy did have a nervous attack, he did not show any of it to me, and he refused to be panicked into rushing." Jane shook her head. "Lord, Marie. Why in heaven's name does a boy of fifteen need that kind of self control? More to the point, how ever did he develop it in the first place?"

"I don't know, Jane. I just think it is odd that he shows it here with us when there is no indication of any such control in the records from Judge Ruth."

"Good point." Jane wondered what to do next. "Of all the exercises this morning, I think the physical discomfort of the high heeled session bothered him the most. Certainly, it was physically difficult for him. I may do an evening session with him, Marie, to see if I can use that discomfort to weaken his resistance."

"Discomfort? You know very well that those heels rapidly become much more than merely uncomfortable. That is why you always work the boys up to them slowly. Not only that, but that pair is brand new and very stiff."

"I am not going to let him be hurt, Marie. His feet will ache a little in the morning, but I won't press him beyond his threshold of real pain. You know I don't work like that. I just want something to distract him enough that he loses some of that control."

"How long?"

"For as long as he can go without real pain or for as long as it takes, which ever comes first."

"I'm betting this one will drop first." Marie muttered darkly.

"I hope you're wrong, dear." Jane murmured back. "I am not sure I don't agree with you, but I do hope you are wrong."

~------------------~

As they'd agreed the night before, both Marie and Jane were waiting when the two students reentered the house. Jane searched Kenneth's face for any sign of the fury that should be there after having been introduced to men as a girl using a girl's name. Once again, however, as had been the case from the moment she'd first laid eyes this boy, Jane found nothing of what she sought to see in him.

"Thank you, Darla, for showing me around. That was a very nice walk. Perhaps we can do it again tomorrow?"

"Of. . .of course." Darla stammered. "At least, as long as Aunt Jane doesn't have other plans for us." She added recovering quickly.

Kenneth, now Kendra, turned to face Jane. "Are there any more lessons scheduled for today, Ms. Thompson?"

Jane swallowed hard and shot a worried glance to Marie. There was no way she was doing anymore with this boy today. She needed some time to think. "Not immediately, my pretty, probably after dinner. You may assist Marie in cooking the evening meal. Knowing how to properly prepare and present food is something every young girl should know."

"Yes, Ma'am." he responded. "Ms. Marie? What can I do to help? I must warn you that I haven't had much time in the kitchen, but I would like to learn how to cook."

"Certainly." Marie rasped out. "Please follow me."

Jane and Darla silently watched the pair go into the kitchen, and then Jane beckoned the girl into her office.

Once the doors were closed, Jane rounded on Darla, "What in the bloody hell happened out there?" Her language was a measure of just how rattled Jane truly was.

"He introduced himself." Darla replied flatly, "Or at least he tried to."

"What do you mean by 'he tried to'?"

"Just what I said. He walked over to old Tom, held out his hand and said, "hi, I'm Ken."

Jane groaned, her eyes closing tight as she fought to stave off the invasive tendrils of an incipient migraine. "Ken?" was all she could manage to say. What was she going to do? If those men put two and two together and came to the conclusion that if *one* of her 'girls' was actually a boy, it would not be all that great a leap of intuition for them to decide that many if not all of her students had been skirted boys. At the very minimum every new student would be under dangerously closer scrutiny during those introductions at the very earliest, most inept moments of their masquerade. It would only be a matter of time before the entire community knew all or part of the truth. Which would be the end of everything.

"I think I saved the day, but it was too darned close." Darla continued in a very tight voice. "I said, loudly enough for both men to hear, something to the effect that "Now, Kendra, you *know* that Jane doesn't like you using that nasty boy's nickname and remember, you *did* promise to go by your given name while you are here." Anyway, I think they believe she is just another of your charm schoolers, but one who doesn't yet have the nose-in-the-air arrogance your students are known for in town. They just figured she was an unusually friendly girl who had always been called "Ken"-short-for-"Kendra" before she came to learn at your feet."

"Hopefully, that will be enough." Jane shook her head. "Good job, Darla. Go up to your room and rest, dear. You look exhausted."

"Thanks, Aunt Jane, I think I could use a nap." and Darla turned towards the door, but then stopped. "Jane?"

"Mmmm. .. Yes, dear?" she answered absently.

"She's not acting at all like that file of yours said she would. He's been nothing but perfectly polite and courteous to Darla. If you'll recall, even I threw a tantrum when Stephanie named me Darla for Old Tom. He just lets it all flow off his back. It just doesn't get to him or matter that much to him."

"And it definitely should be getting and mattering to him." Jane replied emotionally. "Every bit of experience I have in this type of psycho-dramatic event tells me he should be a face-slapped quivering mass of human clay right now, ready for me to start molding and refining him, first into a girl and then into a decent man."

"It would be getting to him, Jane," Darla said in a very soft voice, "If he was what that file says he is. If he's not what the file says he is, then the important question is what is he really?" And then she made her way quietly out of the room.

~-----------~

Jane stared out her window watching the setting summer sun in the west as she held the phone to her ear. The buzzing ring sang four times until –-{buzzzzzz} You have reached the Roberts residence. I am not available to take your call. Please leave you name, number and a short message at the tone. I will return your call as soon as possible. {ding} --

"Sheila, this is Jane Thompson. Please call me immediately, whenever you get in. It is vitally important. Thank you." and then she hung up.

"*DAMN*!" she snarled before punching in another phone number. The phone on the other end only rang once before it was picked up and a bored female voice answered. "County Courthouse. How may I direct your call, please?"

"Judge Ruth's chambers, please."

Moments later, another woman picked up the phone. "Judge Ruth's chambers, may I help you?"

Jane recognized the voice of Ruth's long time law clerk who had been kidnapped by Darla's criminal older brother during her ward's early days in her keeping. "Hello, this is Jane Thompson. I need to speak with the Judge, please."

"I am sorry, Ms. Thompson, but the Judge is out of town at a retreat. I expect her back on the day after tomorrow.'

"I see. Look, it is very important that I reach her. Could you please give me a number where I can reach her?"

"I am sorry, Ms. Thompson, but this is one of those places that pride themselves on being isolated and unreachable. The only phone is in the main office and they normally refuse to call in guests. She has her cell phone, but it doesn't seem to work up there in the mountains."

"Blast. All right. Please leave her a message to call me. I consider the matter to be quite urgent."

Jane hung up the phone, knowing no more than she had half an hour ago. Should she keep trying for a break through with Kendra and work her tonight as she and Marie had planned earlier? Or should she back off until she could discuss this with Ruth and Sheila? On one hand, she trusted Ruth and her judgment implicitly, and yet, she found herself agreeing with Darla's assessment that everything they had seen of the boy was at odds with what had been written about him. Not only that, but Ruth had never before been far from the phone during the first critical days of one of her referral's tenure with Jane. Just in case she had to sign the papers vacating the suspension of sentence and sending the miscreant to jail.

Perhaps it was nothing, but still . . . that did not feel right. That was not at all like Ruth. Lord, hadn't she delayed one boy's arrival at Jane's until she could be available to Jane? As for Sheila. . . well, she'd probably get back to Jane as soon as she got in for the evening.

"Can he really be that good at putting on his company manners?" Jane asked the empty office. "He must be - there's just no other explanation. If I am to believe his file, he is a superb liar and wouldn't this behavior be just another kind of lie?"

And if that was the case, what could she possibly do that would break through his web of deceit?

 

(continued)

 

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