"Go ahead, say it," Natalie prompted. "Say that I acted stupidly. Tell me that I behaved like an idiot."

She was lying on her bed in our dorm room, her panties rolled down, cooling her sore backside.

"You acted stupidly," I told her. "You behaved like an idiot."

Natalie snorted. "I know." She reached backwards to gingerly touch her bum, and winced. "Don't I know it," she added with a rueful smile.

"You do realize that Ms Gablins was provoking you, don't you?" I said. "Goading you, even."

"I am aware of that." She sighed. "I just could not let her get away with the things she said about my parents, and all that."

I didn't know how to respond to that. Natalie was right, of course. Our Geometry teacher had been way out of line when she had made those inappropriate remarks, insinuating that Natalie's parents had abandoned their daughter because of some fault in character on their child's part. To be sure, Natalie had provoked Ms Gablins earlier, when she had been positively gloating about our teacher's mathematical error. Nevertheless Ms Gablins' statements had been quite uncalled for, to put it mildly.

There was a longish pause in our conversation.

"Your butt is bright red," I observed, somewhat at random.

"Thanks a lot for pointing that out." Natalie sighed. "This time, Mel really let me have it." Melanie Watt was Natalie's tutor. The girl who had spanked Natalie's butt earlier today. "Mel says I may count myself lucky if I do not get expelled."

"Expelled? From St. Alberts?" I was shocked. "Does she seriously believe that this may happen?"

Natalie shrugged. "I think she was trying to scare me, mostly. It's a pretty scary idea, anyway."

"I don't think Gablins would push it. I mean, to get you expelled or something. She appeared to be quite satisfied with the outcome of today's confrontation."

"She would be." Natalie smiled grimly. "After all, she conclusively demonstrated to everyone present that she is the one of us who has got the upper hand."

For a minute or so, we both kept silent, each of us lost in her own thoughts.

"Aren't you like, mad at Watt for spanking your butt?" I asked her.

Natalie raised one eyebrow. "Nah, why should I? Mel was just doing her job as my tutor. Besides, it was not Mel who decided about the spanking."

"So tutors and prefects do not get to decide if and how students are disciplined at this school?"

"No, they don't. Or only to a very limited extent. They are constrained by school rules, and even more so by what a teacher writes on that yellow slip of paper."

This answered a few of the questions I had been pondering. Which made me think of another question I had always meant to ask her.

"How ... " I broke of, not entirely sure how to put this. "I mean, what exactly happens when you get spanked by your tutor?"

Natalie shrugged. "Pretty much what you would expect to happen. She will put you over the knee, bare your butt and spank it."

"I see." The prospect of having that happen to me sometime in the near future was more than a bit disturbing.

I noticed how my gaze kept returning to my roommate's reddened buttocks. I got up from my bed and walked over to her.

"Do you mind if I sit here?"

"Not at all." She rolled over to lie face-down, on her belly. I sat down on the edge of her bed. The way she was positioned I got to see a bit more than just her rear. My cheeks grew warm.

Natalie turned her head sideways to look at me. She smiled. A happy, relaxed smile. The kind of smile that only rarely showed on her face.

"You know, you are not so bad to have as a roommate, after all," she told me.

"Why, thank you." I grinned uncertainly.

"Considering that you are from Nebraska, and all that," she amended.

I laughed. "In truth, you are not so bad yourself, either. Wherever you may hail from."

"I am from London, I think. Leastways, that's where they found me on a park bench near the orphanage. They tell me I was less than a year old at the time, not even a toddler yet."

"What about your parents?"

"My parents were never found. So the obvious solution was to keep me at the orphanage."

"That would be the orphanage Gablins was talking about?"

"Yes, the same one."

"So you do not have any memory of your parents at all?"

Natalie laughed. "Come on, I must have been less than one year old when I last saw them. Come to think of it, though, I used to have those dreams. In my dream, there was this dark-haired, brown-eyed young woman who was kind of looking at me. Just looking at me, thoughtful and perhaps a little bit sad."

"Perhaps that woman was your mum."

"Maybe so. I keep wondering why they left me, though. Her and my dad, I mean."

"Perhaps they were left with no other choice than that." I took a deep breath. "How was life at that orphanage for you, then?"

Natty smiled wryly. "The kids who lived there called it the orphanage of hell."

"That bad, huh?"

"Yep, that bad. If it had not been for one person there ...  When she left the place, I ran away. I had just turned eleven. They caught me, and I escaped again, this time for good. I lived on the streets for years."

"How  did you manage to survive?"

"I joined a gang of youngsters, all of them street kids like me. They kind of took me under their wings, showed me the ropes. Taught me how to beg, steal and do whatever was necessary."

"That must have been tough, for an eleven-year-old kid."

Natty shrugged. "I guess it was," she said.

"So how did you come to get enrolled here at St. Albert's, of all places?"

"There is an organization that tries to take care of street kids. They helped me get into school. That's where they discovered that I was clever. Bright. Intelligent. Those were the words they used. They arranged to have me tested and eventually the Chochet Foundation got involved. Which is how I got into St. Albert's."

"I see." This was a lot of new information about Natalie that I had gotten for free, simply by asking her. "I guess that means that you may count yourself lucky, after all."

"Yeah, right. I suppose I may count myself lucky." Natalie grinned. "Time to get up. Unless we want to skip dinner. Which I don't really plan to do."

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A / N :     Thank you for taking the time to read this newest chapter of TE 101. As always, I would love to read your reactions and comments.