The Practical Exam

The last bell went eleven minutes ago. The corridor outside has emptied out. The classroom smells of floor polish and the faint sour tang of chalk dust and the three of them, and the strip light over the whiteboard is humming the way it always does at the end of the day.

Clara, Brie and Poppy are standing in front of the desk. They came up together, in a little huddle, the way prey animals move when they are frightened: close together, heads down, ears swivelling at every small sound. Clara is on the left and she has gone the colour of old paper and her antlers are trembling so hard that the tips of them are blurring, and the report card in her hands is shaking so badly it is making a soft fluttering noise against her own chest. Brie is in the middle and she has chewed the end of her braid down to the tie and the tie has come completely loose and there is a little wet dark patch of goat spit on her collar. Poppy is on the right and her tail is going so fast it keeps thumping against the leg of the desk, and every time it does she flinches and reaches back and grabs it and holds it still, and the second she lets go it starts again.

They each have a report card in their hands. They are holding them so tightly the paper has buckled. Every grade on every card is an F.

The teacher is sitting behind the desk with her hands folded on top of it. Her tail is perfectly still.

Clara (quiet, reedy, breaking): "Miss... we wanted to ask you something. About the class."

Brie (blunt, flat, braid still in her mouth): "We are going to fail. We already know we are going to fail. All three of us."

Poppy (high, quick, apologetic, tail going faster): "We did not mean to! We really did not! It is just, it is a hard class and we are shy and, and my parents are going to kill me, they said if I get another F they are going to take my phone and my door and..."

Clara (very quietly): "Our parents are going to be so angry. All of our parents."

Brie (blunt, but her voice is smaller now): "We thought, we thought maybe there was something we could do. Extra credit. Anything. We will do anything."

Poppy (nodding hard, tail going so fast now it is a blur): "Anything! We will do anything at all!"

[Look at them. Three little lambs in green skirts with their report cards in their hands. And I am about to hand them to a pack of starving wolves and call it homework.]

The teacher leans forward very slightly. Her voice is soft and patient and concerned.

Teacher (gently): "Let me see them. Come on. Put them on the desk."

They put them down. Three cards. Every grade an F.

Teacher (warm, reasonable, disappointed): "All right. Let us be honest with each other, because you are grown women and you deserve to be spoken to like grown women. You have not handed in a single piece of work all term. Not one. Not a quiz, not a project, not a presentation. I have put your names on the board every week and I have given you every chance and you have not taken one of them." She turns the first card around with one finger. "So it is not that you did badly. It is that there is nothing there to grade. And a girl with nothing to grade gets an F."

Clara makes a small sound. Poppy's eyes are already wet. Brie is staring at the desk.

[There is nothing there to grade. And after this week there is going to be nothing left of them that has not been graded.]

Teacher (still warm): "But I am not a monster. I do not want to see you fail and I do not want to see your parents drag you out of my class. So I am going to offer you something that I have never offered anybody, and I am going to offer it once."

She opens the bottom drawer of the desk. She takes out three things and sets them down on the desk in a row.

Three two-litre glass jars. Empty. Clean. Catching the strip light.

Poppy's tail stops moving entirely. Brie takes the braid out of her mouth.

Brie (flat, slow): "What are those for."

Teacher (calmly): "That is your practical exam. Two litres each. You have one week."

Clara (barely a whisper): "Two litres of what, Miss."

[Two litres of what. Oh, sweetheart. Look at her face. She has not worked it out yet and I am going to enjoy watching her work it out.]

Teacher (patiently, kindly): "Of semen. Two litres of semen each, in one week. You will have sex with as many people as you can. Men, relatives, other students, other teachers, pets, animals, I do not care who and I do not care how. You suck their cocks. You let them penetrate you. You collect what comes out of them in that jar. And you film every single time, so I can see it and document it, because if I am going to put an A on your record I am going to need evidence on file."

The room goes completely silent. Even the strip light seems to be holding its breath.

Poppy (very small): "Two litres."

Teacher (gently): "Two litres. Do you know how many men that is, Poppy?"

[Do you know how many cocks that is, sweetheart. Let me tell you. I have done the arithmetic.]

Teacher (still gentle): "A lot. And you have seven days. So I would start tonight if I were you. Or you can take the F, and I will see your parents in September, and you can explain to them why you are repeating my class."

The three of them look at each other. Then at the jars. Then at each other again.

Clara (trembling, reedy): "Brie. Brie, we cannot do that. We cannot possibly do that."

Brie (flat, staring at the jars): "Do you want to explain an F to your mother."

Poppy (crying quietly, tail limp): "My dad will take my door off. He said. He said he would take my door off."

Brie (flat): "Then we are doing it."

They turn back to the desk. All three of them. Clara's antlers are still trembling, and Poppy is wiping her face with the back of her hand, and Brie is chewing her braid again.

Clara (very quietly): "We accept. We accept the practical exam, Miss."

The three jars are on the desk between you. Empty. Waiting.

What do you say to them?

It is Friday afternoon, one week later, and the three of them are standing in front of the desk again. They are not trembling this time. They are swaying slightly on their feet, the way people sway when they have not slept properly in days, and there is a smell in the classroom that was not there a week ago, warm and thick and salt-sweet.

