Still, it was only for one night, I comforted myself. Maybe I had done well enough on the exams that I would be in a smaller room with only one roommate by tomorrow night. Though I had to confess, I would miss Jorn-o and the rest of my new friends if that happened, it would still be better for privacy.
Speaking of privacy—or the lack thereof—no sooner had I picked a cot, right beside Jorn-o’s, than I heard another deep, tolling bell.
All around me, boys started stripping.
“Bath time!” I heard one of them whoop. “Last one to the Cook-pot is a rotten dragon egg!”
“The Cook-pot?” I raised my eyebrows at Jorn-o, who was already tugging his shirt over his head.
“Oh, that’s what we call the big hollow where all the cadets bathe,” he explained. “Hurry up and get undressed and I’ll show you.”
“Why don’t you just tell me how to get there,” I said, frowning. “I, er, need to visit the necessary room before I go.”
“The necessary room?” Bugs, who was in the cot on the other side of me, asked, laughing.
“Runt means he has to take a dump, Bugs,” Toady said, rolling his eyes. “Not surprising considering how much he ate at dinner.”
He was pushing down his trousers as he spoke and I looked away hastily, not wanting to see whatever was between his legs.
As a matter of fact, I was feeling the call of nature, and it seemed as good an excuse as any to skip the communal bath.
“Oh, well—the toilets are that way—at the end of the dorm,” Jorn-o told me. “When you’re finished, leave The Great Dorm and take the corridor on the left. That leads right to the Cook-pot.”
“Thanks.” I nodded, trying not to notice how he was completely naked now. Thankfully, he wrapped a towel around his waist—we had all been issued two towels, two washcloths, a bar of soap, and a tooth-cleaner and tooth powder along with our clothes and boots—and I didn’t have to avert my eyes anymore.
“Is everybody ready?” Leaper asked. “Okay. See you at the Cook-pot, Runt,” he said to me and the four of them trooped off, following the crowd of rowdy, shouting boys on their way to bathe.
I hung back, digging through my stack of clothes until I found one of the nightshirts I had been given. We had all been given a clothing-marker too and I spent some time putting my initials—"A.L.”—in the backs of all my clothes until at last, The Great Dorm was completely empty.
Then, clutching the nightshirt to my chest, I made my way down the middle of the two long rows of beds. Turning a corner at the end of the rows, I found myself in another loud, echoing room, this one lined with wooden stalls on one wall and rows of sinks and mirrors on the other.
Thankfully, the stalls all had tall wooden doors that went up to the stone ceiling and down to the floor, offering plenty of privacy. I locked myself in one of them and breathed a sigh of relief. This was the quietest place I had been since entering the echoing halls of the Academy—though I could well imagine it would become one of the noisiest once it filled with the rowdy First-year cadets.
Still, for now at least, I had the place to myself, and I could finally relax.
I sank down on the toilet seat and spent a moment just rubbing my temples. I could make this work, I told myself. I could hide during bathing time and just take little cat-baths in the sink when no one was looking. And I could change my clothes in one of the stalls every morning and every night. Everything would be all right.
At least I didn’t have to worry about getting my period while I was here. My monthly courses had stopped flowing months ago, after my father killed himself and Auren got sick. I figured it was grief that had stopped them, and I was grateful to be done with the messy business, which had always been extremely painful for me. No more cramps or blood meant much less chance of being found out and exposed.
As long as I had passed the entrance exam—and I was pretty sure I had—I could hide my identity as a female for as long as I had to. I could Impress a dragon and graduate with honors and even become one of the Professors—or maybe a long-range scout, like my father had been. He’d gone out scouting for Madlings every month—even though everyone knew they’d been eradicated for over a hundred years. That way I’d have plenty of privacy and no one need ever know that I wasn’t a male.
As long as you really can Impress a dragon egg, a little voice whispered in my brain. Are you sure any dragon will want a female rider? They’ll probably be able to tell, you know—didn’t Jorn-o say they could smell your blood and your bloodlines?
Well, I would cross that bridge when I came to it. For now, I was going to concentrate on hiding my identity and living as normal a life as I could, as a boy here in the Old Drake, I told myself.
I slipped out of my brother’s clothes and into the nightshirt I’d been given. It was a little too large—which was good, because it was also a little too thin.
I tried taking off the bandages around my breasts…but had to put them right back on again. Though my breasts were small, my nipples were large and they stuck out too prominently through the worn white fabric which felt as though it had been washed and worn a hundred times before it came to me.
I wasn’t sure about the view between my legs either. My white-blonde pubic hair didn’t show through, but the night shirt was thin enough to expose the fact that I didn’t have any manhood to speak of.
I solved the problem by putting on a pair of the underdrawers I’d been given. That hid the view of my crotch enough that I hoped no one would notice I didn’t have a manly bulge.
Then, hoping I was covered enough, I left the privy closet with my pile of clothes and went to the sink. I had bathed that morning before getting dressed and hadn’t done anything more strenuous than taking the entrance exam, so I didn’t feel the need for a cat-bath. But I rolled up the long sleeves of the night shirt and washed my hands and face thoroughly, blotting my skin dry on the rough towel I’d been issued.
For a moment I just stood there in front of the mirror, looking at myself. Did I see a stunted lad with spiky hair or was it a girl staring back at me?
I touched the Dragon Glass pendant at my throat and thought with all my might,
