The bell had sounded over an hour before, signally the end of the last period as Lauren Davis, head of the Social Studies Department, walked down the empty halls of Winslow High. The slender twenty something blond was carrying on an animated discussion with Marilyn Sudor, another of the teachers. The two had been friends almost since the day they had both started at the school, and Lauren often turned to Marilyn for advice.

“I really don’t know what I’m going to do with Harvey,” Lauren said as they walked.

“What’s he done this time?” the auburn haired black woman laughed softly.

Harvey Lipschultz was an aging relic of the Social Studies department. He was long past the age where he could retire, but he had steadfastly refused to do so. Despite the many problems he had caused her, Lauren had a deep affection for the teacher dating back to the days when she sat one of these classrooms as a student.

So far this year alone, he had tried to send Dana Poole, one of the most popular girls in the school, home for not wearing a bra. That action had let to a demonstration of support by most of the female student body who also then went braless. A protest that while not appreciated by the school hierarchy, was quite enjoyable to the other half of the student population.

He’d also alienated a significant portion of his black students with some of his comments, as well as made several accusations about the sexual particularities of some of his fellow teachers. Lately there’d been some talk that he might actually be lapsing into senility.

“Just another argument between him and Guber,” Lauren replied, making reference to Scott Guber, Winslow’s Vice Principal.

“What was it about?” Marilyn inquired, then added. “Wait, I don’t even think I want to know.”

Lauren shot Marilyn a hard look.

“Sorry girl,” Marilyn responded, “but if you’re looking for sympathy for having to deal with Harvey, don’t look at me. I would have let them fire him a half dozen times this year alone.”

The blond haired department head was about to say something to her friend when a noise from the classroom they were passing caught her attention.

“Did you hear that?” she said instead.

Marilyn raised a finger to her mouth to show that yes she did hear it, and that they should be quiet. Moving to the back door of the supposedly empty classroom, the two teachers glanced through the glass window.

“Oh my God!” Lauren gasped in a whisper as she saw what was going beyond the door. “I...”

“Shhh!” Marilyn cut her off, taking her own long look.

In the far corner of the room, visible only from the back door, were two students. One was instantly recognizable as Dana Poole. She was sitting on the edge of a desk, lip locked with another girl. The second student’s face wasn’t clearly visible, but what was clear was that she had one of her hands inside Dana’s blouse. Dana, in turn, had her own hand up the other girl’s skirt.

Before the two girls could become aware of the teachers looking in on them, Marilyn grabbed Lauren’s arm and silently pulled her away from the door and down the hall. She didn’t stop until they had put a closed door between them and what they had just witnessed.

“We have to go back there and do something,” Lauren said as soon as they stopped.

“Do what?” Marilyn asked. “Tell them they’re not allowed to kiss on school grounds.”

“We can’t do nothing,” Lauren insisted.

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Marilyn insisted. “With all the things that have happened in this school this past year, the last thing we need is another sex scandal. Especially one that you bring to light.”

The last part of Marilyn’s comment hit her colleague hard. A few months before, Lauren had practically walked in on two students, that time a boy and girl, in an empty stairwell. The girl, Susan Potter, had been on her knees, performing oral sex on Peter Nelson. Both of them were candidates for Student Council President and it turned out that the sex act had been a bribe to Peter to drop out of the race and throw his support behind Susan. After Lauren exposed them, Steven Harper, Winslow’s Principal, disqualified both of them from the election and the third candidate won.

What had shocked Lauren so much about that whole incident was the casual way both students viewed it. Susan had said that it was no big thing, rating oral sex no higher on the scale then Lauren had rated french kissing when she was her age.

And when questioned about the morality of trading a sexual favor in exchange for throwing the election, Peter had simply explained, “Are you kidding, haven’t you ever seen Susan Potter?”

“Half the students in this school don’t trust you, especially after you blew the whistle on those two,” Marilyn said. “Is it worth it to lose the other half for that?”

With all the real problems facing them, drugs, teen pregnancy, students dropping out, the fact that two students might be experimenting with lesbianism seemed pretty low on the list. Reluctantly, Lauren finally agreed with Marilyn.

