Val found that moving to her new school wasn’t too much of a chore: with the help of her new friends, she found herself accepted by the student body, and the classes and teaching methods were virtual duplicates of those in Delos. And since she was a girl now, the weirdness that she had to go through in Delos and Kennedy wasn’t there anymore. She finally made the connection that most of the guys before found being attracted to another guy was… distasteful to them, hence the weirdness and hostility, but now that she was a girl, that had gone.

This attraction of her new classmates to her made Val re-think the comments Dr. Penny, Dr. Maia, her mom and dad, Carla and the girls keep making about her looks. She vowed never to let it go to her head, but she thought this wouldn’t be a problem - deep inside, she still didn’t believe it.

Dr. Castellanos, or “Dr. Penny” as everyone called her, was her homeroom teacher. That wasn’t such an unprecedented thing – every few years or so, Dr. Penny, besides running the school as well as Archimedes Genomics, would also teach Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Earth or Space Science at Troy, and would usually have a homeroom. That year, in Troy, homeroom for Val’s class was the first thing on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, while it was the last class on Wednesday and Friday. For the others, homeroom was the first class, as usual. Changing of class schedules only happens with Dr. Penny’s class, in order to accommodate her schedule.

The Senior Year had two classes, as did the other levels, and each class had twenty-five kids (Troy’s student body was very small, like the other Endowment schools). Val was assigned to Class G, and her class had fifteen girls and only ten guys whereas the other class had the opposite – ten girls and fifteen guys. And in her class, it was “fortunate” that all five of her new friends were all in Class G (Val suspected Dr. Penny had a hand in that).

Everyone in her class knew each other already, but she was new, so, on their first day, after Dr. Penny’s perfunctory announcements regarding the new school year, and after she took attendance, she asked Val to introduce herself.

Val embarrassedly made a quick five-sentence speech, which garnered some polite clapping. She wisely made her little speech in such a way that it was gender-neutral, not referring to her time in Delos and before that, was as a he. She also referred to herself as “Val” instead of “Faye Valentine just in case (although that would change later on after Dr. Penny suggested it). She also didn’t mention Delos by name. But she needn’t have worried – her new classmates paid no attention to what she was saying but rather to her. This irritated Arianne vaguely since she was used to being the center of attention, but thinking her classmates needed to get to know Val so she wouldn’t have trouble integrating, Arianne didn’t react visibly.

The first day of the fall semester was always the time when everyone selected their electives, and a lot of the kids were around to give Val advice. But she relied mostly on the advice of her new friends. At the end of the day, she had selected two foreign languages although only one was required – French and Japanese (she was inspired to learn them because of Arianne and Momo-chan). As for science, she picked biology (hoping she’d learn more about DNA and such), and for her PE, she picked track-and-field. As for her free electives, she selected auto shop (she didn’t have her dad now so she wanted to be able to take care of her jeep by herself) and home economics dressmaking.

Picking a PE class was not such a big deal in Troy as it was in the other Endowment schools – Troy’s School Administration would let kids pick anything. Since Troy didn’t join other inter-school competitions nor did it depend on sponsorships, there was no impetus for their kids to pick a specific sport, so, as practical as ever, Val picked Track And Field as a way to keep fit. She needn’t have worried since the school required their kids to go to two PE classes a week – one for their mandatory PE class, and another free one to keep the students active, which was important for a place where all the kids were virtual shut-ins, and where the average temperature for the year was around 10C.

So, aside from her track and field PE class on Tuesdays, on alternate weeks, Val would play volleyball and basketball (only if she could get Arianne and the others to be on her team), swimming, tennis, and, upon Momo’s insistence, kendo and karate (Momo-chan was apparently a ranked amateur in both). There were other sports in Troy, but she gave those a miss. There was bowling, as well, but no one except the freshmen would pick that since everyone could bowl anytime they wanted.

As the semester progressed, she got to know her classmates. A lot of her new classmates introduced themselves to her on that first day, especially the boys. But with Val’s new “gang” running interference, this was kept controlled and to a manageable level.

Even so, lots of the boys, especially the senior and junior ones, made a play for Val, and Val found herself going out on dates on most weekends when she didn’t have plans with Arianne and the others, or the girls had dates themselves or other things.

In time, Val would find her old heterosexual male preferences changing, and find boys just as appealing as girls, and for those girls that preferred other girls, they would eventually find Val receptive to their advances as well.

