The Oak Street Method: Renee Read online

  Had it all just gone away, then? Could she not control it?

  No… she realized with a flash of inward mental pleasure that part of her—the whatever part—tried in vain to resist, that she could watch herself become defiant. She couldn’t stop it, at least right now, because shouldn’t she feel defiant when Daddy wouldn’t tell her anything? But she thought that maybe at some future moment she would have that ability—maybe she already did and she just didn’t choose to make use of it.

  For a moment, to Renee’s surprise, her daddy seemed at a loss for words. It almost seemed like he were listening to some voice inside his head that might tell him how to deal with his wayward little girl. Another surge of affection rose inside her: she knew he really did want her to be happy. He just didn’t seem to be able to find exactly the right way to do it.

  He spoke at last. “We’ll talk about this another time, Renee. Soon. But not now.”

  * * *

  The next morning in school, of course, Heather wasn’t there. Mrs. Kimball didn’t say anything about the absence any more than she had made reference to the other absences from her schoolroom over the past few weeks. As Renee entered the cozy space in the Kimballs’ basement, with the three rows of three pupil desks, as usual the last to arrive, she studied the face of Tricia Giuliani, Heather’s best friend, trying to discover whether the dark-haired girl might know anything about where Heather had gone.

  She saw, she thought, both confusion and knowledge—as if Tricia knew something, but not perhaps why Heather had gone away. As Renee slipped into her own desk—the one appropriate, she always thought, for the class brat, at the end of the file on Mrs. Kimball’s right, just behind Delia Chichester—she also glanced over to the far side of the room, where Ginnie, Frankie, and Mary sat. It struck her that three of them, plus Wendy at the front of the middle file, must know exactly what had happened to Heather—what was happening to Heather. Was Frankie blushing? What did it mean?

  Daddy had said they would talk about it. Soon. But though Renee did her best to push the thoughts away, even trying to bring back her whatever face as a defense, she couldn’t keep from looking at Heather’s empty desk. She caught Tricia looking, too, more than once.

  In the middle of an English lesson about the end of David Copperfield,Mary Wood said, “But… you know, Agnes isn’t… I mean, is she?”

  Frankie, sitting in front of the younger Wood girl, and Wendy, at the front of the next file, turned to look at her. Frankie had definitely blushed, now, and Wendy’s face had gone rather pink. Ginnie, too, in the back right desk, turned. The girls from the other side of Oak Street—Tricia and her co-ward Luisa Giuliani, Delia, and Renee herself—had all noticed the strange moment, which had suddenly turned an interminable discussion about an interminable book into something very strange, interesting, and, it seemed, highly embarrassing.

  Renee had never seen the point of English. I mean, she liked a book or she didn’t like a book, and she had never found many books she liked, and none of them in English class either at the educational facility or in Mrs. Kimball’s schoolroom. Mrs. Kimball treated the girls much more kindly when they admitted to not liking the ‘great works of literature’ she made them read than the teachers at the EF had treated Renee and her friends for showing the slightest disdain for the dumb stories of fake adventure with which the teachers had tried to interest the girls in reading. Still, Renee couldn’t make herself interested in the journey of a young man through the world of Victorian England, no matter how accurately Mrs. Kimball might point out the similarities between the British Empire and the corporate-controlled nation that had put all nine Oak Street girls in need of a second chance.

  Suddenly, however, the silly character of Agnes Wickfield, the ‘real heroine’ of David Copperfield, as Mrs. Kimball kept telling them, the exact opposite of a brat as far as Renee could tell, took on a new interest. Mary, the closest thing to another brat that Oak Street had to offer, who had been in the van and returned to receive the visits from the limousine that Wendy and Ginnie also now got, had found in Agnes’ character some contrast worth mentioning.

  Some contrast that made the other girls who had gone in the van start and blush.

  Agnes isn’t… is she?

