“Attila Reardon,” I read from the class list on Monday morning, cringing. I scan the room with one eye open, hoping he’s a no-show.

“Yo,” a smart-ass voice yells from the back.

The students laugh nervously.

I consider the three-foot-ten, redheaded twerp. Lanky and oozing I-don’t-give-a-fuck confidence through his freckles, he’s a smaller version of four evil conquistador brothers who blitzkrieged their dubious legacies through the halls of Bracken Middle before him. If history and permanent records are any indicator, he’ll have lots of stamina to go with his smart mouth.

“You have two choices for how to respond when I call roll: ‘here’ or ‘present,’” I say.

“And you have two choices for how you want my fist. In your mouth or your ass,” he retorts under his breath. Then, to his friend, “He probably wants the ass.”

Laughter bubbles up between them. Silence falls everywhere else. The other students’ eyes bulge as they turn to me to see what I’ll do.

I lurch off the edge of my desk and pound toward the little Hun, stopping inches from his face.

“You trying to get suspended on your first day of middle school? Because that’s where you’re heading.” I point to the bolded list on the wall above the “Let’s rock” bulletin board Roxie made, which is cute, by the way. I’ll admit Roxie’s good at creative shit.

Crap. I’m supposed to be mad at this little fucker who just threatened me.

#StopDistractingMeRoxieRambling

“Rule number one: respect everyone,” I bellow a little louder than necessary, but I gotta make my point and scare the bejesus out of these kids. “That includes teachers, administrators, cafeteria workers, custodians, fellow students, and anyone else who happens to be in the building.”

Attila puffs out his bird chest.

Here we go. Another case of Little Man Syndrome, brought to you by the Reardon family. Short kids, boys especially, are the worst. They think they have something to prove and try to make up for their lack of height with an overabundance of verbal dick sauce.

“Only one I respect is myself,” he declares. He leans around me to ogle Roxie, which would be downright comical if I weren’t trying to put the fear of God into the kid. “And maybe that fine lady sittin’ up there in the front. I don’t give a shit about your rules.”

Oooohs! rebound off the walls, and my skin rankles at the little brat’s audacity. It’s one thing to cuss at me, but another to sexually harass my student teacher. The kid’s eleven, for shit’s sake. And why is this very white boy talking like he’s black?

“Okay, out you go,” I say, gesturing to the door, blocking his line of sight to Roxie.

Attila relaxes into his seat with a smug smile and folds his sticklike arms over his chest. “Touch me. I dare you.” All the blackness disappears from his voice with that threat.

I smile. “Not my department. I’ll let Officer Acuff do the touching.”

Attila’s face falls and he sits up straighter. Now he’s concerned? Go figure.

“He gonna take me to the Chokeman? I ain’t goin’. Ain’t no Chokeman gonna choke me out! I heard all about him from my brothers.” He executes an exaggerated full-body shiver.

“Miss Rambling,” I say over my shoulder to Roxie, “do you see the button behind my desk on the wall?”

“Yes, sir,” she replies.

“Hit it for me, will you?”

A couple seconds later, Jo’s bright voice opens up the intercom. “May I help you?”

“I need the resource officer to escort a student to Assistant Principal Herman, please.”

“I’ll send him right down,” Jo replies.

I lean closer so only Attila can hear me. “You’d be wise to straighten up. Starting the year off with a week of in-school suspension won’t do you any favors. Now, you can step into the hallway like a man and own your shit when Officer Acuff gets here, or I’ll have him forcibly escort you out of the room.”

He narrows his brown eyes and flexes the twig arms over his chest. “Come and get me.”

“Your wish is my command.” I turn away from the visual gridlock and return to my class roster, adrenaline burning my veins. I sneak a glance at Roxie’s magical boobs, hoping they’ll calm me down. She’s holding a pen over a notebook, watching whatever’s going on behind me, when her shoulders flinch.

A ball of paper bounces off my back and tumbles to the floor. Two more lobs follow—one hits my head, the other, my ass.

