EXTRACT FOR
Chloe and the Carpenter
(Author Unknown)

Chapter One

     

     I have a great computer at home (thanks, Daddy!) but it can't match the ones in the computer lab at school and their instant connection to the university's computers. And even though my chair isn't as comfortable and ergonomic as the one at home (thanks Mom!) I can just get things done better here. Especially with so many fewer distractions.

     Declan is a bit of a distraction, but I've gotten used to him. If you're a whiz at Math and decide to take a course in artificial intelligence, it's almost guaranteed you're going to be surrounded by nerds and Chinese students. Most of the Chinese are nerds too, of course, but they tend to be a lot better socialized about it.

     And so less annoying. Or distracting.

     Simon is Chinese. Like Declan, he was assigned to this project with me. Like Declan, he wants my body in the worst way. Unlike Declan, he does a very good job of not letting me know that on every single occasion when we were in the same room.

     I'm used to being wanted by boys. It's sometimes tiring, sometimes embarrassing, sometimes exciting, and often makes me feel like I'm a sheep being pursued by hungry wolves. But nerds are kind of scrawny, timid wolves, for the most part, and I have a lot of experience in dealing with guys anyway.

     Boys have been pursuing me with single-minded lust since I hit adolescence, after all. And it isn't any better now that I'm in college. Most of my classmates are nerds. Nerds tend to get less chance at seeing girls naked except on the internet, and so they are so much more eager to do so.

     I get looked at a lot when I'm in classes. Most of them are careful not to stare, or at least not to get caught staring. But there's a sizeable minority who are not particularly well socialized, like Declan. That can be annoying. 

     And I'm kind of a nerd myself, to be honest. The course I'm taking at UofT is called Applied Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

     The course is jam-packed with technical information, high-level math, and very complex formulas and calculations. My Artificial Intelligence Algorithms and Mathematics course in particular is a real killer! Fortunately, I've always been very good at Math, taking intensive classes in high school.

     Yes, I'm very intelligent. More intelligent than most, I guess. And maybe that's also why I have a very good imagination. Much to my dismay, my love of fantasy and science fiction, books, movies, and TV shows, makes me even more desirable to my nerdy classmates. Not just the boys, either! There are a couple of girls in my classes who I know are gay, and they look at me the same way the guys do!

     And I live with that knowledge every time I leave my house. I live with knowing that a very large percent of the males of all ages who happen to come near me are going to glance at my breasts or my butt, depending on direction, and lick their lips hungrily, metaphorically speaking. 

     And I don't want to make out like I'm this super gorgeous girl. Okay, I'm pretty. Sure. I have nice hair. And I have a nice, slender, fit body. My breasts, though, have gotten a lot of attention. Honestly, they're not that big! I'm not a thirty-eight-D cup or something! Much less whatever it is some of those obese girls wear. How high does the alphabet go?

     I think it's just that my slender body combined with my well, larger than normal breasts draws a lot of eyes. Not to mention activating a lot of male fantasies among men of all ages. The attention I get whenever I'm in a bikini in public just makes me want to run away and hide!

     Try a one-piece? I have. But I don't want people to think I'm some kind of prudish girl hiding my body. I'm not! I just wish people wouldn't stare at it! And they do, even in one-piece bathing suits.

     Maybe that's because the one-piece bathing suits meant for a girl my age are meant to be sexy. So they're usually fairly high cut. That draws a lot of attention to my legs, to my thighs, which are pretty good, even if I do say so myself. But it doesn't really hide the size of my breasts.

     And I refuse to wear some kind of granny suit! I'm not even twenty yet! I'm not going to hide! And the same goes for school. I'm not going to walk around in an oversized sweatshirt or sweater everywhere I go. That sort of thing looks? slovenly. And I'm a very neat and precise person.

     So I dress the way a girl ought to dress given the circumstances. And that means if I go clubbing I'm going to wear a dress that shows a lot of leg and maybe even some cleavage. The circumstances are important! I want to dress appropriately! I want to dress just like the other girls so I don't stand out in some way. Well, more than I stand out anyway.

