Teaching Her a Lesson

Part Twenty-Four: Standards-Based Assessment

For the seniors, the final was, for most of them, a formality. For the college bound ones, they'd already gotten their acceptances and rejections. For the ones joining me earlier in the so-called real world, their GPA might matter on their first, maybe second job application, and after that, might come up again in a couple decades when their kids asked them what kind of students they were back when. So long as they graduated - and with our funding dependent on graduation rates, they almost always did - their success wasn't in question. We tried not to let them know that, but by this point, we'd taught them enough that they knew better.

Ergo, my seniors didn't take the kind of exam that produced a solid, straightforward grade. My seniors wrote essays. Multiple choice was well and good for efficiency, gave easy targets for studying. With grades due less than twenty-four hours after the last finals were distributed, they were sure as hell a lot easier on me. That wasn't how I saw things, though. These last essays were an opportunity to think like a scholar and a citizen and a human being; to process and analyze and reflect and defend and elucidate. I'd received lots of positive feedback from former students about those exams over the years, too. On a personal level, it helped me end the year feeling like I'd accomplished something and started recharging the batteries for summer.

It took days of intense review and discussion to be ready for it. I'd already been cutting it close starting

Catcher

as late as I had. Although I was home from the police station before ten o'clock that Thursday, nevertheless the semester review was being handled by a substitute while I sat at home, twiddling my thumbs as I waited to hear back from Horen.

Not knowing what else to do, I wrote a thank you letter to Capaldi and put it in the mailbox, then met up with Isa for lunch. Unlike teachers, resource officers were free to take lunch off-campus. We met at my place, where I had her strip to her panties and play with herself while I filled her in on my meeting with Shipman. For all she put on a show of sulking over it, it sure didn't slow her budding arousal any.

"So that's it? We're really in the clear?" she asked, eyes squinted shut.

"Sounds like. He thinks the Sterns tried to set me up, bullied Cassie and Tabitha into going along with it. Some kind of report is going to Horen. Could be there now, honestly. I was able to get my lawyer on the line after, and he said there shouldn't be much grounds to continue pressing for my termination. We'll see. I never got a sense that Horen disliked me or anything, but sometimes it's hard for somebody to admit they're wrong."

"Especially when they're right, master," grunted Isa sullenly, hips bucking against her fingers.

"Yeah. Still, you did good. I wanted to bring you by and say that to your face. Kept everybody organized, put up a solid front, kept everything contained. If there's something I can do for you to pay you back, name it. And I know you're busy right now, so think on it if you like."

She didn't respond right away, though only because she was mid-orgasm. A few shallow gasps, and the officer collapsed on my living room rug, spent. Her thighs were splayed wide, a dark spot growing and darkening at the crotch of her panties. "Just... just promise me you'll be more careful from now, master," she managed at last. The woman didn't bother trying to right herself. Not like kneeling would be any more dignified than her present position. "My top priority is keeping you safe and preserving your freedom. I can't handle another scare like that."

I nodded. "No worries there. You and I will sit down together sometime soon, once finals are done, and come up with some protocols - starting with nothing at the school. Though I guess it won't really matter except for Abbie."

"You say that like Abbie's still going to be a student next year," Isa replied. "You can't do the kinds of things she's admitted to doing and not get expelled, at the bare minimum. If Shipman really is some pathetic incel like you made him out to be-"

"All I said was that he was awfully ready to mistrust the Sterns," I protested.

"-then I'd be surprised if they didn't land in real trouble. They're two eighteen-year-old white girls, so, system being what it is, they might get off with warnings. Still..." She sat up, brushed some dust off of the thin sheen of sweat along the side of her breast. "Hard to say. Most likely scenario, I'd say, the two never go back to school, maybe finish their GEDs while serving time in house arrest."

"Oh sure, because I'm the asshole, here?" I snapped, rising to my feet as if I weren't already looming over her in my chair.

"Master, I didn't accuse you of-"

"I didn't know they could get in this kind of trouble! I thought it was a simple house-egging, a slap-on-the-wrist deal! I never would've thrown them under the bus if I'd realized...!"

