Part Sixteen: Weekly Planning
One of the most important organizational tools in any teacher's toolbox is that of routine. Yes, it could also be a key ingredient for drudgery and never failed to kill that buzz students carried in from summer break, but you added whole days of instruction to the instruction calendar simply by training yourself and your students in behaviors. When passing up papers, put yours on top so that stacks remain organized for return. In your seat, not in the door, by the bell. Nobody leaves until desks are all in their proper space. Use the proper header so your poor teacher doesn't go prematurely gray trying to enter grades when he inevitably mixes up stacks of homework. Don't throw chapstick. And so on.
I didn't think of myself as a stickler, but I stickled for those behaviors I wanted to stick. Every student in my classes had heard my spiel that they were to guard their "6 Traits of Writing" rubrics with their lives, sparing me having to print off another two hundred copies every time we did peer review. "If - when - I come to you on your deathbed and ask you where it is, you better be able to point to it with accuracy." That line cut down the needed number of extra rubrics in half. Teaching was always an exercise in organized chaos, and the only way to muddle through it all was to minimize time and energy wasted on the things that didn't enrich lives.
I was quickly learning that maintaining a half dozen sexual relationships with students, coworkers and neighbors was far more chaotic, and impossible to organize. Nevertheless, I stickled.
Taylor left before dinner Monday evening, eschewing my invitation to order takeout since her parents expected her for dinner. She half-heartedly promised to convey my revised sentiments to Abbie regarding the incident over the weekend, though I expected to need to explain it myself later anyway. Megan had returned from her mother's with Robby by then. She stopped by to gripe about the mess Cassie had failed to completely conceal from the party Sunday, then mowed my lawn in lieu of a blowjob when I explained I had been well taken care of. Cassie texted me around nine with a pleasantly succinct request to come over and have sex with me, but I was already getting ready for bed. What was the rush? I had the world in my pocket, and now that things were calming down, I meant to take things one day at a time.
It was our last normal Tuesday of instruction for the year, with the following week set for e-learning and the one after as prep for final exams. The home stretch. I was looking forward to the end of the school year more than ever. Graduation made for a nice bookend for the student experience, but as a teacher, it meant vastly more time and freedom for my new hobby. I could have a different woman every day of the week and then recuperate on Sundays. When I felt like it I could mix things up with doubles - the buxom sisters, the mother/daughter neighbors, the lesbian coworkers. Surely we'd find fresh variations as time passed. Coach and athlete. Cop and troublemaker. Cool mom and impressionable friend of her daughter - was that a thing? Damnit, I'd make it one. This promised to be the best summer break of my life.
That Tuesday we started our final book of the year in senior English,
The Catcher in the Rye.
It was a quick unit, one of the few books where I had more troubles with students reading ahead than keeping up. A short book with fluffy assignments designed in part to shore up weaknesses in the grades of our graduates-to-be,
Catcher
was a welcome respite from denser material. Not only was it usually a crowd-pleaser, but with students on their way to starting jobs, college, families, the whole rest of their lives, it was a good opportunity to address the theme of growing up, its messiness and confusion and allure and unpleasantness. That I was sleeping with not one, not two, but three girls close to a decade my junior made the opening discussion of that theme feel rather poignant for me this year.
During my prep period, I popped by Isa's office.
She glanced up from her laptop. "I have to be downtown for a staff meeting in twenty minutes Canon, so whatever it is, make it quick."
"Hello to you, too." I closed the door behind me, settling into the oversized bean bag chair she kept in the corner to signal my intent to get comfy and stay as long as I liked. Then I got a whiff of all the dust kicked up by my doing so and regretted it, but I think I hid it well. It would appear this too-casual seating option was seldom exercised. "I wanted to talk about the Serenex."
"I wondered when you would. What all did you overhear Saturday night when you were playing possum?"
"Not enough. Start at the beginning. Tell me what you learned, how you learned it. Everything."
