Straight A

As I approached, the gawking students stepped back. There was a mixture of fear and excitement in their eyes. I could tell. The kids’ faces, how their mouths hung open and their eyelids had widened, showed the fear.

            The excitement, however.

            I could see it in their eyes. That little gleam kids like them get just above their pupils when they experience something new, something they’re not use to. Even if it is something as horrible as this.

            They wouldn’t admit it, if you asked them. Later, if they get through this, the news people would ask them, “How did you feel when you were trapped in there with that man?” and they would answer, “I was terrified! Scared for my life!” But excitement was far from their minds as an answer. Hell, they probably don’t even know that they’re excited. But they are.

            I can see it.

            I took another step towards them. The small boy in glasses fell backwards in his chair and hit his head on the counter in the back. He didn’t move, he lay there breathing in slow breaths. The p***y had fainted. The big guy next to him was frozen to his desk, his hands were clutched to the sides of it. The girl two rows in front of him had reduced to a pile of nothing but a factory of tears. I swear, the girl had a puddle of tears and saliva pooling on her desk. The other girl to her right, her friend I’m assuming, had vomited and passed out, leaving us with her reeking smell.

            All those kids reacted the way I hoped they would, but the one student I hooked most of my attention on was a kid up front, a boy about five foot ten, probably a sophomore. He was one those straight A kids by the look of the returned test that had carelessly been tucked under his binder.

            He was reacting quite well. I know I broke him. Not like the girl that was bawling or the girl that had passed out, but really broken. When he left class today, he would remember this lesson for the rest of his life.

            The boy, we’ll call him Straight A, sat in his desk completely loose, almost relaxed. His face was without expression, it was a blank canvas ready to be painted on. His focus wasn’t on me, if he was focusing on anything, but it was on the shoes of his teacher, Mr. Warshire, which were lying just a few feet from Straight A’s desk. Inside of those brown leathers were Warshire’s feet, limp and unmoving. The pool of blood had slowed since it got to his hip, but it was still growing steadily. The blood was a dark red that was coming from an even darker hole just above his right eye.

            What pleased me most was that he was looking at the shoes, not the hole or the blood, but the shoes. For me, it was satisfying that he had disconnected himself at those leathers.

            Back to the teacher, for now we’ll leave Straight A groping for some kind of light. Warshire is… was a history teacher, more formally the rise of western society. He was married, had a kid or two, and was a nice guy. He was also my teacher, in another period within another trimester, within yet another year, so I don’t know any of these students. He was a good teacher.

            But now he is dead.

            And it’s all my fault. Why I killed him, I’ll get to that later. Right now, I’ll turn my attention back to these kids. I have about five-or-so minutes before a SWAT team comes bursting in to put a hole in my head, so I better be quick.           

            “Hello, class. As you can see, your teacher is a little ill today, so I’ll be your substitute for the next few minutes or so.” I smiled at them. They responded back with a horrified stare. I glanced back at the blackboard behind me. “I see you are suppose to be learning about ‘Great Minds in England’ today.” I had to squint a little to see his handwriting. My eyesight isn’t that great. “I think we are going to change the class up a bit today.” I sat down on Warshire’s desk, knocking over a pencil holder and a few ungraded papers. I set down the Smith and Wesson next to my right thigh and folded my arms across my chest with a shrug. “How about storytelling?” I smiled at the kids again. That girl was still sobbing, that p***y in the back was starting to snore, and the big guy was squeezing the desk so hard he was starting to shake.

            Straight A was still lost in his mind.

            I think I’m giving off the crazy-vibe quite nicely.

            “Does anyone have a story they would like to share?” They looked at me with quite a bit of shock. I noticed a desk was empty. Someone was playing hooky.

            “I see we are down one student.” I paused for effect. Everything is going the way I had hoped. “No matter. I guess I can go first, I have a little story I can tell.” I quickly adjusted my sitting position, moving the Smith and Wesson a little more away from me. I looked at all of them, sitting there silently. Their focus was mainly on me. They still glanced over at Warshire and the darken pool he was lying in. His dark eyes had become a paler color of what they used to be. I think that is what the books and movies meant by ‘the light leaving his eyes.’

            I guess I missed my chance to see it happen.

            Straight A still stared at Warshire’s old leathers.

            “There was this young girl, about your age,” I looked at Waterworks up front. Her pipes had either drained dry or she managed to plug them up. “She was a little thing, about five-two, incredibly long auburn hair, and big blue eyes. Let’s call her Jen, for the story’s sake.

