Chapter One

 

God, this job is boring, Kaley thought wearily as she stamped another form and dropped it into her out-basket.

It was like a factory processing the same widget again and again and again. Oh, there were minor differences in the forms she looked at. And sometimes information was missing which she either had to look up on the computer or reject the form.

But overall, for a girl of nineteen, with a reasonably good brain and boundless energy, it was just fucking boring.

Everyone told her how lucky she was to have it; how lucky she was to get hired by the government. It was like winning the lottery, they said. Job security along with infinite possibilities. The more you learned, the more you could apply for other jobs within the public service, and the more money you'd get.

The public service did so many different types of work it was almost impossible to even imagine them all - at least for Kaley. But being a clerk processing applications for foreign students to come and study in the US was not among the exciting ones, that was for sure. Still, you had to start somewhere. And with only high school behind her there weren't many jobs which paid as well and gave benefits; including sick pay and insurance.

She worked in a small, square cubicle alone with herself much of the day. She had put posters of lakes and streams and ponds on the interior walls, for she loved swimming. And the best place in the world when she had been growing up was her family's cottage at the lake. It was paradise on Earth to her then. And still sort of was now.

She had an interior corner cubicle, and the only thing she could see out through the doorway was the little aisle between her and the girl on the exterior corner - Meghan. Meghan was a platinum blonde with a coarse laugh and a brittle temper who had worked her way up to being the administrative assistant to a director - the man in the corner office.

Meghan could be nice but mostly chose not to be. She became especially harsh whenever she was told she couldn't have something the director asked for or she thought he'd like. It was as if she were lacking confidence and desperate to make sure the director didn't find out she wasn't really very good at her job.

Kaley mostly ignored her, even though she was sometimes caught by the clothes the woman wore. Just as she lacked confidence in her work she seemed to lack confidence in her looks. She dressed in outfits which fit her slender form all too tightly and showed off her assets as much as she dared. That included low-riding pants which, when she bent forward in her chair, often revealed the top of her thong beneath.

Meghan was a decade older than her, and the next youngest person on a floor mostly occupied by senior staff in their fifties or sixties. She had not been happy to have Kaley show up, despite her making no effort to attract the eyes or interest of anyone at work. Kaley tended to wear comfortable slacks and sweaters.

The air in the old building was routinely too cold in summer due to the air conditioning, and too cold in winter due to poor heating. She had no idea why Meghan was wearing a thin, tight top at this time of the year, but Kaley was more familiar with the sight of the woman's nipples poking out against the fabric than she would have liked.

There were rumors that she was willing to 'go that extra mile' for her boss or anyone else who might positively impact her career. Kaley had silently dismissed those as jealousy, at first, but after six months here she wouldn't have doubted they were true. Meghan was an awful (and obvious) flirt with any man with power.

Kaley had watched her gushing over both men and women who came to see her boss and wondered just how far the woman would go to get ahead.

Because Kaley herself had already gotten hints from men who had talked to her in the staff kitchen or the cubicle aisles that such an option still existed today for young, attractive women. She had no interest, of course. The idea repulsed her. At nineteen she had all the time in the world to get promoted into better jobs and was already making pretty good money.

She made no effort to dress in a sexy way for work. She'd rarely done that in her private life either. Oh sure, if she was going clubbing or something. But it wasn't in her to dress up and put on makeup to go shopping or visit friends. Why should she dress up to be all sexy? All that would do was ensure she was hit on more than she already was.

And she was hit on quite enough, thank you very much. Being hit on by strangers always irritated her. Why on Earth did they imagine she was going to give them her phone number just because they saw her in a supermarket and thought she looked cute? They could be serial killers or something!

She already knew quite a few guys who liked her looks. She didn't need to court strangers on the streets or in shopping malls. She'd been taught by her mother that it was pathetic to try and impress people with your looks or try to get their approval by wearing revealing outfits. And she accepted that completely.

Or... almost completely.

She saw the attention it brought women like Meghan, after all, saw the praise and admiration she and others she'd known had gotten over the years. She'd always hung back, disapproving, perhaps wearing her brown corduroy slacks and beige sweater, her brown hair hanging back from her head in a loose ponytail with no makeup on.

