I had been a teacher at a private religious school for several years, ever since I had completed my PhD at the University of Michigan. For the most part my family thought that I was making a terrible mistake teaching in an academy, essentially a high school environment, with a doctorate in a field that would allow me to command five digit salaries elsewhere. However, teaching was something that I enjoyed and I knew that in my own way I was helping to contribute to the welfare of the future by teaching kids to extend their minds and think beyond their own personal experiences. I had done my graduate research on artificial intelligence, specifically dealing with modeling human level emotion and how that factors into the decision making process. I taught all of the computer classes at the school.
Some of the classes were a lot of fun to teach as the school allowed me to teach beyond typical high school level. The students who took the more advanced classes, primarily seniors, mostly taught themselves and seemed to be like sponges soaking in the moisture of knowledge. The other classes, however, were basic computer literacy classes required of every student for graduation. I tended to dread those classes as most of the kids did not want to be in the class and the others refused to even try to learn the material. There were of course exceptions, but they were few and far between. I found that many of the kids tended to expect me to give them a good grade simply because of whom their parents were. But, I am not writing this to tell you about those classes or even those kids, rather, I am writing about one specific student in one of the advanced classes.
I spent most of my time on the campus as I was single and only had a small apartment in town that I rarely bothered to clean. I was teaching a new class that year and found that it was taking more of my time than I had anticipated. The class was an introduction to the design and development of computer games. Most of the kids who were taking the class I had had for at least one class during their entire academy life, and they tended to be the stereotypical nerds and geeks, not that I minded as I considered myself to be a part of their community. I sat at my desk in my small office, blankly staring at the wall. I had a small pile of tests that I needed to grade, but was planning on looking at them a couple hours later. I needed to find a good final project for the game design class but everything I had found had been either too easy or way too difficult for a high school level introduction course.
I thought about the kids in the class, as I liked all of them, each with their own individual quirks. Their was only one student who was struggling in the class, though she would pass but I knew she was not doing as well as she wanted too. She was a very gifted artist and had managed to turn those talents into the computer platform quite easily; actually she had taken every non-programming class that I had taught. She had approached me near the end of the previous school year seeking my approval for her to take the game design class. I thought that she had the potential to grasp the programming concepts easily, but I had been wrong. I felt more responsible for her than I did the other students because I had told her that she should be able to handle the class. In actuality she was failing, but I had already decided to give her a low 'C' for the class.
She was a very smart kid, a senior in the academy and I believe that she had just turned eighteen early in the school year. She was destined to graduate in the top ten of her class, possibly in the top three. She had gotten through school on her own merits, not by throwing the names of her parents around in an attempt to intimidate or beguile teachers. She was just about four inches over five feet and I would guess in the neighborhood of one hundred twenty five or thirty-five pounds. She had long auburn hair that had a slight natural curl to it. Her eyes were big orbs that seemed to illuminate a room when she entered and peered out from behind a seemingly delicate pair of glasses, the frames with a subdued hue that seemed to blend into her hair. She had a soft voice with a hint of a southern accent.
Her name was Teresa, but she preferred people to call her Teri, apparently it was a nickname left over from her tomboyish younger days and I suppose she just liked it. She had become one of my favorite students, perhaps because I thought that she was cute, well to be honest I thought that she was extremely sexy and had often times fantasized about her. I knew, however, that she was too young, well not too young but to make an advance on an academy student of mine would be a very poor career choice. There were times, that my imagination got carried away and I imagined that she had an interest in me. She did seem to linger in the class a minute longer than the other students and her eyes seemed to follow me as I walked and lectured in class, but surely she had no interest in an older goofy guy like me.
I suppose that I should interject here for a moment and introduce myself. My name is Alex Percy and I do not like students or others calling me Dr. Percy, it seems too pretentious to me. Though, if somebody annoys me, I have been known to reiterate that I am a PhD. I am about five foot eleven or so, maybe a little shorter and on a heavy day a little over one hundred forty five pounds. I have short brown hair that seems to be running away from my forehead as quickly as it can. I have a bad habit of shaving only every three days or so and wear wire frame glasses constantly.
I leaned back in my chair absently loosening my tie as I did so. I felt the collar of my sport coat brush against my neck as I tried to nestle into the back of the chair. I looked through Teri's last attempt at a pong style game. The graphics were quite impressive and I enjoyed the animations that she had created. The music and sound, though not amazing matched the look of the game creating a complete atmosphere. The problem though, was that the game simply did not work, her code was a jumbled mess of random functions some of which worked correctly but were called at the wrong time and the others did not work at all though they were used in the right place. What to do, I wondered.