The next day was Friday and the two teachers found themselves in the near empty teacher’s lounge, still discussing what had happened the day before. They were speaking in low tones, trying to keep the conversation private, but were still overheard by Marla Hendricks, one of the older teachers.

“I’m not surprised,” Marla offered her unsolicited opinion. “It used to be some girls experimented with that sort of thing in college, now it’s high school. With all the diseases going around, not to mention boyfriends who get them pregnant and then disappear, more girls are finding other ways to take care of their sexual urges. Besides, it’s not the worse way to have an orgasm if you don’t have a steady man.”

As Marla finished her coffee and began to leave for her next class, both of the younger women had to wonder about the last part of her comment. The way she said it made them wonder if perhaps she had some personal experience in that area. Bolder than Lauren, Marilyn asked just that. Pausing for a moment before walking away, Marla just smiled broadly at the question.

The loud ringing of the bell cut off any further discussion, reminding both Lauren and Marilyn that they too had classes waiting for them. They gathered up their things and began to leave as well.

“Are we still on for dinner at my place tonight?” Marilyn asked before Lauren disappeared out the door.

Lauren nodded that they were. With her on again, off again, relationship with fellow teacher, Harry Senate in the latter mode once again, Lauren had been pretty much keeping to himself in the off hours. Marilyn was determined to bring her out of her low spirits, but so far had only gotten her to agree to dinner at her apartment rather than going out.

Dinner went off pretty well, they both agreed. The meal was quite simple but then neither of them were great cooks. It was enough for the two of them to put the week’s problems behind them and relax for a while.

After dinner, Marilyn produced a second bottle of wine and they moved their conversation to the small living room. They sat on opposite ends of the couch and after they made themselves comfortable, Marilyn poured them each a full glass.

“Things any better between you and Harry?” Marilyn asked as she took a sip of wine.

“I’d really rather not discuss Harry right now,” Lauren countered, taking an even larger sample of her own drink.

“All right,” Marilyn said, “but just remember, if all else fails there’s always Guber?”

That suggestion caused Lauren to almost choke on her wine. It was public knowledge that Scott Guber had an almost schoolboy like crush on her. A rigid, no-nonsense disciplinarian, Guber was looked on as an almost neo-nazi by most of the student body and even some of the faculty. While Lauren didn’t view him as that extreme in most cases, the one time he had actually asked her out had almost made her nauseous.

“Well if I’m going to be stuck with Guber,” she joked after catching her breath. “I guess that leaves you with Steven.”

Steven Harper, the Principal of Winslow High was a tall, powerfully built black man. With a clean shaven head and a carefully trimmed goatee and mustache, he was considered quite an impressive figure.

“Hmmm,” the brown skinned woman said as she considered the idea. “That might not be so bad. Steven is a pretty big man. Might be fun to find out if that goes for everything about him.”

“You are so bad,” Lauren responded.

They continued to chat for a while, discussing some of the things that had happened over the school year. If nothing else, as Marilyn had insinuated the day before, this seemed to be the year of the sex scandal.

First there was a mini-scandal with Harry having kissed Dana Poole. It had led to her blackmailing Harry into helping her out when she was in trouble with Guber. Then there was the disclosure of a Pussy Posse game being played by the male seniors. A game where they got different points for bedding female students, with the most going for a freshman.

It was followed by the discovery of a journal by a teacher who died suddenly. In it he had written that he was sleeping with one of his students. In the end, it turned out that the whole affair was the result of his obsession with the girl and had never happened.

A more real affair occurred between Milton Buttle, one of the English teachers and a student. True, when he first met her, he thought she was a twenty-year-old Harvard student and not an eighteen-year-old senior. But he’d continued sleeping with her even after he found out she went to Winslow. The revelation of the affair had cost him his job.

“You can’t tell me,” Marilyn was saying as she refilled both of their glasses, “that a good number of the men at Winslow wish they couldn’t have traded places with Milton for a night. As long as they didn’t get caught of course. Sleeping with a student has got to be their biggest fantasy.”

“Right up there with watching two women,” Lauren said, realizing that the wine was getting to her as she repeated something Harry had mentioned to her one night in bed.