Amid bellows of laughter blooming all around, I freeze and lock eyes with Roxie. Her lips press together. She barely shakes her head, and I let out my breath slowly.

It’s all I can do not to turn and beat Attila the Hun’s ass to a pulp.

Who the fuck pokes the teacher-bear on the first day of school?

A Reardon kid, that’s who.

“Okay,” I holler over the upwelling of giggles as I return to my desk. “Everyone take out a sheet of paper. You’re gonna write a two-page essay on the dangers of lobbing paper bombs at teachers. It will include a minimum of five paragraphs, featuring an introduction, supporting details, and a conclusion. Whatever you don’t finish today in class will be your homework, due first thing tomorrow.”

Groans rise from every corner.

“I’m sorry. Was two pages not enough? Why don’t we make it three, then?”

“No way, man!” someone whines.

“This is suppose’ to be science,” another huffs. “Why we gotta write essays?”

“This class sucks.”

“I have soccer practice after school until seven,” a girl complains.

I cup a hand around the back of my ear. “Four, did you say?”

The door opens, and Officer Acuff struts in, decked out in his navy uniform with a billy club swinging from one hip and a holstered gun strapped to the other. He’s a tall, imposing black guy with a perma-scowl and muscles on top of muscles. He’s also the guy you want on your side for any spontaneous after-school football or basketball games that come your way. Underneath all the bulges and hard edges, he’s a pussycat with a weakness for karaoke power ballads, but these kids don’t need to know that.

“Someone needs a walk?” he asks, glancing around, his voice gruff and spiked. His gaze falls right to Attila. “You look like a Reardon. You got yourself in some trouble already?”

“No, sir, I ain’t done nothin’.” Attila’s grip on himself tightens.

Acuff lifts his chin to me. “This the one?”

“Yep. I’ll send the referral shortly,” I say, grabbing a pen and a triplicate behavior form from the stack on my desk.

He nods. “Staff development this week?”

“I believe we’re both scheduled for combat training,” I say, secretly referring to our usual pickup game in the gym. “What day are you going?”

“Whenever you are,” he says.

“Today, then.”

He rests a hand on the butt of his gun and grins in that scary way of his. “I’ll notify the appropriate parties.”

Every head in the room is fixed on our conversation, bobbing back and forth like watching a tennis match. Instead of a tennis ball, I envision Reardon’s bloody, pulsating heart, freshly ripped out through his snarky pie hole, doing the bouncing. Metaphorically, of course.

The students look terrified.

It’s fun to talk in code in front of the kids and scare the crap out of them.

Acuff towers over Attila. “Get up, Reardon.”

“Don’t take me to the Chokeman,” the Hun pleads, a lip quiver felling his façade of fortitude. <-- Did you see that? I told you I dug alliteration.

“You goin’ to meet the new Chokeman,” Acuff replies, grabbing the back of Attila’s seat and dumping him out of it.

The kid’s skin turns ghost-white. His Adam’s apple bobs. His fingers tremble at his sides.

I should feel bad for putting him through the Acuff wringer. I don’t.

On his way out the door, Attila levels a look that vows payback. With a condescending scowl of victory, I dare him to try.

The room is deathly silent following his exit. As the students feverishly write their essays, I complete the referral form and hand it to Roxie. Her fingers brush mine as she accepts it.

“Take this to Mr. Herman in student services,” I say. “As soon as class ends, we’ll have planning, and I’ll go up there and talk to him.”

Roxie drops her voice. “Is Attila really going to ISS?”

“Probably,” I say. “Don’t you think he deserves it?”

She half shrugs. “Maybe.”

When she turns away, I see the younger version of Roxie, sucking her teeth as she sinks into her seat with arms crossed, throwing all kinds of shade when the police escort arrives. It gives me pause. Eight years ago, she was the one smarting off, puffing up, acting out. My reaction was the same then as it is now: squash the rebel.

But that strategy didn’t work with Roxie. Or any other kid like her or Attila.