            “Jen was also an incredibly shy girl. Her shyness was longer than her hair and went deeper than her eyes. I don’t even think she had a single friend to chum around with. She was a loner and she was naturally fine with it. Her parents were the caring kind and she had an older sibling but after he left home, they talked less and less. Not even a single postcard, after a while.

            “But neither of them felt any sorrow, they didn’t really see it as a loss. She gained extra space and he gained his independence. A fair trade, I’d say.” I had picked up the revolver and had started turning it over in my hands. The students seemed rigid again, like their spines and necks were tied to a light post by baling wire. I started laughing and set the gun down. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I had picked that up.” I stopped myself from chuckling and kept on going.

            “Jen was smart, too. Aced her classes, never missed a single day of school, an ideal f****n’ student. But the only reason any of her teachers knew she existed was because her name was on top of the roll-call sheet. Other than that, they never said one word to her or involved themselves with her in anyway. No one knew she had existed.

            “Except one teacher.” I stood up and started walking back and forth, perpendicular from the rows in front of me. My eyes never left theirs and theirs never left mine. The revolver was back in my hand, loosely held by my left, and my right was fiddling with a .38 caliber bullet. The tension was right where I wanted it.

            “This one teacher had been her writing teacher at the time. She was passionate about literature. Had read all of the greats and kept up with new popular fiction. Her dream was to be a writer. To be the next great in line whose work would be read, analyzed, and talked about fifty years from now. She had the ambition, but not exactly the creative talent.

            “But ‘creative talent’ isn’t what this story is about,” my voice had risen to a loud bellow in this small classroom. Some of them up front jumped a little, their eyes comically widening. “This story is about a girl and her teacher.

            “This teacher noticed her quiet shyness within a few days of having her. He watched her everyday, patiently waiting for her to raise a hand with a question inside of it or a confident answer to his question. But each day he was disappointed.

            “I don’t think disappointed is the right word. I think he was closer to intrigue than he was to disappointment.

            “He also began to notice that he was the only one noticing her. No one turned back to talk to her, the boy in front of her didn’t look at her when he handed her down some papers, and when everyone was told to trade papers, she would sit at her desk, maybe secretly hoping the boy in front would choose her to trade stories or the girl to her left would be more than happy to let Jen read her story, but mostly hoping they wouldn’t swap their work with hers.

            “He began seeing, through their eyes, an empty desk.

            “This discovery began a chain of lightning in his mind that quickly transformed from pure ideas to simple actions.

            “These actions would-“ The phone on Warshire’s desk began ringing. One of the girls in the room gave out a loud scream. I looked in her direction and saw a boy had started running for the door. I raised my revolver and shot towards him, shredding the school mascot off of his sports jacket.

            He stopped dead in his track, only a few paces from freedom. The blood left his face almost as fast as the .38 had shredded his coat. “Nice try. Please take your seat, the phone might be for you.” I smiled at him and backed up to the phone. I had wasted too much time. Those SWAT guys were already here. They probably had the whole school surrounded and emptied already. Did I hear sirens out there?

            I don’t think so, but panic welled up inside of me, all the same.

            I picked up the phone and said: “Sorry we’re a little busy right now, call back in about ten, “ and hung up the phone. They were out there, after all.

            I started speaking again to the students, picking up where I had left off.

            “After he saw that she was a loner, he started observing her. He began spending his lunch hours in the student cafeteria, making it look like he was just watching over the crowding, clumsy students, scrambling to get their French fries and their little milk cartons. But he was really watching over Jen, his new favorite.

            “She was actually his first favorite. His sudden obsession with this little shy girl had first scared him. Scared him to death! But his fright slowly turned into curiosity and then quickly became an undeniable excitement that he let himself indulge on.

            “The teacher would watch her every move at school for the next three and a half weeks, or so. Her first three classes before lunch were all College classes, Math 1010, History 1050, and his English Literature class. Her higher course classes, for how young she was, made his excitement build. Not only was she small, cute, frail, and alone, but she was smart and educated. Something he always liked in a girl. A trait he missed when he married his wife and gave her his seed to give birth to two wonderful children.

            “Her last two classes were easy classes. Cooking and Gym. He never got to see her hand in the kitchen, but gym class had fallen in a perfect spot. Jen’s gym class came right after lunch, which was his free hour.

            “Normally he would be inviting students in need of assistance into his class, answering each one of their questions thoroughly with patience and respect. Or if he were alone, he would have been grading papers and tests, catching up on his work so he would have had his evening off. But that was when he was a normal teacher.

            “He started locking his classroom off from students and spent his evening grading papers when he learned Jen’s gym class fell within his free hour. Instead he would sneak up into the bleachers at the far end of the gym before the first lunch bell rang off and was comfortably seated and hidden when the second one rang five minutes later.”

