Once I’m in my room, I toss my book bag on my desk and toe off my shoes. Pulling my phone from my back pocket, I plop down on my bed, laying so I’m facing the ceiling. I pull Hannah’s name up on my phone and press down on it. It rings three times before she picks up.
“Hey, boo, whatcha doin’?”
I throw my arm over my eyes and let out a sigh. “Wishing I could move back home ASAP and never step foot in Silver Falls High again.”
“Uh oh.” I hear a door slam on her end. “Tell Mama Hannah whose ass I have to kick.”
Hannah, my best friend since grade school, is the complete opposite of me. She’s outgoing, doesn’t have a shy bone in her body, speaks her mind, and won’t hesitate to come to the defense of anyone she cares about. Luckily, she cares about me.
“Mine,” I sigh. “I messed up, Hannah. Really badly.”
Over the next fifteen minutes, two of which I have to pause and grit my teeth because Hannah was laughing so hard, I tell her, about what amounts to be, the worst day of my existence. She already knows of my crush on Mr. Monroe, so that comes as no surprise. She interrupts me several more times to ask questions.
“This has to be some kind of joke, right? I mean, you honestly didn’t hand in a written fantasy of your teacher. Wait a sec.” There’s shuffling on her end before she comes back on the line. “No, it’s not April Fool’s Day.” She pauses long enough to whistle. “Damn girl. You really did it this time.”
“I know!” I cry into my phone. “How in the world can I show my face in his class again?”
“Well, look on the bright side,” she says. “At least it wasn’t a peer-review paper.”
She has a point. It’s one thing to have my teacher read it, it would be doubly worse if both he and another student did. Even so, it doesn’t make me feel any better.
“There’s no way I can go back to school. You need to go ask your mom if I can stay with you so I can finish out the year at Beacon High.”
“Yeah, right.” I can practically hear her eyes roll. “You know your mom wouldn’t go for that.”
“I’m eighteen. I can live where I want,” I grumble.
“Come on, Lu. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Says the girl who didn’t humiliate herself in front of her teacher.”
“Did he say anything else during your meeting?”
I bite my lip. I kept Mr. Monroe’s parting words out of our conversation, not sure imparting that tidbit to my friend is wise. I sent Hannah a picture of Mr. Monroe I found on the school website—no, I’m not a stalker. I came across it when I was looking for an email for one of my other teachers so I could send them a message about an assignment. Hannah took one look at the picture and demanded I try to seduce him. Of course, she wasn’t serious—or I don’t think she was. I’m still a virgin, and she knows that. I certainly wasn’t going to attempt to coax a teacher into my bed.
Even so, there’s no telling what she’ll say if I tell her what Mr. Monroe said right before I walked out the door.
But then again, I really need to tell someone.
“He told me that he fucks dirty,” I blurt out.
It’s quiet on her end for so long, I wonder if she accidentally hung up. I’m just about to ask her if she’s there when her loud screech nearly pops my eardrums.
“What?!” I pull the phone away from my ear. “Holy shit, Lu! I’mma need you to hold on a minute so I can turn down the A/C. It just got really hot in here.”
“Really, Hannah?” I roll to my stomach. “I need you to take this seriously. What am I supposed to do?”
Her breath fans across the line when she huffs. “You do what any normal eighteen-year-old would do in this situation.” She pauses, and I know what’s coming. “You take the bull by the horns, or in this instance, the man by the dick, and drag his ass to the nearest closet. Then you let him teach you all the dirty things.”
Why her words suddenly suck all of the air out of the room is beyond me. It’s not like I would ever do something like that. It’s not even like I want to do something like that.
Liar, liar, my mind screams.
“First, you’re ridiculous. A normal eighteen-year-old would not do something like that. And second, even if I were a different person and had the nerve to do that, Mr. Monroe is not interested in a student.”
She scoffs. “Sounds to me he’s more than interested. He wouldn’t have told you how he fucks if he wasn’t.”
“I happened to have asked that question in my fantasy. So he was just answering it,” I inform her. And yes, even to my own ears, it sounds stupid.