Creepy Teacher: A Psychological Thriller (2 page)

C.C. meant Carla Cummings, cheerleader slut, with an infamous reputation for giving football players head on the bus ride home after games. Bailey doubted that rumor was true, as most rumors get stretched a million miles from the truth by the time the bus arrives home. It was also said that she performed the same act of kindness for basketball stars on the jazz band stage when the curtains were drawn. Again, probably not true.

What was true, though, was that Carla Cummings was right now tossing her curled blond locks in Eric Cady’s face beside his locker as she faked a big laugh and a cheerleader’s spin of some kind, airing out the billows of her skirt.

Carla Cummings was rail thin with no chest to speak of, unless two bug bites counted for boobs, Bailey thought.

Bailey knew, as Jany had said, that guys liked boobs.

Jany was practically dragging her by the arm in a bee-line toward the group of jocks and clingers around Eric.

“Don’t stop or get too close,” Bailey told her.

“Oh, shut up,” Jany answered.

They kept weaving in and out between students, moving too fast, Bailey thought, and several people, pimpled guys especially, turned their faces on rubber necks to catch a glimpse of the great rarity—actually the nev-
erity
—that was Bailey Howard, teacher’s pet, in an over-stretched tank top that showed more skin than they’d ever seen before on goody-goody Bailey Howard, without the slightest of doubts on earth.

Only she had plenty of doubts herself.

She’d felt uncomfortable all morning, as if she were basically naked.

It was completely out character for her, and the closer they got to Eric Cady, who’d known her since 5th grade, the more she regretted the stupidity of Jany’s plan, and the more she just felt stupid, period.

Bailey only wanted Eric’s attention if Eric was interested in her as a person, not because of her…blessings.

Oh, god, she wanted to vomit.

Not over Renly now, but over the simple fact that within about ten more steps she’d be right there close to Eric. He just noticed the two of them coming, too, she saw with sudden terror. The top of his gorgeous head lifted over the craniums of his encircling peeps. Jany grabbed her elbow and started dragging.

She nearly dropped her slippery English book.

“Stay left,” Bailey told her. “Left, left.”

“No, right,” Jany answered.

They went right, and Eric Cady said, “Hey, Bailey,” cutting off mid-sentence whatever goo was flowing out of Carla Cummings over-stretched mouth.

Carla turned around with a face and looked Bailey up and down.

Jany said, “Hey, Carla. How’s jazz band?”

But she kept moving, not letting go of Bailey’s elbow, and Bailey wondered now if they shouldn’t stop, assuming Eric wanted her to, especially by the way he was smiling, one hundred percent expectantly, if gorgeous faces could speak. My god, she thought. He is SO utterly handsome! She couldn’t believe he had said “Hey” to her like that, with boyish excitement in his voice, especially since other people were around, including Carla Cummings.

“Hey, Eric. What’s happening?” Bailey said.

Then she regretted it.

Stupid, stupid.
What’s happening?
God, I’m a common, brain-dead idiot!

All Eric’s Neanderthal buddies had their mouths agape.

“Slow down, Howard,” he called, as Jany and she moved passed. “Did you decide about the—?”

“No time to chat, Eric,” Jany replied over her shoulder. “Talk to her in study hall.”

“You’re a pain in the ass, Fry,” he answered.

Over her opposite shoulder, so Eric wouldn’t see, Jany whispered, “Come on, Howard. Don’t look back.”

“Too late. I already did.”

“Keep facing forward. You’ve got him right where you want him.”

As they drifted left around Jackson the Sackston and past the Simmons twins and Tasha Perez, Bailey heard Carla saying to Eric and his friends, “Why is she wearing that outfit?”

It took a moment for the comment to sink in, but once it finally did, Bailey’s thought was…
Exactly, but you’re still the number one slut, Carla!

Leaning forward against Jany now, for both comfort and security, Bailey asked her quietly, “Did you hear what Carla just said?”

“Everyone knows she’s jealous. Ignore her.”

They drifted around the corner, and Carla Cummings was gone. So was Eric Cady. They slowed their stride to a leisurely pace, approached their classroom, and stopped outside the door.

“Thanks for towing me,” Bailey told her. “I would have stopped and stood there like a dork.”

“And Carla would have belittled you to your face,” Jany said flatly.

“I’ve never done
anything
to her.”

“She knows how to be a rag when she’s threatened.”

“He was just trying to ask me about the party.”

“No, he was reaching for the first question that came to mind so you’d stop.”

“I doubt that.”

“Perhaps, due to your total infatuation, you couldn’t see the bedazzled expression on his face.”

“I saw him smile. That’s it,” Bailey said. Then she grinned happily, adding, “But he’s always smiling at me lately.”

“Yippee. Are you going to his party or not?”

“He’s probably just using me for math,” Bailey said.

Jany scowled. “You’re cracked in the head. Quit saying that. He can easily do his own math.”

Bailey knew that was true.

Eric Cady had been sitting with her for the last two weeks during 5th period study. They had been working on Mr. Renly’s Algebra homework together. He seemed so nice, and so genuinely interested in actually talking to her. And so she was really starting to believe that the math was only an excuse, which is what Jany had been saying all along. Jany had told her that she thought Eric Cady was less of a jock at heart, and more of a romantic. Jany said Eric’s parents had met in the Red Cross, and when Bailey asked him about it one day during study, he said yes it was true, they had met in Africa. Both his parents were doctors, and he’d admitted recently that he felt pressure to follow suit, thus his stress to master his math. Bailey Howard was a full year ahead in math, taking senior classes as a junior.

Eric was having a massive barn party while his parents flew to Paris for the weekend. He’d told Bailey that his parents had given him permission as long as he kept the party to a dull roar. Something about character-building and trust. The barn party would be at their family farm in the rural backwaters of nowhere.