Most of the girls she knew had started wearing makeup as soon as they could. When they certainly didn't need it. She supposed it was part of wanting to grow up faster. Kaley herself had never had much interest in growing up. It had always seemed to her that kids had a lot more fun and a lot less work and responsibilities than adults. So why be an adult?

She had always felt a kind of prudish, judgmental sense of superiority over those girls and their constant need to be admired for their looks. Girls like Meghan. She must be desperate, she thought cynically.

She was fairly confident she had a better body than Meghan. And she was certainly prettier. She wondered how the woman would react if she started showing up in short skirts and tight tops and doing her hair and makeup. Jealous, probably. No, she was already jealous. She'd be pissed, very highly pissed. She was used to being the hottest woman on the floor and now she really wasn't.

She frowned at herself, wondering if it was wrong to take a measure of arrogant pride in being hotter than someone else. Her mother would certainly disapprove. You should be judged on how you acted, not what you looked like. Of course, Meghan kind of acted like a slut, so there was that.

She eyed the clock carefully. She was still new so it wouldn't do to be seen leaving work early. But she had no intention of staying one extra minute she wasn't paid for. When the clock ticked to Four she locked her computer, put on her jacket, grabbed her bag, and headed for the door.

She had no need to say goodbye to anyone for her co-workers, all being older and more secure, had already left. And the men among them had already stopped on their way out to say goodbye to her.

The attention Kaley got, despite making no effort to attract it, often seemed to irk Meghan when she noticed, and it irked Kaley a little, too. The men were just being friendly, but she noticed they were all a lot friendlier with her than they were with the older women. She wasn't keen on men two and three times her age trying to undress her with their eyes.

She was used to that, though. It was just something she had come to take for granted. She rarely did anything to make it easier for them the way Meghan did but it didn't seem to matter to them. It was probably instinctive or something. Some sort of male need to compete for the attention of young, attractive females.

She ignored that attention in the halls and aisle, as she did in the elevator and when she crossed the lobby and went out onto the street. She inhaled deeply, glad to be outside at last. It was chilly out and she zipped her jacket as she headed for the car.

There was parking underground in her building but it was way too expensive. She parked her eleven-year-old Mazda 3 at an outdoor lot a few blocks up the road. She walked briskly along the pavement, not wanting to waste any of her own time she didn't have to, listening to her iPod and largely ignoring the world around her.

She reached it within five minutes, unlocked it, tossed her bag in, and slipped in behind the wheel. The car started (for which she said a prayer of thanks to the car gods) and she pulled out onto the street, headed for the pool.

Particularly in cool or cold weather, she loved swimming in indoor pools. It was like a different world, leaving the cold, bleak outside and entering the hot, humid pool areas with water splashing around.

She had a great deal of difficult keeping close enough to the speed limit as she drove, and fought her impatience for slow drivers. She always wanted to go faster, but couldn't afford the hit her insurance would take if she got speeding tickets. Nothing got her blood boiling so much as some old geezer puttering along at the speed limit in the passing lane.

Fortunately, the public pool wasn't far away, and she was able to find a parking space in the lot. She left most of her things in the car, grabbing her pool bag from the trunk, then marching across the lot to the door.

The one part of the pool she did not like and had never liked and doubtless never would like was the changing room. It wasn't that she was shy - exactly. It was a dozen years of her mother sniffing derisively at girls and women who took too much pride in their bodies and showed them off.

It wasn't that her mother thought such women were immoral or anything. It was that she disapproved of it as a strong feminist. She never called them sluts. She called them sad, pathetic, and desperate, and said they were looking for attention.

Meghan had thus grown into a young woman who avoided anyone thinking such things of her.

But in a changing room, there really wasn't much to hide, often nothing. She couldn't hide her lithe, athletic young body. And she knew, as much as she tried not to notice, that the other women noticed her. That notice came in various flavors, from jealous, to admiring, to assessing (by lesbians).