            I paused for a second to lick my lips. I hadn’t had a drink all day and my lips were cracking from all this talking. I could taste a hint of blood at the corner of my mouth.

            The phone began to ring again. I quickly picked up the handle and slammed it back down on the cradle. Each slam, I felt the plastic crack a little bit more and, with it, came a small shriek from Waterworks.

            Finally that handle had broken in half and the cradle has cracked open a considerable amount, showing its rainbow of electronic innards. I dropped the handle and looked back at the class. Waterworks was red in the face and her eyes were puffy from crying. The boy in the back had woken up and was huddled in the corner, as if I couldn’t see him.

            Straight A had finally progressed his eyes from Warshire’s leathers to the hole in his head. It had stopped bleeding. The gaping, black and white hole just stared back at Straight A in some endless staring contest. OnetwothreeGo!

            “So this teacher would hide out under the bleachers for almost an hour, watching this girl, his girl he started to think, run around in a Dreymore gym jersey and shorts, sweating out the days stresses. I don’t think he ever took his eyes off of Jen when she was exercising. Always holding his breath, holding in his urge to just run out there and pick her up.

            “He did this for a week or so. And every night when he went home to his wife and kids, he would constantly be thinking about her and, eventually, having provocative dreams about her. He would always wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in his sweat. The teacher would wake up his wife, slowly and sweetly, and make love to her, but never thinking of her.

            “He started to get bold after that.

            “The teacher started following her home after school. Jen walked about a mile from school every day. She would exit the school near the Rec Center and walk north along First West. Once she got to Center, she took a left and found her house on the north side of Center Street after a few more blocks.

            “He would follow her carefully and by days. The first day he watched her walk up the hill just north of the school. The second day, he left his class early and walked up to the top of that same hill. He saw her, just behind a crowd of Mexican ‘gang-sters’. He watch the Mexicans turn right at the top of the hill and little Jen, left at Center just a few blocks down. The third day, he left early once again and parked his car along the road on center and saw her come towards him through his rearview mirror. She slowly passed him, not even seeing him even though he kind of wish she had, with a book up to her nose. He saw her cross over to the north side of the street and walk into a yellow house between Third and Fourth West. He quickly drove by and took a full took at the house.

            “It was bright, piss yellow. It had two stories and lovely bed of sunflowers in front.

            “He rushed home after that and locked himself in his study. The teacher paced back and forth all night, arguing with himself. He would tell himself that what he wanted to do was wrong, immoral, and sick! He needed to get help before he did something he would regret. Then the teacher would rebound on himself and tell him that it would only be one time, that the girl would either be too embarrassed to mention it or maybe she was one of those girls that like that sort of thing. Kids are young, and they like weird things, right? Besides, she’s our girl.

            “And then the teacher would rebound on himself once again, this time with a small retort: She’s My Girl! He would come out of his study with bleeding hands saying he tripped and tried to catch himself on the big mirror he kept in there.

            The fluorescent lights suddenly went out, making it dark enough to make a few of the students scream out for a short second. I’ve been talking way too long, I had to wrap it up pretty quickly or the SWATs would be hauling me off before these kids could hear the punch line of my story.

            “The day after next, he followed her home again. He sped past her and stopped on the south side of Center. It was completely deserted, an odd hour for it to be deserted.

            “He saw her slowly walk towards his car, this time with a different book in her hand. She was wearing her long yellow dress today. That got his adrenaline going, giving him that tingling feeling inside of his chest. As soon as Jen passed by his car, he stepped out and quickly gave another glance: it was still a completely empty street. He walked up behind little Jen and hit her over the head with a small socket wrench. She dropped her hardback and collapsed immediately. The teacher picked her up and threw her into the back of his car and sped away. He left the book and his wrench lying on the sidewalk.

            “He went east onto Main and started heading north, his heart throbbing wildly. He took a right on Fourth and picked up his speed. The light changed before he could get past it and had to stop near the top of the hill.

            “He waited nervously. A car started to pull up beside him when it turned green and he sped off before the nose of the other car could reach the front doors of his. The teacher drove up the hill and around the bend. He was heading for Dreymore Canyon.

            “He rode the canyon at a hasty ten miles over, speeding around sharp bends, nearly catching the guardrails that kept him out of the river. He got the occasional honk from drivers heading the other way, but nothing more.

            “After about twenty minutes, he turned off onto a dirt road and drove for another ten minutes. He fished out the sleeping girl and carried her over to a patch of dirt and laid her there. He stood up and watched her slowly inhale the wild oxygen and exhale the used carbon. Her dress had slid up and showed him her inner thigh.”

