Chapter 25: B.M.O.C.

Tim was bored out of his mind listening to student after student reading paragraph after paragraph out loud for the rest of the class. Apparently, his disdain was plastered all over his face.

“Are we keeping you from something, Mr. Murphy?” Ms. Holmes, the English teacher, was looking directly at Tim, who had been staring out the window.

“Uh, no, ma’am. I’m just sitting here listening to our reading assignment.” His emphasis on listening and reading was easy to detect, even for the most dim-witted person.

“Are you trying to say something, Mr. Murphy?”

“No, Ma’am.” He should have kept his mouth shut but just could not help it. “Actually, yes, ma’am. I was wondering why are we spending class time reading the chapter out loud when it was our homework assignment to read this at home. I mean, I already read the chapter at home as I was assigned. Why should I take my time to do it when all I have to do is wait until we get to class, and we can read it together.”

“Very good point, Mr. Murphy.” Ms. Holmes stepped down the steps of her teaching podium and made her way in front of the class. “Is he right, class? Have all of you already read the chapter as assigned and feel we are just wasting time here?”

A petite girl in one of the seats in the front row of desks timidly raised her hand to get the teacher’s attention.

“Yes, Beth?”

She started speaking, very softly though, and the others in the class could not hear her. Tim’s enhanced hearing noted what she said, and he let a little smile come out.

“Please, Beth, a little louder for the rest of the class.”

“I said I agree with Tim. I also spent time last night reading the chapter you assigned for us over the weekend, but I also read ahead to make sure I didn’t fall behind. Luckily, I did not have much weekend homework, so I could spend the time reading.

“Having us now read the same chapter, out loud, in class, is just a huge waste of my time.” Beth Thompson was nervously shaking while speaking her mind since this was far out of line for her. “While I am thankful that you are going over it, we really aren’t doing that; we’re just reading it; we’re not discussing it. If we were at least doing that, then I can see reviewing the chapter. Otherwise, it just helps those who did not read the chapter on their own as they were told to do.”

The diminutive brunette rushed out her last sentence as though running out of breath. She took a couple of deep breaths afterward and was still visibly shaking with anger or fear, or maybe both. Tim noticed the smile on the teacher’s face and realized he wasn’t the only one smiling.

“Okay. Is she correct, class? Did everyone already read the chapter I assigned for you to read?” Ms. Holmes asked as she stepped back up and behind her podium.

A majority of the class agreed with Tim and the wisp of a girl in the front row, though a few disgruntled attitudes wafted throughout the class. Obviously, several students were using the time to read the book for the first time. They had not spent any time reading over the weekend as required.

Ms. Holmes stepped back out from her podium to make sure her white and sunflower-covered skirt did not snag on the untreated wood of her podium. She quickly adjusted the blue sweater she wore atop the dress and stood next to Beth’s desk. Then she put her hand on her shoulder and bent over to whisper to the normally reserved girl. While Ms. Holmes whispered to Beth, she gave a nice, albeit brief, view into the deep valley created by her ample breasts. This was the main reason other freshman boys at Roosevelt were jealous of any male student lucky enough to be assigned to one of Ms. Julianne Holmes’ classes for English. The brief view drove many boys in the class into their personal fantasies as to what else Ms. Holmes concealed underneath the sweater.

“Okay. Good. Thank you Miss Thompson and, of course, Mr. Murphy for pointing out that little conundrum. I generally give the classes about two weeks to realize that, even though I assigned the chapters to be read for homework, we would nevertheless take the time to read them in class. I was hoping someone would say something. I was getting a little worried none of you would.”

The voluptuous blonde made her way back to her podium. “Now that we have that out of the way, I will explain how this will work from now on.” She reached into the shelf just beneath the podium and pulled out a stack of papers.

“From now on, when I assign a chapter for you to read on your own time, you will read it on your own time. The next time you step back into this class, you had better have already read the chapter because you will be quizzed.” A small sigh of defeat came from a few of the students.

“If you had not read the chapter, you could thank Tim and Beth, but don’t think I wasn’t going to give a quiz about the chapter. I was going to save it for the end of class. So now we just have more time for it and for the extra credit essay question I’ll put up on the board.”

