Karie stood in front of her open locker, looking at her reflection in the mirror. Behind her, students streamed down the hallway towards their afternoons. Their conversations were a dull roar that deepened the pocket of stillness around Karie.
In her reflection, Karie saw the worry in her own eyes. Mr. Adams, the history teacher, had told her at the end of class to meet him after school. Karie knew what it was about. Last week she had been so stressed out about an AP Calculus assignment that she had forgotten about the paper Mr. Adams had assigned. At two in the morning, she had remembered. Too exhausted to do the reading and then bullshit some analysis, she let Google, control-C, and control-V write the paper.
Now she was busted, and on the worst possible day. She wore her usual: a black skirt so long that, with tall boots, she could get away with not shaving her legs. Her top was a black tank-top that showed enough cleavage to distract attention away from her thick waist. Her friends called it her Goth uniform. This day was different, though. Instead of unshaven legs, the long skirt hid tight, black stockings that hugged her calves. They ran up past her knees, and ended halfway up her thighs. Keeping them taut were clips attached to a garter belt. She wasn't wearing any panties. Her new bra had so much padding she was spilling out of her tank-top. All day the unfamiliar sight of the tops of her boobs in her peripherals had distracted her.
Even more distracting was that, for the first time, she had shaved not only her legs but everything else too. Every time the fabric of her skirt brushed against that new hairlessness, the surprise of the smooth skin and absent panties reminded her of sex. The unfamiliar cling and rub of the woolen stockings only made it worse. All day her passion had been building, and now she couldn't wait to get back to her empty house and rub out some release. This meeting with Mr. Adams was the last barrier between her and an afternoon of pleasure in an otherwise empty home.
"Goddamn you, Gabby," Karie whispered to her reflection in the mirror. Gabby was an internet friend, another senior, but at a high school on the other side of the country. Karie had met Gabby on the message boards of an author's website—they both loved his books. Their shared obsession had led to a friendship made all the more intimate by the fact that they had never met in real life. Karie didn't know now how their conversations had turned to sex. But it was easy discussing those pleasures with someone she knew through only text.
Karie sighed, shouldered her bag, and slammed the locker door hard enough to jiggle her breasts. She hadn't meant to close it so hard, but her sexual need was nothing like she had experienced. The craving was intense, physical like hunger and urgent like needing to pee. Gabby had talked her into dressing like this so that Karie could feel the power of it. While the teenage eyes on her all day had empowered her, at the same time the outfit was a surrender.
With each heavy step of her boots Karie's breasts jiggled at the bottom of her vision. The naked tops of her thighs whispered against each other. Karie hadn't counted on hair's ability to wick away moisture. Her shaven parts felt sticky. Karie knocked on Mr. Adam's classroom's door. The door had a window, but Mr. Adams had mounted a map over it after too many students had been distracted by clowning friends in the hallway.
"Come in," Mr. Adams said. Karie opened the door and stood at the threshold.
Mr. Adams was at his desk. It was wider than the other teachers' desks to accommodate his wheelchair. That extra width did nothing to tame the mess of papers on it. "Miss Wilson," he said.
"You said you wanted to see me." Karie studied his face, trying to gauge how much trouble she was in. She was prepared to cry. Already the tears were welling up in her eyes, partially from shame but also from sexual frustration.
"Close the door. Sit down." Mr. Adams was all commands, and Karie obeyed. Some kids said Mr. Adams had been in the army, and that's where he had been paralyzed. He was definitely built like a soldier, at least from the waist up. He was bald too, but not in an adherence to any military code. Fate had been so unkind as to take not only his ability to walk but also most of the hair on his crown, and Mr. Adams kept what remained closely shaved. Seeing Mr. Adams's waxed baldness now only reminded Karie of her own hairlessness below.
Mr. Adams shuffled through the papers on his desk while Karie waited. He produced the printed copy of her paper. "Do you want to explain this?" he said, holding it up.
Karie didn't know how much to confess. Students submitted papers through a program that automatically checked for plagiarism, and then Mr. Adams printed them out to grade them. That gave Karie the impression that Mr. Adams was uncomfortable with technology, an impression reinforced by his ancient wheelchair. Karie knew there were battery-operated scooters like the fat people rode around Wal-mart. Mr. Adam's chair wouldn't have been out of place in a museum. He got around the school by pumping the wheels, each push displaying the definition in his huge arms. The muscles of his upper body, accentuated by the tight shirts he wore, gave him an aura of intimidation that compensated for his lack of stature.