  Renee whipped her face around to Mrs. Kimball, realizing that the teacher’s—Wendy’s mommy’s—reaction might tell her something about the truth of the strange matter. Mrs. Kimball had raised her eyebrows, and was looking steadily back at Mary. Turning again to the little blonde on the middle right, two seats over, who always managed to look angelic in her white blouse and gray school skirt despite her impish nature, Renee saw that the pink had crept into Mary’s cheeks, too, and that she had taken her lower lip between her teeth.

  “Can you clarify that for us, Mary?” Mrs. Kimball asked. “Without speaking of any… forbidden subject?”

  Sex. It must be about sex, Renee thought. A thrill went through her chest.

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  Chapter Six

  Alarms were going off on every monitor and every laptop in the Oak Street control room.

  “Someone get Charlotte on the line stat,” Paul Farmer was saying.

  Daria tried to shut out the flood of information from the other seven Oak Street girls and to focus on Renee’s data stream.

  “Wilma,” Paul said over the comm-link to the woman playing Mrs. Kimball, old-fashioned schoolmarm, in reality of course a highly-skilled Institute trainer, “just follow your gut and we’ll manage the girls individually once we get more eyes on the monitors. Forbidden was fine—stay in that vein if you can.”

  Daria had the urge to cut in on the Kimball comm-link and tell Wilma that she had to focus on Renee, that none of the other girls mattered. Mary belonged to a wealthy industrialist; Wendy belonged to a Southern gentleman; Ginnie belonged to a tech billionaire. They were the only girls at risk of fully understanding what Mary meant, weren’t they?

  But Heidi Giannone, to her right, had the Giulianis and Delia to worry about, and though Daria didn’t think there could be any danger of spoiling their value through misplaced references to submissive sexuality, the look on Heidi’s face told Daria that her colleague felt otherwise. Heidi’s screen had lit up with the same kind of arousal spike that had jolted Daria out of the lazy, coffee-sipping mode she went into when Renee was at school.

  From behind her she heard the audible alarm that signaled the control room door had unlocked and would open in a moment, and then she heard Miss Charlotte’s voice say serenely, “Everybody calm down, please. This will be fine.”

  Daria hadn’t been cognizant of any behavior of a less than businesslike nature. Paul had stood up, yes, to tell the administrative assistant handling Charlotte’s phone that the Oak Street control room would welcome the dean’s input. It wasn’t until her boss spoke soothing words, though, that Daria realized that she, Paul, and Heidi had somehow filled the control room with tension so thick that only Miss Charlotte’s imperturbability could cut it.

  As always, the Institute’s academic dean had managed to arrive within a few moments of something going sideways in one of her projects. On the monitors, from four different angles, the scene in the Kimball basement had advanced only a minute from Mary’s question about Agnes Wickfield. Mary glanced around her uncertainly now at the other Oak Street girls: her first response to Wilma Kimball’s request for a clarification without reference to subjects Mary knew she wasn’t allowed to speak of in front of the dwindling number of her friends who hadn’t been sold and started their sexual training had emerged in a stammering, noncommittal fashion that featured the phrase I mean repeated no fewer than six times. It would have sounded adorable to Daria’s ears if she hadn’t been so worried about Renee.

  Daria studied Renee’s face, in close-up on the monitor in the lower left of the bank of screens at the front of the control room. She looked down at the display of the girl’s sensor data on her laptop screen. After the successful s
tart to Renee’s awakening the previous morning, the plan for the beginning of her training with the transition to her first ‘special lesson’ with Bob and Carol Dalton called for her to confront one of the other girls—probably Wendy—with a plea for more information, above all about the meaning of the inspections, as well as Wendy’s feelings about being spanked by her guardians at age nineteen.

  The pink in Renee’s cheeks and the heat between her legs at her obvious understanding that what Mary Wood meant had to do with sex and discipline put her and the three other unsold, un-awakened girls at risk of a serious divergence from the script that might get in the way both of their happy erotic development and of their asset value to the Institute. If Mary said the wrong thing about Agnes Wickfield, or Wilma shut down discussion in too abrupt a way, months of pre-awakening work might be undone: depending on how each girl reacted, the whole schedule might require revamping, especially where it concerned innocent Delia, whom the timetable placed last of all.