            I started to choke on my words a little. I turned my back to the class and started fiddling with the pencils on his desk. I spoke up so they could hear me.

            “The rest happened quicker than he thought it would, he would have said that he blacked in and out. He had pulled down his pants and took of little Jen’s slip and gave her his seed. This time he did think of the girl he was with.

            “After he was done and his excitement had disappeared, a new kind of adrenaline kicked in: panic. He stared hyperventilating and pacing around without his pants on. What had he done? How could he have done this?

            “He heard the girl stir and thought that he saw her eyes open and close during his indecency. Had she seen him? She must of. Then she would tell everyone, her parents, her teachers, his boss, everyone would know! What would the wife say?

            “So he when panic fully took control of him, he did the only thing he could think of doing. He walked over to his girl and wrapped his long fingers around her throat. He squeezed her. He cried doing it, too.

            “Poor little Jen stopped breathing five minutes after that and he let go five more minutes after that. He could already see bruises forming on her neck. His adrenaline was subsiding though.

            “The teacher shamefully put his slacks back on and put little Jen back in his car. He slowly drove back to Dreymore, to put her back where she belonged.

            “Center Street was empty once again,” I had turned back to everyone; my eyes were a little red. “He set her at the door step of her home with a small note pinned to her yellow dress. The note had said: I’m so sorry! W. There were tearstains on it. He ran back to his car and screamed off of Center.

            “An hour later, her older brother, who was visiting home for once, would find her lying there. The gash on her head would have clotted over and the bruises would stand out tremendously against her pale skin. Her skin was pale and dead and cold. Her brother cried and screamed and held her. He saw the note and read once. He read twice. And he read it once again. He recognized the handwriting and the last letter of the note. He called the cops and let them do their thing.

            “For awhile, everything went normally for the teacher. No one noticed she was gone, no one asked him if he had heard anything. The rest of the teachers learned of her untimely end and they didn’t weep. He started to settle down and return to normal. He didn’t know that her brother had had him as a teacher more than a few years back.”

            I took a deep breath and emptied out the chambers in my Smith and Wesson. No one took the opportunity to run. “Did any of you know that Warshire here has a wife and two children?” I paused, waiting for their response. “And did you know that that desk over there used to have a young girl to sit in it? And that the last time that young girl had seen that desk, she was wearing a yellow dress?” I paused again. I began to feel angry with them, almost blaming them. I pulled a small book out and dropped it in the pool of blood. It had the word WARSHIRE on it and below that were the numbers 9/10/11 to 11/2/11.

            “The teacher reported a break in about a week ago, saying nothing was stolen, but either he didn’t notice or didn’t dare say, that his journal was missing.” I looked back at the students and smiled. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes our lesson for the day. Now if you’ll excuse me, I believe there are some men with mace I need to speak to.” I dropped the revolver and walked out the door where men with mace, tear gas canisters, and heavy looking guns met me, beat me down, and dragged me off to a large van outside. I saw about six hundred terrified faces looking at me before I was roughly thrown in.

            I think they knocked out one of my teeth.

 

                                                            *            *            *

 

            Straight A in the front of the class continued to stare at daddy after the man with the gun had left. She stared at the hole that stopped spitting out blood long before his story had ended. The man with the gun wasn’t very smart. He kept mistaking her for a boy, probably because of the dike haircut that b***h at the salon accidentally gave her. And the man kept looking at her, thinking she didn’t see him glancing at her with pride, as if he had broken her.

            He hadn’t.

            And that man with the gun thought that the girl in his story was daddy’s first girl.

            She wasn’t.

            I was his first girl. 

Author's Note

I wrote this one back in August. I had watched a mocumentary about a school shooting and the movie was shot really well (ha). I started writing a much longer story but scrapped it after about six or so pages. THIS story is the neglected step child of that scrapped piece. I was also reading a lot of stories written in that story-telling style. Anyways, i hope you enjoy it. It does get slightly graphic, but only briefly.

Reviews

[A Girl]

Wow. I don't even know where to start... I suppose I could start with the ending; it was incredibly powerful, and definitely worth the read. You did an excellent job of foreshadowing throughout, and your use of nicknames (for lack of a better word), such as Straight A and Waterworks, added a nice creative tint to the story.

The only negative aspects I found where that at times the story was a little too detailed, for instance when you listed the names of the classes that the girl was taking - such details seemed largely irrelevant.

But, nevertheless, excellent job on this piece. I will most definitely read more of your work.

[ChinAllen]

Thank you so much, I'm glad you enjoyed it. And thanks for the criticism, too, every bit helps me out a lot! Thank you, again.