The quizzes were passed back each row from the front of each aisle. Beth turned around and meekly smiled at Tim as she handed him his quiz. He thanked her for the paper., She returned the thanks with a curt head nod and then quickly turned back around in her desk.

“Oh, and one more thing, class. Since you have two people in this class with the guts to question how something is working, I will tell you now that, even if you miss every question on this quiz, I will not give a failing grade, but that’s just for this test.”

The students all smiled, and a few even clapped their hands rather timidly, but the overall pressure in the class evaporated.

“Besides, we were almost finished reading that chapter anyway. If you paid attention, you should have it.”

The quiz was simple, and the extra-credit short essay was equally easy, so Tim quickly wrote out his quiz and essay but waited until a few others turned theirs into the teacher to do the same. However, before he could go back to his seat, Ms. Holmes asked Tim to wait a moment after class before going to lunch. He was half-expecting to be scolded in front of the class but, when he wasn’t, he breathed easier. As he sat back down at his desk, he realized the price for civil disobedience was being forcibly late to lunch. He probably would have preferred public shaming.

Once the bell rang, everyone hurriedly left class to make their way toward the cafeteria for lunch. Tim waited until the last person was leaving to make his way up to Ms. Holmes where he stood at the desk, waiting for the teacher to give him whatever message she did not want to give in front of the class. He soon realized the moments of waiting were her way of showing she was in command.

“Tim, a couple of things. First of all, I know you think you are smarter than most of the other students, but please don’t flaunt it in front of the class. I’d bet you have probably already read the entire book,” Ms. Holmes said.

“Yes, ma’am. I read the whole thing this weekend, just to get it out of the way. I didn’t have any other homework, and there really wasn’t anything to watch on TV, so I read the chapter you had assigned and decided to go ahead and finish the book. Not a personal favorite, but it wasn’t that bad.”

“Okay, well, that answers that question. I was worried because you were just staring out the window, but I noticed you were mouthing the words and reading along with whoever was speaking. You didn’t even look down at your book.”

“Oh, sorry about that. It was how I kept up to where everyone was reading so, when my turn came, I was ready.”

“But you weren’t even looking at your book. That is what I don’t understand.”

Tim fidgeted there a few moments to weigh in his mind what to say. Could he tell the teacher about his photographic memory? Would she want him to move up in class and take another, more advanced class? He knew, though, that he couldn’t lie to her since he was a terrible liar. With a deep breath, he decided to come clean.

“I have a photographic memory, and I can remember anything I read – even if I only read it once. Then I understand it, and I can remember everything about it from that particular book.” To make the full effect work in his favor, he slouched over like a marionette having its strings cut and sunk into the first chair he could find. “I’ve been able to do it for a while now.”

“Well, with that kind of gift, Tim, and with a little work, you could probably skip grades and get to college quicker. Why haven’t you gone that route?”

He could hear the sympathy in her voice, so he decided to continue. Unfortunately, when she asked him about advancing a grade, she bent over again and, with Tim’s height, he got yet another glimpse down the front of the dress. This time he noticed the pink lace bra she was wearing underneath. His pheromones fired out at an alarming speed and quickly filled the air between the student and his teacher.

“Well, Ms. Holmes, I was scared. I only had this growth spurt over the summer.” He motioned his hand across his body like a game show model presenting a prize. He continued, “I just started growing like this over the summer. My whole life, I’ve always been the short, fat quiet kid in the back of the class who hoped no one would remember he was even there,” he said with a voice full of anguish.

“Now, with this new look and finding out I have a natural gift for playing football, I’d like to see where it can take me. Coach Barrett told my parents he thinks I have the talent to play college football. If I can earn a football scholarship, I know my little sister will be able to go to college when she is ready – all because my parents did not have to pay full price for me to go. I really want to play football. If I skip a grade, it’ll mean I’ll have a year less to learn the basics to play ball.”

Julianne Holmes was only half listening to this students’ story about his sister playing football, but she could feel his sadness. She was actually fantasizing about being taken by this man who is not only a physical specimen but obviously an unbelievably gorgeous man. She soon noticed she was indeed sexually attracted to this Greek god standing in front of her, and was getting a little flushed and embarrassed at the ideas swirling around in her head.

