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   PET

   3.  GOOD GIRL, BAD GIRL

   Be good, be good, be good!  WHY?  What did being good really mean, and
why did everyone refuse to ever shut up about it?  The instructors ordered
me to be good, my maids begged me to be good, the other brainless prissy
girls took such pride in being good.  Cissy suggested that I would be
happier if I tried harder to be good.  She was saying the same thing as
everyone else, she just had a fancier way of saying it.  If I heard it even
one more time I was going to lose it.

   'Cissy,' I thought, 'if the House wants me to be good, when is it going
to start being good to me?' When was the House going to stop making me do
things I didn't want to do?  When was it going to stop punishing me?  And
most of all, when was the House going to let me GO?  That was what I really
wanted, I kept telling myself.  Beyond that, I didn't think very far.  Just
to be free!  I had a right to make my own decisions, to act like I wanted
to act, to be who I wanted to be instead of a House girl.

   I came back from class in a miserable frustrated mood, on a hot, muggy,
rainy day when the Couture Instructor had threatened to send me to Cissy if
I didn't pay attention.  Being mad at her wasn't what was bothering me. 
Being mad at the other girls who whispered about me didn't bother me
either. I was so used to being mad at them all that I barely noticed any
more.  What bothered me was my own stupid weakness, because I shouldn't
have let them make me cry.  I looked straight ahead all the way back
upstairs and I didn't make a sound, but the tears were running very slowly
down my face and streaking my mascara.  The duty Trainer and the other
girls in my muster could all see them.  When I got to my room I slammed my
door shut, kicked off my hated, uncomfortable uniform pumps and threw
myself on the bed, pounding my pillows with my fists in an agony of
frustration and wiping my eyes with the bedspread.  The day maid wasn't
around, and it was a good thing for her.  She'd be sorry if she bothered me
today.  I had three stuffed animals on my bed, two bunnies and a bear, and
the last time I'd been in a mood like this I had hit her with two out of
three before she made it to the door.  She was lucky she was so quick, too,
because the next thing to hand had been the water glass on the nightstand.

   My door opened after a soft knock and I wheeled around, a bunny ready in
my hand.  Cissy was in the doorway.

   She was dressed for business as she always was this time of day.  It was
very unusual for her to be away from her office in the Administration wing
before five.  I put the plush animal down and rubbed my hands over my face,
trying to get myself together as she took a couple of steps into the room
and set her purse on the bureau near the door.

   I got off the bed and stood up straight, not quite in the attention
posture that I was supposed to assume, and said, "Good Afternoon, Cissy."
Then, realizing how awful I must look and knowing that I couldn't hide my
tears from her, I put my chin up and looked her defiantly in the eye.

   "Good Afternoon, Pet.  I'm sorry you don't seem to be feeling well. 
Mademoiselle Helena rang me to say that you had had a difficult day at
Couture, and I thought I would drop up to make sure you were all right."
Cissy's voice was calm and cultured as always, and she looked genuinely
concerned in her reserved way.  I was sure it was an act.  She had probably
come to punish me or at least lecture me.  I mentally added one more death
to the ones I already owed that tyrant Mademoiselle Helena.

   "I'm all right," I muttered, staring at the floor.  "Don't worry about
me."

   "Pet, that's precisely why I'm here.  I am worried about you, and I'm
sure you know why.  Each time you misbehave, you simply take a step away
from the happiness that I have always wanted for you.  My role is to help
you move toward that happiness."

   I knew I shouldn't say anything, but I couldn't help myself.  I was just
so mad.  "Cissy, you never help me do anything.  You just order me to do
things!" I thought that would be it, that she would just punish me right
then, but she didn't.  She said, "Let's sit down, Pet.  It will be easier
to talk." She sat on the edge of my bed and I reluctantly sat down next to
her, refusing to meet her eyes.  I ground my teeth as she just watched me,
patiently waiting for me to look at her, and finally I had to.

   She pursed her lips.  "Now, do I really order you to do things?"

   I squirmed in frustration and finally blurted, "Sometimes!"

   She looked contemplatively into the distance.  "Yes, sometimes I do. 
But not often, and only when you already know how you should behave and you
refuse.  Isn't that right?"

   It was obvious where she was leading me.  How could she think I was that
stupid?  I didn't let her do it.

   "Should!" I gritted.  "That's the problem and you know it, Cissy! 
You're always the one who gets to say what 'should' means.  It's not fair!"
I was starting to cry again and that made me even madder.

   "Very well, do you think you should act disrespectfully in Mademoiselle
Helena's class?"

   "I shouldn't even have to BE in it!" My voice broke and I buried my face
in my hands.  I had hardly ever been this contrary with Cissy and I
couldn't believe I hadn't been punished yet.  She was still infuriatingly
calm.

   "We are not talking about your schedule, Pet.  I hardly have more
control over that than you have.  You know that you must take class.  We
are talking about your behavior.  Aren't we?"

   She refused to understand.  I felt like I was in a nightmare.  My hands
were shaking even though I had them knotted into fists, my nails digging
into the palms of my hands and my lower lip between my teeth.  Tears were
streaming and I couldn't think.  Why was she asking me all these questions,
why didn't she just punish me?  "I don't know, I don't know!  I don't know
anything and I want to leave!  I want to get out of this place!" I sobbed
in anguish.  Cissy put a gentle hand on my knee, but I shrank away from her
toward the head of the bed.  She tried again.