     I can't be accused of showing off my body if I'm dressed like everyone else, now can I?

     So if I'm in college I'm going to dress professionally but relaxed. Think of it as casual Friday. I'm not going to wear office clothes, but I'm not going to show up in short shorts and a tank top either.

     I wore a white, button-down shirt with a simple collar over grey slacks to school today. The blouse was, I assure you, not particularly tight. But I had undone an additional button due to the heat in the lab. It was still entirely modest without any cleavage.

     What Declan kept trying to do was get glimpses of my bra between the buttons as he sat on my left. Also, if I leaned forward to check something his eyes would instantly go to the top of my blouse in hopes of getting a glimpse of something down inside. 

     If he was taller than me he might have had a better chance at that, but Declan is two inches shorter than I am. He leaned back then and glanced to the side, which I knew meant he was hoping I was leaning forward far enough he might get a glance at the top of my thong. That wasn't going to work, though. My pants aren't low-cut enough for that. Probably.

     If I was taking a psychology course, I would find it fascinating to look into why guys would put such effort into things when all they have to do is go on the internet and they'd find so much porn, so many naked blondes with giant breasts doing so many filthy things they couldn't watch it all in a lifetime.

     I knew what he was doing but I had given up caring about stuff like that. If he happened to catch a few brief glimpses of my pink bra inside my blouse, or God help us all, a quarter inch or so of my matching thong it was no skin off my nose.

     I try to make sure my underwear always matches. I look better that way. And I like to look good, to be honest. I mean, not that anyone's going to see my underwear, at least not at school. But I see it when I dress and undress, and I want to look neat and attractive. Even if it's just to me!

     It's a fine line I tread in wearing clothes that look attractive without looking sexy, without looking, to the other girls, like I'm trying to show them up or something. Because let me tell you, girls hate that. 

     When girls go into a room they scan the room for other girls to judge who's more attractive. Often enough, that's me. Which is fine for my ego. But I know that a lot of girls resent another girl who's more attractive than them. Which is ? not helpful. I'm not good at conflict or confrontation! I don't want people to resent me!

     Maybe I should be braver and stick up for myself more. I've always been way too worried about what people think of me, though. That's a big part of my problem. I mean, I don't really mind guys looking at me and thinking I'm hot as long as they're polite. But I know that ticks the girls off and I don't want to do that.

     At least in this course, it's mostly guys. And most of the girls are Chinese, and they don't seem to pay much attention to me. As for Declan, and his eyes desperately trying to look down the front of my blouse, he's timid enough not to hit on me. I'm out of his league and he's smart enough to know that. And unlike another guy I had had to work with once he didn't keep 'accidentally' pressing the side of his upper arm against the side of my breast just to give himself some kind of weird thrill.

     There really aren't a lot of touch receptors in the skin along the upper arm, after all. And if he thought I wouldn't notice, well, let me tell you, the distribution of touch receptors is quite uneven along the skin of the human body, but there are places where they concentrate, like the fingers and lips, say. And while they're not quite as concentrated on a girl's breasts they're more than ample to detect anything that comes into contact with them pretty much instantly.

     Sorry, am I talking nerd-talk? I'm distracting myself anyway.

     "I think this algorithm is about the best we're likely to develop, guys," I said. "We've been tinkering with it for an hour, and I don't see any improvement in time disparities between points of origin."

     "I have to agree," Simon said reluctantly. "And the disparities are quite low. They could be lower, though."

     "Yeah, maybe, if we spend the next six hours on it. Do you want to spend six hours hoping for a minuscule improvement?"

     He made a face and shook his head.

     He is a perfectionist. On the other hand, he has an intensive workload. And 'perfect' is the enemy of 'good' when you're busy.

     I took off my glasses. I only need them for reading, and even then they just sharpen up what I can actually see anyway. I mean, my eyes are pretty good.

     Not to mention sexy, according to one previous boyfriend.

     I signed out of the computer and gathered my papers before shoving them into my bag. Simon and Declan did the same with theirs. 

