After spending what my parents referred to as "far too many years in school," I had finally received my teaching credentials. Early on, I had decided to become a high school teacher, like my father, though I knew that this would essentially ensure a life of abject poverty. Like many of us, I had gone through a rough patch in high school, and it had been my history teacher who had helped me the most through my petty adolescent crisis. Like him, I thought I could be of some help to teenagers, too.
I was excited to set my career, such as it was, into motion, but soon found that none of the schools in my area had any teaching positions available. It was with great reservation that I applied at St. Peter's Catholic School for Girls. I was, after all, looking to interact with and help normal, mixed-up kids, not a bunch of Jesus-addled girls who were angry at their fathers. As the money ran out, though, the school's offer began to look better and better, and I finally accepted a position teaching English.
My first day at St. Peter's was going smoothly. Class periods there lasted 70 minutes instead of the usual 40, so it was nice to actually have enough time to make sure that the students understood the material. Though this was technically a Catholic school, I found that the students were just as normal as students everywhere, with their same share of problems and insecurities.
It wasn't until the last period of the day, that things absolutely went to pieces. Class had just begun, and I was instructing my students to read quietly while I got the class' teaching materials together. The door swung open, hard, and in walked Timber.
Timber Michaels. It was a name I had heard only in the teacher's lounge. Feeling completely out of place amongst the priests and nuns, I took my coffee breaks quietly in the corner of the room, in an old, ripped, upholstered lounge chair. Just as I was finishing my newspaper, an exasperated nun burst into the room, and confronted Father Thomas.
"Father," she sobbed, “You simply MUST expel Ms. Michaels immediately! She spent the entire class whispering dirty jokes to the girls next to her in class, and even called me a 'penguin' when I told her to stop! Then, when I rapped her knuckles, she just laughed at me!"
"Now, Sister," Father Thomas replied calmly, "You know very well that Timber's father has made enormous donations to this school. It's not a simple matter, to simply expel her. After all," he continued, "If it weren't for her father, how would we have ever gotten that new science lab built?"
The Sister didn't even respond. She threw her lesson plan book on the conference table, and stormed out of the teacher's lounge, steaming. This didn't seem like particularly serene Sister-like behavior, and I knew this Timber Michaels person must have really gotten to her.
And now, with Timber standing at the front of my classroom, looking on my students as a Queen would look on her subjects, I could begin to understand why. Everything about this girl SCREAMED that she did not belong, at all, in a Catholic school. I thought, briefly, that she would probably look more appropriate in a strip club. Pushing that thought immediately out of my head, I tried to look at her more objectively. I guessed her to be 18 years old, with dark brown hair pulled tightly into two pigtails that stuck out softly from the sides of her head. She had gigantic, pouty, full lips, with just a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose.
She had obviously modified her school-issued uniform. The regulation white button-down shirt that all the girls wore, was tied tightly about three inches above her navel. The top of the shirt was unbuttoned all the way to the knot, exposing a wide expanse of the deepest cleavage I have ever seen on a girl her age. Her red plaid pleated skirt had obviously also been altered, falling what appeared to be three or four inches higher on the leg than the other girls. She did, however, leave the black knee socks and MaryJanes untouched.
I absorbed all of this in seconds, interrupted only when she spoke. "I'm sorry I'm late, Mr. Roberts," she said, reading my name off the blackboard, "I had to stop at my locker."
"Ah, very well, Timber. Just take your seat," I stammered. This was ridiculous. Here I was 24 years old, stuttering like a child in front of my class. I turned my back on the class, and began writing a question on the blackboard for them to discuss. I had just written the words, "What would..." when I heard a huge burst of giggling from the back of the class, where Timber had gone to take her seat. I turned around, smiled, and said gently, "That's enough, now, girls," and went back to writing.
The class period passed fairly uneventfully, with a few more minor interruptions and note-passing from the girls in the back. Remembering the anger of the Nun in the teacher’s lounge, I pretended not to notice, and tried not to be bothered by it. The church bells rang outside, signaling that it was time for the students to begin their next class. I sat at my desk, watching the students filing out, and wishing them a good day. After the last student had left, I looked to the back of the room, to find Timber still sitting there.
"Ms. Michaels, what are you doing," I asked, "Or is this why you're always late to class?"
She rose from the tiny student desk, slowly, and began walking toward my desk at the front of the room. She sat in the large, overstuffed chair to the right of mine, and began crying softly.
Completely taken aback, I asked her what the problem was. "It's my father," she sobbed. I placed my hand on her small, delicate shoulder. "What about him," I asked, innocently. "It's just that he... he caught me out last night after I was supposed to be in bed, and he brought me home, and he... he spanked me, Mr. Roberts. Gawd, I was so humiliated, I mean, no one has done anything like that to me since I was a little girl."
She completely broke down then, and as hard as I tried, I couldn't stop staring at the way her soft, white chest heaved with each tear. I was immediately broken out of this trance, though, by her arms around my neck. "You've got to help me, Mr. Roberts. I have got to get out of here, out of this school, out of this town!"