Page 2 of Disobedient
November wormed his way into popularity with a charming smile and an easygoing personality. It didn’t hurt that he was conventionally good-looking. Summer was a bigger girl, which never boded well. I thought she was pretty, but the other kids didn’t. She found her place in theater, becoming one of those artsy kids that I didn’t really spend much time with when I was her age.
The Clinton kids were as different as night and day, but if I was being honest, I liked Summer more. When she saw me on campus, she dropped by and said hello. Considering I hung out with her father almost every week, it would have been rude for her to ignore me.
Instead, I watched her come into her own. Her personality changed quickly over the years. Instead of hiding behind long sleeves and dark colors, she started to embrace her body. On graduation day, beneath her black robe, she wore a red dress that might have gotten her dress coded a few days prior.
“Are you going to the lock-in tonight?” Greg asks Summer as I walk up to their group.
November has his arm slung around Summer’s shoulder and he’s beaming as if it were his own graduation. “I remember my grad night lock-in,” he gives her a wink. “One of the guys on the football team snuck in some shooters and—”
Summer nudges him hard in the ribs when she sees me walking up. “Principal Briggs,” she says with a grin.
I shake my head at her. “If you hadn’t just graduated, we’d have the talk again, Summer.” Every other month for the last four years, she’s been calling me Briggs during school hours and Mr. Harrison when she sees me at her house. At first, I thought it was her own little rebellious way of poking fun at me because I’d watched her grow up. It was fine, it was hardly the worst she could do. But as she made it to her final days at NPHS, I started wondering if her little jabs were an attempt at flirting.
“I’m not a student anymore, sir,” she announces with a serious tone. “I’m an adult now.”
Adult, indeed. Not two months ago Summer turned eighteen. She was one of the handful of kids that graduated with all their rights firmly intact. She could vote, join the army, and even buy a lotto ticket. “Well, MissadultClinton,” I tease her right back, “are you coming to the lock-in tonight? I’m going to auction off a chance to pie me in the face. You can’t say you’ve never wanted to do that before.”
I participate in every school event, but this is the one that’s been the most fun every year. Half a dozen teachers participate and I’ve given kids the opportunity to get one over on me ever since my first year. One year I raised $205 for the school by offering to let the highest bidder shave off my beard. I spent a few months growing it out and hyping up the grad lock-in and it all paid off.
“Not sure I’m a pie in the face kind of girl,” she says with a cluck of her tongue. “But I’ll be there. My friends and I are excited to see the school at night.”
As if they hadn’t spent the last four years seeing the school at night. Their rehearsals always ran late and on performance nights, they were there until ten and eleven p.m. cleaning up. “I look forward to seeing you then. And congratulations, really.” I would give her a hug if we were back at her place, but there are too many students around. She’s spent four years carefully hiding the fact that we are acquaintances outside the Naughty Pine High School halls; I don’t want to ruin that allusion for her now.
Summer shoots me a soft smile of understanding. “Thanks.”
I head off to speak to some other students and meet their parents, but one thing sticks in my head as I go. The hemline of Summer’s dress tickled the upper half of her thighs. With the graduation robe removed, I could see the swell of her hips. The satin clung to her chest, giving me a head-on view of all she had to offer.
When I started at the school a decade ago, I told myself I’d never get involved with a student. No one has really challenged that, but a couple of girls have flirted with me over the years. They were easy to ignore considering it was my career on the line.
But Summer isn’t a student anymore, she’s my best friend’s daughter. And she’s an adult. Isn’t that more than enough reason to let her flirt and tease me without feeling bad? Or should I stop this before it becomes something forbidden?
SUMMER
Briggs is a man in black, maybe even the original. I remember when I was eight years old, some boy at school pushed me down on the playground. I came home with skinned knees and tears running down my face. My dad was hanging out with Briggs and I told them both what happened. My dad said to push the kid back. Briggs said he’d take care of it.
The next day, he walked me to class and asked me to point the kid out. He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a black shirt that fit his broad shoulders like a glove. When he walked up to my bully, he didn’t even get down on the boy’s level. He hovered over him at his 6’3” height and said unwaveringly that if the kid touched me again, he’d regret it.
I think that was the first time I realized I had a crush on Briggs. I mean, I was eight, and I didn’t know what a crush really meant. I just knew that I liked that he stuck up for me when my father’s solution was to fight violence with violence. Instead of my dad being my hero, Briggs was.
My crush developed over the years though. As I grew up, he was always around to tell me that mama was crazy. He’d be standing at the kitchen island drinking a beer with my dad when mama told me to go outside and exercise. “You’re perfect just the way you are, honey,” he would tell me with a wink. “You’re beautiful.”
Briggs was the first man who treated me with respect. I knew he was as old as my father, but I didn’t care. I modeled my boyfriends after him: older, taller, and broad-chested. I didn’t have a lot of boyfriends, but they all fit the mold.
The decision to seduce Briggs was made in a drunken haze at a high school party a few weeks ago. If drunken constitutes a couple of wine coolers on an empty stomach. A few of the theater girls and I were hanging out in a friend’s hot tub talking about the men we were interested in. I never said his name, but Briggs was the man I talked about.
“He’s older, and I’m talking my dad’s age, older. But God, he’s so hot.” I might have been brazen enough to say his name if I’d had one or two more wine coolers.
Tilda laughed and sipped on a Mike’s Hard Lemonade. I’d stopped drinking, but she was determined to get drunk, call her ex, and tell him she wanted to get back together. “Girl, you’re wild. How can you date older men like that?”
I didn’t tell her that the alternative was dating men like her ex, John. He was a year younger than her but smart as a whip. He’d skipped the fourth grade and was the youngest person in our class. Everyone said he was a genius, but that didn’t mean he was mature. He still thought fart jokes were funny and making fun of fat girls was a hobby. I didn’t like him.
Emma rolled her eyes and told me to do it. “What do you have to lose? Unless he’s like, going to tell your dad or something. You use protection, right?”
Briggscouldtell my dad. They were best friends and saw one another at least once a week. During football season, Briggs was at our place more often than he was at his own. My parents kept a spare bedroom just for him. “Yeah, I always have condoms,” I told her. But the truth was, I’d never really gotten to the point of needing them.
I dated a lot of older men and we did a lot of things that my mama wouldn’t approve of. I started making out with boys and letting them unhook my bra before my friends had even found their first high school crush. I was familiar with oral sex, handjobs, and taking a man in my mouth. But it never went further than that; I always dropped a flag on the play when they tried.
But Emma’s words played through my head as I got dressed for graduation.Just do it.She had said. As if seducing my dad’s best friend and the school principal was commonplace.
