Miss Scott saw it first because she stood facing the windows. When a quizzical look crossed her face and she stopped mid-sentence of her review of what might appear on their finals exam next week, her twenty-two eighth-graders quit fidgeting and stared at her.
“She’s strokin’ out,” a boy in the second-to-last row whispered to the girl next to him.
Miss Scott tilted her head to the right causing her long blonde hair to dangle. She fixed her gaze on an object outside. The students’ heads turned to the rear of the first-floor classroom as if pulled by a puppeteer’s string. Then they saw it too.
In a red plunging blouse and short black skirt, Miss Scott walked down an aisle between desks and pushed open the horizontal window. She reached outside and as if plucking a butterfly from mid-air grabbed the piece of paper dangling from a fishing string. She got it on the first try and unfolded it.
The students couldn’t see what was written on it and sat in hushed nervousness as she twirled on her high heels and bolted out of the classroom. They heard her clip-clopping heels accelerate across the marble floor as she entered the hallway and followed her in their minds as she ascended the stairs.
Upon reaching the room directly above them they heard her knock on the door and shout: “Mr. Rose! Mr. Rose! Is everything okay!?”
As was his nature, Mr. Rose casually strolled to the door. On the short, pudgy side of the scale, he wore black-rimmed glasses, a short-sleeved white button-down shirt, no tie, and gray dress pants held up by black suspenders. With the always-present yardstick in his left hand he pushed open the door with his right and said: “Oh, hello, Miss …” He paused to sift through the “meaningless data” folder that held names in his brain.
“Scott! I’ve worked here for a year,” she said exasperated. She hurriedly stepped past him and looked around the room focusing on the back row and then on one kid in particular who was busily twirling fishing line around his wrist.
“Bo DeMille! What’s the meaning of this?!” she hollered and handed Mr. Rose the note.
Bo didn’t answer but red pangs of guilt flushed up his neck toward a friendly smirk on his crew cut noggin.
Mr. Rose unfolded the note and read it silently. In red block letters it said: “Help! We’re being held hostage in Mr. Rose’s room!” He smiled and handed the note back to her.
“Looks like the boy was just having a go at some last-day-of-school hijinks,” Mr. Rose said. “As you can see, no hostages here, just eager minds soaking up the finer points of the periodic table.”
“Well, he scared the hell out of me,” the 23-year-old said, still loudly.
“Thank you for bringing it to my attention,” Mr. Rose said. “I will beat him appropriately.”
The classroom of seniors giggled.
“You seem to think this is funny, Mr. Rose.”
“I do.”
“That boy should be suspended!”
“There’s no classroom days left to suspend him for,” Mr. Rose argued. The next week was set aside for final tests.
“Well he should be suspended from finals.”
“I will determine the punishment of my students and I’m not going to suspend him from finals and cause the young man to miss graduation.”
“Then what will your punishment be?”
Mr. Rose walked to the rear of the room and cracked the yardstick on the offender’s desk. “Mr. DeMille!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Give me twenty push-ups!”
“Yes, sir.”
Bo promptly sprawled on the floor and pumped out twenty push-ups faster than Mr. Rose could’ve done five.
“Will you ever resort to sophomoric antics in my classroom again?”
“No, sir,” he said upon returning to his seat.
“There, problem solved,” Mr. Rose said, turning to the fuming middle school English teacher.
“I don’t appreciate your flippant attitude,” Miss Scott said. “I’m going to take this up with the principal right now.”
“Or you could return to your classroom, quit interrupting mine, and I will take it up with the principal during our poker game Saturday night.”
“You think you’re all that, don’t you Mr. Rose.”
“No, but I do think I’ve got hemorrhoids with more tenure than you, and as I am also the teachers union president and have one week and two years remaining before retirement, I suggest you steer clear of me and my classroom for that period; or the next time three of the five school board members are at my house playing Mahjong with my wife I will make it a point of emphasizing to them how this newly hired tart and her padded bras are causing an undo distraction in my hallways.”