Mr. Adams was using that aura now. "Hrm, Mrs. Wilson?"
"I'm sorry. Poor time management," Karie said. Her voice surprised her as it came out. It had a huskiness she hadn't anticipated.
"Sorry isn't good enough. Plagiarism is serious. I'm supposed to report this to the administration."
"Please, don't." Karie said. Her whole body started leaking. Her nose started to run into the back of her throat. Tears started to film her eyes, threatening to spill. Curiously, the shame was also started a wetness between her legs. Karie adjusted herself in her seat to close her legs against the rush. She used a hand to cover her eyes.
"Zero tolerance is bullshit," Mr. Adams said.
Karie's surprise at the curse suppressed her leaks. She peeked over her hand to see the expression on his face. "You're not going to report me?" she said.
Mr. Adams's face was stern but otherwise indecipherable. "I haven't decided. I could get in big trouble if I don't."
"Please. I'll do anything. I'm so close to the PROMISE cutoff." PROMISE was the state's scholarship program that paid for the in-state tuition of students with good grades. Karie's GPA was right on the line. If she didn't pass Mr. Adams's class, it meant tens of thousands of dollars of debt for her or her parents, if they could afford college at all.
"I don't want anything, except for you not to cheat," Mr. Adams said.
Karie watched his eyes closely, studying them for a way out. She found it when those eyes momentarily broke from hers and flicked down to her cleavage. Mr. Adam's eyes quickly returned to hers, but something other than disappointment was in them now. Karie didn't know if it was shame, regret, or desire.
She didn't wait to find out. "I mean it. Anything," she said, and with two swift motions she pulled down the left and then the right sides of her tank top, taking her bra with them. Her breasts sprung out and hung freely. Her nipples, suddenly exposed to the cool air, hardened to stiff nubs. Their arousal was so intense that little bumps popped on their areolae.
Mr. Adams said, "Miss Winston, this is not—"
Karie cut him off, not with words, but by grabbing her left breast with her right hand. There were red lines where her new bra's underwire had rested. She brought her hard nipple to her mouth and licked it. It was a maneuver Karie used when she was right on the edge. Her nipples were particularly sensitive, and a few swipes with her own rough tongue were usually enough to send her over. Now the sensation brought a low moan out of her, and, absent volition, her legs parted. She leaned back in her desk as her hips tilted upwards. Her left hand, of its own accord, sought her smoothness over the top of her skirt.
She had just started rubbing when a knock on Mr. Adam's door froze them both. Mr. Adam's mouth was open and his hand raised. He had been about to say something. Karie's fingers were nestled in her crotch, the tip of her middle finger on her clit.
"Quickly. Hide under my desk," Mr. Adams whispered. Then, louder and towards the door, he said, "One moment, please." He backed his wheelchair out of his desk and rolled it to the door. Karie scrambled around the long desk and then underneath it, her large breasts swinging freely and the wool stockings hindering her haste.
It was dusty and dark under Mr. Adam's desk. A board covered the front of the space, hiding it from the classroom, except for a crack an inch wide at the bottom and a smaller gap above, just below the desk's surface. Karie arranged herself in the confinement so that she couldn't be seen. She peeked through the top crack but saw only the empty classroom. Mr. Adams and the newcomer were at the door past her line of sight.
A boy's voice said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Adams. I almost forgot about our meeting."
Mr. Adams said, "Come in, Mr. Winston. And close the door behind you."
Karie's heart quickened. The boy could only be Jack Winston, another senior who had also just turned eighteen. Karie had homeroom with him first thing each morning, along with the rest of the end of alphabet.
Mr. Adam's said, "Sit down, please," and his wheelchair appeared in front of the desk, obscuring some of Karie's view from behind the crack.
Jack said, "Someone left their backpack." Behind the spokes of the wheelchair, Karie saw Jack tuck his lanky frame into the chair she had just been sitting in, next to the backpack she had left in her hurry. Jack was tall, one of the few boys at the school bigger than Karie's five foot eleven. Karie hated that she was shallow enough to care about height, but all the boys she had dated so far hadn't made it past first base. She disliked leaning down to kiss them. Many mornings, from the back of homeroom, she had fantasized about Jack, who sat at the front of his classes because of his poor eyesight. Fantasies were all they had ever been, because Jack was a jock and Karie a Goth—two entirely different species.
Mr. Adams said, "It's Miss Wilson's."
Jack said, "Karie's? I could take it to her if you want. I wouldn't mind having a reason to talk to her." Karie's heart, already thumping hard from her crazy surrender to impulse, now quickened further.