  And Renee, as the true brat, with the defiance complex they had begun to break down just the day before, sat at the heart of it. Daria knew that she had some reason on her side in thinking her own responsibility held more importance than Paul’s or Heidi’s. If Renee went off in some way, demanding to know what Mary meant, what she knew, and how she knew about the things she knew about, no one would get hurt in the grand scheme of things, Daria consoled herself, but she herself could certainly get demoted, and the Oak Street brand could take a serious hit.

  Charlotte had clearly tuned the tiny comm device implanted in her jaw to the Kimball circuit. “Wilma,” she said, “Charlotte here.”

  As if Wilma won’t recognize the voice of God, as far as the Institute is concerned,Daria thought, almost giggling from the tension. Again she felt the urge to demand that Wilma look at Renee, make it clear to Renee that her feelings were receiving some measure of respect and sensitivity. Renee’s mommy had told her, after all, that Wilma and Tom inspected Wendy’s pussy just as Bob had inspected Renee’s. Wouldn’t it make all the sense in the world for Wilma to give Renee a knowing look, to let her know that the kind schoolteacher and parent of a friend understood the turmoil in the girl’s heart and loins? Such a look would make a huge difference for Renee’s growing fight-or-flight reflex, might even save the day, Daria thought.

  But of course it would also alert the Giulianis and Delia to the fact that something was going on with Renee, which would almost certainly cause much worse problems with regard to the necessity of bringing about their awakenings in an orderly fashion and at regular intervals.

  On the four screens displaying the schoolroom scene, each from a different angle, Wilma continued to look patiently at Mary, whose voice trailed off into a final, “I mean…” Daria felt her skin crawl with the tension in the control room. She glanced over at Paul, whose face looked very white in the half-light in which they worked here, lit almost entirely by the glow from the monitors. On her laptop, Renee’s fight-or-flight clicked up a notch.

  Charlotte will figure this out.

  The dean spoke to Wilma over the comm-link. “Say what I say. Mary, are you asking whether…”

  On the screens, whose audio was turned on as was usual when Oak Street’s little school was in session, Wilma said, “Mary, are you asking whether…”

  Charlotte continued, her voice rock steady, “…Dickens depicts Agnes Wickfield as a…”

  Wilma repeated the words. This will be fine,Daria thought. Charlotte would guide Wilma through the lesson and everything would go on normally.

  “…submissive bride?”

  Daria drew a sharp breath. Heidi gasped. Paul made a noise in his throat that Daria thought could only have been a suppressed cry of alarm and interdiction.

  Onscreen Wilma said, “…submissive bride?”

  Daria whirled around. Had Charlotte made a mistake, somehow? The word submissive was never to be uttered by an Oak Street mommy or daddy in the hearing of the girls who hadn’t begun the special lessons that would prepare them for their trip to the Institute.

  On the monitors that showed the girls’ faces, wide-eyed astonishment appeared in the expressions of Wendy, Frankie, Mary, and Ginnie, as they glanced rapidly, sidelong, at one another, as if to make sure that all of them had heard the same thing. Delia was frowning. Tricia Giuliani looked very thoughtful, while her co-ward Luisa appeared thoroughly confused. Renee’s lips had parted slightly, as if she had the notion to say something, and her cheeks had gone pink.

  Heidi said in a shocked voice, “Delia’s at six. Tricia’s at eight. Luisa’s at five.” It hardly seemed important, at the moment, but one of the principles Charlotte had told the Oak Street assessors to follow declared that Delia Chichester’s arousal must never rise past four until the time had come to awaken her.

  Daria realized now that Charlotte’s words had startled her so much, and the arresting sight of the scene unfolding on the screens in front of her had grabbed her attention so completely, that she had forgotten her duty to Renee for a moment. Her own face burning, she looked down at her laptop. To her mild surprise, she saw that the fight-or-flight meter had gone way down, almost to the bottom of its range. Renee’s arousal, though, stood at eight.

