Teaching Her A Lesson

Part Twenty-One: Faculty Meetings

“Aw, man, do I have to, Mr. Canon?”

What a night that had been. And what a morning. I’d never felt socially awkward alone in my car before. With Tabitha in her Prius stopped at the light in front of me, and Taylor in her shitbox wedging me in from behind, there had been no escape.

“Yes, Jessica. Complete sentences. Big, happy, full ideas.”

I was a teacher again. I was a teacher, and it was first  period, and I had students. Normal, non-compromised students who I couldn’t have sex with, who didn’t know what I’d done, who had their own lives and their own problems and didn’t care about the look on Taylor’s face when she passed Tabitha on Megan’s driveway yesterday evening.

I hadn’t seen it. I didn’t need to.

I’d told her to wait until Taylor left. Don’t court trouble, I’d said both to her and silently to myself. She claimed she’d been looking for it on the driveway and hadn’t seen it on the street. It was probably a lie, though on my own first time driving to pick up a girl for one of my own high school dances, I’d gone to the wrong house – and I’d been to her place twice before that. Nerves happened. It didn’t convince Taylor, who of course turned right back around and demanded to know what was up with the apparent trade-off. I hadn’t had a good answer ready. I hadn’t thought I’d need one.

“Would you stop freaking touching me?!”

The plan had been to get some work done, let Tabitha “work” on her acclimation to nudity, then go to bed. In the morning, we’d see how I felt. She pointedly ignored Taylor, casually undressing in the middle of the living room as if it were perfectly natural to meet up with a despised classmate at her English teacher’s house and strip for them. She asked if I was all right that she’d undressed the way she had, without making it sexy. I said spicing it up was nice if she were trying to entice me, but wasn’t necessary every time she took her clothes off.

“Knock it off, you two. Last time I want to have  to warn you. Hands to yourselves, eyes on your own work.” Had  second period ever passed by so slowly?

Taylor asked, unjustly, how spicy her little pancake titties could even get. Tabitha responded with frosty elegance, complimenting Taylor on her impressive bust, to enjoy it before gravity joined forces with biology and they sagged to her waist, and noting that she hoped the variety would enhance my satisfaction. Taylor laughed and snarked back that if a man already had a crazy hot girl with an amazing body, of course the next thing I would want was variety. Tabitha shrugged, sharing only that I hadn’t complained thus far, and asked if Taylor had likewise made the offer to undergo surgery to better herself for me?

Or tutoring, perhaps, if it wasn’t Taylor’s body that was lacking.

“Oh my god, I can’t believe how hard this is.”

Not to be out-classed, Taylor shucked off her shorts and t-shirt. They were probably still warm from the dryer, having been still damp even all those hours later after she’d exited my shower. My breath caught in my throat. It was easily top  three hottest things I’d ever seen. Tabitha, in all her raw, sculpted beauty, alongside Taylor with her unbelievable curves. If you could put the former’s head atop the latter’s body, it might actually make the perfect woman. But both were damn close in their own right, so gorgeous that only individual taste could place one ahead of the other.

As to my own… hmm.

“It’s not that difficult, TJ. That’s just the senioritis talking. Here, why don’t you and Anjul go out in the hall and read together. Don’t get lost, hear me?”

Taylor didn’t even understand why they were naked. She simply wasn’t going to be out-classed. As I explained that I was going to get back to grading and they were free to entertain themselves however, she demanded to know why the hell they’d undressed to begin with. She was welcome to get dressed, I said, and welcome to go home if she wanted. Then I went into my office and picked up where I’d left off before Taylor’s break-in. Tabitha asked if I minded if she looked through my browsing history to see what kind of porn I liked. Taylor cattily insisted on watching with her, offering to help explain to the uninitiated what the fellas and ladies on the screen were doing.

“This doesn’t taste like I would have thought.”

I attempted to defuse the tension by praising each of them on their journal entries. Tabitha had gotten a perfect score, like usual; Taylor had actually managed an A herself, though that was only because I’d had her re-write them during our after school sessions when her pre-Serenex effort had yielded two off-topic paragraphs and ended with “this is stupid and I don’t care.” Her re-try had been better, and if it was objectively unfair that their scores were a mere three points apart, Tabitha was used to it by now. My praise did less than nothing to mollify either of them, and the three of us climbed into my bed, one naked, flawless girl curled up on either side of me, and went to sleep without another word.