"Look, stop in tomorrow and maybe I'll have time for this, all right? Much as I'd be perfectly happy to fabricate an excuse to get out of sitting in the same room as you, I really do have that staff meeting."
"Tell them something came up. Or don't, I don't care. But you're going to tell me what I want to know. Unless you don't think I can bend you over your own desk as easily as I did mine."
The resource officer glowered, but her chin betrayed a tell-tale tremble as she set her jaw. "God, what did you do to me."
"Same thing I'm going to keep doing to you. Whatever I want. Now talk." I considered. It was taking real effort, overcoming my default fear of cops, to say nothing of affecting such poor social graces. (Girlfriends' parents loved me.) Still, best to establish a baseline level of domineering behavior, see if I could push her to the brink right off or if she had to build to it. "Better yet, lock the door, come sit on my lap, then talk."
It didn't take thirty seconds for her to break, though a tense thirty seconds, to be sure. I really thought she might call me out, get in a good slap, maybe a kick in the nuts before Serenex caught up. Instead, I got a glare that soon reaffixed itself to her desk, to her lap, and then withered into a mere pout as she shuffled to her door, then even more petulantly to me. She landed in my lap a little harder than was comfortable, but there she was nonetheless, eyes dark but downcast.
I got to work on the buttons of her uniform casually, but nevertheless immediately. I'd been interrupted yesterday; today I meant to finish what I started for once. "So, Serenex. Go."
She wriggled into a comfortable position. "Right. So what I told you before about my connection in the analysis lab was true. Her name is Shantel. She's not employed by the department, just an outside contractor, which makes her more reliable."
I untucked her shirt and targeted the previously concealed buttons, revealing the rest of her compression shirt. "Why's that?"
"Because Shantel doesn't answer directly to the department. She has a boss of her own at the lab, a civilian like her, so she's less inclined to sniff out bullshit in my story or try to curry favor with my superiors. No loyalty to the PD. I kept it believable enough that she didn't ask questions, and she can probably be bought if she gets too suspicious. Of course, if she figures out what your stuff does, we'll probably have to dose her to keep her from replicating it for herself. It might not be the worst idea anyway, just to make sure. If, um, you think so, that is. Sir."
She had to help me disconnect the radio from her shirt before I could toss it across the room, but once she did, I did. "Good thinking. I'll consider it. Can't solve all of life problems with mystery spray, after all. We don't want to get too cavalier about it."
"Too..." She grit her teeth at my deliberate hypocrisy, and I swear I felt the heat emanating from her lap ratchet up another dozen degrees. "Yes sir."
"So, what did she tell you, specifically?"
"I'll get you a copy of the full lab analysis, in case it interests you. She had to explain it to me. In summary, what you bought isn't technically Serenex." Her voice was muffled somewhat as I pulled the compression shirt off over her head. "That's the base, but it's only about eighty percent of the actual solution."
I dropped her belt on the floor beside the bean bag. The thing was surprisingly heavy. "Eighty sounds like a lot to me."
"Ok, so think of it like this. If you ordered a steak, and the waiter brought you a plate and told you it was eighty percent steak, would you still eat it?"
"Fair enough. So what's the other twenty?" The implications were only beginning to catch up with me as I got to work on her belt. "Is somebody manufacturing this stuff on purpose?"
She shrugged. "Shantel didn't seem to think so, but that's not really her area of expertise. In the spirit of keeping you safe, sir, I encourage you not to go poking around."
"Well why didn't she think so?" The zipper stuck when I pulled; she had to give me a hand finding the proper angle.
"It's what was in the rest of it. In short, it's a party cocktail. Some of it's just water, standard procedure for that sort of thing, but there was some other junk in there, too. Heroin, something that is a less potent chemical compound born out of PCP and some of the stuff in Serenex - still not great for you though."
"Isn't the point of filler to make it cheaper? That sounds like the opposite."
"You think rare black market chemical weapons come cheaper than street grade heroin?"
