Academy Island/Lessons in Lesbianism - 4

Routine

The meeting had gone well. Mr. Ling was happy to help with the paperwork needed for Olivia to transfer into Eliza’s dance class. It cost her her two late mornings of the week, but that was a small price to pay to actually have a dance partner.

It meant having to deal with Ms. Applewood twice in less than twenty four hours, which she wasn’t thrilled about, but she was able to better face the woman the next morning. First from having an idea what to expect and second before Eliza was with her. The tall and handsome woman was good for emotional support. (As well as good for helping Olivia blend in better, no longer the tallest girl in the class.)

Though Olivia had to admit seeing Eliza in a dance leotard was… confusing. With her arms bare Olivia couldn’t help admiring those well defined muscles. Yet the outfit also left little doubt about Eliza’s hips and… well, there was no getting around it, she was chesty. To a degree that Olivia found herself distractingly envious of.

“It feels so weird to wear this,” Eliza muttered, apparently noticing how distracted Olivia was, if not what specifically had her distracted. “Wish I could just wear my hopak outfit. That was plenty flexible and didn’t feel all… like this.”

She pulled at the tight and thin material stuck to her chest as emphasis.

“I—” was about as much as Olivia managed to reply.

“Really doesn’t mesh with my ‘bad boy butch’ look I usually aim for,” Eliza said, posing in front of the mirror wall to see how it sat on her.

Olivia continued to struggle with the odd feelings in her gut, and sought distraction by looking away from Eliza. Which led to her realising roughly a third of the class was staring at Eliza’s movements with hunger in their eyes. It seemed Eliza’s worries about losing her appeal were for naught.

Ms. Applewood interrupted the gazing to start the class. It went much the same as yesterday, Olivia feeling like she’d done only marginally better at her dance attempts. However, when it was Eliza’s turn Olivia couldn’t help but stare. She moved around the dance studio with a grace Olivia could barely believe. Especially on someone so tall and muscular.

They lined up by height once more, and Ms. Applewood’s eyes lingered on Olivia once more. She seemed almost upset that she had nothing to complain about. Which left Olivia wondering why the woman had a teaching job, if she seemed so focused on finding the worst in everyone.

“Mhmmm… you. It was Ms. Greene, right?” the teacher asked, pointing to the tallest next stage maiden after Olivia.

She was a couple inches shorter than Olivia, but about as tall as the tallest stage boy in the class. The other girl also had a figure that Olivia couldn’t help envying. Those hips…

“Yes, Jessica Greene,” the girl said.

“You’ll be joining up with Ms. Haliwell and Ms. Bishop,” Ms. Applewood said.

Jessica lit up at the news, giving a thank you and rushing over to the two of them.

“Hi there,” she said, ignoring Olivia completely as she batted her eyelashes at Eliza. “I just want to say that I can’t wait to learn to dance with your help.”

“Um… hi?” Eliza replied.

“I know we’re going to end early today, since it’s still just the orientation week, but… if you want to do a little extra after class practice, I’d love to,” Jessica said.

“Oh. I could probably use the extra practice too,” Olivia added, honestly thinking she needed the help.

Jessica glared at her, but Eliza seemed to light up at that. Olivia let Jessica go first, feeling like she needed to watch any moves before trying them herself. That seemed to make the redheaded girl happy, and she rather clung to Eliza as they ran through dance steps. Olivia found herself wondering how much extra practice Jessica actually needed. She seemed to have everything pretty down pat from the start. Though Olivia supposed it was possible she just didn’t know enough about dancing to find errors that existed.

Soon enough, however, it was her turn to dance. Which meant letting Eliza take her hands. An act that somehow felt scandalous. As if she were cheating on her boyfriend by doing this… by dancing with another woman.

And, also, as if she wished it was cheating. Because something about this felt so much more exciting than the same action with Carl.

Following Eliza’s lead through some simple and basic steps, Olivia struggled to focus on her footwork. She wanted to look up at Eliza’s face. At those kind and warm eyes. Why couldn’t her boyfriend have ever looked at her like that? With such gentle kindness.

She was pretty sure she’d made a fool of herself while so distracted, even with Eliza telling her she’d done fine. It was just that Eliza was such a… well, gentleman wasn’t actually the term, but Olivia felt Eliza embodied the concept more than any guy she’d spent time with before.

Either way, she excused herself to go hide from the world in her room for the next hour or so. Until she had to head off to her next class. Which was probably going to be awkward, as it was singing class.

