Jamie Carter sat waiting alone at a table near one end of Greenleaf High's cafeteria. She was dry-mouthed with fear. She'd been filing student records in the school office twenty minutes ago when she'd received a text message on her phone. The message was from a number she didn't recognize, and read simply:
CAFETERIA. THIRD PERIOD LUNCH. SIT ALONE.
There was an attachment to the message: a picture of Jamie herself, taken from the point of view of a young man whose cock she was blissfully sucking.
She didn't recognize the dick in the photo. It could have belonged to any one of half a dozen teen boys, all of them students at Greenleaf.
Now she sat nervously checking and rechecking her phone for further messages, torn between cold fear and anger.
Anger, at the blatant attempt at blackmail: which of her willing, eager fuck partners thought they could wield power over her this way?
Fear, at the prospect of public humiliation and the possible loss of her job and family. Jamie had no idea what she could do to protect herself if Luke or Bobby or Brandon or any of the others wanted to blackmail her now.
"Mind if I join you?" Jamie's anxious rumination was interrupted by Elaine Moore, the head of the music department at Greenleaf, setting her tray down on the table and sliding onto the seat across from Jamie.
Jamie nearly panicked. "I, uh—I'm supposed to meet someone. I don't think—" She looked around the room nervously.
The tall, dark young woman leaned across the deeply-graffitied Formica tabletop toward Jamie. "You're waiting for me. We need to talk," she said in a low, husky contralto. "We got a problem."
"You?" Jamie blurted out. Elaine nodded solemnly. "Look here, Ms. Moore, I don't know what you think—"
"Friends call me Laney," Elaine said shortly. "You and me are going to be friends now, on the grounds that if we don't hang together we'll hang...you know."
Until now Jamie had spoken to Moore only to exchange polite greetings in the school corridors. The music instructor was a tall, graceful, woman in her late twenties. Her impish features lent her a girlish appearance that almost clashed with her mature wide hips, round ass and big natural boobs.
Elaine glanced at the phone that Jamie nervously clutched. "That's Bobby Tilson's dick, in case you didn't know. He sent me the pic. Thought I'd get off on it. I sure did."
For the first time this morning Jamie relaxed just a tiny bit. Clearly Elaine had escapades of her own to hide. "So, uh Laney," Jamie said as casually as she could, "The kid's a pretty good fuck, huh?"
Elaine grabbed Jamie's hand and squeezed so hard that Jamie dropped her phone.
"Ow!"
she did her best to stifle her outcry lest she draw the attention of students at other tables. "What the fuck!"
"Have I got your attention?" Elaine demanded, her gaze boring into Jamie's. Jamie nodded, biting her lip and fighting back tears.
"Good." Elaine released her. "Now, what I want to know is just how stupid are you?" Jamie sat mute, dumbfounded. "I've seen you prancing around here all pleased with yourself the last few weeks," Elaine hissed, "You think you
invented
sport-fucking these boys? You probably do, since the rest of us have the brains to keep it quiet and keep them under control. Do you follow me?"
Jamie nodded wanly.
"Okay then. Yeah, these guys
are
amazing studs. They can go forever, and you can teach 'em all the most kinky things and they love it all. But they brag, and they share, and they show off for their friends and worst of all they like to think that they're in charge. You make it too easy for them and this shit—" she waved Jamie's phone in front of her and handed it back—"is what happens. We have to show them who's boss. Get it?"
Jamie found her voice. "Yes, Ma'am," she said. "But...is that what you wanted to meet about? Bobby's bragging too much?"
"Bobby's mama knows something," Elaine said. "Bobby told me this morning that he caught her going in his email the other day and then he heard her on the phone making an appointment with the county school commissioner."
"Oh my God," Jamie muttered. "How much do you think she knows? Are there lots of other pictures?"
"Oh, I'm sure there are. Relax, princess, I don't think either of us would still have our jobs right now if Mrs. Tilson could put our faces or names to this—yet. She knows me. You ever met her?"
"I used to baby-sit Bobby," Jamie said, surprised to find herself blushing. Alice Tilson was about forty now, a petite, pretty woman with pale, almost translucent skin and arresting green eyes. Her delicate features would have been truly beautiful were they not usually set in a disapproving frown. "She's always calling the school to complain about one thing or another. You know that teen curfew petition the kids were upset about last semester? That was her. She's always in the town council's face."
