CHAPTER TWO | DESIREE
Ask me what the deepest, darkest pit of hell looks like, and I’d draw you a picture of the first day of school at Hartford High.
It was five minutes til the first period bell, and the cramped hallways were swarming with hundreds of angst-filled teenage bodies still riding the high of summer vacation.
New shoes scuffed over the old tile floors. Twenty-pound textbooks were crammed carelessly into lockers. Gossip was murmured in hushed whispers, and insults were heckled with haughty laughter.
You could practically smell the hormones in the air; that unmistakable cocktail of bad body odor masked with AXE cologne. I fought the urge to snort a sinus-cleansing glob of hand sanitizer as I weaved my way through the first-day-of-school chaos.
A circle of reunited friends swapped vivid accounts of their summer break adventures. Across the hall, a pair of reunited lovers were making out furiously beneath a poster advocating the benefits of safe sex.
A tribe of bleach-blonde It Girls strutted down the hallway, then paused to take a choreographed sip from their matching Starbucks cups. An incoming freshman scuttled around them anxiously, clutching a printed-out copy of his new class schedule.
“Do you need help finding a classroom?” I asked him, trying to sound helpful.
“I’m not lost!” he insisted in a panicky squeal, then promptly scurried away.
Before I had a chance to call after him, I felt someone plow into my shoulder.
“Move your ass, bitch!” a female student snarled as she darted past me impatiently.
I sighed. Although today marked the beginning of my third year as a member of the teaching staff, I was still routinely mistaken for a student in the hallways of Hartford High School.
There were a few factors working against me, at twenty-five years old, I was the youngest faculty member on the roster. I was also short -- even in heels, I struggled to reach the 5’5” mark -- and I had never grown into my baby-faced features. Thanks to my oversized brown eyes and my round, dimpled cheeks, I still got carded whenever I tried to buy tickets to an R-rated movie at the local cinema.
I had tried everything to make myself appear older -- from wearing a pair of non-prescription glasses, to investing in a new wardrobe of ‘teacher friendly’ cardigans and ankle pants from Ann Taylor LOFT. Nothing seemed to work.
No matter what I did -- or what I wore -- it seemed like I was just destined to be jostled and heckled in the hallways, the same way I had been years ago, when I walked the same halls as a student.
I took a deep breath, then flung myself back into the current of foot traffic that shuffled down the long hallway.
Up ahead, I spotted a cluster of jocks in matching leather Varsity jackets blocking the main stairwell. Impervious to the students that were trying to squeeze around them to get up and down the stairs, the jocks were sprawled out on the steps like sunbathers on a beach. They ogled girls walking by in the hallway, then took turns muttering innuendos and exchanging high-fives.
When a curvy girl attempted to climb up the steps around them, they erupted into a chorus of cow sounds.
“Moooooo!” one of them huffed loudly, while the others stomped their ‘hooves’ on the stairs.
The girl’s face turned bright red, and she turned on her heel and darted in the opposite direction.
Oh, hell no…
My jaw dropped so fast that it must have hit the floor. My pulse surged from zero to sixty, and red-hot rage flooded my veins. I knew that I had to say something -- I knew that I had to put a stop to this! -- but my mind was drawing a blank.
I stood there, speechless, as I tried to form some sort of intelligible, expletive-free disciplinary statement out of the angry sludge that was surging through my head.
That span of a few silent seconds was all it took for the ringleader to glance up and lock eyes on his next target, me.
“What are you staring at?” he asked me as he rolled forward on the steps, resting the leather elbows of his Varsity jacket on his knees.
I froze. All of the rage immediately drained from my body, along with any sense of power or authority. In that split second, I wasn’t a twenty-five-year-old teacher on my way to my first period English class. In that split second, I was fifteen years old all over again...
“Hey!” he shouted impatiently. “I’m talking to you!”
He thrust himself up onto his feet and sauntered towards me, grinning menacingly.
What is wrong with you?! The voice inside my head was screaming. Say something! Do something! Speak up for yourself! You’re the teacher… you’re in control! You have the power, not him!
If the voice inside my head could speak out loud, she’d have the strength to move mountains. Unfortunately, there had always been a fatal disconnect between my brain and my tongue.
I had never been great at dealing with confrontation or speaking up for myself. When I was in high school, I had the same self-defense mechanism as a turtle, whenever I sensed danger, I would recede into my shell and hide.
As the jock stomped towards me, I found myself reverting to that same old strategy...
“Yoo-hoo,” he whistled in a condescending voice, waving his hand in front of my face. “Anybody home in there?”
“Maybe she’s deaf,” one of the minions back on the stairwell suggested.
The ringleader grinned, then he cupped his hands over his mouth and shouted straight into my face, “HEY BITCH, ARE YOU DEAF?!”
I flinched, and my entire body went tense.
You have to do something! You can’t let them get away with this!
“I know you can hear me,” the ringleader narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”
“Meeeoowwww!” one of the minions squealed from the steps.
“You know what they say about quiet chicks, don’t you boys?” the ringleader glanced over his shoulder at his posse on the stairwell, then he rolled his head slowly back towards me. He grinned, leaning even closer, and hissed, “They’re always the loudest in bed!”
On cue, the minions on the stairwell immediately erupted into a dramatic chorus of sex sounds; moans and grunts and squeals.
Luckily their sounds were quickly drowned out by the harsh ringing sound of the first period bell, echoing through the now-empty hallways.
The ringleader backed away slowly, shooting me a wink before he spun around on his heel and disappeared down the hallway.
I was left standing on my own in the empty, silent hallway. My knees were rattling and my stomach was still spinning in circles.
