Academy Island/Lessons in Lesbianism - 3

Classes

The first class was a bit stressful. It always was at a new school, but Olivia felt like she had a target on her back, what with being the only trans girl in the class. She also hadn’t really had a chance to meet up with anyone the evening before, as everyone here was a fellow ‘stage maiden’. At least, watching from the back of the room, she saw she wasn’t the only one who didn’t seem to have made friends yet. Whether those other girls had been too tired or shy to socialise the day before or had simply wound up with no one from their floors in this class she didn’t know, but she was glad for it making her stick out less.

Not that it helped much when she overheard a nearby group of girls discussing the presence of two transgender students here this year. They weren’t saying anything all that rude, but they were complaining. They saw the school having guaranteed one slot for a stage maiden and one for a stage boy, out of a total of one hundred accepted students, as unfair special treatment.

Something Olivia didn’t really feel she could deny. Trans girls couldn’t really be a full 2% of the nation’s female population, after all. Olivia had heard a ‘one in one thousand’ number bounced around a bit, which certainly made for quite a gap between the number allowed in and the number who must have applied. She was left staring at her desk, trying to hold down her guilt, when the teacher strolled past her.

“I was going to start with simply running over the curriculum and a few ice breakers,” the woman said, her dark hair short but her clothing quite feminine, “but it seems there’s another matter to be addressed first.”

The teacher’s stopped beside the girls who had been talking. “While the amount of trans girls we’ve accepted this year might seem a bit high, you have to remember that this is the first year we’re allowing trans applicants. And that this is not a high school. We accept mature students as well. Thus the sheer number of trans applicants meant those two guaranteed slots were, in fact, more competitive than the other 98.”

The girls stared up at her, all looking more than a little spooked to be called out by a professor.

“There was, actually, serious discussion of opening a third slot, since one applicant was so over qualified,” the teacher said, her eyes glancing around the classroom, but falling on Olivia just long enough to give her a small nod. “Now then
”

She walked up to the whiteboard, and wrote ‘Voice and Projection’ in a red marker, before adding her name, Monica Leblanc, below it. Olivia pulled out her notebook, and did her best to jot down the important aspects of the curriculum not covered by the rubric. Not that there were many gaps, but there was certainly emphasis to be learned. And
 well
 this was a class she was very interested in.

Olivia had had some voice training, but not aimed at a theatrical volume. She hoped it would help her with the degree her voice had dropped. Which, she admitted, was less than most trans girls faced, but was certainly still more than she wanted it to have.

-

She had three other classes that day. One on the history of theatre, which she hoped she would find an easy course. She’d grown up around old traditions. After that was an improv class. To her thrill she and Kala had the period together, and they sat beside each other, happily bouncing yet another round of ice breaking prompts off one another.

“Wait. You’re twenty two?” Olivia asked, after a question about birthdays, when she’d decided to claim to be older with her June birthday over Kala’s August one.

“Mhm. Glad I look younger, though,” the other girl said with a grin.

“Well
 it’s not that big of a gap,” Olivia mumbled, though she still felt a bit self conscious about not realising it.

“Do you have anything after this? I think I remember you saying Tuesdays were heavy for you,” Kala asked.

“Yeah
 It’s
 dance class,” Olivia said, wind still out of her sails. “I’m not looking forward to having to wear a leotard.”

“You—oh, right. You’re just eighteen. Not been to Montreal yet,” Kala replied.

“That’s one way of putting it,” Olivia whispered, blushing to herself.

“Don’t worry. Pretty sure a leotard offers pretty decent compression. Just run back to the room and grab a second pair of ginch and you’ll probably be fine.”

That made Olivia’s blush worse. “N-no. I, um
 I definitely need to do a bit more than that. It’s—yeah.”

“Ah. That sucks,” Kala said, with a look of condolence.

-

Now, Olivia had gone back to her room to change. She hadn’t wanted to try to figure something out at the general changeroom just yet. Which meant walking across the campus in a light dress over top of her leotard. Which was awkward, the cut of the dress not quite covering all of the upper portion of the leotard, but she got fairly few stares from the people she walked past. She presumed they were still focused on adapting to the new semester and so weren’t paying much attention to the oddly dressed tall girl walking the other way.

The teacher definitely noticed when she showed up to the dance hall before anyone else. The woman watched quietly as Olivia hunted for somewhere to put her dress that was out of the way.

“That corner there is probably best,” the woman said, not sounding overly impressed by her efforts.

“Ah. Thank you,” Olivia offered with a smile as she hurried over.

The teacher just nodded, still watching her, even as other girls started to file into the room. At least there were eventually enough of them for Olivia to feel a bit lost in the crowd.

“Alright, girls. I’m Ms. Applewood, as I’m sure you’ve read on your schedules,” the teacher said. “Today is fairly simple. We’ll go over some stretches, I’ll evaluate the abilities each of you have going in, and then I’ll split you into your groups. Each stage boy will be assigned with two stage maidens, assignments being made based on skill and relative heights.”

It all felt reasonable. There were always more stage maidens than stageboys in the applications.

Olivia did her best at following through the stretches as they were explained. Dance was one of her weaker points, not having been something her family worried much about. Still, as she watched some of the other girls in the class attempt to go through their steps, she was glad to see she wasn’t alone in her lack of real training.

The academy was willing to overlook weaknesses in certain areas if you had strengths in others, after all.