"Figures," Elaine said. "It doesn't sound like she's the kind to live and let fuck...unless we persuade her to get over it. You in?"
"In
what
?" Jamie asked, then thought better of it. "I don't guess I've got a choice, do I?" Elaine shook her head grimly. "Okay, but what reason could we possibly offer her, to get her to drop a thing like this?
Elaine surprised Jamie by leaning back and flashing her a wide, toothy grin. "What's the very best reason you can think of?"
Jamie's eyes widened in realization and, against all logic, she felt herself smiling too.
††â€
Alice Tilson stood under the shower spray in her master bathroom, running her fingers through her long copper-red hair as the hot water rinsed away shampoo. Some of her tresses caught in her wedding ring and she tugged her hand free.
The ring was an ornate, "twisted platinum infinity band studded with diamonds" - except that the diamonds were zirconium and the platinum was just some now-tarnished cheap silver metal: a fake, just like the louse of a husband who'd split town over a year ago with her own goddamned sister.
She cursed herself for continuing to wear the piece of gaudy junk. She told herself that she wore it as a reminder of what she'd learned, which was not to trust men or to give in to them - not to trust most people, period.
On some deep level she knew that the truth was that she wore the ring out of hopeless sentimentality. But then, Alice was making a lifestyle out of denying her feelings.
The sudsy water sluiced away, running down over her firm belly and slim hips and over the rounded mound of her pussy. For a moment she reached down between her legs, barely touching her clit with one finger. She drew her hand back reflexively as if from a hot stove.
She wouldn't give in to
that
, no matter how much the long-unsatisfied need for sexual release beckoned her. She didn't have the time for it this afternoon, anyway.
Downstairs, the doorbell rang.
Alice turned off the water and stepped out onto the bath mat. She toweled herself hurriedly. She wasn't expecting visitors, and whoever it was she'd send them away. She didn't want to be late for her appointment in an hour at the school commissioner's office.
There would be some big changes at that school and in this town. Alice Tilson would see to that.
For days she had furiously rehearsed, in her mind, what she planned to tell the authorities about the licentious goings-on she believed were underway at Greenleaf High School. During her recent inspections of her son Bobby's email account—it wasn't
snooping
, she was his mother after all—she'd discovered messages in which he and his soccer teammates discussed their sexual exploits involving several of their teachers.
At first she'd thought it was just idle boasting of the kind that she knew teen boys did to build themselves up in the eyes of their friends.
Then she'd come across one shocking photograph of her Bobby having intercourse with the gym teacher, Carla Moreno!
Her damp hair wrapped in a towel and wearing only a long blue terrycloth robe, Alice answered the door to see Elaine Moore and another young woman standing there. "Oh, Ms. Moore! I'm sorry," Alice said. "I wasn't expecting anyone..."
"I understand and I apologize," Elaine said. There was urgency in her voice. "Mrs. Tilson, I've just learned some disturbing things about your son and some of his friends, and I thought I should alert you to it immediately. May we come in and talk for a couple of minutes?
"Now? Um...of course." Alice knew and liked Ms. Moore. Elaine had grown up in a strict religious home and had arrived at Greenleaf High straight from a conservative southern teachers college. If she was here to discuss what Alice suspected, she was a potential ally against wickedness.
"Mrs. Tilson, I don't know if you remember me." The other young woman shyly spoke for the first time, and looking directly at her now Alice did recognize Jamie. The girl had watched her Bobby in the evenings, many years ago, when Alice had gone to her part-time job answering phones at the Greenleaf Baptist Church office.
"Jamie, dear, how are you?" Alice hugged her. "How are Michael and the boys?"
"I'm afraid that Jamie is part of the problem we're here to discuss," Elaine interrupted. "I thought it was better for you to hear this straight from her. She has something to confess."
"Jamie?"
"I—Mrs. Tilson, I...I slept with your son. With Bobby," Jamie sobbed.
Alice stared open-mouthed at Jamie for several seconds, and then shouted "How DARE you! You—you