I felt weak and enraged all at the same time. Part of me felt like curling up into a ball right there on the spot and crying my eyes out. Another part of me wanted to chase after the jock and drive my fist into that stupid, smug grin until his face looked like a plate of cafeteria lasagna.
I couldn’t even decide who I actually hated more, the jock, for being a menacing asshole? Or myself, for letting him get away with it?
I was already late for my first period class, but I knew that I had to pull my shit together before I faced a classroom full of students. I pushed myself into a nearby bathroom and hovered over the sinks.
Without glancing up at the mirror, I cupped my hands under the sink faucet and let my palms fill up with cool tap water. I splashed the water over my face, and the tingling chill immediately soothed the heat that had spread over my cheeks.
I patted my face dry with some crunchy brown paper towels, then I slowly glanced up at my reflection.
I half expected to see fifteen-year old Desiree Leduc staring back at me. Instead, I saw a fifteen-year old girl trapped inside a twenty-five-year-old woman’s body.
Sure, I was dressed the part, I was wearing a navy-blue blazer, crisp white chinos, and a pair of conservative gold stud earrings. My dark brown hair was pulled into a neat knot at the base of my neck. I had even completed the ‘English teacher’ ensemble with a Hartford High School lanyard around my neck.
But when I stared at my reflection, I realized that I was wearing the outfit like it was a Halloween costume. It was no wonder my Ann Taylor LOFT wardrobe hadn’t fooled anybody. Regardless of what I was wearing, I still had the vacant, lost eyes of my sad little high school self.
I’m not that girl anymore, I told myself.
My mind flashed back to the hallway, and I flinched as the jock’s cruel words replayed in my head.
“I’m not that girl anymore,” I said it out loud this time.
I graduated from this hell hole a long time ago. I grew the fuck up. I worked my ass off and got a college degree…
“I’m not that girl anymore!”
The words bounced off of the tiled walls and echoed around me. I felt a chill rattle down my spine when I heard the strength and conviction in my own voice. I slowly raised my chin and pressed my shoulders back. With the right posture, the blazer suddenly didn’t look so bad.
I smiled at my own reflection, and the eyes blinking back at me in the mirror looked a little less lost than they had before. I straightened the lapels on my blazer and took a deep breath, then I walked to my first period English class.
I managed to maintain my confident stride all the way to my classroom. Then I strolled through the door and spotted the leather Varsity jacket occupying a desk in the front row, and I felt my shoulders deflate faster than a balloon in a room full of needles.
Wooooooosh.
“Well look who it is,” the jock grinned, leaning forward in his desk.
My shoulders were already starting to recede into my blazer as my body slipped automatically into turtle-mode.
STOP! I commanded myself. I’M NOT THAT GIRL ANYMORE!
With a sudden surge of strength, I forced my shoulders back and held my head up high.
“What’s your name?” I demanded, glaring straight at him.
“Why do you wanna know?” he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Are you trying to slide into my DMs or something?”
There were a few snickers throughout the classroom, but I ignored them.
“Something like that,” I winked.
Enticed, he slid back into his metal chair and propped his feet up on top of his desk.
“Well aren’t you just full of surprises,” he grinned, weaving his hands behind his head.
“Just you wait and see...” I countered suggestively. This time there were a few wolf whistles, but again I ignored them.
Instead of taking a seat behind my desk at the front of the classroom, I slid into an empty metal desk at the edge of the classroom. I pulled my canvas work bag into my lap and discreetly slipped out my pad of detention slips.
My hands were shaking, but I forced myself to take a deep breath.
You can do this, I told myself.
Gleefully unaware of the shit sandwich I was preparing for him, the jock lounged back in his metal desk chair as he smugly spelled out his name for me,
“Cody -- that’s C-O-D-Y--”
“Uh-huh,” I nodded attentively as I neatly transcribed the name onto the first detention slip in my stack.
“Last name, Wyatt. W-Y-A-T-T.”
“Perfect,” I said slowly. I finished transcribing his name, then I began filling out the remainder of the form.
Some of the other students had already caught on, and I heard them whispering softly and giggling. Cody, however, remained completely oblivious.
Once I had finished, I recapped my pen and stood up from the desk. My heart was pounding in my chest, but somehow I managed to keep my composure as I strutted across the classroom and hand-delivered the detention slip to Cody.
“What the fuck is this?!”
“That is one month of after school detentions,” I grinned cheerfully. “For inappropriate conduct towards another student and a teacher.”
“Wait… you’re a teacher?!” the shit-eating smirk melted straight off his face. “How the hell was I supposed to know that?!”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You shouldn’t talk to anybody like that.”
“Bu-but-- what about football?! I can’t miss an entire month of practices!”
“One month is nothing compared to the life sentence that you gave to that poor girl in the hallway today,” I felt my jaw tighten with disgust as I glared down at him. “When do you think she’ll be able to look in the mirror again without hearing the sound of you moo-ing at her? When do you think she’ll be able to be able to walk to class in peace, without glancing over her shoulder to make sure you’re not lurking behind her?”
Now it was Cody’s turn to play the turtle. He said nothing as he sulked down in his chair and folded his arms over his chest.
Content with his silence, I stepped behind my desk at the front of the classroom. I took a deep breath and pushed my shoulders back, then I glanced up at my first period students.
“Good morning,” I said. “And welcome to first period AP English. I’m your teacher, Ms. Leduc.”
I turned and wrote my name out on the white Dry Erase board, and as I did I felt a tingle of pride tug up at the corners of my lips.
It was only the first day, but this school year was already off to one hell of a start.
Desiree, 1, Everybody Else, 0