Chapter 5: Meeting with Mrs. Ball

At four o'clock I was outside the door to Mrs. Ball's classroom, but I couldn't make my hand knock on the door, or turn the knob to open it. I knew what was about to happen—I was about to be labelled a pervert, and at best, be given one final chance to clean up my stories before I was exposed to the Vice-Principal. He, of course, would take great delight in expelling me, possibly turning me over to the police, and maybe even beating the shit out of me. I knew I had to go in there; I couldn't avoid this meeting, and somehow I even felt that I owed it to Mrs. Ball.

Finally, I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and in my head heard my father say, 'straighten your spine and act like a man.' I grabbed the knob and pulled the door open, striding through it like I had a purpose ... and found an empty room. Mrs. Ball was nowhere to be seen, and all my bravado deserted me in an instant; I could almost feel myself deflating as the fear returned. Before I could turn to run, I heard a noise behind me, and Mrs. Ball blew in, a little flustered and out of breath, pulling the door shut behind her. "Sorry I'm late, Edward. I was with the Vice-Principal, and the meeting went a little long."

If her goal was to increase the level of my fear, she had just succeeded. Mentioning the Vice-Principal was all it took. I knew in that instant that my high school career really was over, and I could see my life in front of me, flipping burgers, and learning how to say, 'Would you like fries with that?'

She must have caught something in my look, since it was of the 'deer in the headlights' variety, for she smiled quickly and said, "Oh, we weren't talking about you. It was another matter entirely." That smile was made of sunshine and warmth, and I felt the blood returning to my face, and my heart start beating again ... maybe there was some small hope left...

She waved me to a chair in front of her desk, and pulled out the swivel chair behind it, settling herself and arranging her purse and briefcase beside her. She put her hands flat on her desk, and seemed to be gathering herself for a moment, maybe trying to collect her thoughts, and maybe trying to figure out how to talk to a sixteen year-old pervert who wrote stories about her body. Everything seemed to come together in her mind, for she suddenly fixed me with a steely glare.

"Now, Edward, we need to talk about your stories. Quite honestly, you are the best writer in the class, but ... your stories ... they're very graphic, and descriptive. They're also very evocative, and very inappropriate."

She paused for a second, but I didn't take that as a cue to speak. I had been listening to everything she said, and watching her closely, but doing my best to not react. She gathered her next thoughts, and went on.

"Your subjects ... I know that your stories are all about me, but is this how you see me? As some sort of sex slave? You describe me as a ... a ... concubine, and then the prisoner of an Arab pirate, and then you talk about how to bring a woman to orgasm ... how to stimulate different parts of her body..."

She seemed to run out of steam for a moment, pausing in mid-sentence, her look softening from the steely glare to something that seemed more ... pleading, perhaps?

"How do you come up with these storylines? Where do you get these ideas?" She was still staring at me, but now her look was questioning, and it was obvious that she was expecting an answer. That would be fine if I knew one I could give her, but I had no idea how to respond to her.

I looked away while I thought, because those green eyes were simply too distracting; my brain froze whenever I looked at them, although it was likely because my blood moved rapidly to lower parts of my body, and my brain was simply deprived. When I met those emeralds again, she was still looking at me with the same questioning expression. I was going to have to give her some kind of answer, or we would both sit here forever. That wasn't an unpleasant prospect, as I'd at least be within a few feet of her.

I let out a deep sigh, resigning myself to whatever fate befell me, and thought again about flipping burgers. "I ... I don't know. The first one just came to me, almost as if it had been in a dream. The image of you, like that, just came into my brain and wouldn't go away. I had to write it down ... it was as if it were screaming at me to get out, and the only way to get any peace was to write it all down, and describe everything in detail. There was this ... this image ... that I had to paint, but only using words. It just seemed to run out of me, through my fingers, and onto the keyboard." She was nodding as I spoke, taking in everything I said. Her expression had softened slightly, and I drew courage to continue trying to explain myself.

"When I had finished what I had written, I read back over it and it just gripped me. You said that storytelling is about grabbing the reader's imagination, and getting them to see the scene you're trying to create, and if you can do that, then you've probably got it right. I tried to put myself in someone else's shoes when I read it, so I would see it the way a new reader would see it. I got pulled into the story, and I could see the characters, and I had to read it, I had to know what was going to happen. I could see you, naked like that, standing there, scared and trembling. And then being spanked like that, and screaming when you..."

"When I came ... when I had an orgasm?"

I nodded, this time not willing to look at her.

I don't think either one of us breathed for a minute or more, then she quietly asked, "Tell me, Edward. Have you ever actually given a girl an orgasm?"

I felt a rush of blood away from everything else, and into my face. I couldn't look at her, too embarrassed by my reaction. I shook my head, and muttered "No."

No one said anything for a long moment, and then I heard her say, very softly, "Yes, you have."

My head shot up, looking at her. She was just calmly watching me. "Wh-what did you say?"