Cougar

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PRESENT DAY
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God, was it hot today.

My classroom felt like it was set in the middle of a campfire. And even worse, it was making me start to sweat. I dreaded the heat because of its unfortunate effect on me.

I got up from my seat, the burning becoming intense. I hoped I could make it to the bathroom before bursting out in tears.

I interrupted my second period Creative Writing class as they carried on with their ‘silent reading.’

“I need to use the crappa,” I blurted, heading for the door, earning laughs. Breaking into the hallway, I limped my way to the restroom.

Oh god. Fuck eczema, seriously. The painful itch was starting to kill me. The sweat on my skin felt like acid.

The hall seemed to stretch and narrow, making the walk feel like years. I was literally on the verge of tears when I finally jogged through the door of the teachers’ restroom. I closed its door behind me and leaned up against it.

My nails shredded through my jeans, but didn’t satisfy the insane itch. I knew there was nothing I could do to ease the pain, and scratching only made it worse. I slipped down to sit on the floor and held in the tears.

I was done crying over this stupid skin condition. As I sat there waiting for it to subdue itself, I thought an ironic thought.

I could make my class write about their most painful thing they ever felt. This somehow being a distraction to me, I soon forgot all about the unbearable irritation spreading over my legs.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled open the door and headed back for my classroom. I made rash apologies (heh heh rash) to the students and came around to lean on the podium. My English teacher in eleventh grade had the same one. When she retired, I got it from her.

I gave a look to the clock then at them.

“Right, so,” I popped my foot up onto the railing. “Think of the most painful thing you’ve ever experienced and jot them down - at least three.” The sound of twenty-two notebooks being flipped open was made. I waited for the room to fall silent before making some noise of my own.

I grabbed the open pack of Poptarts I started eating earlier, but never finished.

“Does anyone want these?”

Heads popped up and I got several ‘I do!’s in return. To make it fair, I gave it to the quiet girl sitting in the front row. She looked at the blue package, then up at me with a smile.

“Thank you.”

“Welcome.”

After everyone laughed, the room went quiet again. I tried not to tap my feet as I waited for a number of minutes to pass before I asked, “We good?” Seeing them nod, I picked up the green paper that had the seating chart on it. I went on. “Anyone want to share?”

About three hands went up. I pointed to a girl sitting in the back as she added the finishing touches to her list. I took that time to put a tally mark next to her name - Gillian. It’s for participation points. More like bonus; I don’t like making people talk when they don’t want to - especially in front of a class full of teens.

Cracking her knuckles, Gillian spoke.

“In my house, we have this…” She paused to look up at the ceiling. “Well, it’s hard to explain, but in the kitchen, we have the hanging cabinets - does anyone know what I’m talking about? Anyway, I was chasing my brother and he ran into the kitchen; I slipped and slammed my head right into one of the cabinets. It hurt.”

Her story got groans of pain and laughs.

Up next, I called on Jenny - a blonde girl just like Gill. She sat in the center of the room.

She summed her story up very quickly.

“When I tore my ACL.”

“Soccer?” I guessed after a sharp intake of breath. She nodded, then went on to explain how it felt. Lovely. As much as I didn’t want to hear her reenact the sound it made, her normally quiet voice was booming. To keep myself from gagging, I focused on giving her two participation points. When she was finally done talking and everyone stopped grimacing at her, I added, “You get bonus points if you make someone cringe or throw up with your story - keep that in mind.”

“I’m gonna nail it,” Gill announced, hands flinging into the air. Her smile grew when the class laughed at her. She’s what you would call a ‘class clown,’ but she’s not nearly as annoying as Elias is. He’s in my fourth period class and never shuts up.

Knowing Gill never fails to disappoint with her gruesome details, I nodded, already regretting saying that. School’s only been in session for about a week and she’s already given insane details about anything and everything.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that.”

The third hand that had popped up earlier wasn’t there anymore, so I went to step two of this writing process. “Take those ideas and narrow it down to one. We’re goin’ to either do a poem or story on it. Whichever you want.”

Someone asked from the…somewhere, “Narrative?”

I nodded, watching Cameron get up from his seat to throw a scrape of notebook paper into the rubbish bin. Reaching down to pick it back up when he missed the bin completely, he made a comment. “Didn’t you say your English teacher made you do these? Or was that something else?”

“A story about your worst pain?” Dropping down in his seat, he nodded at me. I grabbed my Propel bottle from my desk before answering him. I took a drink. “Yeah, actually. A lot of the stuff we’ll be doing is what she had us do, so you can use what I turned in as examples, if you’d like.”

Gill interrupted. “Wait. What’d you write yours about?”

