"Actually it's okay," I replied. "One of my students handed in a writing assignment I gave them as a joke. It's on Whit Diffie, so I'm going to read it."
"Homework? On the last day of school?" he laughed. "Was it a male student?"
"Uh huh," I giggled.
"Crush?" he asked playfully.
"Maybe a little one," I conceded, forgetting to tell him it was a two-way street.
"Well you have my permission to lead him on," he laughed. "I had a hot teacher too in Year 12. I would have crawled over broken glass for a smile from her."
"Hey," I said, changing the subject; I was still wearing the blush from Josh's compliment and now it was burning redder than my dress. "Can you get off work and come to the fair this afternoon? It'll be fun."
"What's my motivation?" he teased, back to flirty-talk. I was on familiar ground again.
"Well I'll be in doing a stint in the sponge-toss booth," I crooned temptingly. "All alone … helpless … soaking wet." I felt my heart quicken. Doing this in school was so much more exciting than at home; it's a shame I didn't get many similar chances.
"Oh!" he exclaimed with exaggerated, playful interest. "Helpless, you say? So a stranger could maybe creep into the back of the booth and have his way with you?"
"Ah!" I gasped wordlessly, my nipples hardening as I pictured Kevin doing exactly that while the kids threw sponges at me.
"Uh oh. Gotta go," he said quickly. "I'll be there. Love ya Jean-Genie. Bye."
"Oh, um … bye," I said, surprised at his abrupt sign-off. Somebody had probably just come up to see him at work, but a little part of me wondered whether he was trying to distract me from the sponge-toss fantasy. Ever since that first time on the beach at Manly, we'd both enjoyed outdoor sex. Not exhibitionism,
per se
, just … risky. It would be just like him to sneak into the back of the booth and tease me to a public orgasm. I was getting short of breath just thinking about it.
My phone had gone back to its home screen; Kevin had hung up. A shadow moved in the corner of my vision outside the classroom door. I looked up, but it was only a cloud passing across the sun.
~~~
My student-free morning was finally over. Josh's thousand word essay only kept me entertained for ten minutes of the almost three hours I sat alone in the classroom. Sadly he used up most of his insight in his selection of the subject. There wasn't really much meat in the essay; he wasted too many words on a misguided attempt to explain Fermat's Little Theorem and not enough on the commercial and social ramifications of secure, public cryptography. It didn't make me any less proud of him though; even if he can't write, at least he can think, and sadly that's an ability not as common as you'd imagine among school-leavers.
Demonstrating iron willpower, I took my homemade sandwiches to the staff room for lunch rather than braving the fair for what I really wanted: a big, greasy hamburger.
"Miss Granger, are you lost? This is the staff room. Strictly no student's permitted."
Oh my goodness! Hermione jokes from my colleagues now.
It was the principal, Neil Smith, dressed for-fuck's-sake as Dumbledore, the principal at Harry Potter's Hogwarts School. He was wearing a long, white Santa Claus beard, his college academic gown and a rumpled witch's hat from a costume store. I mean he could've been Gandalf from
Lord of the Rings
, but the principal dressed as a famous movie principal was actually quite clever.
"I'm sorry, Professor Dumbledore," I cried, eyes wide with mock earnestness. "But the schoolyard is filled with trolls and dementors. I came in here to be safe. Please don't send me back out there!"
"Ha!" he cried with a smile. "I was wrong to match wits with an expert. I presume you're very adept at rebuffing Hermione Granger jibes."
"You don't know the half of it, Mr Smith," I smiled ruefully, taking a seat opposite him at the lunch table.
"Not long until the wedding, Jeannie," he said, changing the subject.
"Oh, don't remind me," I rolled my eyes, talking around a cheekful of chicken-and-salad-on-wheat. "I still have a million things to do: bridesmaid gifts, bonbonniere, table centrepieces, speeches. I still don't have my vows finalised!"
"Well we're here to help," he said with obvious irony. "On a related note, we have the Sponge-Toss booth prepared in honour of your pending nuptials."
"Oh dear," I cringed, but I was grinning too because I sensed I was becoming the target of another joke. "Should I worry? What have you done?"
"All will become clear when you show up for your turn in the booth," he said, eyes glinting with mischievous humour. I wasn't too worried though, what's the worst they could do? I didn't think they'd go so far as to supply cream pies to throw at me. It was probably just a few metres of white tulle wrapped around the booth.
After lunch, I steeled myself for the assault on the senses that would be the Muck-Up Day Fair, over two-hundred senior students, many of them still drunk from last night's party, yelling and cavorting through the rides and sideshows distributed around the school oval. I wasn't disappointed either. It was every bit as frenzied and raucous as I imagined, but in a strange way it was also pleasing. With a shiver I thought back to my own Muck-Up Day with kids passed out in the corners and others defacing the school. The fair gives the kids a focus, and that focus was on harmless, wholesome fun. I almost expected Danny and Sandy from the movie Grease to come dancing through singing "
You're The One That I Want"
.