     Declan is your classic nerd. He's short, and skinny, with thick glasses and bad skin. He also dresses ? weird. He was currently wearing a pullover short sleeve with thin horizontal brown and white lines that did nothing for his skin coloring, and too-large beige shorts with blue tennis shoes and white socks.

     He's very smart, though, and very much into video games and fantasy stories, books, and movies. I had little doubt he'd done everything you could imagine to my body in his mind. And since I'm also smart and have a great imagination, I shy away from even thinking about it.

     Simon has longish hair, glasses, and wears button-down shirts and dress pants. I've never seen him in shorts and would be shocked if I ever did. He's about my height, but even skinner than Declan. He's much more mature in his behavior, though. I hardly ever catch him eyeing my breasts.

     I brushed off Declan's suggestion we go to the cafeteria to get a coffee. Simon said he had another project to work on and I said I had chores to do at home. Which wasn't a lie. I slung the bag over my right shoulder and headed for my locker with Declan's eyes locked to my butt until I was out the door.

     At my locker, I grabbed another bag and headed downstairs to the gym area. I can change in a ladies' room stall but prefer not to. It's easier to just push the door open into one of the changing rooms for the gym complex (which is huge) and then strip off my slacks and blouse, carefully fold them, and slip them into the bag.

     As I was grabbing a pair of shorts to put on a girl came into the room. She was tall and had blue hair. Short blue hair. And she looked at me the way boys do, then blew a kiss at me as she passed by.

     I flushed a bit and pulled the shorts on quickly, then slipped on the white halter.

     I walked out of the changing room in pink shorts and a white halter top with my dark brown hair done in a ponytail and pulled through the little loop in the back of the pink baseball cap I wore on my head. The combination of halter and shorts revealed a lot of midriff but I was only heading for the exit where people locked their bikes.

     Five minutes later I was on my bike headed south for home.

     Austin makes it easy to ride your bike. There are a lot of great bike lanes. And I don't live very far from school. It doesn't rain much, and snow is rare in winter. Heat is unfortunately not so rare in summer and fall. And despite how girls are supposed to be dainty and delicate and never sweat? I sweat like a pig. At least I do when the sun is beating down and it's over a hundred degrees.

     There is no way I can wear much in the way of clothing during this, which always makes me a bit self-conscious. I've been 'prey' for boys since even before junior high. I developed early for a girl, you see. So, I'd been the subject of jokes and taunts, and then as I grew older gradually more sophisticated attempts to see my breasts.

     Not to mention the rest of me!

     Maybe because of that, I've never been entirely comfortable with revealing clothing. It's not that I don't have a nice body. I work out and my dad has a home gym which I use daily. My body is fit and toned and even athletic since I was once a gymnast and still work out on the bars in my dad's home gym.

     But almost as long as I can remember boys have been eager to see my body, to touch it, to get pictures of it, and to brag about their experiences with their friends. I've gotten pictures of erections, sometimes by boys I barely know, sometimes anonymously, for years. And endless requests that I send nudes or at least topless pictures back.

     None of which I have agreed to.

     There had been a lottery among some of the guys at high school to see who would be the one to pop my cherry. In junior high, my dad chased two boys out of the willow tree who had been trying to see into my bedroom window and get pictures.

     So, I've become kind of self-conscious about my body.

     But on a day as hot as this one what am I supposed to wear when biking? 

     Sure, the halter was kind of thin and had gotten damp with my sweat as I'd biked along. And the uhm, well, position one takes on a bicycle requires leaning forward. I wasn't wearing an athletic bra. I hate how they squeeze in against me, and that can be hot and sweaty all by itself on a warm day. So, my breasts were pulling down my bra and pushing down against my damp halter.

     That was something men driving by or walking by noticed. Yes, I saw the looks as I passed. And while my shorts aren't especially low-cut, they are form-fitting and I was leaning forward. I reached back carefully, while still leaning forward, and let my fingers slide along the top of my shorts, just checking, just making sure nothing of my thong was showing.