Tim’s heightened senses were telling him this woman was becoming sexually attracted to him. He could smell something almost musky -- like the dampened leaves on a tree after a thunderstorm. Then he realized Ms. Holmes was covered in a fine sheen of sweat as was he.

Tim began the story of what happened to him that summer. The same story he had been telling everyone. Meanwhile, both his and his teacher’s sexual attraction was rising, and Tim realized he was getting uncomfortable standing in front of his teacher as his jeans were suddenly feeling very constricting.

The freshman English teacher was trying to remember the last man she was with sexually but, for some reason, her thoughts were having trouble forming. Oh, yes! Her last boyfriend, Clark, was the last person she’d slept with, but that was the week after Christmas and before New Year’s -- damned near nine months.

She began thinking to herself, “Oh, has it really been that long? Sure I play with some of my toys and catch a dirty video on the computer when the need strikes.” She began fanning herself with the collected quizzes of the class and did not even realize she was doing it.

She always thought of herself as a sexual person but monogamy was always important, and one night stands just did not interest her at all. The young man standing in front of her became her focus. The bulge in the front of his jeans was promising, and she could easily see the outline of his many muscles through the tight pullover shirt.

A sudden thought crossed her mind, “I’ll bet he could model for the covers of those trashy novels Patty Thompson is always going on about.”

Her lust was threatening to overcome her, and she wasn’t alone in those feelings.

Tim found himself fantasizing about all the sexual games he could play with this beautiful woman in front of him. His arousal was increasing. He noticed she was only wearing a modicum of makeup, apparently trying to downplay her sexuality.

Tim couldn’t help it, but he stood and reached forward, gently brushing a few errant hairs off his teacher’s face and, in doing so, noticed the light freckles dotting her face and neck were intensifying and reddening.

They were now both breathing a little heavier and a little deeper with each passing second. Before he could pull his hand back away from his teacher’s face, the obviously aroused, 25-year-old, voluptuous blonde captured his hand and guided it back toward her face. She placed the rugged hand onto her face in a desperate attempt to convey just how much she wanted this to happen – and she wanted it to happen right now.

Suddenly, from the outside hall, several lockers slammed shut with bales of laughter and calls to groups of friends to slow down for larger groups to form and head toward the cafeteria for lunch. The slamming lockers forced Tim to slam the brakes on the output of pheromones.

The calls of teens in the hallway forced their way into Ms. Holmes’ conscious thoughts, forcing her to remember she was indeed embracing a beautiful young man who was still a student. One of her students. Fear gripped hold over her quickly, and she released his strong yet gentle hand from her face as he quickly pulled it away. Both were now clearly embarrassed at what nearly happened.

They both spent the next few moments carrying on a conversation with each other, but not a single word was spoken. Looking into each other’s eyes and asking the question, do you want to continue this? Their shared stimulation still there but regressing behind the societal detachment between student and teacher they re-established. The hopes of exploring their newly-discovered paradigm held firm as something both participants clearly wanted, though.

Julianne Holmes closed her eyes for a moment and debated with herself: what did she want. Did she want to explore the opportunity standing right in front of her, or should she keep the taboo relationship of a student/teacher as just a fantasy? She opened her eyes, and a decision was made. When Tim noticed a sultry expression overtake her face, his own carnal smile was genuine. The decision was made. Fortunately, Julianne still had some sense of right and wrong at the moment, no matter how weak it was currently.

She leaned underneath her desk, reached into her purse, and pulled out her phone. Seeing what she was doing, Tim pulled out his own from his backpack. Classroom policies required students to keep the phones off during class time, so he had to turn it on. She sent him a text message with her number and a message to call her tonight so they could talk. He read the message, looked up from his phone, and nodded with a smile.

“Well, Tim, at least we now know you can keep up with the class fairly easily. Maybe we can figure out a way to make the class a little more intense for you. Just a way to challenge you so that you won’t get caught again staring out into space.”

He nodded his head ‘yes, ‘ again. He only nodded because he still could not think of anything to say. He was so far above cloud nine he could not see it any longer. Julianne Holmes was by far the most beautiful woman he had ever met in his life, and she was interested in him.

