Teach Me Dirty(83)

She sighed. “Yeah, he’s a useless prick, same as always.”

“I don’t mean that…”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean. It’s all cool.”

I was aware of our lateness, alone in the schoolyard, but I couldn’t move a muscle. “Lizzie, does Ray… does he do anything?”

She laughed. “Do anything?”

“I’m being serious.”

Her face dropped. “I’m totally fine, I’m just…” She kissed my cheek. “I’m good.”

But I knew she wasn’t. “Promise?”

She held up two fingers. “Bestie’s honour.” I’d have asked her to say the words, but she was already off, her battered old satchel bouncing off her ass as she went. She turned just before she was out of sight. “I want an update this evening, Helen Palmer, walking home buddies or not, understand?”

I gave her the Bestie’s salute as I walked away. “Sure thing, Lizzie.”

“All the juicy gossip.”

I grinned. “All the juicy gossip.”

I just hoped there was some juicy gossip to give her.

I made my way into English, and my heart was already thumping.

***

Mark



Helen was a different girl when she arrived in my art room in third period. It wasn’t a case of makeup, or different clothes, or hair, or even a different school bag. It was so much more fundamental than that.

There are only a few instances in my teaching career that I’ve genuinely been put off my stride, and this was one of them. I lost my train of thought, and my words with it, and through doing so I lost the year sevens, and some thirty pairs of eyes turned to look at her.

She smiled, and her eyes met mine for just a moment before looking away.

“Morning, Mr Roberts.”

“Good morning, Helen.”

I cleared my throat and tapped the bike frame I’d suspended from the ceiling, and it moved on its fastenings and clattered into the other hanging assortment: shiny pans and old tyres and a pretty little display of antique cutlery. At least it got their attention back.

“As I was saying, you should select a part of the arrangement you feel is inspiring. See your picture. Frame it with your fingers if it helps you visualise it. And then focus on shape and colour rather than object. Focus on the play of light, and the texture and the shapes within the shapes, the negative shapes between objects. Focus on bringing your chosen piece to life.” I watched Helen unpack her sketchpads. “Everyone set?”

Silence.

“Good.”

I went to my desk as the room descended into squeaking stools and chatter, and turned my attention to my lesson plans, but all I could see was Helen. All I could feel was Helen.

Her heel tap, tapped, and her cheeks blushed, and she pushed her hair behind her ear compulsively. And then she looked at me.

Our eyes met and the chatter in the room faded beneath my rushing pulse. The room became hot, and tense, and small. Sizzling with… knowing… sizzling with the memory of her sweet little moans as she came for me over the telephone, the sight of her swollen * lips as she pushed those fingers inside.

I was hard, and I really shouldn’t be.

An hour’s lesson has never gone so slowly. I was parched, and my throat was scratchy and dry. I distracted myself with the class, but it didn’t help any. All the still life questions in the universe couldn’t distract me from the willowy, beautiful siren of a girl at the back of the room. Her eyes were big and filled with secrets, secrets only I knew, and they pulled at me, and twisted me up, and excited me. I could feel her gaze on me, and the tension felt like heaven and hell all rolled into one.

My heart was racing by the time the lunch bell sounded. I gathered the year sevens’ drawings and stacked them in a pile, and Helen waited and watched, quietly and curiously until the door swung closed behind the stragglers. She joined me at my desk as I put away the sketches, and I could smell her, taste her. The hint of her pale thighs tempted me from under her school skirt, and she knew it. She checked out the playground through the window over her shoulder, then angled herself so that her back was facing every possible pair of eyes out there.

And then she opened her blazer, just enough that I saw the hard little bullets of her nipples poking through her blouse.

No bra.

Lord save my soul.

“I, um… I thought you might…” She looked at me, and there was nervous Helen again. “Nobody, um… nobody can see, not when I’ve got the blazer on… but I thought you might… like it…”

I stood and checked the corridor through the door windows and there wasn’t a soul out there. “Helen, you’re going to be the ruin of me.”

She took a little step back. “Doesn’t it make you happy? You said that… you said you liked it… when I was in your shirt…”

My throat was bone dry. “It makes me very happy, but I maintain you’re going to be the ruin of me. This is more temptation than I can bear.”

“So don’t…” she whispered. “There’s nobody here. I thought you… you could… touch…”

“Christ, Helen. We’re playing with fire as it is, any more and we’ll be bathing in it.”