Creepy Teacher: A Psychological Thriller (3 page)

Nobody called out to him, but he was so frazzled by the interruption that he called out to them, saying, “Yeah, I’m coming!”

There was an irony!

Stupid over-eager kids couldn’t wait five minutes for him to drop a dollop before bursting in to see if he was dead like Elvis on the throne.

He flushed the toilet for show, smeared flat his tingling third leg, unlatched the stall very loudly, and emerged in a staggering hurry.

Principal Jenkins stood there.

“Oh, I thought you were a student coming in to check on me,” Stuart Renly said. He moved to the sink under Jenkins’ watchful eye and began washing his hands. With soap even. “They can’t hardly wait five minutes to get their daily learning, it seems lately. It guess it’s good they enjoy my style of teaching.”

“As we’ve discussed before, though,” Jenkins answered, “you need to begin your teaching on time.”

“Doing my best to get this licked,” Stuart said. “Not as easy as one might think. I wouldn’t wish A.I. on anyone. It’s a kick in the pants, so to speak.”

“The board already approved your medical furlough,” Jenkins said. “Bring in a physician’s signature, take the time off, then come back when you’re cured. No sense being here just to suffer every hour on the toilet.”

“At most, it’s twice a day,” Stuart Renly answered in his defense.

“But if you can’t hold it until your prep time, it’s a problem. Students tell their parents, their parents tell me. It’s ten minutes past the bell already, and your students are tossing pencils at the ceiling.”

“They do that in everyone’s class,” Stuart Renly said, trying to make light of the situation.

“You’re facing a discharge if you don’t take the furlough. That, or get the problem solved,” Jenkins said flatly.

“I could wear a diaper,” Stuart Renly said, “but being five minutes late to class would be less distracting to the students. Beyond prescribing probiotics, which I’m already taking, my doctor can’t do anything. But he’s sure probiotics will lick the problem, so to speak.”

“I am uninterested in colorful aphorisms.”

Stuart shrugged. “I guess I’m trying to grin and bear it.”

“Get in there with those kids.”

“You got it, boss.”

Principal Jenkins let Stuart Renly exit the lavatory first.

Once they were in the hall, Jenkins reached for Stuart’s shoulder and gave him an understanding, principal-style pat. Jenkins liked to play the nice guy with everyone. He’d only been at Freemont for three years now, and the majority of the staff thought he was the bees knees. Mainly because he smiled more and was easier to get along with than the previous principal, Dr. Butthole Bixby. It also didn’t hurt that Jenkins was, as the female staff liked to whisper, a “real looker.”

Funny how the ones who whispered “real looker” were the old, fat ones. The young, sexy teachers, who still walked high and tight and still cared about their weight and how many treats they ate daily, would never admit out loud that their loins burned for Principal Jenkins.

Stuart Renly knew the truth.

And Jenkins was a playboy at heart.

He knew Jenkins wanted him gone, discharged, that is, if for no other reason than to have his harem of adultery-willing females more to himself.

No more peephole breaks for a while, Stuart Renly decided. No more smart phone breaks either. Be in class on time. Okay, sir. Right and understood. Will do.

But it will be hard going, he knew—really hard going.

Especially seeing now, as he walked into class, three sets of creamy, shaved knees, all slightly spread, waiting for him in the front row.

5
th period study
was immediately after lunch. You could either go to the library or to Mrs. Karuther’s classroom. The tables in the library sat four, plus the chairs were padded, so no one went to Karuther’s. Students could also talk quietly in the library while group cramming for a test, but the librarian still barked “Shh!”

Never at Bailey, though.

Bailey walked into the library and saw Eric Cady sitting at a table across from Tony Avery and Kylie Westin. Tony and Kylie were dating, and together they formed what someone had coined “The Pretty Pair.” Eric sat opposite them, with an empty chair on his left.

He said something to them as he waved Bailey over.

Bailey smiled, but shyly.

Now, more than ever, she wished she hadn’t worn a tank top. It made her feel like one of those car wash girls you see on the street corner flagging guys down for a five dollar soapy wash. To say the least, she felt self-conscious about how much skin and cleavage showed. It was SO unlike her, and she prayed she wouldn’t be sitting directly under an air-conditioning vent.

Eric had started waving her over after the last Algebra exam because the day prior Bailey had answered an easy linear function that an entire table of jocks couldn’t solve.

Kylie was sporting spirit wear, Bailey noticed now, also a tank top, which made her feel a bit more at ease. Bailey’s tank top, however, was a lot tighter, practically stretching the threads to their breaking point, she knew.

“Take this seat, Bailey,” Eric said as she approached, kneeing out the chair beside him, “before the Sackston takes it. He doesn’t know anything about quadratic equations.”

Okay,
Bailey thought,
that’s either a made-up excuse or you really intend to study math.

“I barely understand them myself,” she said.

“Whatever you know, I’ll be grateful for,” Eric said.

Both Tony and Kylie appeared to be studying
her
.

Bailey took the seat, setting her book bag on the floor between her chair and Eric’s. She said, “Hi,” to both Tony and Kylie together, and Kylie replied, “Hello,” and Tony said, “Hey.”

Eric scooted his chair to give her room to lean toward him and open her bag.

Why did I set this here?
she thought.
Now he’s looking down my shirt!
She could hear Jany now telling her that was precisely the idea. Use it or lose it. Throw down the aces. Make him eat his heart out.

Jany kept telling her she thought Eric was interested but conflicted, and all he needed was a gentle push over the edge.

She quickly brought her Algebra book up to the table and set it down. Then she leaned over again to grab her calculator and a pencil.

“How
is
the fabulous Mr. Renly?” Kylie asked.