  Daria opened her mouth to report the number, but Paul spoke, his tone flat, almost sarcastic.

  “It hardly seems worth mentioning, but Mary—”

  Charlotte cut him off. “Wilma, hold the moment. Wait for Mary to answer.” Then, to the assessors in the control room, “Daria, where’s Renee’s fight-or-flight?”

  “Very low,” Daria said numbly, feeling her brows knit together as she tried desperately to figure out what the dean meant to do.

  On one of the screens at the front of the room, in close-up, Mary Wood looked back at Wilma Kimball with surprise. “I…” she said tentatively. “I suppose so, I mean…”

  Paul spoke again. “Mary’s at ten. If I had to guess—”

  “I don’t need you to guess,” Charlotte said sharply.

  Daria thought she knew exactly what Paul would have said: she’s about to say something about spanking. The most important subject on Oak Street, and the one never to be talked about among the uninitiated girls.

  Charlotte continued, speaking to Wilma, “Repeat what I say again, please, Wilma.”

  Daria couldn’t help feeling a good deal of awe for the woman playing the patient teacher, ready to hear and to answer her students’ every question. Wilma’s nerves must be on edge as she, like the assessors, tried to figure out what Charlotte meant by straying so far from the protocols she herself had laid down for Oak Street.

  On the screens, eight young women, three of them—Mary, Wendy, and Ginnie—with damp panties according to the sensor data on Daria’s laptop, waited for the same thing, looks of rapt attention, though of several different varieties, on their faces.

  Charlotte spoke, feeding words to Wilma, her own voice a perfect imitation of an engaged teacher. “Renee, what do you think it means, in Dickens’ England, to be a submissive bride?”

  As Wilma swung her attention to Renee, Paul breathed, his voice not even a whisper, “Oh, my fucking God.” Heidi coughed, and Daria had the strong suspicion that the cough covered a nervous giggle. Daria herself felt like she might faint. Charlotte’s masterstroke seemed to leave her with no other choice but to depart from consciousness.

  On the screen, Renee’s eyes went very wide, and she swallowed visibly. Her cheeks flamed red. Her arousal went to nine, and her fight-or-flight jumped, but then almost immediately settled back down. Daria realized that Charlotte had asked about it because of what she intended: if Renee had remained high on that scale, the question from Wilma might have made her shift into defiance. As it was, Renee had command of herself—but she also had a crucial question to answer.

  Charlotte had found a way to solve the immediate problem and advance Renee’s awakening at the same time. She had let Delia get more aroused than her plan called for, but Daria reflected that that
would have happened anyway.

  Come on, Renee, Daria thought fervently.

  “I…” Renee said. She looked around at the other girls. The four who already belonged to wealthy men were frowning now: they of course didn’t know that Renee’s pussy had been inspected yesterday, that she had begun her own journey toward the sale of her virginity and sexual service at auction. Tricia, Luisa, and Delia, who were closer friends with Renee than with the girls from the other side of Oak Street, looked sympathetic.

  For one thing, having Wilma call on Renee calmed things way down, Daria thought admiringly.

  “I guess it means that you do what your husband says?”

  “You can take it from here, Wilma,” Charlotte said. Wilma had already started to smile and to nod in encouragement for her usually recalcitrant pupil’s answer.

  In Renee’s face, as her arousal ticked down to eight, Daria saw comprehension—and, even better, a dawning realization that Agnes’ obedience had a relation to everything she had discussed with her mommy and daddy the previous day.

  In the control room Charlotte spoke urgently now, over the circuit that covered all the Oak Street trainers. “We need to get Renee over to the Woods’ house after school. Laura?”

  The lower monitor on the far right automatically went from a shot of the street from above to the kitchen of Number 10, where Laura Wood seemed to be making brownies. Laura nodded in response to Charlotte.

  “I want you to collect Frankie, Mary, and Renee from school.”

  Laura nodded again.

  “Brownies around the table. Tell Frankie and Mary that they can talk about the Institute.”