Suddenly, there was a loud drumming against the window that was hidden behind a thick shade. I leaned forward and peeled the shade back a little to glance through the window and was surprised to discover that it had suddenly started raining. Strange how oblivious I am to the world outside, I thought to myself as I leaned back into my chair letting the shade drop back down to once again cover the window. The academy sprawled across several acres of land, most of it left in a seemingly natural fashion so that the school seemed to be nestled in the seclusion of the forest. There were four different building where classes were held, another building for administration and yet two more for a cafeteria and gymnasium. The buildings had a surprising lack of architectural spark that prevented the building from truly blending into the natural surroundings. On opposite sides of the huddle of main building were four other blocky boring structures. Two of the buildings were the dorms for the boys and the others were where the girls lived out their academy lives.
There was a light knock on my office door behind me and without moving I informed however was knocking that the door was open. I heard the door open, its hinges squeaking ever so slightly and then the door closed just as quietly. I spun around in my chair, the printouts of Terri's program still scattered in my lap and a page in each hand. I was very startled to find a rain drenched Terri standing in my office, drops of water falling quietly in darkening circles onto the grey concrete floor. Her hair, while wet and dripping, was not matted to her head, though her pony tail did not fluff out as much as it usually did, The wetness had taken most of the curl out of her hair and I could see that her hair was quite longer than it appeared. There were large drops of water on the lenses of her glasses that I knew from personal experience made it very difficult to see through. The world would seem to pass through various magnifying glasses depending on which drop of water you tried to look through. She wore a grey shirt that had the logo of the school on it, it was the standard issue shirt for gym class, though most of the students wore the shirts because they liked them. She had cut hers at some point in time and the edge of the shirt was a couple of inches about her belly button. Her breasts, of which I had many times admired from a distance being a breast man myself and hers being very well defined D-cups, though they may have been large C's I never cared too much about the exact size of nice breasts so long as they were a good handful or two, held the shirt away from her body so that the edge did not touch her stomach. She had on a red and black plaid skirt that matched the red and black within the logo on her shirt. It seemed like an extremely odd combination to me, but I was not much of a fashion person myself. She shifted her weight slightly from one foot to the other seemingly wishing that she had stayed in the rain or nervous about something.
"Oh, I'm terribly sorry about that, Dr. Percy." She said softly as she noticed the papers in my hand and recognized them as her own. I glanced down, not sure what she was talking about at first then saw the papers and was able to follow her. I quickly gathered them up and dropped them onto my desk.
"I've told you, I'm not your doctor." I told her with a disarming smile that seemed to relax her slightly as I motioned to the other chair in my office. She glanced at it, seemed to wonder if it would be impolite to get the chair wet then decided not to worry about it as she moved over and sat down. She pulled her glasses from her face and began to wipe them on her shirt before realizing that her shirt was far to wet to dry the lenses. I felt my breath cath for a moment as she lifted the edge of her shirt to the lenses, showing more of her skin, but not as much as I had hoped. I noticed that the cold rain had had its effect on her as her nipples pressed firmly against the shirt. I leaned forward and held out my hand and she looked at me puzzled for a moment. I grabbed the glasses from her. I un-tucked a corner of my shirt from my dockers and wiped the lenses dry for her before handing the glasses back to her.
"Thank you." She said as she placed them back onto her face.
"This isn't really too bad." I told her indicating the papers that she had noticed earlier.
"Thank you D, uh, Mr. Percy, but, " she said smiling and then seeming to lose her momentum for a moment, "I know that I'm failing the class." I did not want to lie to her, but I also did not want to tell her that I was going to pass her simply because I liked her genuineness and other qualities, to put it politically.
"Up till now I had a chance at being valedictorian, but I know I'm not going to be and that's ok with me, Mary probably deserves it anyway, " she said though I could tell by her voice that she did not like Mary. The feeling was mutual, as I did not like her either. I had only had Mary in one class and though she had earned an 'A' she tried to get the grade by threatening me with her father's name, that had tempted me to fail her but I couldn't. Mary being the valedictorian was a true shame as she was no more than a spoiled child who would possibly never learn the value that she had in herself regardless of her father.
"The class isn't over yet, anything is possible." I told Terri.
"No, but I need help, and I really hate having to ask you, I mean I know that you are about the only teacher here who is actually fair and treats everybody the same." Her voice trailed off for a moment and she seemed to once again wonder if she had made the right choice in coming to my office.
"How good are you at keeping secrets?" I asked her suddenly after letting the silence hang for a moment. Her hands folded in her lap and she looked up from them to look over at me. A quizzical look crossed her face and I thought for the moment that she thought I might have been implying something that I had no intention of doing, though once the thought had occurred to me I wished I had thought of it sooner.