"I'm only saying-"

"I hear what you're saying! It's not my fault! They made their beds with a dozen years of apathy, mischief, and rancor. And suddenly there's consequences when it all bubbles over, and that's on

me

?! Bullshit!" I swung a fist at the air blindly. It didn't come anywhere near her, but she fell back anyway as it collided with my lampshade and launched the thing into the wall. Pieces of it flew everywhere.

After a moment, Isa silently busied herself cleaning it up. I insisted she put her shoes on first for safety's sake, and added to it that she may as well get dressed anyway. She waved me away as I tried to help, so there was nothing to do but sit back and watch her clean up my mess, blushing at my overreaction. My admission of guilt.

She came to stand at attention in front of me, her hair back up in its tight bun, body hidden away in her uniform. "Master..."

"Don't. I know what you're going to say already, OK? Obviously it's my goddamn fault. I know it. So yes, I'm the miserable piece of shit who's ruining the lives of these innocent girls, just like you've said a hundred times before. You win, OK? Tell Candy you were both right about Canon. I'm a monster. I get it."

"That's not what I was going to say," she said softly. "If you'll let me..."

"Fine."

She lowered herself to her knees. "Sorry, this is hard to do standing up, master. But you know what? Yes. You do bear a significant burden of responsibility for what you did to those girls over the past month, master. Whatever your intentions, you did exactly what Horen accused you of. You fucked your student. Then three more. That's on you. But what happened in your classroom Monday?"

Isa shook her head. "What happened Monday was those girls showing no common sense at all. They were impulsive and careless and stupid, and you were very nearly the one who burned for their idiot mistake. Now the way the system works, mistakes have consequences. For Cassie and Tabitha? The consequences are going to be the awkward conversations they have with their parents." She glanced in the direction of the Browns' house. "Well, for Tabitha at least."

"Yeah, pretty sure Megan's not losing sleep over it."

"But for Taylor and Abbie? No, they didn't bully the other two into being in there - they turned those girls into sex slaves, and

enslaved

them into being in there. And their harsher consequence comes from a lifetime of being deviant little hellspawn, and frankly, they probably had something like this coming for a while now."

"So you're saying I'm not a monster, I just created monsters?"'

"I don't do metaphors, master. I'm only telling you how it is."

I folded my arms. "Bullshit. You're really trying to say those girls are to blame for this and I'm not?"

"Were you going to turn Cassie into your sex slave before the Sterns blurted out those obscenities?"

"Well, no."

"Did you lure Tabitha into a room at a party and force-feed her Serenex so you could fuck her?"

"No. I didn't. I thought you didn't believe me about all that, though. You've been on my case about it since the beginning."

"Fuck what I told you I believe, master. I didn't want to believe it because it complicated things. It was easier to imagine you as the lecherous teacher preying on helpless students. Which you are," she added, fretfully mashing her tits at her contempt for me. "But... well, I do appreciate that it's also more complex than that. Nothing like standing over the printer for twenty minutes while it spits out the Sterns' combined discipline records for Shipman to make you appreciate what rotten little bitches those two have been."

"Careful, Isa, you almost sound like this isn't one hundred percent my fault."

"Your percentage is high, master," she said bitterly, then trailed off as she was unable to resist squeezing down on her nipples. "But my top priority is keeping you safe and preserving your freedom. Those girls are bad news, and they've been bad news since long before you came along."

I imagined the size of those files. I'd probably sent Taylor to the office, assigned detentions or filed reports leading to her suspension almost weekly for two years now. I had a folder in one of my desk drawers where I kept my copy of those forms. My sixth period, Taylor's class, was thicker than my other five classes combined, and at least half of it was that one student.

"Yeah. Yeah, you're probably right."

She pried a hand away from her lewd display and patted my knee sympathetically. "Look, master. Just because you sharpened your monsters' claws doesn't mean you created them. If you prefer figurative expression."

My scowl faded to a pout, and after another moment, gave way to a grudging smile. "You know, you might do halfway decent on the

Frankenstein

question on my final."

"Thank you, master...?" She rolled her eyes derisively, then squirmed as her display of disrespect hit her right in the clit. "Though Frankenstein didn't have claws, just bolts in his neck and a bit of a slur."

"He didn't have bolts or a flat head either," I said, my teacher persona unable to resist surfacing after days of neglect. "Actually..."