Could I be making a mistake?

Nah. Kids like that need authority to keep them on a tight leash. I push the doubt out of my head. I’ve never been good with guilt or second-guessing myself. Attila can rot in ISS for the rest of the year, for all I care.

When the bell rings and the students head to their connections classes for the rest of the day, I fall into my chair and swing my legs to the top of my desk. Roxie returns from the office and sits at her desk beside mine. She braces an elbow on the surface, propping her head in her hand. A hint of exhaustion underscores her whiskey eyes. She’s been quiet today, mostly observing and writing lots of notes. Probably praising me and my awesome control of the class. It’s a good thing she ended up here and not with some asshole like a Kuntz for a supervising teacher.

“What did you think about the first day?” I ask, flipping through the handful of essays in front of me, pretending to study them.

“It was fine,” she says with a forced smile. “Lively.”

“That Attila kid was something else.”

“Yeah,” she says noncommittally, arranging the stack of questionnaires I collected from students at the end of first and second periods.

I drop my feet to the floor and sit up, folding my hands at my nape. “Yeah, but …?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing. It’s all good. If you don’t mind, I’d like to schedule a few minutes for us to talk about my unit. I have some ideas I need to run past you.”

“Plenty of time for that later.” I wave off her request. “What’s bugging you?”

She sighs, and then blurts, “It’s the first day of school, and that kid is going to spend the rest of the week in isolation.”

Of course, she’d side with the little shit. She has a lot to learn about discipline if she thinks I was mean to poor wittle Attila. I bite off a defensive retort and aim for a softer tone. “He deserved it.”

“He was out of line, yes,” she concedes. “But I wonder if there was a better way to handle him.”

Great. She’s going granola on me? It’s not enough that I have to put up with touchy-feely Love getting all counselor-y on these kids, trying to be their best friend, and making sure they all eat breakfast first thing in the morning. Now my student teacher’s turning soft too?

“Lesson one,” I say, honing my voice razor-sharp. “At the beginning of the year, you have to be mean as hell with these kids. You gotta lay down the law. Let ’em know who’s boss. If you start with both middle fingers firing double barrels, you’ll be a lot better off in the long run. You can ease off once you’ve established your dominance.”

“I see how well that worked for you,” she mumbles.

“I can promise you, after a week in ISS, Attila will come back a changed Hun.”

She straightens, and her nipples pop on high beams through her yellow shirt.

Goddamn it, I want to lick them. They’re like little gum drops begging for a noshing. Try one, Mr. Slater! We’re good! they tease.

My stomach growls.

“I spent my first week in ISS in sixth grade too,” Roxie snaps, diverting my attention to her face. She looks pissed. Why is she pissed?

“I didn’t come back a model student. I came back worse,” she says. “Give me a chance to work one-on-one with Attila. Maybe the positive attention will be good for him. If someone had shown me a little kindness when I was here, I might’ve turned out better.”

I ignore her bleeding-heart rhetoric.

“You turned out just fine.” In more ways than one. “If you want to work with him, go for it. Waste of time, if you ask me.”

I lick my lips and turn away in search of a conversation detour from the lost cause of saving children from themselves. Finding the brightly decorated wall, I nod to it. The elaborate design features a cross section of sedimentary rocks with layers and features labeled. To the left are posters of rappers and rock stars interspersed with song lyrics and examples of slam poetry. The words “Let’s rock” sprawl across the top in thick, graffiti-style letters.

“The kids liked what you did with the bulletin board. I heard several of them talking about it. Nice tie-in between science and language arts.”

Her scowl dissolves, and a smile fills in the gap. There, much better. “Kendrick Lamar is one of my faves. I wanted to give the board some Georgia flavor too, so I added the local.hunny and Killer Buzz Float band posters. The Walking Dead zombies ambling over the rocky surface was an afterthought, but I thought it was a nice touch. Something the students can relate to.”