“Tell me about it, girlfriend,” Marilyn said, feeling a little of the wine’s effect as well. “It seems like there comes a point in every relationship that a man brings up the idea of a threesome. Just so he can see you and another girl get it on.”

It must’ve been the wine, but Lauren found the determination to ask a question she normally never would.

“Marilyn, have you ever done it?” Lauren asked, the meaning of “it” self-evident.

“Well to be honest,” her fellow teacher replied, “I’ve been hit on by women before, but I’ve never taken any of them up on their offers. Still, I have thought about what it might be like at times.”

“I can believe that women hit on you too,” Lauren agreed.

In the beginning of the school year, Holt ‘45, the popular student website run by Sheryl Holt had run a poll on what female teachers the students most wanted to sleep with. Marilyn had come in first, gathering twice as many votes as the runner-up.

Lauren had ranked lower on the list, barely beating out a few women almost twice her age for the seventh position. That had upset her so much that she had a friend hack the site and get the raw data for the poll. More shocking than how few people had voted for her was how many girls had taken the poll and voted for Marilyn.

“How about you?” Marilyn asked in return.

“Sometimes,” Lauren answered almost hesitantly, “I think about what it would be like to kiss another girl. Just to satisfy my curiosity.”

Marilyn laughed at her response.

“I’m glad you think it’s so funny,” the blond said, a little touch of anger in her voice.

“I wasn’t laughing at you, Lauren,” Marilyn explained. “A friend of mine, I think you met her once, Rene, the lawyer, told me a story about her roommate. It seems another female lawyer in her firm was having dreams about kissing her.”

“I don’t see what that has to do...”

“It was just that you used almost the same words that her roommate used to justify it when they did kiss each other,” Marilyn said, before pausing to take another drink of the wine.

“Did it satisfy their curiosity?” Lauren asked.

“Well to hear, Renee, tell it,” Marilyn smiled, “her friend came home that night with a very satisfied look on her face.”

Now Lauren paused to take a long taste of her wine. The look on her face was one Marilyn knew well. It was a look of remembrance.

“You’re thinking about Dana Poole, aren’t you?” Marilyn asked.

Lauren nodded her head yes.

“I guess I’ve been thinking about her too,” Marilyn admitted.

“Do you think we could?” Lauren asked, the need to actually say it outright not needed.

“Can’t see what harm it would do?” Marilyn smiled.

“Guess not,” Lauren smiled in return. “It really can’t do any harm, just a little kiss...”

“ ... just to satisfy our curiosity,” Marilyn finished the sentence.

Both women leaned forward as their lips met. It was a gentle kiss at first, just the barest caress of their lips against each other. Then it became just a little more intimate as their tongues came into play. The kiss seemed both endless and all too brief. Rather than satisfying their curiosity, it only seemed to intensify it.

“That was...” Lauren began.

“ ... Intense,” Marilyn finished.

“Again?” Lauren asked, unsure of the answer she would get.

“Why not?” Marilyn replied.

They kissed again, the degree of their connection being just a little stronger. Without asking about it, a third kiss followed without pause. To Lauren’s surprise, she found her hand resting on Marilyn’s breast, mirroring what she had seen Dana and that other girl doing yesterday. To her relief as she realized she had done it, Marilyn didn’t seem to mind at all.

In fact, rather than be shocked, Marilyn took Lauren’s hand in her own and slipped it under her blouse, bringing it to rest against her naked flesh beneath.

“Oh my,” Lauren said as she took a long deep breath.

“Exactly,” Marilyn added.

“I think that maybe we should take a few moments to think about this,” Lauren said as she reluctantly withdrew her hand from inside Marilyn’s shirt.

A shattering quiet filled the room as both women realize that they are the edge of crossing a line. They moved back a little further from each other, each taking another drink of wine.

“I think this is going a little further than we planned,” Lauren said.

“Is that a bad thing?” Marilyn asked. “After all we’re both adults.”

“I guess not, and yes we are,” said Lauren.

“So I guess the question to ask is,” Marilyn said. “Do we really want to explore this?”

“I guess it would be nice if we understood what the attraction to it all was,” Lauren replied in way of not giving too direct an answer.