“That’s the vinegar, mama. I told you we were out of your usual dressing last week, remember, but you said you didn’t wanna go grocery shopping until we made space in the fridge,” Candy explained over lunch. Isa made a face but kept eating in her place kneeling beneath my desk. I hadn’t even asked her to do that, and ignored her quiet overtures in search of fresh abuse. I was still trapped some hours in the past.

I’d awakened with a tongue in my mouth.  It was dark in the room; I later found out it was not quite four in the morning. At the time, however, I was drowning in a sea of hands and legs and mouths. Once again my hands had been busy in my sleep. One young woman had decided I was trying to start something, or more likely, one of them thought they could one-up the other by starting it themselves. The other decided it was a game they thought they could win.

It wasn’t long before they were pushing one another off of me, forcing their tongues down my throat before the other did the same. Then a tit was in my face, a hand on my cock, an ass in my palm, a pussy enveloping my fingers. In the dark I couldn’t see, couldn’t guess whose was whose. All I knew was it was more intense than I’d signed on for.

“You don’t think having a teacher grab you like that in the middle of the night is super pedo stuff?”

I had to tell them to stop before someone got hurt. My bed wasn’t big enough for them to be shoving one another around like that. Plus, the batteries that stored my patience for teen drama charged in my sleep, so I was completely tapped. I stopped Tabitha with a smack on the ass, and Taylor with a hard twist of the nipple. Or maybe vice versa. As my eyes finally adjusted to the dark, I could make out the two of them glaring balefully at one another from opposite sides of my erection.

I didn’t know what to do with them. I couldn’t send them home in the middle of the night. I didn’t even want to. I simply wanted them to get along, let me have my fun without ruining it with their selfishness. I hated Taylor too, after all, but you didn’t see me letting it diminish my appetite for her body.

So I told them to kiss.

“Keep your voice down, Ben – you know the policy on spoilers. I’m excited for you that you read ahead, but let’s not ruin Holden’s antics for those who haven’t, K?”

It had been too dark to see which one of them moved first. My ears picked it up before my eyes, the slow, wet sound of lips meeting lips. Then it broke. I hadn’t been literal enough, I saw, so I took an ass in each hand and pulled them together. Their only options were to hold each other up, or let me push them down to their hands and knees. Taylor probably would have selected the latter, but Tabitha, more in tune with my wishes, caught her playmate-to-be, their chests pressed together in the air above me. I held them there for a time, but before I knew what was happening, there was a cunt on my face. I didn’t even know whose. I didn’t think it tasted like Taylor’s, but the pussy that mounted my cock felt like Tabitha’s, too.

“That’s what you get for using a five-dollar whore, huh.”

They fell asleep again almost the moment we finished. At least I think they finished. The pussy on my mouth definitely did. The one on my cock, I was pretty sure. Tabitha quietly apologized for letting her temper get away with her; Taylor simply put her nipple in my mouth as her version of a good night kiss.

My alarm went off at 5:30, though I’d barely slept in the interim. Tabitha awakened, blushed upon remembering she was naked and in bed with not only me but another woman, then apologized for her moment of embarrassment and asked if she could blow me until I was fully awake. Taylor told her that she was welcome to suck Cassie’s butt off my dick, but that a titty-fuck might be more my speed – noting it that it was nothing to be ashamed of for anyone who didn’t have the cleavage needed to do so. So I had them do both. At the same time.

“Hey, language! Do you want one last detention before graduation, Mike? Besides, get your facts straight. Sunny was a ten-dollar, shall we say, lady of the evening.” Was it fifth  period already? I could barely remember anything that had happened that day.

When we got around to getting dressed finally, I was pleased that Tabitha had brought a thong like I had forgotten I asked. She wore it beneath a thin ash gray dress that made it painfully obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra, deciding to take my request for her after-school attire and extend it to the entire day. It wasn’t in direct defiance of the dress code, but her petite but shapely build and dancer’s legs were going to turn heads. Taylor’s stinkeye went unheeded as she put on her same dirty clothes she’d worn over to my place the day before. (Abbie had promised to bring her a change at school, but that wasn’t helping her compete that morning.)

