I shuffled my papers together on the front desk firmly, hoping to give the impression that I was not in the least intimidated to be assigned to watch over the students penalized with after-school detention on my first day as a new teacher in the district. I knew that I must look very young, a fact only compounded by my short stature, so I tried to make up for it by keeping as grim a face as I knew how to make, wearing large-framed glasses, and keeping my hair in a severely angled bob.
There were only a handful of students in detention this afternoon, thankfully -- although as I reviewed the list of names an administrator had handed to me just minutes before, which was the same time that I learned I was being assigned this duty, I was surprised to note that every one of them was a senior. Apparently the old software used to generate these lists also made it necessary to include the ages of students, so a column of five 18s stood out in faded dot-matrix ink.
I cleared my throat.
"Sharonda Egan?"
A fat black girl in the front row looked up to meet my gaze. "Here."
"Antonia Silvera?"
A chubby Hispanic girl didn't even raise her eyes from her fingernails. "Here."
"Jessica Axelrod?"
A white girl in a punk haircut and black clothes glared at me. "What?" There was a small ripple of laughter. I ignored it.
"Anita Chiyama?"
An Asian girl blew her bangs out of her eyes boredly as she bent over a book. "Here."
"Lacey Kuwantu?"
Another black girl, stocky but not fat, wearing a boy's basketball jersey, looked up from the back row. "Yeah."
I put the paper down.
"All right. Detention has begun. No talking, no phones, no passing notes. You can work on homework or read or just sit and wait, it makes no difference to me."
None of them responded. Only Sharonda continued to look at me.
I looked at them all individually, trying to impress upon them that I would be watching, and then pulled out the quizzes I had left to grade from the classes I had already held that day.
It was very quiet for several minutes. Lacey and Jessica had apparently joined Anita in bending over some papers. Antonia continued to study her fingernails, which were not particularly long or heavily decorated. Only Sharonda seemed to keep her eyes entirely on me, so much so that I started to avoid looking at her so as to not give her the satisfaction of seeing me look away from her sustained, unambiguous stare.
I had gotten into a rhythm on the quiz grading when the terrible screech of a desk being pulled across the concrete floor resounded in the silent room. I looked up with what I hoped was an awful scowl to see Sharonda pulling one of the empty desks toward her, her eyes still locked on mine. Even as I was formulating a scathing reproof, she lifted one thick, tapered leg to rest it on the seat of the extra desk -- and revealed to me that she wasn't wearing panties.
My jaw dropped as I saw the dark lips, glossy with moisture, peep out from between the skirt that rode up high on her thighs. I felt a sudden dryness in my mouth, and my brain felt completely devoid of words. I knew, abstractly, that I should be screaming at her to demand respect, informing her that dragging a desk and sitting with her legs spread was immediate grounds for further detention if not worse punishment -- but all I could think about were the young pussy lips, dark and plump, that peeped out at me.
Sharonda's gaze had not faltered from my face the entire time, and as my eyes flickered up to meet her eyes in helpless fascination, I saw a slight smile on her thick, flat lips. But she said nothing.
I swallowed hard and began to try to weigh my options. Should I call security on her? A terrible way to start my career as a young white teacher in a majority-black district. Glancing irresolutely at the other girls in the room, I was sure that none of them would back up my recounting of Sharonda's disrespectful gaze and shameless display. None of them were even looking at us, although I did catch the ghost of a smirk fade from Jessica's face as she bent over her papers with a pen firmly clutched in hand. They all gave the impression of being either actively hostile to or completely unconcerned about me; and so I was forced to return to the fact that an eighteen-year-old student was displaying her vulva to me in the middle of detention.
As I looked at it, I saw a faint sparkle begin to trickle down the glossy dark petals, and I couldn't help feeling my heart pound in my throat. Was she actively aroused? Was my confusion and irresolution and failure to do anything remotely resembling a demand for order and respect turning her on? And then, even as I watched, she slid one hand down her skirt, along the crease where her spread-open thigh met her torso, and used two tapered fingers with long acrylic fingernails to spread wide her pussy lips, almost startling me with the beauty and vibrancy of the pink that lay within her depths.
I must have made some kind of sound, a squeak of surprise or a gasp of intaken breath or a little choke in the back of my throat, because every head in the room snapped up to look at me. Their eyes flickered to Sharonda as they followed my own gaze, saw the pose she was in, and then smiles spread across every face.
Anita shut her book with a snap and stood up.
"Wh-what are you doing?" I pulled myself out of my fascinated stare into Sharonda's depths at the last second to demand. "Sit back down."
Anita began strolling toward me, and raised a slim finger to her own exquisitely round lips.
"No talking," she said in a stage whisper. "It's detention."
Jessica had gotten up when she saw Anita move toward me, and Antonia followed. All three of them were moving up toward the front of the classroom now. Only Lacey remained in her seat in the back; she had crossed her arms and was watching the rest of us with pursed lips, running a tongue along her teeth with an expectant, appraising air.
They stopped just behind Sharonda, who still spread her pussy lips open, holding my gaze with her bold black eyes, and her lips spread even wider in a forthright smile now.
"Do it," said Antonia.
I blinked at her. She was looking at me, and I realized, half a beat late, that she had spoken to me.
"Do what?" I said, my gaze resting once more between Sharonda's open thighs.