________________

"Frankenstein wasn't the monster," Tabitha interjected, speaking even as she raised her hand. As she often did. "He

made

the monster, then it turned evil all on its own."

It was Friday, and I was back in my room in time for a bit of last-minute final exam preparation. It felt like a month since I'd stood in this room, not four days. Entering this morning had been surreal, and six hours later, it was barely less so. I'd been all sorts of nervous about what to expect. Teaching can be a bit of a fish bowl, oftentimes, yet to my immense relief, as near as I could tell, people had enough of their own drama to worry about without needing to worry about mine.

I'd taken lunch in the teacher's cafeteria, where Amy and the rest of my department were at their usual table. Their curiosity was plain, and I answered it without being asked. My tale of being seduced and subsequently framed was met with fretful gasps, women mortified by what those no-good Sterns had put one of us through this time. Most of the rest of lunch went to sharing tales of their misdeeds, pure gossip. Considering I'd taught Taylor for the entirety of the past two years, hearing about her sophomore year hijinx was laughably tepid. Wild offenses like wandering the halls instead of going to the bathroom, using the b-word at a fellow student, and (oh my!) spreading a rumor that Melinda Scott-Wallace was bulimic.

(There was the story of the time she beat up another girl at lunch for refusing to vacate Taylor's preferred table. That was more on brand.)

As we packed up and made for our rooms to begin the second half of the day, Amy even took me aside after and apologized for her role in the whole misunderstanding. I swallowed down my self-loathing long enough to reassure her that I had already forgiven her, and that she was right to report it. That I would have done the same.

Maybe I would have, once upon a time.

The rumors hadn't hit the student body yet. Finals were stressful, the allure of summer vacation loomed large, and graduation was a far more pressing concern to the senior class than whatever fresh antics noted misanthrope Taylor Stern had whipped up, and expecting the juniors to be surprised at Abbie being suspended was like expecting my sixth period to be surprised Tabitha was correcting someone.

I nodded to her point. "That's right, Tabitha. Though remember, evil is a value judgment. Was Frankenstein's creature truly evil? What do you folks think?"

I looked around for answers, scrupulously avoiding gazing in Tabitha's direction, where eye contact would be considered permission to take over the discussion with her own thoughts. Useful sometimes, but not today. To my surprise, it was actually Justin who answered. "I mean, just 'cause he's huge and ripped, that don't mean he ain't a kid, right?"

It was so unheard of for him to participate in a class discussion, I could have fainted. "Go on. How do you mean, he's a kid?"

His usual cocky grin returned upon being given the spotlight. What I wouldn't give if someone could have helped him appreciate the merits of positive attention at an earlier age. "Right, well like... he doesn't really know anything, right? Like yeah, he can think like a grownup, talk smooth and stuff, but he's not, like..."

"Socialized?" I prompted. When cognition didn't register on his face, I added, "He doesn't know how to relate to other people."

"Yeah! Exactly. Like, OK. So my little brother used to piss himself. Like

all

the time I'm sayin'. Couldn't take the dude anywhere or he'd go pss pss pss all over himself. Was so gross. Smelled

awful

-"

"Get back to the point, Justin." Lucky for him I'd had for days to build up patience for this kind of crap.

"Right, but I mean, he didn't know, and he couldn't help it. Has some kind of anxiety disorder, I guess. But like, see how I mean?" Suddenly - too suddenly - his grin faded and he looked at me pointedly. "The person who's s'posed to have the monster's back hung his ass out to dry. Way I see it, our boy Victor is the evil sonofabitch in that story."

"Language, Justin."

I took his meaning all too well, though it was lost on the rest of the class, naturally. The rest of the class, minus one, at least, one who immediately took it upon herself to reply. "Yeah, Mr. Canon talked about that at length while we were reading it," Tabitha said dryly. She had condescension down to a science. "Still, I'm not convinced, personally. Dr. Frankenstein might not have been a very good parental figure, but he wasn't a murderer. I mean, what's more evil, being a bad adoptive parent, or murdering your adoptive parent's loved ones. It's easy to sympathize with tales of woe and bad upbringing, but somewhere you have to draw the line and let the creature be responsible for his own crimes."