“When I first realised I had eczema - does everyone know what that is?” Shaking heads told me to explain. I glanced up at the ceiling, trying to figure out how to word it. Went with the truth. “To sum up, it’s a skin condition that blatantly sucks ass - seriously.”

They giggled. Adorable.

“My sister has it,” someone murmured from the left side of the room. When they continued, I saw it was Stephen. “Her skin would get so dry, it’d crack and she’d have to use Vaseline on it. It was…gross.”

“Do you still have it?” Gill asked me, getting something out of her bag. A blue folder. “The paper?”

And since I did, I nodded. “Not with me, but if I remember, I’ll bring it sometime - tomorrow, maybe.”

There was a light knock coming from the left of me. The entire room looked to stare at assistant principal Mr. Shultz and the young girl standing at his side.

Gesturing to her, he put on a big smile. He introduced her as, “New student.” I gave her a look-over. She must’ve been sixteen - seventeen-ish. Long black hair and eyes engulfed by dark, heavy black eye shadow and mascara. To be honest, she was gorgeous. Kind of looked like Taylor Momsen, like, Gossip Girl Taylor Momsen, except - obviously - not a blonde. I think she might’ve been her, seriously. I tried to avoid eye contact with the parts of her that weren’t near her face, slyly taking a peek, nonetheless.

Her petite body was barely covered by her red tank top and tight acid washed shorts.

I wanted to slap myself for thinking she was attractive. A non-school appropriate kind of attractive. Especially when the words ‘new student’ reverbed in my head.

That’s the thing that sucks about getting older: everyone who is even slightly hot is underage.

But it doesn’t matter. I have Ally.

I stopped gawking at her to smile nicely.

“Oh. Hi.”

She put out an awkward smile, looking from me to around the room at all the faces staring at her as well. She mumbled out, “Hello.” She had a slight accent to her voice.

Mr. Shultz’s voice nearly gave everyone a heart attack since they had to listen up for New Girl’s quiet response to my greeting.

He bellowed, “Her name’s Rebeca; she’s from Brazil. Speaks almost no English. Good luck.” And with that, he gave us all a cynical smile before stepping out the room, turning down the hall.

“….’Kay then.” I looked around the room for a place she could sit. Finding an empty spot, first row, second column, I said, “ZK.” Zachary Keltz looked up from his crotch. I heard him glide his phone shut.

Letting it slide, I turned to Rebeca. “You can sit by him for now.”

I’m assuming she understood me, because she craned her neck to see him, then nodded at me. Absolutely everyone watched her take her seat.

I took the three steps over to my desk to grab the stack of rubrics. I held them up. “Volunteers to pass this out?” Gill hopped up. I decided to explain to Rebeca what they were for. She looked at me when I spoke and she realised it was directed at her. “We’re writing a poem or a story involving the most painful thing you’ve ever experienced, so - broken bone, an accident of some sort. Whatever.”

Remembering something, I added loudly for the rest of the class to hear, “I booked us for computer lab Monday and Tuesday of next week.”

Gill, as always, was the one to ask the questions.

“When’s it due?”

I shrugged, not really having a set date. “We’ll see where we’re at Tuesday and if you all need it, I’ll give you a few more days.”

I got massive feedback on that. All involved thank you’s.

-

“She’s taking my art class,” Ellie informed me, beaming. After shoving a bite of a Doritos Locos Taco into her mouth, she groaned. “She’s so fuckin' hot; I want to die.” My sister's got one of those real posh Strayan accents going. Most times she sounds more British than Australian.

I chuckled at her, tipping the large plastic cup back to take a swig of my Baja Blast. I wagged my finger at her in a scolding fashion, but warned simply, “Shelby. What would she think?” Ellie smiled at me and shrugged.

“Threesome, duh.”

I shot out a laugh just as another body joined the table for a now routine lunch in Ellie’s classroom - the art room. We glanced up to see it was Ally. Unwrapping her Chalupa from its loud paper cocoon, she asked snootily, “Who are we crushin’ on, Eliza?”

Ellie flipped the bird as a way of acknowledging Ally calling her by her real first name. Ellie didn’t bother to hold back her devious smirk as she said, “Rebeca Linares.”

Ally's face resembled: 0__o

"The porn star?" she asked puzzled.

“The new girl,” I corrected cheekily and unfortunately pictured Ally watching porn. I zoned out a couple seconds but was brought back in when Ellie started to talk.

To answer, El slumped back in her chair, hand going over to her heart before waving in front of her face like the room was horrendously hot.

"She's so hooootttttttttt!" she whined.