“Do I have dick breath? I feel like I have dick breath. Mr. Canon, do you have any gum or mints or anything? I think I have major dick breath.”

I didn’t see either of them until sixth  period. Tabitha strolled in promptly, skirts swishing behind her, just short enough to tantalize. She bade me a casual greeting as she took her seat, and I almost missed it when she flashed me a glimpse of that bright yellow thong before crossing her legs. Taylor arrived mere seconds before the bell in a t-shirt so tight it actually hugged the underside of her breasts, further proof that the dress code would need to be too explicit to survive the school’s written communication policy in order to do its intended job. Tabitha’s lack of bra was obvious if one looked for it; on Taylor, the absence would be discernible from outer space. As the class filtered in, there were more than a few double-takes at the sight of two nipples pressing into Taylor’s tie-dyed shirt; later, when the shock wore off, they began to notice the miles of leg being advertised by the honors student across the room.  

What could I say, though? It would be wholly inappropriate for a male teacher to bring up such a thing about a female student in front of the class, and even if I tried to handle it quietly, the offended party would only point out that the other was equally culpable. There was nothing to do but start class and try not to notice the placid smile on Tabitha’s face, the cool smirk on Taylor’s.

“Go to the office, Justin. Don’t say another word. If they try to send you back before the end of class, don’t you dare come back into my classroom.”

“What? I’m just saying, my breath smells like–”

“Not another goddamn word. Go.”

“You got it, C-dawg. Say, you look nice today, by the way. Good enough to–”

“GO.”

With a last snicker, he strutted out the door. I took a few deep breaths as the class sat in idle discomfort. “OK. So today we’re talking about the reading from the weekend. Everybody get out a half sheet of paper – we’re going to do a quick reading check.” A chorus of groans fired back at me. “Relax. This isn’t a quiz; it’s a reading check. If you took your notes or at least paid attention, and you finished the reading from Friday, it should be a joke.”

I waited for them to get their materials ready, sheets hastily torn in half and shared with neighbors. Tabitha had stored a half sheet for herself from the last reading check, the tear a perfect line across the top of the page. Taylor had forgotten a notebook. And a pen. And to do the reading, as was plain from the look on her face.

“Question one: which of the major themes we discussed – remember, you can use your notes on this – was the dominant theme of these two chapters?”

I gave them a minute to flip through notes, issued  the standard reminder about full sentences. It didn’t take long. That was the point of these, after all, an easy way to dole out simple pass/fail grades for doing the work. Once time was up, I had them swap with a neighbor, initial it  so I could tell who graded it, and addressed the class.

“All right, brilliant people. What’s the dominant theme of the past two chapters?” Several hands went up, but I called on Tabitha.

She smiled sweetly. “The sexual confusion of adolescence.”

“Mark it, circle it, pass it back.”

Abbie looked surprised to see me. As many times as she’d surprised me the past few weeks, it was good to turn the tables, if only by this small act of ambushing her in Barbour’s office. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously, but here, in the heart of my paltry school teacher authority, there was nothing she could do to escape. Not unless she thought her dwindling reserves of Serenex were going to get her past Principal Horen, two vice principals, Officer Barbour, myself, three secretaries, and sweet old Mrs. Pedretti, our volunteer parent door monitor.

Nobody got past Mrs. Pedretti.

“Well, at least you got me out of precal,” she said dryly, closing the door behind her.

“Glad to oblige. Isa, would you give us the room?”

“Just… try not to make a mess, mast… fuck.” She sighed, glowered at Abbie’s giggle fit, and stormed out.

“Grats, you cornered me. Whatcha wanna do? Something messy, I hope.” She grinned suggestively.

“Not just yet. We need to talk first. Now, I’m not mad.” Her grin widened a little too much. “OK, I’m not that  mad. But I am very much confused, and I’d appreciate a few answers from you.”

She hopped up on the edge of the desk, probably the first time since I’d known her she could claim the high ground. It also afforded me a good view right up her blue and yellow striped dress. Purple panties, a garish contrast. Christ, I was practically fucking the Joker.

“Right, so what’s up. The gay thing?”