He was blown away and currently going through the motions of gathering up his phone and backpack and leaving for the long-forgotten lunch. “Okay, Ms. Holmes, I’ll talk to you tonight to see what we can do to help keep me from getting bored in class and out of trouble.”

He quickly walked to the door and, when he opened the door, he spun around for one last look at Ms. Holmes. She was clutching her cell phone like it was a prized possession. He closed the door and walked just a few steps down the hall. He stopped, leaned back against the wall, and let out an extended breath that his body seemed to have been waiting to release since the bell rang. He wiped the slight sheen of sweat from his forehead and smiled to himself. Now, finally able to gain some control of himself once again, he made his way toward the cafeteria.

Julianne smiled to herself after he turned around for one last look before walking out into the hallway. After he closed the door and the last bit of strength holding her up gave way, she slid into her desk chair and almost dropped her phone.

She regained control over her body and tightened her grip on the phone. She could not believe what she had just done. It was illegal, immoral, and just not right, but she’d always told herself when she made a decision in life to stick to it. Better to make a mistake now than to wonder ‘what if’ for the rest of her life.

She smiled again to herself and gathered up the quizzes from her desk again. Then she started grading them to give back the next day. Before she started grading, though, she leaned back in the office chair and began giggling to herself at what had just happened. She had not felt this way since she was a student in high school.

Her nerves were fraying as she thought of the legalities of what she was considering. She took a moment and fanned herself again using the collected quizzes. They weren’t quite working so, placing the quizzes on the desk, she grabbed several tissues from out of the box on her desk and dabbed the perspiration from around her neck. She circled her neck, up toward her temples, and across her forehead. She discarded those and grabbed a few more to try and dry the sheen of perspiration also collecting in the valley between her breasts.

As she wiped, she grinned to herself, recalling what had just happened in her classroom. She made a play for, quite possibly, the most gorgeous man she had ever met. She decided he was a man and not just a freshman. He oozed confidence. Her resolve further hardened from what she had heard about him from his other teachers and the morning announcements recalling his achievements on the football field. Perhaps he has a great future ahead. Maybe she could be a part of it!

She suddenly shook herself from her own reverie and said, out loud to the room, “What am I doing? I’m a grown woman lusting after a fifteen-year-old. Even if he does look like he is in his twenties, it is no excuse for how I reacted in front of him. I’ll just have to apologize to him and try to get past this. I’ll have to get him to understand that nothing can happen between us, especially if he is my student. That’s what is best for him ... and for me. Yep, just nip it in the bud before anything can begin. I didn’t kiss him or anything like that.”

She then turned her head like she was responding as someone else. “Even though you wanted him to take you right here on the desk!”

She started with the quizzes again. The first few were easy to grade as they were all correct. Then his came up, and she quickly graded his quiz and, of course, there were no wrong answers. She could not help it and thought to herself, ‘Just like choosing him could not possibly be a wrong answer. It felt so right, how could it be wrong?’

With the remainder of her free lunch hour, she started a checklist of what she wanted in a man. It was the same list she had mentally begun back in high school but, of course, it had been amended and updated several times. She had to admit to herself Tim Murphy was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen in her life, and that was including famous men she had seen on TV or in movies.

As she went down the list of the characteristics of her perfect man, Tim Murphy was matching each line of her perfect-man checklist. She quickly reset herself to grading the quizzes and eventually finished them while still thinking about Tim. Eventually, she started grading the quizzes from the earlier classes to stop thinking about how his strong hand perfectly molded to her face, and she felt so secure there with this man.

“Good God, I’m glad I planned on going to the gym after work today, I might need the other pair of panties in my bag.”

Tim knew he needed to take a moment and get his mind back from fantasy land. The only thing he knew for sure was he did not want anyone else knowing what had just happened. That was the main thought circulating through his head. He was still having trouble believing what just happened had just happened, but he did not want anything to possibly mess it up, either.

He knew if his friends got a whiff that something was wrong, the high school rumor mill, not to mention his own friends and teammates’ locker room talk, would fire off like a rocket into space. If he let on that anything may have happened while in Ms. Holmes’ classroom, the rumors would have spun their own narrative -- with Ms. Holmes as the feature attraction to a football team gangbang by the end of the day.