Kaley knew how good her body was, especially compared to older women. In fact, even compared to girls her own age it was taut, fit, and firm. Her stomach, in the right light, displayed the muscles beneath the pale skin, and the only fat on her was on her chest.

Women like Meghan liked to wear push-up bras and other outfits to make their busts look more impressive. Kaley did the opposite. Showing off your breasts was the most desperate of desperate moves, as far as her mother was concerned. And so she tended, when she went to work, to wear outfits which were less likely to draw eyes to that part of her anatomy.

A part of her thought it was okay in here since this was only women. There wasn't the same need to cover up. The woman didn't look at her the way men did (except the lesbians). But they still noticed her body and they still noticed her breasts.

And despite herself, she was proud of her body. She couldn't help it. She knew very well she had a body which would outdo most of the porn chicks she came across on the internet. Oh, she didn't have massive breasts, that was true. But the muscles in her belly and abdomen were equaled by those holding her full breasts firmly in place, the nipples jutting perkily upward.

For much of her life, they just got in the way of things like playing baseball and hockey. But at certain times, like when she was actually interested in a guy, or in attracting a guy's interest, they were her secret weapon. Most people who knew her didn't seem to be aware of just how full they were, so it was hard to fight the ego gratification when she unveiled them and eyes widened.

She stripped completely and put her things into the locker, then stepped into her one-piece black bathing suit. She had no intention of wearing a bikini around here. It wasn't the place for them. Nor was the swimsuit particularly high cut at the bottom or low cut at the top. It was a largely utilitarian swimsuit, saved from being 'too old for her' by the way it cut upward across her hips on the sides.

She didn't want people thinking she was some kind of prude either, after all.

She locked the locker, hung the key from her neck, and went out into the pool area. On a weekday, at this time, there weren't a lot of people there. And they tended to be older and male. She ignored them as much as she could. She had long learned that no matter how old a guy was he never quite lost his hopes and dreams about some young thing finding them irresistible, and she definitely didn't need to encourage any of their attention.

It was pretty rare she saw a male body around here worth a second glance. And even when she did they were far too old to draw much in the way of interest from her.

She walked to the side of the big pool, dropped her towel, and dove in. She swam strongly underwater, her hair streaming out behind her as she angled up toward the surface, then started swimming. She started with the breaststroke to warm up, crossed the pool, did a turn, kicked off against the wall, and did the backstroke to reach the other end.

From there she started freestyling, letting all her frustration at being cooped up in a chair all day lead her to a furious stroke that took her from end to end and then back again. She stopped with her heart pounding, standing in place, gulping in air, looking down over the pool to make sure she still had a free lane.

After catching her breath she slid forward and did the backstroke again during a nice, lazy crossing to the other side and then back. It was an Olympic-style pool so had a good, long length to it. And after she had done a couple of lengths she checked to make sure this side of the pool was largely empty, then switched to the backstroke.

She kept swimming as long as possible, putting off what was generally the least favorite part of her routine. That would be the shower afterward. She'd much prefer getting dressed and going home and showering there but she was meeting her sister for dinner and didn't want to smell of chlorine the whole time. Hannah would definitely notice and comment on it.

She had dragged out her swim time for another reason. There was no point in going early and playing with her phone, after all. And since Hannah got off at five-thirty she had time to kill.

She toweled off enough not to be dripping wet as she made her way to the women's locker room, then over to her locker. A quick scan along the opposite wall showed most of the shower stalls were free. The room was practically empty, with one middle-aged woman just finishing putting on her clothes and almost ready to leave, and one person in a shower.

She delayed peeling off her swimsuit until the woman left, then slid it off her body. With the luxury of not worrying about who might be looking (or worry about being thought of as showing off) she twisted the suit in her hand to wring out the water. She hesitated, but again, no one was there, so she walked over to a sink and turned it on, wetting down the suit with clean water and then twisting it semi-dry again as she padded back to her locker.

And then, as luck would have it, the shower in the single stall turned off. She gave a kind of mental shrug, walking a bit faster, feeling the same little weird emotional surges she always did when naked in any sort of public or semi-public setting.