“Sure, we can start there. Forget the why. I get why. I shouldn’t have made you do all that stuff with Taylor, with Ms. Salata, the shower thing. It was–”

“Hot as fuck,” she interjected. “I mean Miss Candy, yeah, whatever. It’s not fun if it’s not with you. Near you was OK. With you was awesome. Don’t you dare apologize to me for that shit.”

I hesitated. “Even… with your sister?”

“Dude. That’s some next level shit. That’s not just fantasy slut. That’s fetish  slut. Thicc-ass pawg-ass incest bi-ass shit. And that look in your eyes when you…” She licked her lips. I wasn’t even sure it was deliberate. “That’s the fucking stuff, yo.”

“OK, so… then I guess I don’t get the thing with Justin. What the fuck, Abbie?”

She laughed. “I dunno, I just thought you might like it. Isn’t that what guys always say to other guys they think suck ass? ‘Suck my dick, asshole.’ I figured you’d like taking pretty  boy and making him your little cum-guzzling bitch.”

I folded my arms. “Yeah, see, I don’t buy that. If you thought I’d enjoy it, you wouldn’t have tricked me into it. That’s how you get a toddler to eat their vegetables, not how you treat sexual liaisons!”

She waited for me to remember where we were. “Yeah, maybe wanna keep your voice down? And also that’s a terrible way to get kids to like veggies. I used to babysit for my cousin. You shove broccoli in their mouth when they’re expecting hot dog chunks and you’re gonna get one hell of a–”

“I don’t care about vegetables! You put my dick in Justin’s mouth!” I hissed.

Her lips twisted. “So you’re saying you’re still miffed.”

“Yeah. I’m still miffed. The fact that you won’t even apologize, much less explain yourself, is not helping, I have to say.”

“I figured Tay patched things up when she went over to your place yesterday. Guess not, huh.”

“Taylor is answerable for Taylor. You’re answerable for you. Besides, you can’t blame your minions for your failings. Remember, you’re the boss, right?”

“Yeah, that’s me. Boss bitch.” She frowned. “OK fine. No more boys. But tell me you didn’t have fun sticking it to that twiggy little bitch Tabitha. Right? You can’t say I didn’t knock that one out the motha fuckin’ park, huh?”

The absence of an apology still galled, but there was no sense forcing it. This young woman was not someone I credited with great psychological depth. “That was… better. But that brings me to my other concern. Exactly what have you been doing with my Serenex? I’m told you took people aside at the party last weekend – err, weekend before last, whatever – and dosed them. Is there something I should know?”

“Depends on what you find worrying,” she replied after a moment of consideration.

Objectively, the notion of Abbie blithely spraying that crap into people’s mouths at random ought to terrify me. If it were Taylor or Isa or Megan or any of the rest of us, I’d be chilled. Abbie could use my Serenex whenever she wanted, however, so there was no use being a pussy about it. I suppose it was a bit like drunk driving. On the whole I vehemently disapproved of it, yet my dad had often done it and I’d gotten so used to it that I hardly even worried about him.

“Have you used it on anyone else?”

The smug, evasive grin that stole onto her lips said it all. There was that chill after all.

I took to my feet, pressing, “Who?”

“Why do you care? I never promised I was only gonna use it to bring you fresh pussy.”

“I care because… Jesus, isn’t it obvious? That stuff is dangerous, Abbie! What happens when someone finds out? Have you even  considered it?” My palms gripped her shoulders, pressing my earnestness into her flesh. “There are people who would kill  to get their hands on it. We’re talking about literal mind control. Sure, you and I have used it to have a little fun, but even in relatively benign hands, it’s already done way more damage than I ever would have signed on for. Officer Barbour comes in her panties when I call her a bitch. Ms. Salata gets off watching me do it. I have fucked four of my students, one of whom is still going to be attending GHS for a full ‘nother year! I’ve all but enslaved my next door neighbor, who’s pimping out her daughter to me to pay off a debt that I basically invented.”

“So? All that shit’s fuckin’ hot, C-dawg. That’s just sexy-time shit.”