   "And go where?  Pet, I don't think I've ever seen a girl as unhappy as
you were before you were brought to the House.  You were so unhappy, so
unhealthy.  Undisciplined.  Unloved." I'd never head her voice soften like
this before.  She was emotional, almost.  "The House cares for you, Pet.  I
care for you.  You have everything a girl could want here, if you would
simply accept the support and authority of the House.  You can learn and
grow and be happy here.  But you must behave properly.  It isn't that
difficult."

   But I barely heard her.  I huddled against the headboard and stared at
her like a cornered animal, swiping at my cheeks with the back of my hand,
my breasts heaving with unbearable frustration.  The room seemed to be
getting darker, it was hard to see her face through my tears and I wanted
to beg her to leave, to just get out and let me cry myself to sleep because
I knew that if she said one more thing, I was going to lose control.  We
could talk about it later, I didn't care, it wouldn't make any difference
anyway, but I couldn't seem to get any words out.

   She sighed deeply, her shoulders dropping a fraction, and finally she
said, "All right, Pet.  I think you should bathe, and then you can rest
until this evening.  I'll have a tub drawn for you, and soon I hope you'll
feel more like being good." She turned to reach for the call button.

   Being GOOD!  I just couldn't stand to hear it even one more time.  It
rang in my head like fingernails on a blackboard, amplified a thousand
times.  I would tell you what went through my mind in that moment, but I
really don't know.  Tantrums are like that.  I reached blindly behind me
and my fingers closed on a little embroidery of a heart that stood in a
gold frame on the nightstand.  It happened like I was watching someone else
do it, the picture frame coming around in a vicious arc at Cissy's head and
the sound of breaking glass, and someone screaming.  It must have been me.

   The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back on the floor a couple of
steps away from the bed, the breath all gone out of me and little shards of
glass scattered across the carpet and the throw rug at the bedside.  Cissy
stood next to the bed, staring down at me, her left hand over her ear, pale
and shaken.  The look in her eyes was impossible to describe.  I was so
afraid that I couldn't move a muscle.

   Cissy steadied herself visibly as I watched, taking slow deliberate
breaths.  She took her hand down, and there was a little smudge of blood,
dark against the line of her jaw under her ear.  She pulled a silk
handkerchief slowly out of the sleeve of her jacket, reached up again and
wiped the blood away, pressing against the side of her head, without taking
her eyes from mine for a moment.  Then she stepped past me and picked up
her purse from the bureau.  She walked out without a word and closed the
door behind her.

   As I lay on the floor waiting for whatever was going to happen to me,
all I could think of was that look in Cissy's eyes.  It hadn't been anger
or even the wintry promise of retribution that I had sometimes seen before.
It was more like a kind of hurt and frustration, eerily similar to some of
my own feelings.  Stark fear knotted my stomach so tight I could barely
breathe, and I realized wonderingly that what I was afraid of wasn't being
punished.  I was afraid that Cissy would never speak to me again, that she
had finally realized that I could never be a House girl.  Why should that
thought frighten me so?  It was what I had wished for over and over and
over, since the first night I had come to the House.

   It had been wrong, so wrong to hit her like that.  But all she had done
to me, all that the House had done to me for all this time, that was wrong
too, wasn't it?  Hadn't she deserved it?  I had pictured striking back at
her a thousand times, and it had always seemed right.  Now that I'd done
it, why did I feel so horrified, so guilty?  Was it just because she was my
lover, or was there more to it?  A storm of conflicting emotions raged
inside me and I had no idea what was right or wrong or what I really
wanted. And it didn't really matter anyway, nothing mattered now because
Cissy would have to tell them, she would have to tell the Mistress what I
had done, and then it would all be over, one way or another.  I didn't know
if any girl had EVER done anything as bad as this.

   I still couldn't get up, I just turned on my side and curled into a
ball, sobbing and choking.  It seemed like a long time, but it could only
have been a minute or two before my day maid burst in, pale as a ghost, and
rushed to kneel at my side.  She bathed my face with a cool, damp cloth and
started loosening my uniform.  As soon as she could, she helped me up and
into bed, and coaxed me to drink some water.  I had passed out before she
finished undressing me, and it wasn't until I awoke later that evening that
I was taken downstairs by the duty Trainers for a punishment that seemed to
me very routine.  I was placed naked in a tight cylinder of plexiglass that
forced me to stand very straight and on tiptoe, with my arms over my head,
or lower my bottom onto a set of dull metal points that were even more
painful.  I was left there until I collapsed on the points from sheer
physical exhaustion, sometime later that night, and then I was released and
taken back to my room and put to bed.

   Cissy and I sometimes talked about my punishments, because she wanted to
know how I felt about them, but we never discussed that one.  We never
discussed what I'd done, either, and it gradually dawned on me that she
hadn't told anyone else.  The next day there was no class and I stayed in
bed, recovering, and she came and took me to dinner, greeting me as if none
of it had ever happened.  When we were in the Dining Hall, though, she was
quieter than usual and I knew that my time at the House had come to a
crossroads.  Cissy and I were in a crisis that was going to change
everything, and soon.  We couldn't just go on the way we had been.  I
walked around tense and nervous, and tossed fitfully at night, and then a
couple of days after the episode in my room, Cissy sent a message up to my
night maid when she came on duty, to get me ready for a "training
experience." I had vaguely heard of these, the girls called them "nights
out" and they involved going outside the House.

   *****

   In episode 4, Pet finds herself in an impossible situation.  She has
promised herself she would never do this, but what choice does she have?