“Your hallways!?”
“Yes, my hallways. Now get back down to your classroom while you still have one.”
Her new-fangled Common Core training hadn’t prepared Miss Scott for these situations, so she went old-school and upon reaching the door turned and hollered: “Fuck you, Mr. Rose!”
He turned to his hushed students, most mouths agape waiting for his response. Mr. Rose said: “Now Mrs. Rose wouldn’t approve of that, do you think?”
And the students gave him the first standing ovation of his 28-year teaching career.
Chapter 2
Mr. Olivier sat behind his old wooden desk, arms crossed, day-dreaming out his third-story window while his class finished reading their assignment. The tops of the ponderosa pines stretched for miles, puffy white clouds above them reminded him of his pipe sitting in an ashtray by his recliner at home. Three more hours and he could stuff it with some Dark Fired Kentucky tobacco, draw smoky black wisps of heaven into his lungs, relax and put these little demons behind him for the weekend.
Then one of those demons tapped her pencil on his desk and drew him back to reality.
Ashlee Cross was leaned over the front of his desk on her elbows. Her loose blouse held up by two spaghetti straps hung down to the top of his desk allowing him to look all the way down to her pierced belly button and everything in between.
If he hadn’t been distracted and surprised by her presence, he wouldn’t have looked. But it was instinct, honed by five decades of being a red-blooded high-T male. As soon as he looked, he knew he was caught. She’d done it on purpose and not for the first time. So he took in the sight and then moved his eyes to her face.
She had long brown hair held back by a ponytail, otherwise it would’ve hung forward and blocked his view. She smiled at him. Batted her 18-year-old eye lashes and said: “I need to use the restroom.”
“Next time just raise your hand,” Mr. Olivier said, putting the onus back on her.
“I was, but you were staring out the window and didn’t see me. It’s an emergency.”
“Then go.”
She turned and walked away. He found himself staring again, this time at her tiny rear end sashaying out the door like a runway model.
“Damn it,” he thought to himself. “This weekend can’t come soon enough. These little hussies are going to kill me.”
His ability to project his shortcomings onto others was the least of his many moral failings. Thus far, he’d been able to keep from falling into the teacher-student trap, but barely.
“Four more years,” he thought, returning his gaze to the window. “Oh, Dear Retirement, my heart longs for you.”
Chapter 3
Mr. Odney’s mind was already on the water - the Mighty Mo and the elusive lunker walleyes that inhabited it.
He was outside on his alma mater’s football field, his second most favorite place to be. But he wasn’t playing anymore, in fact his students weren’t even playing American football. They were playing the Communist version with the round white ball.
It was his last physical education class of the day, of the week, of the school year. He’d set up the goals, thrown the ball out and let the fifth-graders chase it around for fifty minutes. Time was about up.
He could see the river from where he was standing. Hands on his hips, whistle around his neck, he’d heard the fish were biting by Cedar Shore. He figured he could have the boat in the water by 6.
A gaggle of kids ran past him toward Chase Long who was “dribbling” the ball. The big lunkhead kicked the ball and like shot from a cannon it came towards Coach Odney. He couldn’t get his hands off his hips quick enough. The ball nailed him in the balls. A direct hit.
Pangs of lightning bolt pains shot down his thighs toward his ankles and up into his stomach like an alien was trying to bust out of him. He tumbled forward into the fetal position and when he woke up, eighteen 10-year-olds were staring at him. The girls looked concerned, a couple crying because they thought he was dead. The boys were laughing, not even trying to conceal it. That’s what boys do.
Odney was smart enough not to speak immediately, as he knew his voice would sound like he’d just sucked on a helium balloon. He took some deep breathes and sat upright. Finally, he said to the assembled: “Let’s call it a year. Hit the showers. And, Mr. Long, you just flunked phys ed.”
The boy’s jaw dropped. Odney gave him a wink and a smirk. The boy smiled and with an outstretched arm pulled him to his feet.
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