"Yeah, well, nobody expects a monster to not do what monsters do. He's just being what he is. Frankenstein - the doc, I mean - is the one who fucked - sorry, fudged - up. He's a grown-ass man, ought to know how to treat somebody who cares about him."

"Did the creature care about Victor? If it did, it sure had a strange way of showing it."

"Victor's the thing's dad! You gonna blame this dude who's been alive for like an hour and not the guy who had a lifetime of socialism to know better?"

"I think you mean socialization," I pointed out, though Tabitha was already composing her next rebuttal. The class watched with interest at this strange but tense debate between the honors student and class clown.

"That sounds like a double standard. Victor is supposed to instantly know how to be a father to this disgusting thing, but the creature, which has the faculties of a full-grown adult even if it was still fairly stupid, can take as long as it needs to figure out not to be a rampaging psychopath?"

"Psychopath!" Justin barked a rhetorical laugh. "Bullshit! It only lashed out because Victor crapped all over it and never apologized, hid from him, acted like his life got to just go on smooth while his innocent little creature got bent over and-!" He didn't finish the sentence, but we all filled in that blank easily enough.

The two were glaring daggers at one another, and mercifully Jesse raised his hand. I nodded permission. "Not to get off-subject, but like... isn't it crazy how much better discussions are when Taylor's not here throwing us off subject?" He grinned around at his peers, many of whom nodded in agreement.

Before I could process what was happening, Justin reached into his pocket and retrieved something, then whipped it full speed across the room. It thwapped solidly into Jesse's temple, then bounced across the floor until it rolled right up to my feet.

Chapstick.

Justin stormed away to the office before I even needed to tell him to go. Jesse rubbed his head for a minute but promised he was all right. His grumbling about the on-going hazard of flying chapstick was only barely audible as I transitioned the discussion to our next text.

________________

"He wasn't wrong, you know," I told my pillow some ten hours later. A very naked Tabitha was straddling my own very naked self, her fingertips grazing sweetly across my back. It had begun as a massage, but true to form, she'd discerned that this gentle tickling was every bit as relaxing.

"That's one reading of the text," she answered. "Admittedly, it's more in line with the apparent intent of Shelley, but that doesn't mean it's the only one."

"I'm not talking about Shelley or Frankenstein or the damned creature and you know it." The sting in my voice was dulled by the filtration effect of my pillow.

"I know. Which is all the more reason he's wrong. You only feel like he's right because your profession predisposes you to agree with lines of reasoning supported in the so-called Great Books of the western canon."

"Really? Well thank you, Ms. Freud. Please, do go on, explain away the rest of my thoughts using your crack armchair psychology."

I could tell she was bending down when her hair draped down onto my shoulders, followed a moment after by a kiss on my cheek and a soothing murmur in my ear. "I'm sorry, Mr. Canon. I didn't mean to be glib. Still, he's not right about you and the Sterns. You have to understand that."

"How so? I'm the one who provided the Serenex; showed them how it worked; planted the ideas in their heads. Then I threw them to the wolves to save my own ass. You know Officer Barbour said that-"

"That they could go to jail, yes, you've said so several times already. And it's very sweet of you to be preoccupied with two girls who so clearly spend next to no energy worrying themselves over

you

."

"They're two dippy kids who flashed their boyfriend and egged a house."

"They're two adults who violated your wishes and forced two sex slaves on you just for kicks. One of them put you in a position where your affair was caught on video and handed over to Principal Horen. Do I really need to point this out to you?"

"She didn't mean for that to happen. Nobody meant for Horen to walk in on you all, either - which, while we're on it, let's not forget you also voluntarily took part in, remember?"

"I misread the situation. I assumed that as more experienced sex slaves, they would have some understanding of the protocol, and mirrored their behavior so as to meet your expectations. It was a mistake, clearly, but the mistake was trusting those two. As it so often seems to be."

"Keep using your fingers," I commanded, and she obeyed as if by reflex. "They don't deserve this. Taylor's

so

close to graduating. I still have a big pile of all her make-up work for her classes, all ready to go. The only thing that's going to stop her is this stupid investigation, and they're not even investigating her for what she actually did wrong anyway!"