Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 75240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Not on the last day of school, anyway.
I was almost there. She almost wasn’t my student.
We’d managed to keep it PG this long, another hour wouldn’t hurt.
“I’m giving y’all an hour to take this. You don’t need the two hours that we were allotted. Promise.” I pulled the tests out of my back pocket and handed them out individually.
For some reason administration made us hand each student a different copy of the test with the questions scrambled.
It was a bitch to do, although I did see the merit.
“Everyone have a pencil and a Scantron?” I questioned them.
I got a bunch of ‘yes sirs’ and finished handing out the tests to the last tables.
When I turned around, I finally let my eyes feast on Angie’s body.
She was facing the front of the room, but I could tell she was aware of my attentions.
Her breathing was heavy, and her hand was clenched so hard around the cup in front of her that she was bending the sides.
As I walked past her, I gently took the cup from her hands before she spilled it and set it at the corner of her desk before walking to the front of the room.
“You may begin,” I told the class.
The moment they flipped the tests over, I scooped up the study guides and flopped down into my chair, utterly exhausted from the night’s events.
The last thing I wanted to do was read over study guides for their extra credit, but since I had nothing but time for the next hour, I pulled out a red Sharpie from my shirt pocket and started grading.
From time to time I looked up, my eyes automatically going to Angie, and found her scribbling furiously on her test.
Satisfied that she was doing okay, I turned back to my grading.
It was when I was on the fourth study guide from the bottom that I started to have suspicions.
I knew for a fact that, before I’d left class earlier in the week, I’d told them all to do their own study guides. That this wasn’t a group project. Yet, after two very nearly similar worded study guides, and then getting to Jade’s who’s was identical to the other two, I realized that they thought I was stupid.
Obviously.
Why the hell else would they all write the same damn thing for each answer?
I knew for a fact that they’d heard me.
After writing a ‘33’—if they were going to pool their answers, they were going to all share a 100 in my book—on each of their study guides, I finally got to the last one and smiled.
Angie’s was more detailed than anyone else’s. Each question had a paragraph of words underneath of it explaining her answer, and it made me smile to read them.
After writing a hundred on top of hers, I sat back and waited as the tests started trickling in.
Angie came up at the same time as her friend she’d studied with all day yesterday, and I had to grit my teeth when he put his paper on top of hers.
I really didn’t like that guy.
Really.
He may be exactly what she explained him as, but that didn’t mean that I had to like the fucker.
I hated the way his eyes watched Angie move.
Hated the way his hand came out to pat her on the shoulder.
If I hadn’t been the teacher, I might’ve very well ripped his hand off at that moment in time.
“Good?” he asked my woman.
Angie smiled, and then turned her eyes to me.
The vulnerability in them nearly gutted me.
I had to clench my hand on the leg of the desk I was sitting at to keep my hands from reaching for her.
Lucky for both of us, she went back to her seat and completely ignored her new study buddy.
I released my grip and waited not so patiently for the rest of the tests to be turned in.
“Time is up in five minutes,” I called out.
Jade looked up, her face a look of utter pleasure, and then stood with her test in her hand.
She looked over at Alicia, who nodded, and I narrowed my eyes.
What the fuck was that?
Five more tests were turned in, and all were accounted for.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen.” I picked up the tests as well as the study guides and tucked them under my arm. “Y’all have about fifteen minutes and I’ll run these through the grading machine. I’ll give you your grades when I get back.”
When everyone nodded, I left, purposefully avoiding Angie’s gaze directed at me.
I hustled out of the room, and went directly to the office area where the grading machine was located.
Immediately, I ran the tests through, a painstaking task since there were four different versions, and picked them up minutes later.
Taking a seat at the table with my red Sharpie, I started to go through the tests.