Her excitement over the bulletin board’s success is endearing, but teaching middle schoolers involves a lot more than putting up hip posters with catchy slogans. I have major concerns about turning over a class of wild-ass sixth graders to her, especially that last group. Sixth period is going to be our biggest challenge.

“Yeah, cute. I have a team meeting in ten,” I say. “Anything we need to discuss before then?”

She straightens her spine and opens her notebook. “I have some questions about procedural team stuff. Would it be okay for me to come with you?”

A perverse, protective instinct flares in my gut. Over the last week, I’ve had a driving need to keep Roxie hidden away with me so I don’t have to share her with anyone—not even the female teachers I work with. I’m not doing it to be a dick; I’m only looking out for her.

Roxie’s mine. I know what’s best for her—in a purely professional capacity, of course. She doesn’t need other teachers filling her head with bad ideas, telling her the wrong way to do shit—especially Witcher, Love, and Vino. They’re imbeciles, hung up on treating kids like they’re special snowflakes. The world has enough individuality.

I kept Roxie busy all last week with tasks I didn’t want to deal with while I went to endless meetings. She pored over the curriculum and searched for teaching ideas online, cataloguing everything she found in a three-ring binder. She organized it by performance standards, annotated, with tabs. She cleaned up my shelves and the science closet that connects my room to Vino’s. I can’t think of any more tasks to give her that would keep her away from the meeting.

Is that wrong of me?

Be real, Slater. You’re keeping her locked away so none of the other guys in this building will have a chance to woo her. Savage would be all over Roxie if you let her out of her cage.

So, my vigilance is totally justifiable. I’m protecting her honor as well as her teaching career.

#CarryOn

“Mr. Slater?” Roxie prompts with a raised eyebrow.

I shake my head to clear out a vision of her bent over my desk, tied up with red satin ribbons at the wrists and ankles. Blindfolded. And naked except for a pair of sexy black heels. #SomebodyGiveMeAPaddle #RoxiesBeenABadGirl

“Sure, you can come.” I wince at my gravel-voiced double entendre.

She grins somewhat guiltily and gathers her notebook.

“What are you doing after school today?” I blurt without thinking.

Well, I am thinking. Not with my brain-head, but with my really stupid other head that has a knack for finding trouble, usually in women’s pants.

Roxie clasps the notebook against her right tit, which naturally draws my attention to the double Ds that’ve been taunting me all day. “I, uh, was going to research some activities for language arts in the library until Mrs. Lance leaves. I don’t have a computer in my dorm room, and it’s easier using the ones here than going to the lab on campus or doing searches on my phone.”

Business. Of course. Because we’re teachers.

I’m the teacher. Soon-to-be Teacher of the Year.

I gotta start acting the part and stop following my nose every time I get a whiff of Roxie’s flowery perfume or catch a glimpse of her nipples puckering the fabric of her shirt. #GumDropNips

“If you want to use my computer, I’ll be here till about four o’clock. I have some IEPs to review and other … stuff. We can talk about your unit—”

The intercom interrupts me. “Mr. Slater? Do you have a moment to meet with Dr. Dragov?” Jo asks.

Shit. “I’m supposed to be in a team meeting. Can it wait?”

“She needs you now,” Jo says, her tone rushed.

I roll my chair back and stand up. “On my way.” Then to Roxie, “Tell Witcher I got called to the office. Take notes and fill me in when I get back.”

“You got it, boss,” she says, her dark amber eyes flashing with mischief.

Oh, Roxie Rambling, I got your mischief right here. Observe Exhibit C:

For sale by owner: Mischief, tucked away in a hidden cul-de-sac in the hot, highly affluent neighborhood of my pants. #InquireWithin

With a grunt, I enter the hall and dodge the minefield of lost kids clutching their sweaty, wrinkled schedules on my way to the front of the building. The door to the Dragonlady’s office is closed, so I’m made to wait for ten minutes. Like I have time for this shit.