Each of them sets a two-litre glass jar on the desk. All three jars are full to the neck and sealed, and there is a strip of masking tape on each one with a name written on it in shaky handwriting: CLARA, BRIE, POPPY.

Clara has semen dried in her antlers. It is crusted white across the velvet and down one side of her face and there is more of it in her hair, matted into the fringe, and her blouse is soaked through at the chest and clinging to her, and she is standing very carefully with her thighs pressed together and a long slow line of it running down the inside of her leg from under her skirt and pooling in her shoe.

Brie has it across her snout and both cheeks and down her chin and in the hollow of her throat, and her braid is stiff with it, and there is a fresh white streak down the front of her green skirt that has not dried yet, and she is chewing her braid anyway, and the braid tastes of it.

Poppy has it everywhere. Her whole face, her ears, her throat, the front of her blouse plastered to her chest and see-through where it is wet. Her tail is wagging weakly and leaving a wet arc on the floor behind her, and there is a river of it running down each thigh, steady and continuous, and it does not look like it is going to stop any time soon.

Clara (quiet, reedy, hoarse): "We did it, Miss. All three of us."

Brie (flat, exhausted): "Two litres. Exactly two litres. We measured. We measured twice."

Poppy (high, weak, still apologetic): "Sorry about the floor. Sorry. I cannot, it does not stop coming out of me, it has been coming out of me since Tuesday and it does not stop..."

[Look at them. Look at the three of them. They did it. They actually did it. Two litres each, in seven days, and they are standing there in their own mess and waiting to be told they were good.]

The teacher looks at the three jars, one after another, and then at the three of them.

Teacher (warm, delighted, entirely sincere): "I am so proud of you. All three of you. Do you understand what you have done? You have done more work in one week than the entire rest of this class has done all year."

She opens the top drawer and takes out three printed sheets and lays them on the desk.

Teacher (gently): "Clara. You were the frightened one. You were the one whose hands shook and you did it anyway, every single day, and I have watched the footage and I have never seen anybody so terrified keep going for so long. A plus. Well done."

Clara's eyes fill up and she nods and cannot speak.

Teacher (warmly): "Brie. You were the one who argued. You argued with me, you argued with them, and then you were the one who said we are doing it, and then you were the one who made sure they kept doing it. That is leadership. A plus."

Brie (flat, but her jaw is working): "...Thank you, Miss."

Teacher (softly): "Poppy. Sweetheart. You cried the whole week, did you not. You cried and you kept going anyway, and your jar is the fullest of the three and it is not even close. A plus. Every one of you. A plus."

Poppy is crying again, silently, and her tail is wagging so hard it is spraying droplets off the end of it.

Teacher (calmly): "Now. Before you go home and shower. Tell me how you filled them. All three of you. I want to hear it out loud."

What do you say?

It is Wednesday afternoon and the three of them come into the classroom looking for you and they are all three of them in a state.

Clara's eyes are red and her antlers are drooping. Brie is chewing her braid right down to the tie and her jaw is set so hard it is twitching. Poppy is not wagging her tail at all, which is the worst sign of the three.

Clara (shaking, reedy): "Miss. Miss, we have a problem. The jars are gone."

Brie (flat, hard): "Somebody took them. We left them in the locker room at lunch and we came back and they were gone. All three. We have been looking everywhere. Under the benches, in the bins, in the changing rooms. Nothing."

Poppy (small, cracking): "We were more than halfway. More than halfway! And now it is all gone and we have four days left and..." She stops and her whole face crumples. "Please do not fail us. Please. Please do not fail us, we were doing it, we were really doing it."

[The jars are in the bottom drawer of my desk. They are six inches away from her hand. She is crying about them and they are six inches away from her hand.]

The teacher leans back in her chair and folds her hands and looks at the three of them for a long moment.

Teacher (slowly, coldly, entirely reasonable): "Oh, girls. Girls, girls, girls. You are telling me that the three of you, who have never handed in a single piece of work all term, have lost your assignment, four days before it is due, and you would like me to believe that it was more than halfway done."

Clara (desperately): "It was! It was, Miss, I swear it was, we can show you the videos..."

Teacher (gently, sadly): "But you cannot show me the jars, can you. Because the jars are gone. And anybody could make a video."

Poppy (sobbing now): "No, no, no, that is not fair, that is not..."

[Look at them. Look at the little dog crying. Look at the goat chewing her braid down to the knot. I could let them fail right now. I could let them fail and watch all three of them break in front of me. But that would be the end of it. And I am not done with them yet.]

The teacher sighs. She reaches down and opens the bottom drawer.

She sets three new jars on the desk. These are bigger. Much bigger. Four litres each.

Brie (flat, staring): "Those are bigger."

Teacher (warmly): "They are. Four litres. I am not a monster, girls. I am giving you a second chance. It would be very easy for me to write you off right now and I am choosing not to, because I think you can do this and I think you were telling me the truth."

She slides the jars across the desk towards them, one by one.

Teacher (still warm): "But you are going to have to work for it now. Four litres in four days. And this time, girls, be responsible with your jars. Do not leave them in a locker room. Do not let them out of your sight. Because if you come back to me on Sunday and tell me you have lost these ones too, I am going to have to assume you were lying to me about the first ones, and I do not want to have to assume that."

Clara is staring at the jars. Poppy is wiping her eyes. Brie has not taken her eyes off the teacher's face.

What do you say to them?