I walked around for a few minutes, gaping in wide-eyed wonder at what the organising committee had managed to put together (with the help of countless parent volunteers). There were stalls selling fast-food, popcorn, fairy-floss, funny hats, and glow sticks. There were sideshows with a Lucky Wheel, Madame Zelda's palm reading, Guess Your Weight, and of course the Sponge Toss – not yet adorned with whatever wedding-themed decoration they had planned for me. And then there were the rides. Not tame little merry-go-rounds like they have in local street fairs; no sir, these were the real deal, exciting thrill rides like The Octopus, Rock Star, and The Enterprise – anything that can be mounted on the back of a truck.
"C'mon Miss Granger," yelled a passing senior in a Slutty Nurse costume as she grabbed my hand. "I need a gal-pal for Rock Star; the boys need a different dress to look up."
It took a moment for me to recognise Mandy Djvonic with all that teased hair and skin on display. Normally she was the quintessential pretty and prim teenager – currently without a boyfriend – but it looked like she was cutting loose today. I guessed that a small-to-medium measure of white wine spritzer had something to do with the transformation. I wanted to be part of the fun, so I went with her unquestioningly. My dress was sexy but at knee length it was a far cry from earning the "Slutty" prefix that Mandy's nurse uniform so richly deserved, so I wasn't worried about the small crowd of senior boys huddled beneath the ride. Not that Mandy seemed terribly concerned either.
I'd been on Rock Star before at the Easter Show in Sydney, so it held no surprises. I locked into the standing harness next to Mandy and let her squeeze my hand, glancing at me every few seconds with a manic look of excitement that made me think she was maybe mixing some pharmaceuticals with her wine spritzer. When everybody was on board, the ride began to power up and all of the teenagers joined in with the blaring catch-cry over the speakers: "For Those About To Rock, WE SALUTE YOU" from some golden-oldie rock song.
It started out slowly, lifting and dropping and swinging from side to side, higher and higher, with the crowd of about thirty riders making anticipatory "Whoooa, whoooa" noises as it built up speed and approached the apex of its rotation. That building cry peaked along with the ride's motion and then transformed into outright screams (mine included) as it tipped over the top and into an ever-faster rotation, plummeting downwards with hair and hemlines flying before ripping us back up into the air with terrifying speed.
I'd forgotten how much fun it was. I was trying to simultaneously scream and hold down my hem and look at the crazed faces of the kids around me. And then I was tricked as it slowed again at the apex, thinking it was over only to have it reverse direction and go through all the same stomach-churning motions again counter-clockwise.
When it finally slowed to a stop and the harnesses released, Mandy grabbed my wrist again and with a frenzied "Let's go!" she raced me down the exit ramp and straight back around into the entry to have another go. And we weren't the only ones! There were a few other serial thrill-seekers running with us. By the time the second ride was over, I was every bit as manic as Mandy and had completely regressed into the carefree teenager that I never had the opportunity to be. After the third ride, it was me grabbing
her
by the wrist and dragging her back into the entry queue, running and giggling, flushed and excited.
The sight of a teacher going feral on Rock Star had drawn a small crowd of gawkers and our little group running from exit to entry had grown to an even dozen. The newfound teenager inside me noticed with a heart-flutter that one of them was Josh, but the nurturing, mothering teacher inside me wanted Mandy and Josh to get together and make beautiful babies. After all, if I couldn't have him, I wanted to get him for my new BFF. Running ahead of Mandy, I got us a position on the ride so that they were standing together, hoping they would hold hands as a lot of the kids had been doing.
They didn't.
Bloody teenagers!
I was going to have to spoon-feed them.
On the next round, I grabbed Josh's hand too and the three of us raced back to the entry with Mandy in the lead. I got between them this time and as the ride built up speed, I clutched my hands (and theirs!) together in mock terror, trying to graft one set of fingers onto the other like a couple of climbing ivies. That didn't work either. I was screaming on the outside, but scheming on the inside, and as I played out a little daydream of young love in my head, I realised two things: one, I was horny; and two, I was pressing both of their hands together. Into my breasts!
Reality surged back in a flood of adrenaline.
Yes folks, that's me; I'm that schoolteacher standing in plain sight holding the hands of two students to her breasts.
My self-preservation instinct kicked in,
play it cool, Jeannie
, an inner voice whispered to me. Without moving my hands (yet) I used my peripheral vision to check on both of them, but neither seemed to have noticed that I was using them to feel me up; they were screaming and holding their free hands in the air just like everybody else. When the ride next crested, I used the momentum to lift our arms above our heads and away from my breasts, with seemingly nobody the wiser.
Could they not have noticed?
