Outside my tutor's office, I just stood there for a moment or two, morosely rubbing my rear through the fabric of my skirt.

Two first-year students walking down the hall, probably running some sort of errand for a teacher, glanced my way. The girls grinned and exchanged an amused look. I scowled at them, my cheeks burning.

Upon my return to the classroom, our history teacher took the yellow slip of paper from me, read it and nodded briefly before sending me back to my place. I gingerly lowered my bottom onto the seat of my chair. This earned me sympathetic looks from Natalie and from Nancy Kerrington, but otherwise nobody seemed to take much notice.

It slowly dawned on me that when Mr Haskins had sent me to pay to a visit to my tutor, my classmates had known what was going to happen at Allie's office. The only one surprised and upset about what had transpired had been I, myself.

In third period we had PE, which at St. Albert's mostly meant playing hockey. Afterwards, in the locker room,  we all undressed, getting ready to hit the showers. I stepped out of my panties with a bit of trepidation, knowing fully well that my butt was still conspicuously red.

Hearing the sound of footsteps behind me, I turned around. A very naked Mallory Carmichael sauntered towards me.

With or without clothes, Mallory was stunning. Perhaps especially without clothes.

I floundered, not quite sure where I was supposed to look. There had to be some girls' boarding school etiquette that dictated exactly where a girl was to look when a nude classmate approached her, right? I decided it ought to be safe to focus on Mallory's face.

If such an etiquette existed, Mallory herself chose to ignore it when she looked at me.

"I've got to hand it to you, Hart: I loved the way you stood up to old Haskins, and also the things that you told him."

"Thank you, I guess." I smiled wryly. "Though I probably would have been a bit more careful with my choice of words if I had known about the consequences."

"I daresay. " Mallory casually positioned herself behind me to take a look at my butt. "Whose handiwork is that, if I may ask?"

"My tutor is Allie Thomas. I think that kind of answers your question."

Mallory grinned. "It kind of does." She fell in beside me as we walked over to the showers. "Looks like Thomas knows what she is doing."

"Yeah, that was kind of my own impression, too," I agreed, with a rueful smile.

Later that day, during lunch break, I made a detour to the park where I sat down in a secluded spot to talk to Mira on the ansible.

"What is it with you, Cathy? You sound kind of grumpy today," Mira asked me, after we had talked for a bit.

"You would be grumpy too, if you had gotten your bare bottom spanked earlier this morning," I grumbled.

"Cauchy's cough drops! Who did that to you?" It did not help at all that Mira sounded vaguely amused.

"My tutor, Allie Thomas."

"Allie? I thought she was supposed to be so easygoing?"

"Well, she wasn't easygoing this morning. Look, could we talk about something else? Like, what I have found out about Natalie Fogg, so far?"

"Sure. Let me get Sara, she will want to hear what you have got to say about that, too."

There was a brief pause. I could hear Mira addressing my Temporal Instructor.

"Sara, do you have a few minutes? Cathy is going to report on what she found out about her roommate." There was a brief pause. "Poor Cathy got spanked this morning," she added.

In the background, I heard Prof. Sara Jenkins' clear, cool voice answering. She was saying something that I could not quite make out. But it sounded suspiciously like 'Well I am sure she deserved it.'

A second later, Sara was online. "Catherine. How are you? Mira tells me you got spanked earlier today."

"Well, yeah. As to how I am doing, I'll live," I replied somewhat dourly.

"Cathy is still a bit touchy about that," Mira helpfully observed.

I experienced a sudden unreasonable urge to kill her, preferably in a painful manner.

"Well, be that as it may." Sara cleared her throat. "So, tell us what you found out about Natalie Fogg."

So I told them everything I knew at that point. That Natalie had grown up in an orphanage, her parents unknown. How she had run away from the orphanage and lived on the streets for a few years, until she had been picked up by some organization that looked after street kids. How under the auspices of that organization she had gone to school, had gotten tested and had been found to be exceptionally intelligent. How the Chochet Foundation had stepped in at that point and enabled her to get enrolled at the prestigious St. Albert's Boarding School for Girls. That Natalie was the only student at St. Albert's ever to be accepted there on a scholarship. That she was incredibly bright, and that she appeared to be writing into some sort of notebook all the time. But into a blue notebook, not a red one. That she seemingly did not have enough money to keep up with her classmates when they went shopping for cosmetics or treats in the nearby town of Arlesten. How Allie had told me that certain teachers and students were of the opinion that Natalie did not belong at St. Albert's, on account of her lack of family background and basic manners.

Finally, I told them of the incident that I had heard about from Allie's friend Lena: how a strange man had shown up a few months ago, pretending to be an envoy from the Chochet Foundation, inquiring about Natalie's progress at our school and requesting to meet with her, alone. How the ID he had presented to the headmistress had turned out to be false. I also told them about Headmistress Stuart's suspicion that the man had been trying to kidnap Natalie.

"That sounds rather ominous," Sara admitted. "Let's run that through the Grid, Mira. See if the attempted kidnapping made the news, maybe. Or if some sort of police report survived, even. Concerning Natalie's notebook, I must admit that the fact that its cover turns out to be blue rather than red bothers me." She paused. "Is there anything else to discuss at this point? Mira, Catherine?"

"Perhaps Cathy could have a look at that notebook and find out what Natalie has written in it," Mira suggested. "To see if its content in any way resembles the content of the Red Notebook. If so, that would be a strong indication that Cathy's roommate and the author of the Red Notebook are one and the same person."

"That is an excellent idea, Mira," Sara agreed. "Catherine, could you do that?"

I frowned. "That's not going to be as easy as it may sound. Natalie keeps her notebook in that weird bag of hers. I mean, it would be kind of awkward for me to ask her if I can read her notebook, wouldn't it? But I'll see what I can do," I promised.

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A / N :  Thank you for taking the time to read this chapter. I greatly appreciate this, and I am looking forward to read any comment or idea or moody remark you may have to add.