It jolted Bailey from her thoughts. “Don’t ask,” she said, coming back up. Now that she was up, she could relax a bit about her over-exposed cleavage. She wondered if Eric had actually looked, and noticed.

When she finally glanced at him, which took an extreme amount of effort, like her chin was being held by an elastic cord in the other direction, she saw he was looking directly at her face. And their eyes met.

She shied away immediately, trying to make it casual.

“Renly always gave me the creeps,” Kylie offered now.

“Why?” Tony asked her.

Kylie shivered mechanically and said, “He’s just an ‘Ew…’”

Tony reached out and put his hand on her bare shoulder.

She elbowed that away, then whacked him in the gut.

Eric said, “He wants your bod, Kylie. Go down there and give it to him.”

Bailey shook her head. She imagined herself going down there, not Kylie. And she imagined Mr. Renly scanning her up and down. She said aloud, “That will never happen.”

Tony, referring to Kylie, said jokingly, “It better not.”

“Duh,” Kylie said.

Why are we talking about this?
Bailey wondered. She knew most guys talked rudely about sex, but she wondered if Eric had made the perverted reference about Renly wanting Kylie’s body because she herself had just leaned over and now bodies were on his mind.

She really didn’t know Eric Cady very well. He was unquestionably the most popular guy in school, especially during football season. She was only guessing why he was suddenly interest in sitting with her during study.

But he
had
been very nice.

And as they say, you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover.

“Well, let’s open his book, at any rate,” Bailey said, meaning Mr. Renly’s algebra textbook. “So to speak,” she added.

“Exactly,” Kylie said, smiling now. “You go right ahead and do that, Bailey, so to speak.”

“What’s with ‘So to speak’?” Tony asked.

“It’s a Renly-ism,” Eric said.

He was grinning, and looking at Bailey to confer, and that made Bailey glad that she’d added the little jest. She was so nervous, just sitting with them, and right beside Eric, because she wasn’t normally part of the “in” crowd. But at the same time, she recognized how easily she’d slipped into making fun of other people, and that was not something she wanted to do.

“I think he can be easy to misunderstand,” Bailey said.

“Most psychos are,” Eric assured her.

She cracked open her textbook, flipped to this week’s chapter, and said, “Let’s focus on his math assignment, shall we?”

“We shall,” Eric said, finally opening his own book. “Quadratic functions. Let’s hit it. Bailey, do you understand these?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I was kidding before.”

Kylie stood up and said, “I’m getting a restroom pass.”

“She won’t give you one. We were just at lunch,” Tony told her.

Kylie glared at him and said, “What do you know?”

Tony rolled his eyes. As Kylie walked away, he started looking around the library for who else he could go chat with. Jackson the Sackston had come in and sat down over by the window wall with two other football players, and after a few seconds, Tony rose off his chair and drifted away.

Bailey’s throat tightened into a sour pixie stick.

She couldn’t even bring herself to glance off the blurry left page of x’s and y’s and random numbers to acknowledge the simple fact that her and Eric were now alone.

If she swallowed, she knew, it would be as loud, and as funny sounding, as a plunger in a whistle stick. She needed water.

She got up and went to the fountain, drank a sip, and came back. Her knees were knocking. She moved to sit down, trying not to be an awkward goose-legged gimbo, as Chester MacDoogan had once called her. But try as she may, she tripped, casting her right hand out against Eric’s shoulder to catch her from falling completely into his lap.

Oh, my god!
she thought, terror-stricken. She said, “Sorry,” quickly, and then got her butt situated and flat on her chair, and she just nearly died with embarrassment at having touched his arm.

“No problem,” he said.

His arm had felt really solid.

Now she needed something else to say.

“I don’t feel like doing math,” she said, trying to focus her eyes. The text on the page was starting to clear, although to actually read was still out of the question.

“Neither do I,” he said. “I can’t stop thinking about my party this Saturday?”

“I’ll bet there’s a lot of work to throwing a senior party,” Bailey offered.

God, did I just make myself sound lame?
she thought.

“Well, the exact truth is I can’t stop thinking about whether or not
you’re
coming. When will you know?”

She moved her pursed lips sideways, started biting the corner of her mouth on the side opposite him. She made an umm sound while her brain worked—actually slammed gears hard—to assemble a group of words that wouldn’t make her sound like a fifth grade goody. At the same time, she basically
was
a goody, and the honest answer would be best. If he wanted her to come to his party, he needed to want the real Bailey Howard, not some manufactured dingbat who’d say anything, and do anything, just to be accepted. She was confident in who she was, just not too confident yet in selling it to the world.

“I wanted to come with Jany Fry, but her cousin’s getting married Saturday.”

“Yeah, she told me,” he said. “She also told me I should ask you to come as my ‘special guest’.”

He even hooked his fingers into little quotation marks, which was kind of nerdy, she decided. But she actually liked that little nerdy move, because it seemed out of character for him, and she preferred it to his constantly cool persona. He’d been showing her this unexpected side of his personality during their math study, especially when no one else was sitting at the table.

As far as Jany interfering, by opening her big mouth, Bailey didn’t mind because she knew Jany was trying to be helpful, and Jany had been saying for weeks that Eric Cady had a different heart than other jocks and clingers.

Still, she might just kill Jany later, she decided.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, referring to the phrase
special guest
.

“Like a date, I guess,” Eric said.

She finally glanced over at him then, and when their eyes met, he shrugged. He looked down at his textbook quickly like a shy, uncertain boy.

That’s new
, Bailey thought.
That’s
very
new
.
I wonder if it’s real?

“I think it might seem weird to a lot of people if I came as your ‘special guest’,” she finally said. “I know one girl, in particular, who might actually claw my eyes out.”