After a long, arduous day of dealing with every obstacle her rowdy and incorrigible students could put in front of her, all Debra Stallings could think about, as she lugged herself out to the school parking lot, was to throw the two heavy leather bags full of homework in her arms into the backseat and then head home.
Scattershooting her mind, trying to decide which takeout place to order dinner from, Debra knew it would be a long night of grading papers and hoped her family would understand if all they got to eat was either Chinese or Italian on paper plates.
"MMMPPHH... you ain't as young as you used to be," Debra gasped as she tossed her book bags into the backseat and sat down behind the wheel.
Just as she was about to slip the key into the ignition, a large business sized envelope placed underneath her driver's side windshield wiper caught her attention.
"Those kids and their fundraising," Debra initially muttered, familiar with the students' practice of placing fliers for school related events on teachers' car windows.
"But that's an envelope... not a flier, " Debra said to herself, with a modest level of curiosity as she swung her feet back out the door so she could reach for the strange delivery.
Taking a look around the nearly vacant faculty lot to see if any of the remaining cars had a similar package on the windshield, Debra began to get a queasy feeling in her stomach when she saw that the few cars left had no such envelopes.
"Humm," Debra groaned as she stood up on her tippytoes to retrieve the delivery.
Cringing immediately from the tangible weight of the package, being a sales rep for Tupperware, Debra's next inclination was that it must be an order from one of her co-workers. Flipping the envelope over however, after she returned to the comfort of her driver's seat, a cross expression drifted across her demure features when she saw that it was addressed to ,"Mrs. Stallings".
"It must be from one of my students," Debra stoically whispered to herself.
Digging her right index finger into the seal, Debra carefully ripped the envelope open. From the moment the contents of the letter spilled out onto her lap, Debra Stallings lost all comprehension of space and time. Sitting in the driver's seat of the family's SUV, with the letter and its contents spread out across her lap and the bottom edge of the steering wheel, the married Mother of four felt as if she was stewing in front of the Gates of Hell as the reality of her situation slowly engulfed her.
Trying to tame her trembling hands enough to unfold the one page letter so she could study further the gravity of her newfound predicament, Debra anxiously pressed the note down against the front of her dark blue skirt and read the short but succinct offering.
It said simply, "As you can see, several items of interest pertaining to your indecent and hypocritical behavior has come to my attention. If you do not wish to have any of this material offered up to the general public, meet me at the truck stop motel out by I-79 at noon tomorrow to negotiate. "
Debra's already pale Victorian face turned a ghostly shade of white as the threat in the blunt message dug like a leech into her psyche. She didn't even have a chance to chalk the threat up to empty verbage when several Polaroid pictures spilled out of the envelope as well. Scouring her numb fingertips across the glossy squares of film, Debra immediately recognized the hazy images in the photos. An arctic chill infected her spine when the middle aged teacher began to piece together the depth of her peril.
Whoever had done this her had taken the time to take several Polaroids of the photos that Debra and her husband had concealed under their marital bed. Pictures of her in various stages of undress, playing with numerous large and imposing phallic instruments, and to her horror, even a few digital vid-cap camera scans from one of the home movies Debra and her husband had made.
Sitting there alone in the family vehicle, in the middle of the desolate school lot, Debra trembled in the driver's seat for nearly a half hour as the typed letter and photographic evidence of her "behind closed doors" indecency stared back at her from her lap.
To complicate the fear and helplessness she was already feeling, the sickening reality of violation that comes when you realize your house has been robbed also sunk like a led ball inside Debra's belly.
"Who could have done this... when... and... why," She cried loudly, dropping her forehead against the steering wheel until her stinging tears were dripping down on the paper and pictures below.
* * * * *
The trip home and subsequent evening was nothing more than a jumbled blur for the married woman. It took her Husband, Ben, asking her three separate times what was for dinner before Debra found the wherewithal to look up the Chinese takeout place's number and call them so her family could eat. It was a meal that Debra didn't even touch.
Repulsed and sickened by what was in the letter she received at school, Debra spent the entire night in a foggy abyss until her Husband finally cornered her and asked her what was wrong.
"Just a headache and a stomachache, Honey," Debra told him, as she rested in a heap under the covers, never once making eye contact with Ben, wishing she could just find a hole to crawl into.
