Author's Note: This story was created as part of a much larger story about a girl who develops a relationship with her gym teacher in high school. If conventionally unattractive women and large age differences are not your thing, please skip this story. Some background on the main characters:
Ciara Ackerman: She is a beautiful and sweet 18 year old senior with long glossy auburn hair who attends North Haskell High School. She is the student assistant to her gym teacher, Miss Treadway. She plans to stay in Thatcher Blake after graduation and go to college to become a teacher.
Miss Treadway: To a lot of people, Miss Treadway represents a textbook example of the fabled athletic butch woman—a real tomboy. She has this stern, steely guise that is amplified by her dark framed glasses and short cropped hair. Miss Treadway is also quite slender and toned for a woman who might be nearing the wrong side of 50—a similarity she shares with Miss Larsson. She favors the standard golf shirts and pressed shorts or track pants her colleague wears each day to work. Like Miss Larsson, she has a flat chest and she could easily be mistaken from behind for a teenage boy. In other words, Miss Treadway is neither pretty nor feminine.
Miss Larsson: This woman who is as old and tomboyish as Miss Treadway is extremely striking to look at. Decades of vigorous aerobic activity have given her the same athletic trim as Miss Treadway, and it suits her beautifully. She has this distinctive Nordic looking face aged from years of spending time outdoors and yelling at students to run laps. Her light, nearly white blond hair is cropped in a boyish bob that barely covers the bottoms of her ears.
Miss Blount: She is a gym teacher who teaches at Talcott, another high school in Thatcher Blake. You can read more about Miss Blount in the story, Shari Holds a Torch.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. All characters are 18 and over...Enjoy!
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I leaned against the wall in the grand hall outside the ballroom of the Faust Hotel doing my best to disguise the fact I'd been crying so much that my makeup had smeared. Before anyone could notice, I dashed into the ladies' room, and did my best to repair the damage which thankfully was minimal. This prom night might have been the most magical night of my life if it hadn't been completely ruined.
I spent the entire day trying to make myself look perfect. Last week, Aunt Francie gave me some money so Amy and I could go to the mall to pick out a dress. We ended up at Wieboldt's where I found this diaphanous pale blue gown after trying on dozens of dresses. I applied minimal makeup; just enough to bring out the color of my eyes and enhance the natural pink fullness of my lips. I piled my thick auburn hair into a somewhat messy bun similar to a picture in this issue of Redbook I found lying on an end table in the living room next to Aunt Francie's cigarettes. I figured Francie wouldn't mind if I borrowed it long enough to copy the style. She never said anything to me about it, so I figured either it was okay or she'd simply forgotten about it.
I wasn't planning on going to the prom with Jason Pope. I wasn't planning on going to the prom at all. Since Jason gave up asking me to go, he ended up asking this girl, Hailey Quigley, who was in one of his other classes instead. But two weeks ago, Hailey got back together with her boyfriend, Craig Molander, so Jason hounded Amy and Jenna to convince me to go with him.
I really don't know why thinking about this is making me so upset anyway. I should have known that Jason had something up his sleeve the whole time! Did I lead Jason on? I wondered. Before the dance, Amy tried to convince Jason that we should join her and Brad at Valhalla for dinner but Jason had other plans. First he ended up taking me to the Armada downtown. The Armada is this super swanky steak and seafood restaurant that sits about a block away from the Valencia Theater. I've never been to the Armada, but I'd heard that it was a really romantic place to eat and the food was supposed to be excellent. The night should have been perfect!
Was it my dress? Was it something I said? I saw that Bobbie Brinkman had been standing near the restrooms earlier saying something to Jason. I wondered what Bobbie said to him. They were both too far away, and she'd kept her hand over her mouth part of the time so I couldn't make out what she was saying.
I swear I almost died when we'd gotten to the restaurant and saw Bobbie seated at the table next to ours. She was wearing this jet black gown with dainty little straps that made her look like an adolescent beanpole. Her date, Mark Perone, sat there looking like he'd rather be somewhere else. Mark is in the future leaders' class that Coach Stalcup used to teach until he'd gotten fired a few weeks ago for reasons nobody knew. I wondered if Mark had been asked to take Bobbie to the prom as a favor, or if he really asked her to go on his own.
Everything seemed to be going so well in spite of Bobbie and Mark sitting near us. But Jason completely stunned me when he suddenly dumped me on the car ride to the dance. All of those times when he told me how much he liked me, and all of those visits he paid me during PE class were thrown away all because I told him that there was no way I was having sex with him that night. Actually, I didn't want to have sex with him at all!
Maybe I should have stayed home. Going to the prom with Jason was such a huge mistake especially since my first date with him was such a colossal disaster. A shudder of disgust comes over me whenever I see a can or bottle of Orange Crush. And I still haven't gotten over the fact that he tried to force me to jerk him off in his dad's car after we left the movie theater.
I should have figured that whatever Bobbie was saying to Jason at the restaurant was something about me. We were driving along in his dad's Shelby Mustang when Jason pulled the car into the nearly empty parking lot of the A&P near the Blake Plaza Shopping Center. Before I could ask him what was going on with him, he demanded to know if I was "some kind of Jesus freak or something."
"No!" I said emphatically. "What the hell even gave you that idea?"
"Then how come you're wearing that?"
Jason was looking in the general direction of my chest when it dawned on me. Earlier in the day when I put on my dress to show Aunt Francie, she suggested that I wear a little jewelry. Something simple; delicate and feminine to show off my neck and collarbone. She started to go in her room to find something for me to borrow, but then I remembered the delicate gold necklace I'd been keeping in my jewelry box. A tiny gold cross adorned the necklace.
"Hey—Bobbie said something about..."
I tuned Jason out as I felt a momentary twinge of fright. Bobbie probably spotted the necklace when we were in the restaurant and told him...what? That I said the necklace was a present from Aunt Francie? I bit my bottom lip, and my cheeks felt like they were on fire. I knew Bobbie knew I was full of shit. For the last couple of years, she has been accusing me of having a crush on my PE teacher, Miss Treadway. When a few of us found out that Miss Treadway is actually Bobbie's aunt, we were floored—especially since a lot of us accused Bobbie of being the one with the crush! I was starting to feel so anxious the more I ruminated over what Bobbie could have possibly said that I didn't realize that Jason was still talking.
"So aren't you in that nutty Aim for Success group that Miss Treadway and Miss Larsson both run?"
