Free Use School

The bell for fourth period has not gone yet and the corridor is full and somebody's phone is up on the notice board with the volume all the way up.

The stream is the ministry briefing. A woman in a grey suit at a lectern, reading it flat, and behind her a chart of the birth rate going down and down and down.

"...therefore, under Article Nine, all secondary institutions are declared open grounds. Any male member of staff or male student may avail himself of any female member of staff or student, at any time, on any part of the grounds, without prior arrangement. Conception is the object of the provision and completion within the body is the standard practice..."

The corridor goes quiet for about a second and a half.

Then the boys lose their minds.

Whooping, whistling, a bag in the air, somebody hammering the notice board with the flat of his hand. A boy grabs the girl beside him by the shoulders and she shrieks and laughs and he says, "You. You're first," and she says, "First for what?" and he says, "You'll see."

Then the looking starts, and the talking.

"Look at that one. Look at the legs on that." "Get her against the lockers, the metal's cold, she'll squeal." "I want her bent over a desk, not standing. Bending's better." "That one's got no idea, look at her face." "She'll know in a minute." "Who's got a condom? Nobody? Right. Inside it is, then." "Her skirt's not even that short, it'll go up to her waist fine." "Are we doing holes or not? I'm doing holes." "Line up properly, she's not going anywhere."

A girl by the window pulls her skirt straight and a boy puts his hand on the hem and pulls it back down again, and she makes a small noise and stops fighting it. Another one has gone scarlet to the ears. The pair at the lockers are counting out who is first, out loud, on their fingers.

Then a boy turns round and looks at you. Grins. Does not look away. The ones either side of him turn too.

"Oh," says one of them, delighted. "Oh, you. Come here."

Somebody's zip goes down. The bell for fourth period rings.

You are halfway down the second-floor corridor with a register under your arm when the announcement finishes, and the boys come off the walls.

It does not matter whether you are staff or a student. It does not matter to them. Two of them are in front of you before you have decided where to go, and one is already reaching for your belt with the confidence of a man who has read the statute twice.

"You heard it," he says, grinning. "Same as the rest of us."

Behind them the corridor has organised itself in four seconds. A girl backed into the lockers with her skirt round her waist and a boy already behind her, one hand flat on the metal over her head. Two more arguing over her shoulder about who is first, and settling it by rock-paper-scissors. A third holding a phone at shoulder height, narrating into it.

"Desk or wall?" somebody asks you, businesslike. "Wall's quicker. Desk's better, she can't close her legs on a desk."

"Both," says another. "Do her on the wall then bend her over the desk."

"Holes?"

"Holes. Obviously holes."

The boy at your belt gets it open and looks up at you, waiting for the word, and the whole corridor is suddenly watching to see what you do first.

You have been teaching here eleven years and they have never liked you.

You are strict, you are loud, you hand out detentions like flyers, and the back row has been counting the days. Fourth period, thirty of them, and the announcement has just finished playing out of somebody's phone speaker at the front.

The boy nearest the door gets up and shuts it. Then he turns the key in it. Then he looks at the rest of the class, and the whole room starts to grin.

"Miss," he says, pleasant as anything. "You know what the law says."

The front row is already pushing desks back. Shirts come out of waistbands. Somebody laughs and it is not a kind laugh.

"Eleven years, miss," says a boy in the second row. "Eleven years of detentions."

"How many detentions have you given me?" another one asks, cheerfully, unbuckling. "Go on. Guess. I'll tell you after."

"She's going to be loud," says a third, matter-of-fact. "She's always loud. It'll be the same noise as when she shouts."

"Get her over the desk. Face down, that's how she does the marking, she'll be used to it."

"Skirt up first. Do it slowly, let her feel it coming."

"Nobody finish early, we've got a whole period."

The one at the door comes over and puts a hand flat between your shoulder blades, and pushes, not hard, just enough to mean it.

"Bend," he says.

You are the one they like.

Twenty-six of them and half of them owe you something: the sandwiches you bring on Fridays for the boys whose cards are empty, the two hours you stayed back to drill Kanji with Ogata, the way you never once read the marks out in order. Fourth period, the announcement just finished, and nobody is cheering.

They are looking at you instead. All of them, quiet, and then the noise comes, but it is not the noise from down the corridor. It is pleased.

"Miss," says Ogata, from the back, grinning so hard he can barely get it out. "Miss, we talked about it. While it was playing. We've decided."

"We drew lots," says another, holding up a torn page. "Properly. Nobody cheated."

Then they start talking, to each other, over your head, the way they do when they have forgotten you can hear them.

"She's going to be alright about it, isn't she. She's not going to be weird."

"Are you joking? It's her. She's an angel, she's not going to say no to anybody."

"She feeds the ones who can't pay for the canteen. Every Friday. Out of her own bag."

"She's like my mum, honestly. My mum's the same, she'd give you the last of anything."

"That's why we're doing it gentle. She's not one of the ones you bend over a desk and get it over with."

"Chair, then. In the middle, where she can see all of us."

"And somebody hold her hands, not to pin her, just to hold them."

"Can we do it properly, miss? Not quick?"

Ogata clears his throat and looks at you and his grin goes a bit shy.

"You can say no," he says, quickly. "Well. You can't. But you can say if you'd rather not."*

A chair is set down in the middle of the room, facing the board, and a boy pats the seat of it.