Val Edward was no virgin, but Faye Valentine was, and she lost her virginity to a sophomore transferee (a sophomore didn’t return to Troy after the break because of a sudden death in the family, so Troy filled the vacancy with a new student). The new student, Craig, was from Edinburgh, and Val and many of the girls found his accent and his bad-boy persona novel and appealing. Eventually, Craig would become Val’s on-and-off boyfriend. Though Craig wanted the relationship more steady than that, he was clued in by his new buds: it was better to be on an on-and-off boyfriend rather than make any moves that could jeopardize it because, as it was, Val, was the hottest girl in school, not to mention a senior. Craig was so out of his league that he should just thank god and cool it.

For Craig, he didn’t like being an occasional boyfriend, but he was far more scared of ruining their relationship by demanding any kind of exclusivity: those times that they went out on dates, he thanked his lucky stars that he had the most beautiful girl on his arm. Sex with Val, the few times they were able to do it, was also spectacular – as in stars-and-fireworks spectacular, and Val’s appetite was so voracious – Craig was so spent after a night with her that he often needed the following day to rest. He also knew now to be prepared since Val wouldn’t do it otherwise. So he learned to make sure to have a lot of condoms on hand.

Finding opportunities for sex was a little difficult for Troy House students since school policy was that there shouldn’t be any sexual fraternization for students, even though the age of consent in Canada was sixteen. So, because of the school authorities and the ever-vigilant RAs in the dormitories, the kids had to do their thing off-campus, often out-of-town altogether, except for those who had cars or knew places in the city that wouldn’t turn the kids away - most motels and hotels in the city knew about Troy’s policies so they would regularly turn away Troy House kids. Entrepreneurs making fake IDs did a brisk business in Troy because of this, but with the strictness of the school, the kids just thought it safer to find other “alternative venues” for their nocturnal activities…

So, during those Saturdays when Val wasn’t doing anything and was willing, Craig would drive them out to this nice motel he found outside of town that didn’t card kids, and they would spend the night.

The first time they did it, Val found it a little painful as well as awkward since it was her first time, but the fun and pleasure outweighed any pain or embarrassment. And because Val Edward was no virgin, Faye Valentine was able to compare, and if it was just about sex, being a girl was a hundred, maybe a thousand times better than being a boy. She wondered why other girls didn’t have more sex. She wondered that maybe it was just her.

Over multiple dates, Val learned things and, in a short time, she was probably the most experienced in school. The thing was, Val found that Craig wasn’t able to completely satisfy her cravings, so she’d want some alone time when they got back to the dorms. Either that or find another partner. But she didn’t want to get a reputation as a slut, so masturbating in her room became one of her most favorite things.

There were only twenty-five students per class, making a total of fifty seniors (as there were in the other years), and roughly half of them were guys. So with the small student body, most everyone in school knew each other, and that was fine for Val: Unlike in Delos and Kennedy, Val didn’t feel at all creeped out, and actually welcomed the attention. And she usually dressed up to get attention, to the limits of the school uniform code, of course. Among her friends, Val quickly became the one with the best dress sense, even better than either Ashanti or Arianne, and the girls would spend many Sundays trawling the department stores and shops in town on mini-shopping sprees, with Val or Arianne or Ashanti giving the others advice. But unlike Arianne (or Val, for that matter), most kids in Troy depended on their daily stipends, so these sprees would only yield maybe two or three items per girl, but that didn’t stop them from still having fun.

In buying their outfits, Arianne and Ashanti stressed the need to match them to their complexion and hair color. However, for Val, it almost seemed that her hair was not a constant thing. Obviously, it was a trick of the light, but Val would sometimes not appear to be blonde, but sometimes a redhead, a brunette, or sometimes raven-haired or silver-haired. Sometimes, her hair even seemed to be ombre, in color combinations that were always flattering to her current outfit or mood.

Obviously, it was some trick of the light, like Ashanti said, but, they all wondered, if that was so, why was it just Val? The girls knew that Val was officially a strawberry blonde, but her hair seemed to match whatever she was wearing or doing at any time. The girls, especially Jazz, envied this of Val and often tried to mimic it, but the best Jazz was able to do was to do a kind of shading that allowed her hair to appear black, brunette, or coppery-colored depending on the ambient light. But only in hints.

Val herself didn’t know how she did it, and though Val shared with her friends her hair routine and the products she used, they weren’t especially unusual, and they didn’t give the girls Val’s magical hair.

In any case, with all these positive things, suffice it to say, Val found her niche in her new school.

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