Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 69734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69734 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
In a minute flat, I’m out the door and starting up my Mini Cooper with the spare key I dug out last night after crawling through an open window to the casita where I live.
I step on the gas, screeching the tires as I peel out. It doesn’t matter though. While I may arrive before the clang of the first bell, there is no possibility of me being the first or second person in the school. I orgasmed my way right through that chance an hour ago.
I race down the streets and pull into the staff parking lot.
Dear Moon Goddess, get me through this day. I jog into school. I swear everyone’s looking at me, but hopefully, it’s just paranoia.
I do a quick, surreptitious check, but my clothes are not in the hallway. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, to be honest. I walk to my classroom, where students gather outside my door for the first period. It’s a first-year class, one of my easier ones. The younger they are, the easier they are for me to control. My worst class is the sixth-period seniors–the class with Asher Martin, the school football star and leader of the alpha holes.
The neighbor kid who doubled in size since I saw him last and who now absolutely hates me.
I reach for the door to my classroom before I remember I don’t have the keys to unlock it.
Dammit. I need to find the janitor or principal.
No, wait. No, no, no. I resist the urge to scurry around like a guilty rat.
I’m a teacher here. I need to maintain my dignity.
I draw up all five-foot-two of my height, puff up my chest, and turn a regal head on the closest student to me. “Andrew, go and find the janitor to unlock my door.” I may not be the biggest or strongest wolf in the school, but I am a teacher, and I know how to pull authority.
“Yes, Ms. James.”
As soon as he disappears, I wish I’d gone myself. Because now, the seconds stretch out like hours as the bell rings, and I’m still standing in the hallway with my class.
I think fast. “Being an artist means working with what you have where you are,” I tell the class. “The bell has rung. Class begins now. Look around this hallway. If you were to depict it in a way that conveyed some meaning, how would you do it?”
No one is listening to me.
I put as much Alpha Command in my voice as I can. “Backs against the lockers.”
My students reluctantly shuffle back to form a line against the wall. “Now, let’s look at that wall.” I point to the wall opposite us. “What do you see, and how would you make a statement about it?”
“What do you mean, make a statement about it? It’s a wall.” One of the female students says, looking at her nails.
“Sure. How many different things can a wall convey?”
Blank stares.
“How do walls make you feel?”
More blank stares.
I offer a little vulnerability. “Sometimes walls make me feel shut in. Imprisoned.”
I get some nods as they start to catch my drift.
“So I might paint this wall with an oppressive tilt in my direction as if it were closing in on me. Or how else might I show that?”
“You could paint bars,” someone throws out.
“Exactly. I could paint actual prison bars.”
“Or you could make the lockers look like prison bars–I know!” –Finally, one of my students gets excited– “You could have the lockers as prison bars and then have them bent open in the middle with a hole to the outside.”
“Yeah, and what if everything inside was black and white, and then the outside could be in full color?” Another student suggests.
I reward her with an encouraging smile. “Now that sounds like an art piece worth making.”
The janitor–Zory, I think his name is–arrives with the keys. He doesn’t look at me as he unlocks the door and pushes it open for me.
“Thank you, Zory,” I murmur.
He grunts in response and walks away without another word.
Someone has been inside the classroom recently. I catch the scent but can’t quite identify them. My clothes from last night are folded and neatly stacked behind my desk, underneath my purse.
Okay. I exhale the breath I’d been holding.
Someone had my back.
Maybe nothing is fucked here.
I go with the morning’s lesson, telling them that we’re going to take a break from their current pointillism project to try some rough sketches of the hallway.
A cheerleader raises her hand.
“Yes, Remi?”
“May I go out in the hallway to sketch?”
I hesitate. I would love to take my class out of the classroom and into the world to start seeing the world through an artist’s lens, but I’m not feeling brave enough to buck the system after my behavior last night.