“I’m not disagreeing – much – but again, that’s in the hands of someone who didn’t want  to fuck anyone’s life up. Let’s say we extend the same credit to you.” I didn’t, but I wanted to keep this civil. “Look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t have friends who would do some serious harm to people if they caught on to what you’re doing. Shit, I don’t even want my  friends to find out about this, and they’re not…”

Abbie was too keen to miss what I’d been out to say, “What, a bunch of hoodrats?”

Too late to walk it back now. “I know some of your friends, Abbie. If you keep this up, someone will  notice, and then your only option is going to be to use it on them. I can attest firsthand that it can and will spiral beyond your ability to control it. And that’s best  case scenario. It’s not hard to envision others that end a lot worse.”

Little by little, I could see my words sinking in. Good. So she had some imagination after all. “You’re saying you wouldn’t go all Liam Neeson and use your particular skills to bail my ass out if I got tooken?”

“I’m sorry, ‘tooken?’” She merely nodded. “If you keep abusing my language like that, I’m going to root for the tookers.”

Abbie sighed. “OK fine. You can have the rest back. Wasn’t enough to do anything too cool with anyway. I’ll drop it off.” She caught my skeptical expression. “I will! What, you think I’m gonna go on a rampage in the next twenty minutes of the school day? Short-ass rampage. Almost nothing left anyway.”

“And again, did you use it on anyone other than Justin and Tabitha? We do have our own designated security chief in all this. It would be smart to keep her informed so she can be looking out for us.” I omitted the fact that I hadn’t yet told her about the addition of Tabitha (and to the limited degree of his involvement, Justin) myself. It was on my to do list. Now.

“Nah. I was gonna use it on that fucking hoebag Katie Medina, but I couldn’t pry her away from her boyfriend at the party. So much for an early birthday present.”

I tried not to imagine Katie Medina joining the lineup. I had little doubt her name would have come up if someone forced a confession of fantasies out of me. Even without Serenex, she was already well on her way to fantasy slutdom. It was almost cliché – the quintessential vapid, gorgeous, busty blonde cheerleader. The blonde was dyed, and the vapidness was a learned response after years of reinforcing that if she couldn’t do something people would line up to do it for her. It was my least original student-centered fantasy, no doubt, but it was impossible to to look at that body, that blank, doe-eyed stare, all of it wrapped in a tight sweater and short skirt and waving its pom-poms, and not think about fucking her.

But not now.

“My birthday is in February.”

“Way to be literal, dude. Early Memorial Day present then, what the fuck ever. Bitch was gonna support my lil’ trooper.”

The troops only wished they had a pinup like Katie Medina. I reminded myself that it was a good  thing that Abbie had failed to ensnare her. “So you’ll return the canister then?”

“Yeah, yeah, fine.”

A pallet of bricks suddenly lifted off my shoulders. Mostly, at least. I’d relax when it was securely in my hands. “Good. Thank you, Abbie. I was… well, to be honest, I’d started to worry that you and I were drifting apart.”

“So then come over here and let’s drift together.” Her thighs slowly spread, putting ever more purple before my eyes. “You haven’t fucked me in, like, five days now. Your widdle Abbiekins wants dicky.”

Honestly, I’d meant to save some for Tabitha or Taylor after school, but if it would help fix the rift between us, I supposed I could donate some dick to this poor under-dicked teen. “All right, but we have to be quick.”

She clapped her hands giddily, jerking her panties to the side and sliding her hips into place as I took a moment to lock the door, in case Isa came back early. My slacks dropped to my ankles as I stepped up to the desk. I wasn’t hard enough yet to just thrust straight into her, so I teased what I had along her moistening labia.

Her eyes squeezed shut in exhilaration, and she inched forward to press me inside her too-long-vacant teenage pussy. “Come on, just fuck me already, Mr. Canon. Fuck your little fantasy slut. God, how did I get so lucky to land a man like you. I was so jealous of Taylor last night. Can I sleep over sometime? I want to suck your fucking dick all night long. While you eat dinner, while you watch TV, while you text your other fuck toys, while you plan your little lessons, while you shower, until you fall asleep. Your dick in my hot little mouth until-”

All right, now I was hard enough. I pulled her hips down to meet me, the dress slipping up to pool around her waist on the desktop. “Ya miss me?”