-

Walking into the third class of her day, Olivia was happy to see she shared it with Kala. They didn’t have nearly enough classes together. What surprised her, though, was that Eliza was also in the class, along with a couple other folks from their floor.

It was nice to have so many familiar faces for the class where they’d be doing their actual term play. Even if she still didn’t quite feel like she’d lived down her bad dancing this morning. Which meant she was a blushing mess when she talked to Eliza.

“Alright class,” the teacher said, “I’m sure you’ve all read the rubric. You have a basic idea of what’s involved with this class… but you have one question on all your minds: what’s your play?”

There were murmurs of agreement from the assembled students. Olivia had been glad to see that their first semester term plays would be Shakespearian. It meant she didn’t have to worry about it as much. But it did leave plenty of options. Some of which she was less confident about. Say, Timon of Athens or Measure for Measure.

“We’ll be doing A Midsummer Night's Dream,” the teacher announced after a pause to build tension.

There were some quiet grumblings from the girls in the class.

“I know, I know, you all want to do Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet, but those are third year plays. You want to have honed your craft before doing them, so that you’ll do them justice and look back on them with pride.”

The grumblings shifted to quiet murmurs.

“Before we get to that, however, you’ll have a number of smaller projects to show me your strengths. Roles in the term project will be assigned in October based on your performances.”

The teacher brushed past introductions, assuming everyone was probably sick of ice breakers by this point. Instead, she jumped into assigning groups for their first scene reading. They were split into groups of three or four, and each given a scene from a contemporary Canadian play to work on.

Olivia found herself with two girls she didn’t really know, one stageboy and one stage maiden. They exchanged phone numbers, so they could coordinate a meeting for the weekend. Then they ran through the scene a few times. Something about a down on his luck man trying to go on a date while a waitress was a bit too talkative. Olivia took the role of the waitress. She was used to asides to the audience and banter after all.

-

Thursday proved largely a repeat of Tuesday. Except that she had the afternoon off without dance class. When Olivia mentioned it during their history class, Kala seemed to get excited.

“You should come watch our fencing class.”

Olivia blinked. “You’re doing fencing in your stage combat class?”

“Hm? No. No. Stageboys have a whole class for fencing, on top of stage combat,” Kala replied. “Freebairn’s performances are known for their fencing. It’s why we only have one improv class per week.”

Since she had nothing better to do, Olivia agreed to come along.

-

The fencing area turned out to be one of the gyms at the academy. The school was known for doing surprisingly well at sports, despite its small size, so it had an outsized amount of athletic space. Olivia made her way to a bleacher, sitting down as the various stageboys marched in. There were about thirty of them, which Olivia realised was the full cohort of freshmen stageboys. She obviously recognised a few from her dorm, though pods had a spread of all three years at the academy, so she didn’t recognise all of them.

But, it being everyone meant that Eliza was there. The padded fencing outfit hugged her figure, but not quite as loyally as the dance class leotard had. Meaning some part of Olivia’s brain could pretend Eliza was merely a particularly barrel chested guy… or, something like that. It was the only explanation Olivia had for why seeing the tall girl mess about with her fencing saber was making her heart flutter so.

“Oh! Olivia! Hey!” Eliza said, upon noticing her and waving.

Olivia managed to wave back, not feeling comfortable yelling over such a distance. She was fairly happy with her voice at normal speaking level, but shouting was still somewhere she felt self conscious.

Especially not while feeling so nervous.

Luckily the class started before Olivia had any chance to put her foot in her mouth with how nervous she felt. Eliza, and the rest, had to put their protective mesh helmets on before practicing. It wasn’t really true matches just yet, but they were still all paired up to run through the drills they were offered.

Which left Olivia watching Eliza practice. Even with the helmet on there was no mistaking her for any of the other girls. And she still cut a dashingly imposing figure between her height, build, and the grace with which she moved. Olivia slowly realised that grace was a result of years of practice as a dancer.

And that it seemed to be serving Eliza quite well while she learned the footwork needed for fencing.

She could only imagine how Eliza would look in a stage costume, swiftly dashing about.

-

Friday morning’s dance class had been thoroughly unpleasant. Ms. Applewood had picked apart every step Olivia had made, while Jessica had done everything in her power to hog Eliza’s attention for any paired up dancing steps. The classes to follow had been passable, but nothing good enough to fix Olivia’s mood.