Based on the way Ms. Applewood glared at her after her attempt, however, she was left worrying that maybe she was worse than she thought. She decided to find a corner to disappear into for the rest of the assessment period, shying away from talking with any of the other girls. Even if she did at least recognise a couple of the stage boys from her pod
 she still didn’t feel like talking to anyone after that. (The discomfort of dancing in a gaff was not helping with her mood.)

Her efforts to hide only lasted until the teacher called for everyone to line up in order of height, however. Once again she found she was the tallest in the class. The second tallest (a stage boy she didn’t know) was only a smidge shorter than her, but still shorter.

Which did not seem to impress Ms. Applewood in the slightest.

“This is something I was worried about with letting your—well, with average heights considered,” she muttered under her breath while scanning Olivia from head to toe. Slowly, as if to reinforce the height Olivia felt rather self conscious of. “If you were a more skilled dancer we might still be able to get this to work, but, starting out, it’s easier when the taller party leads.”

“If I
 if I have to, could I learn to lead?” Olivia offered, while quietly wishing she’d talked her doctor into letting her start estrogen younger.

Hormones associated with adulthood were there to stop growth, but her doctor had still been worried she’d change her mind until her father had given approval a bit after her seventeenth birthday. And so here she was, stuck with at least an extra inch for life.

“Maidens do not lead, Ms. Bishop,” the teacher said.

“I
 I could transfer classes, then?” she tried.

Ms. Applewood shook her head. “I’ve looked up the statistics. Less than one percent of women are as tall or taller than you, and we only let in a hundred applicants
 Well, ninety eight
 non-trans applicants this year. And I’d heard you’re taller than the other one. There’s a couple stage boys in higher years, but they don’t have time to waste helping you.”

“Uh
 well, there’s Eliza?” Olivia said.

“Hm?”

“Eliza Haliwell? She’s on my pod floor and she’s a good few inches taller than me,” Olivia explained.

“Wait. You’re trying to claim her?” another student asked. One of the taller fellow stage maidens. “On the first day?”

Olivia blinked, wondering why the other woman was acting like
 like
 maybe like Olivia was a nerd asking out a high school football captain.

“It’s just that I need someone to work with for dance class?” Olivia replied.

The girl continued to glare daggers at her. As did a couple others.  As they did so, the teacher had headed over to an old wall mounted intercom system, making a quick request for Eliza to be sent over. Ms. Applewood didn’t seem very convinced, however, as she returned to the students. She explained to Olivia, in what felt like rather sharp tones for a teacher, that a secondary factor in former groups was about partnering skill levels. Each triplet needed at least one reasonably skilled dancer in it, to help teach anyone who was lagging once grouped off. It seemed left implied that stage boys were generally considered less skilled at dance than stage maidens. A likely side effect of their generally being tomboyish and shying away from lessons in ballet or similar things.

As Olivia began to wonder seriously what the alternative was going to be, the door opened. Eliza slipped in, standing over six feet with a few inches to spare, even as she towed her shoes off to walk onto the dance hall floor.

Once again, Olivia was struck by how handsome she was. Surely better looking than any man
 but, well, it made sense. Women were trained to care about their looks more. And, historically, their chances for good marriages were tied to their looks, while for men success was generally more tied to whoever their father had been. So, in simple logical terms, Olivia was pretty sure that meant society had pushed evolution to ensure women got prettier while men
 just sort of existed. (All the more reason for her, as a trans girl, to feel self conscious and be amazed whenever she passed.)

So, it was obvious that when women presented in a masculine way they’d be more attractive than men. Even for someone like Olivia, who was so clearly straight. A girl so straight she’d dreamt of being a wife before she even realised she was a girl.

Which
 so
 so there was nothing to think about as she kind of lost track of what was going on while Ms. Applewood responded to Eliza’s arrival and height. Though Olivia did slowly regain her sense of her surroundings, and realised the way many of the other girls were staring at Eliza. There was a hunger in their eyes that—well, she supposed that an all women’s academy must have had a certain appeal to those interested in other girls. So it shouldn’t be a surprise there’d be more lesbians here than one would expect in the general population.

“Oh, yeah, I did hopak growing up,” Eliza said, drawing Olivia’s attention back to the actual matter at hand.

“Hopak?”

“Mhm, Ukrainian dance. My mum’s—”

“I know what it is,” Ms. Applewood replied. “I just didn’t expect you to have been the type to wear those dresses and flower crowns and such.”

“Ah. That’s because I did the ‘guy’ parts. They got the best soloist bits, and I eventually convinced the teacher to let me
 had to shave my head to get her to give in, but she did,” Eliza explained, her tone as casual as always.

The teacher’s lips thinned into a grimace, before she gave a nod. “I suppose it’s fortunate that both you and Ms. Bishop are in the same year, then. You’re tall enough you’d probably find dancing with most of the other girls awkward. Very well. You two should go work out a new schedule with one of the administrators. See who’s better able to change their timetable.”

“Sounds good,” Eliza said with a grin.

Olivia offered a weak smile of her own, hurrying over to the taller girl’s side as both the teacher and several classmates glared over at her. She was very glad to get out of the room when she did, awkwardly carrying her dress and her bags out into the hallway. At least the hallway was fairly empty as they travelled, it being during class periods.

“Glad to be partnered with you, by the way,” Eliza said as they walked.

“P-pardon?” Olivia asked, surprised to hear it.

“Mhm. You’re on my floor, so we can get together to practice easier,” Eliza replied, wearing a grin that was as charming as it was dorky.

Which made Olivia’s heart race (and her gaff feel even more uncomfortable). Proving further that her heart was annoyingly confused about Eliza’s gender.