“I missed these,” I answered, taking hold of her tits, which were doing an incredible job of filling out that dress. There was no simple way of getting them out of that thing, so for now, I settled for pawing at them through the material. Her sister hadn’t worn a bra today. No. Stay in the moment. And in this moment, I was going to fuck the hell out of Abbie St–

The door to the office suddenly jiggled behind me as someone tried to enter. It was followed a heart-stopping moment later by a pair of staccato knocks, accompanied by a voice.

“Mr. Canon? Are you in there?”

Principal Horen’s voice.

“Keep going,” whispered Abbie.

“Um, yeah, do you, um, do you need me?” My voice broke. Good grief, my voice broke!

She tried the knob again. Oh thank god I’d locked the thing! I nearly hadn’t! Shit! “Can you let me in? I need to talk to you about something.”

My cock was out of Abbie’s pussy and back in my underwear in a flash, recinching my belt as quickly as I could. “ Hide! ” I mouthed to Abbie. “Right, sorry – forgot I, ah, did that.”

Abbie rolled backwards across the desk and crouched in the hollow beneath it. Hands trembling, I undid the lock and opened the door. Did it smell like pussy in here? We hadn’t been at it long enough for that. Had we? Would Principal Horen even recognize that smell?

The middle-aged woman on the other side of the door wore her usual pinched-off expression. She glanced into the office quizzically. “Is Louisa not with you?”

“Um, no, she had to step out. Don’t know why she locked it. Wait, were you looking for her, or for me?”

“You, though I was hoping for both. No matter.”

I was breathing too fast. I tried to go slower, but that only made me feel more out of breath. Relax!  I ordered myself. She doesn’t know anything. This is just some mundane–

“What can you tell me about your relationship with Abigail Stern?”

To my credit, I didn’t faint on the spot.

“Excuse me?”

Her eyes narrowed. “We should talk in my office. I’ll have Louisa paged.”

“Um, now?”

“Yes. This has already waited too long.”

Oh fuck .

I followed behind her woodenly, at least relieved that Abbie would be able to flee. I hadn’t been caught redhanded or in any provable fashion, at least. But what did Horen know? How  did she know? Why Abbie and Isa but not the others – or did she know about them, too? I will not let anyone learn about my relationship with the Stern sisters. Except I already had! Fuck! The best I could do now was protect my secret about Taylor.

We marched down the hall to her office. Was everyone staring at us? No, that was my guilty conscience. I think. Were they? She shut the door behind her, and I fought my instinct to panic. This was the fruition of that moment I had dreaded when I’d first received Megan’s blackmail message, all that dread suddenly poured out like a truckload of concrete. At her gesture, I sat down in the hard wooden chair opposite her desk, and she took a seat behind it.

“So what’s up?” I asked, trying to keep my voice casual. Probably failing.

“Up front, Mr. Canon, is there anything you’d like to tell me before we go further?”

So much for my dim hope that there could be some benign explanation for her previous question about Abbie. This was the start of an interrogation.

Like so many occupants of this chair before me, I feigned ignorance. “I’m not sure what we’re doing here, so I’m not sure what you’re looking to hear. You said something about Abbie Stern?”

“I did. You know her?”

“Vaguely,” I replied vaguely. “I’ve had her older sister the past couple years, but I haven’t been graced with Abbie’s presence.” I made sure the sarcasm came through. Maybe she had nothing but suspicion, some anonymous report. (From who, though?!) Maybe I could bullshit my way out of this.

“What about outside of class?”

Most students thought teachers disappeared into the ether with the tolling of the last bell, and I channeled that belief into my response. “Outside of class?” A place I’d never been, never heard of, my face said. “I think I’ve seen her in Saturday class here and there. Usually kind of a pain in the tush about it, too, but that’s what you pay me the big bucks for, right?” I chuckled.

She did not.

“And nothing beyond that?”

“How else would I know her? From what I hear, she’s not exactly Spell Bowl team material.” (I coached Spell Bowl in the spring. Too nerdy for the Sterns, too intellectual for Cassie, too low-brow for Tabitha. It was a fantasy-free zone.)

Usually Mrs. Horen let her glasses hang from a cord around her neck. Presently, she raised them to her face. I recognized that maneuver. I’d seen it before in conferences with difficult parents, where she was done listening to them bloviate and was about to lay down the law. I have to say, it was doing work.

