Chapter 1: Life-Changing Events

Alex watched Miss Pierson's legs as they swished back and forth at the front of the class. She was one of the youngest teachers at the school, and by far the best looking. As a result, Alex was having trouble with a class for the first time. The trouble was, how could he possibly concentrate on maths when she insisted on pacing back and forth at the front of the class, the muscles of her perfectly shaped calves moving under the sheer material of her stockings.

He knew that probably a quarter of the class were looking in the same place. Another quarter were staring at her boobs, which were a perfectly shaped C cup. She never dressed to show them off, but she never played them down either, and they had enough natural majesty that certainly no teenaged boy could resist them. Unless, of course, it was for the lure of her legs.

The other half of the class were girls.

His grade was slipping. It would be a unique experience for him, getting a grade lower than A, if it weren't for phys ed. Not that he was a clumsy nerd type, but he found it pretty boring, and while he didn't trip over his own feet, he wasn't exactly physically imposing either. He had quick wits and good reflexes, but that just barely let him keep from getting hurt, and he knew eventually he wouldn't be so lucky. He managed Cs, and kept his head down.

Still, math had always been one of his best subjects, and he didn't look forward to explaining to his parents why he was barely managing a C in it. "Sorry mom, but I spend all my time daydreaming about fucking my hot math teacher." He didn't think that would go over too well.

There was a distant ringing in his ears, and it took him a few moments to realise that class was over. He blinked dazedly as he refocused his mind on the classroom. Around him, people were already moving, though a number of the boys were getting their things together without standing up, and awkward process which only announces what it attempts to conceal to the whole class.

Luckily, his worrying about his grades had allowed his own erection to subside a little, and he was able to stand up and gather his notes without any problems. With a last, quick glance at his teacher, he exited the class room and headed for home.

Alex wasn't nerdy enough to receive personalised bullying — he only got the blanket bullying that was applied to anyone smaller than average and smart, but not a social retard. So while he was jostled gratuitously in the hallways, his trip home was otherwise pretty uneventful, a pleasant six block walk through a suburban neighbourhood, complete with ornamental cherry trees along the street on both sides. Even the garbage cans in these neighbourhoods had a classy, art-deco look to them.

His parents were right at the bottom end of the income bracket this neighbourhood lived in. They sustained the lifestyle, but they both worked to do it, and their savings wouldn't keep them going for very long if one of them lost their job. On the other hand, both were good at what they did His mother worked as an interior decorator, with a small company that dealt with an elite clientele. It paid very well, but work was sporadic, tending to come in rushes as one person redesigned a room, and then everyone else rushed to surpass, or at least not fall behind, them.

His father had a steady job as a translator for the government. He travelled a lot, with diplomatic missions and the like. He made less money than mom, but his job was steady and secure, as were his future raises. Only a major faux pas could really hurt his dad's career, while his mom was always dependant upon the whims of some very whimsical people.

With hard work, though, they managed to maintain a very comfortable upper middle class existence, and if he had gone to school in any other neighbourhood, he might have been one of the school elite. Here Alex was the poor boy, whose mother had to work, and who had no butler, and who while he had most of the things they had, didn't have them as quickly, or in the most expensive brands. He was probably the only kid in school who walked home. It was only five blocks, but there were kids who lived closer than that and had rides to and from school (or in the case of the older kids, drove themselves.)

The house itself was quite pleasant — they had sold the house they inherited from his mother's parents when his grandfather died, and the equity in their own home, and added a large portion of their savings. The resultant down-payment was enough to get this place with only a very small increase to the mortgage, and only one extra year of payments. There were no financial problems they couldn't solve by moving back to their old neighbourhood, so they weren't taking a big risk living at the limits of their means. His parents were careful, avoided waste, and worked hard — barring misfortune, that was enough.

The house was a small one for the neighbourhood, three bedrooms, two bathrooms (though there was also a 'powder room' off the living room, which Alex couldn't have told from a bathroom if he hadn't asked the realtor about the apparent inconsistency in the listing.) His own room was nice and big, and caught the morning sun (and conversely, afternoon shade. Perfect, in his opinion — sunlight was one of the few things that could wake him up without making him automatically wish he were dead, and stifling heat one of the worst things for keeping him awake at nights.