Frustration burning up my gullet like acid, I tap my foot, as if that’ll hurry things along. Finally, Kuntz the Greater comes out, yakking over her shoulder as she’s wont to do. I swear, that woman loves the sound of her own voice more than she loves Kuntz the Lesser. I bet she does him doggy-style with a strap-on every Sunday before church.

“... don’t have to send me the list,” Darcy says, glancing at me as if I’m a mold spore. “I have a photographic memory. Thanks, Sharon.”

I have a photographic memory, I mimic snidely in my head, shaking it like a bobblehead doll.

The fact that Kuntz and Dragov are on a first-name basis and get together for grilling and funsies on the weekends furrows the wrinkles on my balls. Dragov’s probably gunning for Kuntz the Greater to win TOTY for the second year in a row. Ain’t gonna happen. At least, not fair and square. I resist the overwhelming urge to jab my finger down the back of my throat.

I stand as the Dragonlady fills the doorway. Her physical stature may be petite, but her presence overcompensates for it in the way only an evil dictator’s can. She levels me with an inscrutable, unpleasant stare and gestures for me to come in.

“Sit down,” she commands as she assumes her throne behind the desk. I check to see if there’s a pile of gold pieces under it that she lords over as she breathes fire on peons who dare to enter her domain. Nothing visible. Trap door, perhaps?

Dragov folds her gnarled talons on the polished wood in front of her. Her crystalline blue eyes bore into my soul, demanding answers, or possibly a blood sacrifice. “Tell me what happened with Attila Reardon.”

That’s what this is about? Shit, I thought I was in trouble.

“He was disruptive and disrespectful,” I say.

“I don’t need your assessment of his behavior. Anecdotal notes. Abbreviated.”

I squirm in the hard chair. “He said he didn’t give a—quote—‘shit’ about my rules. I called for the resource officer to remove him.”

“He claims you threatened him,” she volleys back. “Told him to—quote—‘own his shit.’”

“Wait a minute. He threatened me first,” I retort. “When I told him he could answer roll call with ‘here’ or ‘present,’ he said I had two choices of how I wanted his fist—ass or mouth. Ask my student teacher. She saw everything.”

“I don’t need to remind you, Mr. Slater, that you’re here not only to educate your students but also to act as a role model for appropriate conduct.”

Did she even hear what I said? If Chokeman were still principal, Attila would probably be heading to alternative school for a semester. Chokeman might’ve been a teacher-humping perv, but he didn’t tolerate threats, no matter how empty.

“Inappropriate language will not be tolerated. This is your one and only warning. There won’t be a next time.” Dragov speaks the last sentence with the kind of authority that leaves no question as to her sincerity. “You’ll receive a copy of the formal report I’m filing in your district personnel folder.”

I spring forward, ramrod straight. She can’t file a report on me. It’ll ruin my chances at winning Teacher of the Year. Besides, that little shit-Hun started it!

“What’s Attila’s punishment, then?” I stammer.

She glances at my referral form and tosses it into the trash can. “Silent lunch for the rest of the week.”

After my bluster and bragging about what was going to happen to him in front of the entire class, all he’s getting is silent lunch? That I’m responsible for monitoring?

“We can’t put students in ISS the first week of school without good reason. We’ll have nothing to hold over their heads for the rest of the year.” She turns to her computer and shoos me away like an annoying gnat. “That’s all.”

I stand, glaring at her, hands fisting in my pockets. She glances up. “Oh, one more thing. I don’t have your lesson plans for this week. They were due at eight o’clock this morning. Drop them in my box before you leave for the day.”

How dare she discount my side of the story and stand with a student? Not only that, but now this bitch has me doubting myself. What is it with the women in this school?

A lower my head and shuffle out of Dragov’s office, dazed. Stunned. Utterly shocked by this turn of events. The Dragonlady clearly has it in for me. Her accusations and rude dismissal make me feel two feet tall.

Maybe Attila’s not the only one having a Little Man Syndrome relapse today.

Well, I’ve got just the remedy for that ego-deflating malady. Savage and I are gonna hit the hotel bar after work. Mindless fucking makes everything better.

---