Without a word, the principal flipped open her laptop and tapped a few keys. She then pivoted it so I could see. It was a video. A large, dark room somewhere. The quality was crap, way too low-def for fullscreen. Then she hit the spacebar and it began to play.

I recognized it almost immediately.

Gooses, the bar I met my friends at in White Oaks. Oh god, what was this? The screen zoomed in towards the bar, where after a moment, I recognized myself from behind, perched upon a stool. Roddy was beside me, the two of us talking inaudibly. “Aw, he looks so sad,” someone said over the din. Jacqui?

The realization of what I was about to see dawned on me but slowly, but only because I didn’t want to believe this was happening.

After some brief jibes at my expense by my friends, I watched as Roddy patted me on the shoulder and returned to the table, drink in hand.

“Dude, you’re recording?” Roddy accused the camera operator. I wasn’t sure who it was. “Come on, bad enough he’s gonna be humiliated, but you’re gonna immortalize it?”

It was Jay who replied, confirming the cameraman’s identity. “Remember we were talking about his pouty face?” He made a mopy sound, and indeed I remembered both the conversation from a previous gathering, as well as his use of that sound to mock me then. “Here it comes.”

“Come on, Jailbait, give our guy a chance.” Alice, at least, was rooting for me. But by then, my aggressive tactic was working, and rather than waiting for the long shot of my walk of shame, he zoomed in to catch me leading Abbie away from that older guy she’d been using to make me jealous and back to my stool. My friends’ reactions varied between shock and elation as Abbie and I briefly talked. Jay zoomed in on us. The quality was really poor, especially zoomed in all the way across the bar like that, but there it was. There on my principal’s monitor, I watched with nauseating horror as the two of kissed .

(Hey, so I had kissed girls other than Taylor after all. I’d have to tell Cassie when I got out of prison.)

In the middle of the kiss, the bell rang signaling the end of the school day. As an English teacher, I appreciated the symbolism in its selection of timing.

My friends, Roddy in particular, marveled at what I had pulled off as Abbie and I walked out of the bar. Jay finally turned the camera around, laughing delightedly. “My fucking hero, man! Fire dat  cannon, boy!” he exclaimed a bit too on the nose.

The recording ended.

“Wait, you think that woman was Abbie Stern?” I asked. I wanted to cringe at my own audacity. The quality had been poor, but I was pretty sure anyone who knew the girl well would agree it was her. They might even recognize her unprompted. Not many women with that body, those good looks.

“Are you telling me it wasn’t?”

“Of course it wasn’t! Where did you even get this video, by the way?”

With that, she tapped the right arrow, and the screen switched over to instagram. No, a screenshot of instagram. It was Jay’s page, the screen frozen on the start of the video at the center. I squinted, trying to make out words from over here. It was mostly comments from my friends expressing their disbelief and a little hero worship – and Jacqui once more referring to Abbie as jailbait – but I did see that they had tagged me in it. Then I saw a comment from someone that read, “I think that’s one of our students...”

I froze. Amy Cook-Burfield. My department head.

According to the screenshot, her comment was less than an hour old, from which I quickly surmised the chain of events. It wasn’t hard to imagine. Amy saw one of her work buddies was tagged in a video, the comments suggestive and enticing. She clicked it, did a double take when she saw Abbie, probably watched it a few times to try to be sure. Her comment was probably a knee jerk response, but then she’d remembered herself and contacted Principal Horen.

Now here I was.

How long had this been out there? How had I not known?! When I’d shut off social media notifications on my phone, I’d figured it would be a time-saver, not cost me my only opportunity to save my career! Thankfully I didn’t let students add me on instagram – one thing to socially network, another to do so in a medium that all too often shared images inappropriate for teachers’ eyes. At least it meant the whole student body hadn’t seen this by now. Had Jay even taken the video down after seeing Amy’s comment? The dumbass certainly hadn’t contacted me – he must have thought Amy was teasing me for the girl’s apparent (and actual) age. Not jailbait in the traditional sense, but add to her youth the complication of teacher and student, and the term once again applied.

Nothing left to do but double down. The penalties for lying my ass off were insignificant compared to the penalties for telling the truth.