He had a few friends who he normally stopped to talk to after school, but today he needed to get home. His mom had asked him to ride down to the antique store and pick up an ornamental throw-rug for her. Her current client wanted some authentic period look for the living room this year, and everything had to be just right. The rug had fit so perfectly that his mom had snapped it up. That morning, they had called to say they had another available, and since his mother was quite busy she had asked Nancy, the owner, to hold it for Alex to pick up.

Alex collected things for his mother on a regular basis, and he quite enjoyed looking through the store, poking through the shelves of weird old things that filled the back portion of the crowded floor. The back of the store was for storage of the smaller pieces, tools and primitive machines, jewellery and ornaments, the miscellaneous bric-a-brac of times gone by. All tasteful or interesting enough to be worth having around, and all crowded together on the shelves, with obscure labels that identified a thing without impacting on its mystery. The front and middle sections of the store was dedicated to furniture and other larger items, along with the sales desk from which Nancy minded her store.

Nancy was nice, pretty, and very intelligent. Not quite beautiful, and a bit on the plump side, but with the excess weight distributed in all the right proportions, and a cute, rounded face with the longest, darkest eyelashes Alex had ever seen, and a wealth of gorgeous black hair that shone against her pale skin. Her lips were red and full, but her mouth a little small, giving her a cute, dainty appearance that was emphasised by her cute, slightly upturned nose. She was friendly and chatty combining an amazing memory and an obsession with history with a wide streak of eccentricity and a playful sense of humour.

She had opened the store with an inheritance, and made a decent living at it as well as getting to lay her hands, however briefly, on some of the items she had studied in graduate school. She loved her store, and lived in a flat directly above it, which she had first rented and then bought outright, as her success mounted. She was not rich yet, but she was on her way — not so much because of business sense as because she was an expert, both on her product and at knowing who would want any particular item. Alex enjoyed hearing the stories behind different pieces, and she enjoyed telling them, so they had a relaxed, enjoyable relationship.

He arrived at home within ten minutes, and vanished up to his room. He had bought a few items from the store, cheaper ones with stories he'd enjoyed, or been inspired by. Or just things that looked cool on a shelf. A bit of it was touristy replicas from Mexico and India, things brought back by his grandparents from vacations. He was grateful for the effort — they didn't know much about that kind of thing, but at least they made the effort to know what he liked, and the items they got him were never tacky or ugly — just inauthentic.

The walls were a dark blue, a compromise between his desire to paint it black (back when he was 13, he went through a gloom-and-angst phase) and his parents desire not to have a dingy hellhole in their house. Two years later, he felt a kind of sheepish gratitude — the blue colour was soothing and had a classy kind of feel to it, and he'd been in a few rooms that were painted black and quickly gotten over the idea that it was pleasant or cool.

One corner had a tall bookshelf, crammed with books. His bed sat in another corner, beneath the window, and the bedroom door opened into the third. The last had a rug, a writing desk, and a comfortable wooden chair. The desk was cluttered with papers — his parents insisted that his computer be visible from the living room couch, ever since they found out he broke into the school computers over the modem and changed some grades. He ended up getting off pretty lightly, since no-one could find any proof except the rumour started by his own bragging. He had learned a valuable lesson there, but his parents had still moved his computer out to the living room where they could keep an eye on him.

In retrospect, he was strangely glad. The computer had broken up the look of his room, which was otherwise decorated with books and weird old ornaments. His sister said it was creepy, but he didn't much care — while he never actually told her how vapid and pointless he found most of her interests, that didn't change his feelings about them. He just wasn't stupid enough to think pointing it out would do anything but create tension, and despite their differences over such things, they had a fairly comfortable live-and-let-live relationship that he did not want to endanger.

Besides, she had lots of friends at school, and right now she wasn't doing anything to hurt him. She could easily sink him in advance with most of the girls in school, if she wanted, so it seemed foolhardy to court any kind of adversarial relationship with her. Not that he'd ever actually gotten up the nerve to ask a girl out. But he was planning on it. He just had to pick the right girl. The problem was, all the ones he figured he could probably get, he didn't really want.