“There’s no way I’m going if you’re not going,” she told Jany for the umpteenth time.

“I can’t skip my cousin’s wedding,” Jany answered. “Maybe he’ll ask you to be his special guest, otherwise known as his date.”

“I’d die of embarrassment, and Carla would kill me. It’s all the jocks and the clinger crowd. It’s not me. Plus, I don’t drink.”

“Maybe you should take a chaperone, Peggy Sue,” Jany said.

“You’re funny.”

“Take Mr. Renly along. He’ll protect you.”

“Oh, stick it, big mouth.”

F
ive years ago,
Principal Jenkins reshuffled classrooms, giving teachers a bit of say-so in where they preferred to be. Stuart Renly avoided all the back-stabbing politics and maneuvering because the room he preferred no one else wanted. Freemont high school had been built at the turn of the last century. Everything was old, old, old. Ancient by modern standards. All the plumbing rattled and groaned spontaneously, and the sewer from the student lavatories on the NE wing reeked and radiated, especially in warm weather. Stuart Renly chose the classroom at the end of that NE wing, kiddy-corner from those smelly lavatories.

It wasn’t a problem for Stuart Renly.

Being at the end of the hall reminded him of home.

And he dealt with the stench because there was a really beneficial tradeoff.

Boys will be boys, Stuart liked to say.

About six years ago, he found a hole bored through the crusty old concrete wall that separated the boys from the girls. Stuart Renly had been clever, relocating a toilet paper dispenser so it covered the hole, and twisting out the right thumb screw made the dispenser dangle sideways, revealing the hole.

From the girl’s side, it looked like a spider hole.

The girls often complained about having to use that creepy last stall, calling it the spider stall. Stuart Renly would overhear their conversations in the hallway.

“I had to use the spider stall,” they would say.

“Who keeps leaving shit and rags in the other two,” would come the reply.

That was the daily mystery of the NE wing.

But Stuart Renly had solved it years ago.

He was the mastermind.

For nothing better to do in the evenings, he usually stayed late after school, leaving the building about five or six o’clock, sometimes later depending on the girl’s basketball or volleyball gym schedules. Once the janitors had finished cleaning, he’d go into the girl’s lavatory, take a healthy dump, top it with toilet paper, and leave it floating. Then for the second of three stalls, he’d plug it with toilet paper and top it with a fresh bloody rag, face up, that he would scavenge from the sanitary napkin bin, providing the bin hadn’t been emptied.

By morning, the contents of those first two toilets had soaked and stagnated into a disgusting mess, and the young ladies thusly defaulted to the infamous spider stall.

It had been amusing over the years to watch the mystery playing out with each new crop of female students, and it always amazed him how the simple trick kept working so consistently.

As for the hole in the wall, whichever punks had bored it, however long ago, were now well graduated or, at any rate, well gone, and the new crop of pinheads hadn’t found it during the last six years.

His classroom being at the end of the hall was perfect given his “active intestines,” which required frequent lavatory visits throughout the day.

In fact, he was on one of his so-called A.I. breaks right now, and the students in his fourth period geometry class didn’t mind one iota if he ran five minutes late almost every day. They enjoyed the extra gabbing time. His geometry girls would even sneak the extra time to hurry in and out of the spider stall.

Since it was a pain to twist around while sitting just to reach the toilet paper, this peeping stall in the boy’s room was usually available.

He unscrewed the little bolt on the right.

The toilet paper holder dropped into a dangle.

His warm palms resting on the cold porcelain tank, he leaned in and peered through the pencil-sized hole in the concrete wall.

Sometimes the girls got smart and stuffed the opposite end with TP, but they hadn’t been smart for awhile, and the pathway was adequately clear at the present moment.

Every day was a crap shoot, so to speak. He liked thinking of it in gambling terms. It made the game more interesting. Or “like a box of chocolates”—the Forest Gump line—“you never knew what you were going to get.” Reality was, if he got lucky enough to catch a girl doing her business in the spider stall, most of the viewing time was spent staring at the back of her head. Some turned around afterwards to look inside the bowl, some didn’t. When a particular girl didn’t, all he saw was her ass cheeks. That was okay, certainly. Better than nothing. He learned which girls had tattoos. But the real prize, the money shot, so to speak, came from the girls who turned around. Inevitably, when they turned around to judge what they’d left behind, there would be a quick shot of whisker biscuit as they pulled up their panties.

If they actually wore panties.

If they actually had a whisker biscuit.

The unfortunate trend lately was an asinine invention called the Brazilian Wax.

Asinine.

There was a fitting word, Stuart Renly thought while peering into the hole.

The spider stall was empty now.

Fiddlesticks!

He rolled snake eyes on the peeping game!

It was hardly the first time, nor would it be the last.

Luckily, he had a backup means of getting his jollies, albeit less thrilling.

He screwed the TP holder into place and wrangled his smart phone from his pocket.

The lavatory was quiet as he activated the photo gallery. The last pictures taken were the first to light up. And light up they did! Miss Bailey Howard! What a fine top you’re wearing today, Miss Howard. All the better to see your golden blessings. All the better to stroke an “active imagination,” which was the secret definition of A.I., as far as Stuart Renly was concerned.

Time was short.

And getting shorter.

But as he thumbed through the gallery of buxom-heavy Bailey Howard one thing for certain was getting longer. Longer and harder, and rising in his trousers like a twisted and deformed third leg.

Time to free the bugger.

He turned toward the toilet bowl and unzipped his fly.

Then the lavatory door opened loudly, jolting him from his fixated daze, and he quickly pocketed the smart phone and re-zipped his pleated khaki pants.

Pure frustration mixed with sudden panic.

Meddling kids!