Ursala Updike - Students At Play

And then, slowly, gradually, it was over, like a coasting vehicle throbbing and jolting and finally coming to an absolute and total halt.

It was over. She had reached physical satisfaction and yet, as always, there was an emptiness to it, and a despair, which she could not quite understand or explain.

Still trembling slightly, she rose to her feet and slowly walked to the living room of her small apartment. She removed the player arm from the record and snapped on the light. Then she set about snuffing the myriad candles which had burned there.

What was wrong with her? she wondered. Was she really so old that sexual contact had lost its thrill for her? She had just turned thirty the day before and the trauma was heavy on her. She was losing her youth and was even more conscious of it than most women because she was surrounded by all the young and beautiful and terribly, terribly desirable girls who attended Northrup Academy.

Was it the fact that she was getting old? she wondered, as she again snapped off the lights in the living room and walked through the heavy smell of smoldering wicks to the still candlelit bedroom.

A woman shouldn't think that way. Everyone turned thirty. It wasn't the end of everything. Besides, she thought, she still had Sissy-sweet, innocent, succulent; hot Sissy. She could still teach the girl to do all the things she herself knew. The girl would be an apt pupil. She would come to the apartment tomorrow for another tutoring lesson in "history."

Only the history would be of carnal enjoyment and sexual thrills. Sissy would slip out of her school uniform tomorrow and reveal her slender, blonde, eager body, and then Glen would teach her how to caress breasts and pubes-how to use her hands and her lips. Yes, tomorrow after dinner, during the study hour, she would have Sissy's body and that sweet, young nubile flesh would at last bring her to thrashing climax as she had just done for the girl.

Tomorrow.

A frown clouded her sensuous face as she began to snuff the candles in the bedroom. There were other things she had to do tomorrow. They were things which might prove very unpleasant. They were even frightening-so frightening in fact that she had pushed them out of her mind. She had tried to drown the truth in her enjoyment of Sissy's young and impassioned flesh; But still the truth hung over her like the ax of doom.

She snuffed out the last candle and slipped between the still warm satin sheets of her big bed.

Tomorrow.

She had been ordered to report to Dean Lydecker's office immediately after breakfast. She wondered if he could have found out about her sexual relations with the girls. She had been at the academy for almost eight years-ever since she had graduated from college. Over those years, she had savored the bodies of more girls than she could ever remember. Could any one of them have confessed to Dean Lydecker? she wondered. Could someone else have seen or suspected?

Glendora Adams curled in her huge bed. She pondered the unknown as she curled her body into itself. She knew that her meeting with Dean Lydecker the following day would mark a turning point in her life.

What she didn't know was just how catastrophic that turning point would be.

Armand Lydecker had been the dean of Northrup Academy as long as any teacher or student there could remember. He was an overweight, florid, bald man who, more than anything else, looked like a clean-shaven Santa Claus, meticulously dressed in a three-piece grey suit. Dean Lydecker believed in the old-fashioned way of doing things as he thought the old-fashioned way might have been. He thought of himself as a just, but firm, administrator, and he frequently mentioned the fact that discipline was a vital stone in the total structure of a young girl's education.

That discipline was invariably administered by Armand Lydecker himself because he believed that young ladies should follow a straight and very narrow path.

Glendora Adams was admitted to the dean's inner office where he apologized to her for the necessity of having her wait while he disciplined a young girl already there.

Glen seated herself on a bench against one wall of Lydecker's spacious office and watched as the fat, bald man interrogated the girl. Although she did hot like the idea of what she knew would follow, there was a part of it which had invariably proved to be a great personal benefit to her. After Lydecker disciplined a girl, that girl always proved very responsive to Glen's tender, concerned approach to her. Indeed, Glen believed that she had shared sexual favors with every girl Lydecker had disciplined over the previous eight years.

The girl who stood before the dean's desk now was a fifteen-year-old named Catherine Gyle. She was small for her age and, as a result, gave the impression that she was much younger than she actually was. Like all the girls at Northrup, she was dressed in her uniform of plaid skirt and white blouse. She was trembling as Armand Lydecker let his eyes roam over the budding curves of her adolescent body.

"So." His deep voice rolled almost like a note from a huge organ, over the room. "You thought you could get away with it, didn't you? Thought you could sneak Out of the dormitory and meet your young man in town without being seen?"

"No sir," the girl was almost stammering.

"Ha!" His voice was like an explosion. "We know. We saw. Oh, yes. We know everything you did!"

The girl seemed about to collapse from sheer terror. "No… I-"

"Sitting in his car. Oh yes, we saw! The only reason we didn't stop you last night is that we wanted to see just exactly how far you would go. Admit it. You were there in the car with him! Weren't you?"

"Yes sir."

"And you let him touch you and feel you and cup his hands on your… your… bosom."

"Yes sir. But we…"

"Never mind!" he snapped. "You had his… his member… in your hand. Didn't you?"

"I-"

"Didn't you?"

"Yes sir."

"And you gave him his degenerate satisfaction with your hand?"

"I-"

"Didn't you?"

"What's wrong with-"

"Wrong! You violated the rules of the academy. You slipped away from the dormitory after bed check. You went to town and there you engaged in a disgusting, perverted act of sexual lust and abandon-"

"A hand job?"

The dean ignored the girl. "We are going to have to punish you, Catherine-punish you severely so that you won't even think of boys any more-so that you will pay strict attention to your studies and to the rules of the academy."

"But, sir, I-"

"No buts, young lady. Lean over the desk!"

Dean Lydecker rounded his side of the huge desk. When he did so Glendora was not surprised to see the bamboo switch in his hand.

"Believe me, Catherine," he told the girl as one pudgy hand lifted the hem of her plaid skirt to reveal the diaphanous white panties covering her firmly rounded buttocks, "this hurts me far more than it will you."

He slipped pudgy fingers under the waistband of the young girl's panties and pulled them down to reveal the rounded flesh of her buttocks.

Glendora watched as Dean Lydecker switched the girl fifteen times. Catherine cried out in agony and the dean's eyes were wide. The child was sobbing when Lydecker finished, and he himself was trembling and covered with perspiration. He seemed barely able to control himself as he told the girl to return to her duties and to think twice before sneaking into town again.

Still sobbing, Catherine passed Glendora on her way to the door, then limped out of the huge office.

Apprehensive, yet still maintaining an expression of casual curiosity, Glendora crossed to Armand Lydecker's desk. The dean was sitting now. He was still breathing heavily, but seemed in better control of himself than he had been a moment before. Glen wanted to speak out to him-tell him what she thought of him and why she thought he really liked to discipline the girls-but she held her tongue. The next few minutes could mean the end of her career as a teacher.