The principal had called me in to his office. The vice-principal was there too, along with my colleague who taught English. They were all pretty good people. I had gone out for drinks with all of them at one time or another over the past couple of years. The vice-principal invited me over pretty regularly for his barbeques. All pretty good people, and all people I liked.
This time, they brought me in to fire me.
To be fair, I know I had it coming. I really didn't belong teaching in a high school. I had the degree and certification. I'm an okay teacher. My classes were effective. My students did well on all the standardized exams and most of them even enjoyed coming to class. For a history teacher, that's not an easy thing to do. I was a good colleague, and I didn't think I had any real enemies on staff or in the faculty. Well, to be totally honest, there might have been a couple of people I pissed off.
So why was I being fired? Well, that's a bit of a story.
"Ben, I want to make clear that you aren't being fired here." This was the principal's way of trying to make this easy on me. "It's just, and you know this, right? It's just that you can't stay on here." He looked for support to the vice-principal, but she seemed not to be paying that much attention.
"You can't shit where you eat, man. You should know better than that." Kent, the English teacher, really should have a better way with words.
I thought about how much I should try and defend myself. Was there any chance I could keep my job? If I wasn't being fired for cause, I might be able to get unemployment or severance, as long as I played along. My financial situation was dismal. Rent ate most of my paycheck and student loans tore though the rest. I wasn't at the point of getting a second job quite yet as long as the paychecks kept coming in, but once that changed, things would get tight very quickly. I might not even be able to afford to stay in town.
"You can't imagine how hard this has been to try and handle PR-wise, Ben." The principal had been talking all this while, but I wasn't listening very closely. "We thought we had this contained, but of course it got out. The PTA is obviously calling for blood and I can't blame them. You know this is a conservative town, and the way gossip spreads, there are stories going around even more lurid than, well... I mean, I don't even know the whole story." His eyes shot to me quickly and with force. "And I don't want to know. Don't even think about telling me or anyone else. God knows it's bad enough already."
Kent looked at me with something between sympathy and envy in his expression. The vice-principal kept her expression cool as ice. Which was kind of funny, seeing as how she knew the whole story, or at least most of it. She was there the last night anyway. I tried not to look at her, but in my mind I could see her clearly - her short brown hair framing a face that looked much younger than her age. She always wore rather severe suits that didn't really flatter her modest curves. She tended to wear skirts though, and there was no hiding those legs. I tried to shake myself out of that vision. That kind of thing is where my problems all started.
Things didn't really seem that complicated at first. Parent-teacher conferences were just another part of the job at our school. We prided ourselves on real personal attention to the student and the family. I had been doing parent-teacher conferences since I got there. They were almost always dull. "Your little Timmy is doing fine, but he really needs to start focusing more on his homework." "Tiffany is a smart girl, but she needs to spend more time on her writing."
Then there was Mrs. Kindlaw.
For the whole time that little Pete Kindlaw had been in my classes, I had only met with Mr. Kindlaw. He was a nice enough schlubish kind of guy who took notes and promised that Pete would work harder. Two months ago, on the Friday I was supposed to meet with him, I got an email saying that he couldn't make it, but if I could be so kind as to wait at the school until six, Mrs. Kindlaw would take his place. I didn't mind. I usually stayed late to prep classes and get my grading done anyway.
I was head-down grading some particularly rough papers when six o'clock hit. However, it wasn't until after seven, when my neck was sore and my eyes blurry, that I heard a rapid knock on the door.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry. I can't believe you're still here. Thank you so much."
"No worries," I tried to sound cheerful, but as a turned to look toward her voice, there was a pinch in my neck. I groaned and started to massage my neck, finally getting a look at Mrs. Kindlaw. She was a tall woman, and based on the state of her clothes, she'd had as long a day as I'd had. Her white blouse was barely still tucked into her grey skirt in a way that looked more like she had been rushing to get there than any kind of sloppiness. Her brown hair was clearly once well put together, but now mussed. She pushed a stay lock of hair out of her eyes as she came into the room.
"Is it still okay? Can we talk now, or should we just reschedule? I don't want to hold you here so late." Without waiting for an answer, she fell into the chair I had set aside next to my desk.
"No, no, it's fine. I'm nearly done with grading, so it's all good." That's when I finally looked her in the eyes.
Brown, nothing unique or special, just brown eyes, but there was a strange spark there. As I looked at her, she seemed to jerk back a bit too. I lowered my head to look back and my papers on the table, but my eyes stayed locked on hers. I saw her flush. She just ran here from the parking lot, right? That's what it had to be. She sighed a little and sat up a little straighter in her chair.
Finally, I shook my head a bit to clear my head and broke line of sight with her. What the hell? My neck didn't hurt at all and suddenly I was one hundred percent awake.
"Ah, let me get Pete's paperwork, here..." I knew his paperwork was right at the corner of my desk where I put it earlier, but I shuffled around all the papers on my desk, I have no idea why. With my head lowered, out of the corner of my eyes, I could see her legs below that grey skirt - why did that skirt seem shorter? Then she crossed her legs, tightening the skirt against her legs and pulling it even higher.
"Pete's been doing well. Er... there isn't really much... His presentation on the Civil War was..." I looked up and caught her eyes again.