And that's my sister for you. When she got her wisdom teeth taken out, under the daze of the Almighty laughing gas, all she carried on about was how hot girls were and how much she dug 'em.

Ally and I both shook our heads, but smiled at her ridiculousness. Ally spoke, laughing slightly, “Shelby’s okay with this? She’s not gonna make you drop Rebeca out of your class, is she?”

“She only did that once,” Ellie hissed defensively. “And besides, I don’t plan on telling her. I’m not gonna do anything. I just think she’s hot. Plus, life’s unfair. She’s probably straight.”

Laughing, too, I pointed out something that should’ve been way obvious, “And she’s a student; you’re her teacher.”

Backfire.

Though at first, Ellie seemed to consider the information, she instantly paused to throw condescending looks at Ally and me. Her right brow rose arrogantly.

“Practice what you preach, eh?”

I flipped her off as Ally’s face grew red, her mouth scrunching into a bunched line. Shifting the subject back to her wrongdoing, I said to Ellie’s big head, “You’re also engaged, missy.”

She inhaled a deep breath, her face falling. “Oh, yeah,” she muttered, feigning disappointment. “Forgot about that.” She suddenly stood up, hand reaching into her back pocket. She waved her mobile in the air, taking the last bite of taco and throwing it into her mouth. She excused herself, speaking with her mouth full.

“Gotta call the wife.”

We laughed our farewells, watching her skip from the table, caked with dried glue and streaks of paint, to her desk piled high with artwork she was meant to be grading right now. She clicked a few buttons, pressed the phone to her ear and waited. Within seconds her face lit up and you knew Shelby had answered.

“Hey, babe!” she sang out, plopping down. “Miss you too - how’s work?”

From beside me, I heard Ally ‘aww.’

“They’re so cute; I want a relationship like that.”

“Easy,” I said, swallowing a bite of my delicious nachos. “Become a lesbian and join in. Ellie's already in love with you. ” Woah, lesbian is an art teacher? No stereotypes there.

Ally’s big smile broke out at me. She grabbed her cup of Fanta and brought the straw to her mouth, downing a big gulp. “Your family’s full of gays, isn’t it?” I snorted at how she worded it. After laughing at herself, she said, “I mean, your sister and brother - I know that’s not really a lot, but still. Geez.”

Yup. Both Ellie and Damien are big homos. I, for one, am not, though - apparently - if one twin is gay, there’s, like, a forty percent chance the other is. Which explains them, but me? I guess it only makes sense, really, that I’m somewhere in the middle. Ellie was born first (les), then me (bi), and finally Damien (gay).

Don’t worry. Our family gets more and more interesting as you read on in this story. I swear it.

Giving my attention back to Ally, I laughed with a shrug. “True, true - did I ever tell you that my dad’s gay?” There was a loud gag as Ally choked on her food.

“No way!” she wheezed, sounding skeptical. But I confirmed myself by nodding slowly at her disbelieving face.

“Way - but he grew up in a really homophobic house, so he legit went to straight camp to - and I quote - ‘pray the gay away.’” Her laugh was loud and slightly ear piercing - the classic Ally laugh.

“Did it work?” she asked, gulping down a few more sips of Fanta.

I scoffed at her. “Of course not - once you’re gay, you can’t stop. It’s a life sentence type of thing.”

She titled her head to the side in consideration. “True. Do you think that’s why he…you know?”

I did know, but was as full of questions as she was. “Maybe,” I shrugged. Suddenly feeling awkward with the topic this conversation was resulting to, I was desperate to change it. “Don’t know, don’t care. It happened.” Scoffing, I contradictorily said, “Ellie would try to pin this back on us.”

Seeing I was silently begging her to drop our last conversation and never pick it up again, she indulged herself in this one. “Right? Good thing she’s going to be married now - she totally would go after a student. Definitely someone who looked like that.”

I smirked at her, saying, “I would never.” Ally gave me a scowl, narrowing her eyes.

“Good.”

“Yeah.”

“I know.”

“That’s why I said ‘yeah.’”

“Y’all are dumb.” We looked up to see Ellie, done with the phone, sitting back down over here with us. To add, she defended herself. “Like I said, I got a girl, and shouldn’t be bothering with someone so much younger than me.” She slanted a look at us. “I know my boundaries and stay in them.”

Dumbly thinking I’d get the heat off me and onto Ally, I leaned in to sneer at her, “Yeah, Cougar .”

Ally whacked her hand against my chest, making me sit up straight. “’Scuse you,” she said with a head bob. “It wasn’t all me, buddy. If I recall correctly, you were the one that was all ‘We should do it, yeah, sex, yeah. Heh.’…like…?”