“That woman was not Abbie Stern. I guess I could see from this video how it sort of looks like her – not that I know what she looks like! – I mean I do (sort of) but not very well – but it wasn’t her. It was just some random woman I met in a bar.”

Principal Horen listened to my raving, then nodded and tapped the arrow again. Another screenshot, this one from facebook. Abbie’s page. It was a picture of her at last year’s junior prom, wearing that same incredible dress.

“Anything else you’d like to say for yourself?”

“So the dress shop isn’t allowed to sell multiple similar dresses?”

“To multiple similar women, you mean.” She may as well have used air quotes with her “similar.”

“Look, all I can say is, that woman wasn’t Abbie Stern. You can call her down here and ask her – she’ll laugh in your face, Mrs. Horen. Why would a girl like her even want a guy like me?”

In hindsight, the “I’m not cool enough to fuck a babe like her” defense might not have been my best tactic.

“Mr. Canon, with heavy  heart, I must inform you that you’re being suspended without pay while we conduct an investigation. The police will be notified and called upon to assist. Should the investigation find you innocent of wrong-doing, you will be reinstated and resume regular duties. If it concludes that you engaged in sexual conduct with a GHS student…” She paused, pivoting the monitor back to her, steepling her fingers such that it almost felt as if she were the villain and not I, “you will be terminated, and charges will be filed against you.”

My heart ran cold. Was it even beating? This couldn’t be happening. I deserved this, though, no denying it. I’d simply spent so long in this building where merit and outcomes were so utterly divorced from one another that I’d let myself believe this could never happen.

“Will it be Officer Barbour? Conducting the investigation, I mean.”

“Your friend, Louisa Barbour, whom you’ve been eating lunch with for several weeks now? No. This is above her pay grade. But she and I will be escorting you to your classroom to claim any personal effects just as soon as she gets here. The building should be mostly empty of students, but please don’t attempt to interact with any on your way out of the building. Keep your dignity about you, Canon. While you can.”

That was all there was to it. Neither of us had anything left to say. What would happen now? Should I flee the state? The country? Should I try to bring any of the girls with me? Could I dose  Principal Horsen? And Amy Cook-Burfield? And everyone they’d told?

I’d need a vat of Serenex to cover this up. An ocean.

No, it was over.

Or, well, almost over. Isa arrived a few minutes of awkward silence later. Mrs. Horsen briefly explained the situation to her aside , but Isa kept in character as the school resource officer, love  slave persona temporarily suppressed. Her job was to protect the secret, but the secret was out now. I shuffled down to my classroom, head hung low, the two women following a respectful distance behind. They didn’t want to look like they were escorting me. This would be dramatic enough without creating a scene now.

I made my way down to my room and keyed my way in. With a sigh, I reflected that I’d have to turn the key over, too. I opened the door and–

“Hi, Mr. Canon! I came for those extra lessons you mentioned!” crowed  Tabitha. She was standing in the corner behind my desk so she’d be visible only to me and not to anyone out in the hall. The girl sounded like she was smiling, but I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t tell because she had her back to me, and was in the process of flipping up her little gray dress to reveal the thong wedged up her ass crack.

“Get outta here with that shit. Panties are for prisses ,” shared Taylor, standing next to her in the corner lowering her shorts around her thighs to reveal her bare pussy.

And there was Cassie, peering nervously between them. “Am I supposed to take my pants off or something? I mean, I guess I could…”

The door swung open behind me. The girls tried to conceal themselves in a flash, but when they saw it was Isa, Taylored rolled her eyes and relaxed, shorts slipping down again. Not to be outdone, Tabitha hiked her dress up, ass back on display. Cassie lowered her leggings, revealing her own sculpted bottom.

“I wondered if we could talk real quick about what happened after you butt-fucked me yesterday…?” Cassie asked.

Taylor was speaking at the same time. “Fuck, Barbie, we thought you were somebody else coming in here to…”

But the door, which had never fully closed, swung open again, and in walked our principal. Everyone present froze – in confusion, in terror, in humiliation, in stupefaction, in contemplation of tasing our way out of this. In defeat. After a moment, Tabitha turned back to see why Taylor had trailed off, squeaking in alarm and dropping her dress. Taylor’s shorts were already back up, but far, far too late.

“Mr. Canon? You’re fired. Get a lawyer.”