When she’d finally gotten back to her dorm room, she’d had a Flight call with Carl which had only served to worsen her mood. It seemed like he was trying to get her to second guess attending just because of one bad day. Didn’t he support her? Didn’t he want to see her happy and succeeding? Like Kala had said a partner should?

She wanted to see him succeed? On… some level. Ok, so, sure, it wasn’t as much of a natural instinct as Kala seemed to act like it should be, but still.

Her mood was ruined enough by the call that she dragged herself over to her bed and just flopped there, staring at the ceiling. She didn’t have any major homework to do. So she didn’t feel guilty about inactivity.

Boredom was probably a better descriptor of her mood.

“Had a fight with the boytoy?” Kala asked as she slipped into the room.

“Something like that,” Olivia muttered.

“Think you’re up for going out and distracting yourself?”

“Hm?” Olivia asked, turning to her roommate.

“Figured we should celebrate the first week finishing with a meal a little nicer than the caf,” Kala explained, leaning against the wall.

Olivia sat up, raising an eyebrow.

“There’s a couple of restaurants on the island. One’s a kind of rowdy bar from what I gather. Popular with the older students, since it’s about the only place to go get smashed and have a party. There’s some others that are more aimed at staff, though. Heard the one is a nice little place with good beer and pub grub.”

“I suppose that sounds nice,” Olivia replied, though she was mostly focused on getting out of the room rather than where they were going.

“Good, good. C’mon. Some of the other girls are downstairs.”

Nodding, Olivia got up and followed Kala out of the room. It was a quick walk down to find Eliza and another girl (she was East Asian and Olivia was reasonably certain her name was Laura?) standing just outside.

They ended up walking in two rows of two (Kala and Laura in the front, Olivia and Eliza in the back), following along the brick walking paths that covered much of the island. Olivia hadn’t really explored much, so they were headed into unknown territory for her. She’d only visited the docks where they’d landed, the academy buildings proper, and a small section of the dorms. Considering the size of the island she felt like it was a bit embarrassing for her not to have a better idea of her surroundings. So she decided she’d explore this weekend.

For now she’d just follow Kala and make slightly awkward small talk with Eliza. Well, mostly letting Eliza talk while she nodded along. The other woman was simply far more outgoing than Olivia. Outgoing and excitable, once she got on a topic that interested her.

To Olivia’s surprise, there was actually something resembling a small town main street to be found amongst a cluster of residential buildings where school staff apparently lived. The architecture looked more wooden and rustic than the school proper, that sort of panelled wooden lodge aesthetic that seemed to dominate everything west of the Rocky Mountain foothills.

She’d heard there were more staff than students at the academy, when you added in costumers, lighting technicians, custodians, musicians, and so on, on top of the large number of teachers and administrative staff. Throw in a fair number of them having families. Then those households needed groceries and hardware supplies, and everything else. All adding up to somewhere close to a thousand non-students living on the island.

Not a thriving metropolis. Or even Stratford. But… enough to be a town. Especially when so many of the inhabitants were the artsier types. Folks who liked walkable urban living, rather than a house tucked away in the woods on a long driveway.

The pub itself was easy to find, sitting on the main road of the small town. They had to wait for a server, but it didn’t take long.

“Now then, I just want to check everyone’s ID,” the woman said, pulling out a small stamp pad.

The girls did so, both Laura and Kala were of drinking age, but Olivia wasn’t yet. Still another year to go, so she took her stamp. The waitress then turned to Eliza, stamp at the ready. Which seemed to confuse the Winnipegger girl.

“I’m old enough to drink?” she said.

“You’re eighteen,” the waitress replied.

“Yes?” Eliza said.

“Um… this isn’t Alberta? The drinking age is nineteen in BC,” the waitress explained.

Eliza looked wounded by the idea. As if now being too young to drink was a slight against her honour. Olivia swore she saw gears turning in Eliza’s head, before they clicked into something.

Something that didn’t leave Olivia with a lot of faith.

“Ah, but is that the law in BC or the law for British-Columbians?” Eliza offered with a confident grin and a pair of finger guns.

“It’s the law of BC, in BC, for BC liquor sellers,” the waitress said flatly, before applying the stamp to one of Eliza’s hands.

The tall girl deflated, slowly following the others to their booth. Once seated she muttered about it having been worth a try, which none of the others could really agree with. Eliza came to reluctant agreement with them, her moping tone so cute Olivia couldn’t help giggling.

Which seemed to cheer Eliza right up.