Clara Collects Her Debt

The days following the locker room incident were a torture of paranoia. In reality, only two days passed, but to me they felt like an eternity marked by the fear that someone would mock me or make some lewd comment about my braless parade through campus. But nothing happened. No one said a single word. The mystery of who had taken my bag was still there, floating in the air like an invisible threat, but the general silence allowed me to hide myself again behind my baggy sweatshirts and my usual shyness.

It was Thursday afternoon. We were in the faculty cafeteria, at one of the tables in the back. I was reviewing my anatomy notes while Clara played with the rim of her coffee cup, unusually quiet.

Suddenly, she sighed and looked me straight in the eyes.

—I need to ask you a huge favor —she blurted out, with a seriousness that was not common in her—. And really... I need you to say yes.

I looked at her over my glasses, leaving my pen on the notebook. I didn't hesitate for even a second. The guilt and the immense gratitude I felt toward her for having rescued me from absolute nakedness in that locker room, for having lent me her clothes and for not having told anyone about my humiliation, weighed on my chest like a debt of honor.

—Of course, Clara. Whatever you want —I answered immediately, with a sincere smile—. You don't even have to ask. After what you did for me on Tuesday, I owe you my life. Ask me for anything.

Clara raised an eyebrow, and a strange spark, a mixture of surprise and subtle mischief, shone in her eyes.

—Really? Just like that, without asking what it's about? —she insisted, resting her elbows on the table and leaning toward me.

—I trust you —I assured her, shrugging under my enormous gray sweater—. Besides, I don't think you're going to ask me for anything terrible. Whatever you need, count on it.

Clara was silent for a couple of seconds, looking at me in that intense way that always made me a little nervous, as if she were evaluating my resistance or savoring a secret. A slow, almost feline smile began to form on her lips.

—I'm very glad to hear that —she murmured, and her tone of voice dropped an octave, becoming strangely soft, almost intimate—. Because the favor has to do precisely with... your curves. The ones you try so hard to hide, but that I saw perfectly under my uniform.

A sudden chill ran down my spine, and the heat I hated so much began to rise to my cheeks. My nipples, traitors as always at the mere mention of that day, tightened under the thick cotton of my clothes.

—Wh... what do you mean by that? —I asked, feeling that the confidence with which I had accepted began to waver.

Clara stretched across the table and touched the back of my hand with her fingertips, chilling my skin.

—You already gave your word, you can't back out now —she said in a soft voice, but with a firmness that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up—. This weekend you're going to help me with a personal project. But I'm not going to give you the details now; I'll tell you on Saturday itself, in case you have a panic attack and back out on me ahead of time.

A silence charged with tension took over our table. The brush of her fingers still burned on my skin, and the warning left me breathless, suspended in a mixture of apprehension and a morbid curiosity.

—Saturday? —I repeated in a barely audible murmur, swallowing with difficulty.

—Saturday —Clara nodded, slowly sliding her hand back toward her cup, without breaking eye contact for even a single second—. You have until Saturday to prepare yourself, Lola. There's no turning back now.

My pulse thundered in my ears. The mere idea of posing, of displaying the body I had spent years striving to keep invisible, caused an electric dizziness that went straight to my crotch. Clara knew me well enough to know that if she revealed the whole plan to me that same Thursday, anxiety would drive me to look for an excuse; by holding back the mystery until Saturday, she tied my sense of honor to the word I had just given her.

—I'll see you Saturday afternoon at my apartment —she added with a smug smile, standing up and gathering her things with deliberate elegance—. And you'd better come ready to obey, my precious model.

Clara stood up with the fluidity of someone who knows she has won, adjusting her bag on her shoulder and giving me one last look of the kind that undresses without touching. The click of her heels faded down the cafeteria hallway, leaving me alone in front of my anatomy notes that no longer meant anything. I sat motionless in the chair, with the coffee cup growing cold between my hands and my gaze lost on the door through which she had just disappeared, while a single question drilled into my temples: what the hell was she going to ask me on Saturday?