Occasionally checking the digital clock on her nightstand, Debra couldn't help but count down the minutes until noon the next day when she had been summoned to appear at the seedy truck stop all the way on the other side of town, to answer for some sins that she was now brutally ashamed of. Even as her Husband snored away beside her, Debra forced herself to stay awake, scared to fall asleep for fear of what her nightmares might hold.
As the fear and uncertainty of darkness gave way to dawn however, the deep seeded fortitude of a woman who had successfully navigated her way into her mid thirties kicked in and Debra made the decision to ignore the threat, to go to school like she was supposed to do and to live her life in the face of the awful threat to her station in life.
Even though she was sleeping on the same bed that the thief had pilfered her and her Husband's most embarrassing possessions out from under, Debra Stallings found the strength to drag herself up, dress her kids, get them and her Husband ready for their day, collect herself for school as well and charge out the door to meet the day head on.
Despite all the positive thinking she could muster, Debra's workday turned out to be a surreal experience. Traipsing through the day with as much confidence and denial as she could, it didn't prevent the distraught teacher from looking hard at every male face she encountered, wondering if that person was the one responsible for the threatening letter on her windshield.
By the time noon had rolled around, Debra was a nervous wreck. Staring at the clock above her desk, Debra let out a audible sigh when the minute hand tipped the top of the hour, right along side the small hour hand.
"Nothing happened.... Thank God," Debra mouthed over and over as if she were a death row inmate that had just been given a stay.
* * * * *
With the school day finally ended, Debra eased her way back out to the same parking lot where a day before, she had been confronted with the most shocking moment of her life. Making sure she exited the school with several coworkers beside her, Debra felt a warm sense of insulation until she got close enough to her SUV to see that its windshield was clear of any new deliveries. A massive weight was seemingly lifted off of her demure shoulders as she crawled into her vehicle and drove home.
After making a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner, Debra Stallings found herself easing her SUV over to the far corner of the store's lot, where a series of large blue dumpsters sat. With a great deal of haste, Debra pitched away the note and revealing photos, eliminating any evidence of the harrowing letter she had received a little over 24 hours earlier.
That night at home Debra descended into a further depth of normalcy after fixing a huge lasagna dinner for her family to make up for the shoddy meal she had ordered the night before. After topping off the evening with a few glasses of wine, Debra even found the energy to make love to her husband before turning in and catching up on the sleep she had lost the night before.
By the time the next morning rolled around, Debra had pushed the events of the past two days into the darkest recesses of her repressed psyche. As she walked into school on a sun filled Thursday morning, Debra held her chin high and her chest out as she entered the school's front doors.
She held that carefree pose all the way down the main first floor hallway, until she saw a small but bustling congregation of kids converging around one of the large kiosks where students often posted club or fundraising announcements.
"They must have just announced when the next after school party's going to be," Debra thought to herself as she approached the gathering only to stop cold in her tracks when several of the students turned to see her standing behind them, each with a strange tint of shock in their collective eyes.
Before she knew it, Debra found herself clutching her purse and briefcase tightly against her chest as the assembled students scattered in a spontaneous exodus.
"WHA... " was all Debra could manage to gasp as the wave of pubescent youth drifted past, snickering at her in a strange mocking tone as they fluttered away.
Standing alone now in the early morning silence of the high school's main hallway, Debra looked up at the place on the kiosk where the kids had just been gawking. Staring straight at the cluttered mass of stapled, taped and thumbtacked pieces of colored paper, she easily picked out the two square Polaroid pictures that stuck out like sore thumbs in the midst of all the other school related material.
Taking a hypnotic step closer, Debra's eyes widened in horror as the realization of the photo's content registered in her mind.
"Oh... NO," Debra mouthed, immediately harkening back to the note she had found two days earlier on her windshield.
Looking at the two tamest and least incriminating of the photos that the thief had stolen from under her bed, Debra felt several bitter and angry tears drip down her cheek as she stared at the two pictures of herself in a one piece bathing suit tacked to the kiosk.
"Those were taken in Atlantic City... almost 10 years ago," Debra told herself as she reached out to pull them down off the board. "And now everyone in school's gonna be talking about them... and talking about me. "
After mentally cataloguing what the thief had stolen however, Debra knew that the pictures of her in her bathing suit, sitting demurely and smiling for her husband on the beach, was only the tip of the proverbial incriminating iceberg.
