Flirtatious Glances, Secret Desires (Excerpt)

I sat in the back of the room like I always did for lunch detention; only, at this point it wasn’t much of a detention. I glanced up from my practice test and eyed Eric Sloan, the current history student teacher. He had assigned me the lunch detention almost a week ago for saying the word ‘shit’ during a class presentation. His angular jaw and high cheek bones could make any girl my age pawn over him; especially because he was a teacher, a forbidden prize that taunts the inner core of all those who let it.

“Ms. Anderson, how are you doing back there?” he commented, keeping his eyes narrowed on the computer screen. His arm was propped underneath his chin and he reclined back into his chair.

“No one else is around.” I decided to respond with.

His eyes met mind, then wondered to the classroom door that was propped open, exposing the moment to the rest of the world.

“We are in a classroom setting.” He murmured, just above a whisper.

He stated the obvious, but all I could think about were his hands, touching me, his soft lips meeting mine in an intense moment of passion as the water engulfed our entire being. The way the moon was at the right position hanging above us, and the dock creaked a little as the current whipped through ever so often. I held the memory in my mind for a moment.

“We have to talk about what happened at the class camping trip.” I demanded.

“Now isn’t the right time for that Ms. Anderson. We can speak about it later.” He forced.

I thought for a moment before I responded. I thought about all of the times Mr. Sloan flirted with me in school, made hints at how beautiful I was, or how he especially chose me over the other students from time to time. I thought about how I walked away from camp in the middle of the night to clear my head, only to find myself entangled with my history teacher, naked, while we swam around the dark lake at midnight with the rest of the school sleeping soundly only yards away.

“When will there be a time?” I lowered my voice and leaned into the conversation. “I’ve never felt like that. You just can’t… you can’t lead a girl on and let her think that she’s falling for her history teacher…”

I was breathless. He looked at me, and for a moment I thought maybe he would run across the room, embrace me and feed me an earful of what I wanted to hear. But he didn’t.

“You can leave now Ms. Anderson. Lunch is almost over.”

I gathered my things into my satchel and walked towards the door. I stood at the door frame and turned to him. His eyes were once again glued to the computer screen.

“I felt something. I know you did too.”

I let that settle for a moment, and made my retreat. I turned towards the hall and stepped outside of the door. I glanced up, and before I had a chance to really see what was unfolding before me, a loud boom echoed through the hallway, and a middle aged English instructor fell to the floor in a single motion just ahead of me. I looked at her face. Perfectly etched between her eyes was a hole the size of a dime. Blood began to pool around her tiny figure. Her eyes were open and her face was frozen in a look of pure terror. She’d been shot.

I stood there, struggling to breathe. Ahead of me, a figure dressed in black disappeared into the third room down from Sloan’s. I could hear the shear screams of terror as if they were right next to me. Many more shots were fired, eight or nine, and then, nothing. I had to run. I had to get the hell away from here but I couldn’t move. Before I could make my legs work, before I had a chance to scream, an arm was wrapped around my waste and another was over my mouth. I was being pulled backwards, back into the history room.

Mr. Sloan’s eyes were wide and alert, complete opposite from how I’d left him seconds ago. He put his finger up to his lips, and gently closed the door behind me. He turned the lock tight and pulled the blinds on the window down.

“You have to be quiet,” he said as he frantically began to move a chair below the door handle.

“Eric…” I called. My voice was very frail, barely able to form a sound. “She was right next to me… Mrs. Greene. She was right next to me and she… she died… she just got married and now she… oh eric.” Tears started streaming from my face. I could feel my pulse racing. I reached out for him and my hands were shaking so much that I couldn’t even focus on touching him.

Eric walked up to me and wrapped his muscular forearms around me. He pushed my hair behind my ears and looked down into my eyes. “I know…” His voice was so even and soothing. “I know this is terrible and scary but you have to be strong for me. If we aren’t really quiet, we will not make it out of here alive… do you understand me?”

I nodded.

“Good. Now, I need you to try and focus all of that scared energy into being quiet. Be as quiet as you can okay? Because if he comes through that door and you are here, you will be just like Mrs. Greene, and I can’t handle that. Okay?”

Just as I was beginning to breathe more easily, the glass on the door shattered. I jumped backwards into Eric, as a hand plunged through the hole that was now on the door. The hand fumbled for the lock and flung the chair away from the door. The man pushed the door open, and there he was.

It was a shotgun. That was the first thing I saw. He held it in his right hand and let it rest on his shoulder as he pierced into our eyes. I looked at him, I looked at his face, and I recognized him. I remembered him as the freshman that everyone teased on the bus ride home. He was almost six feet tall, with stringy long blonde hair. He was a lanky boy with no real defined features. Now, he was looking into our eyes, with a shot gun aimed at our faces.

“Please… don’t.”

One shot was fired, a few seconds later so was the other. I hit the floor hard with a thud. My eyes were closed but I heard the freshman’s boots as he carefully walked out the door, into the hall and up the stairwell.

I opened my eyes. My breath caught in my throat when the pain from the hit engulfed me at once. I used my hand to feel around for the hole. The bullet was lodged into my chest, I could feel it inside of me as I tried to inhale deeply. I looked to my left to see Eric nursing a bloody hand to his abdomen.

“Oh my god, Tiffany!” He called to me with pain in his voice.

My vision was a little blurry but I saw him hoist himself up and hover over me.

“Mine was just a graze…” he mumbled to himself as he ripped his shirt off. “Mine was just a graze… mine was just a graze…mine was just a graze…” His voice trailed off.

I felt his shirt press against the giant gaping hole in my chest, but I could barely see him anymore.

“Tiffany, you have to stay awake okay? Tiffany, you stay awake!” I could hear tension in his voice.

“You can’t die today. Don’t let go you hear me?” He grabbed my hand. It, and he were covered in the blood that was pouring from both of our wounds.

It was getting harder for me to breathe. I could see dark clouds of gray flooding my vision.

“Damn it Tiffany you can’t die!” Tears rushed from his eyes as he scrambled to keep pressure over the middle of my chest. “Tiffany I haven’t started loving you. We haven’t even started… you can’t die. You can’t die. You can’t die….”

I could feel myself fading away, then, blackness.