“I didn’t see you stopping me!” To imitate her, I failed to raise the pitch of my voice. Ended up doing the girl impression of a guy when I said, “‘Yeah, yeah, why not? Blah, blah. Sex, yeah, bleh.’”

She leaned back with her arms crossed over her chest. She had the look that made Ellie and I think she was going to ‘go off’ on me, but dropped it, going into a soppy tone. “But think about it, dude - we wouldn’t be where we are now, if it wasn’t for my ‘cougar-y-ness.’” The lady speaks the truth. Ellie even stopped to nod in agreement - after laughing at Ally’s made up word for her being flat-out horny, that is.

Ellie tilted her head at me, saying, “She’s right, ya know.”

I puckered my lips. Did I lose this ‘fight’? Still, I couldn’t deny she was right. Sighing, I gave in.

I childishly said, “Unfortunately.”

To show her happiness with being right, Ally jumped up only to bend her knees, hands waving around in the air.

“Horniness shall prevail!” She abruptly stopped to glare at me. “But not for you.”

“She’s sixteen!” I wound up shouting into the air. “I’m not gross like you.”

Her response was throwing her crumbled up napkin in my face.

I feel the love.

-

The next day, sitting back at my desk, I waited for second period to crowd into the room. I tried to greet everyone, but when Rebeca came up to ask me questions about the current assignment, I missed most of the class. After the looooonnngg bell rang, she thanked me as everyone skidded to their seats. I immediately got questions about my paper I had to write in eleventh grade.

“You’re still reading that, right?” Gill smiled big, kicking back in her seat, hands going to rest comfortably behind her head. Murmurs turned loud as more expressed their agreement.

I hated sharing my work with others, but knew how hypocritical I was being. I hung my hands at my side and groaned.

“I mean, I guess.”

I grabbed it from my bag and took a stand behind the podium. Gill didn’t hesitate to jump up, clapping her hands together loudly.

“Yeah! Whoo! Go Mr. Williams! You can do it!”

I put my hands up in a modest way as the class laughed at her usual overzealousness. I felt all eyes on me while the room went quiet. They waited for me to begin. I looked down at the paper in its horrid MLA format.

Eh. They better like it or their grades are done-for. (Author’s note: Oh, hey, you guys. Sup. Just wanted to say that some of this poem actually contains lines I used at the beginning of the chapter to describe what eczema felt like to him. They were just so clever; I had to use them in the poem. And yes, I wrote this for my Creative Writing class, due a day after this chapter is published (twenty-fourth of September). Just sayin’. Uhh, copyright ah0y-m4te or whatever my username is.)

-

Tyler Williams
Mrs. Orr
Creative Writing p.6
Tuesday, September 14, 2011

It started out as a blissful walk, but turned to pain real fast.
My skin burned and cried for relief, nails going in with hopes for the best.
There was nothing I could do to ease the pain and scratching only made it worse.
All that did was intensify what I felt, like I was one my way to a hearse.

I scratched and ripped my legs through my jeans, tears welling up in my eyes.
If I hadn’t known any better I would’ve thought it was acid being dumped on my thighs.
But it was both the cold weather and stretchy material of my jeans who were the real culprits.
Each time I tried to move and walk, they were there to remind me of the consequences.

Making the ten minute limp to my home, I was nearly in tears.
Time seemed to stretch and narrow, making the walk feel like years.
Skin was red and hot to the touch; I couldn’t help but cry.
Is life trying to take me down? That’s the only explanation as to why.

I need something to blame; I don’t really know what it is.
I guess I’ll just go ahead and say it’s contact dermatitis.

-

I slowly looked up from the paper, secretly dreading their reaction. Thank God - Gill hopped up, clapping loudly again. She cheered and screamed, getting her sought after response - laughs.

She said to me, finally taking her seat, “That was good. I liked the way you described it - like I could almost feel you pain.” She knocked her hand back to cover her heart in fake sympathy. I took a step back to bow without hitting my head square on the podium.

“Thank you, thank you. You’re too kind.”

*laughs*

I continued to talk, throwing the assignment back on my desk.

“It was actually a toss-up between writing about this and when I got kicked by a kangaroo.”

Cameron was the one who repeated incredulously, “You got attacked by a kangaroo?!” while Gill sat in shock, her jaw hanging low before letting out a loud taunting laugh.

I laughed at everyone’s disbelieving faces and cocked my head to the side.

“I’m from ‘Straya, mate - what’d you expect? But that’s a story for another time.”

Giggling, Gill was back to being the voice of the class. “Did you actually write about that, too?”

“Well of course. I’m not jokin’ when I say nearly everything you could possibly have a question about that involves me - I’ve probably already explained it in an assignment I had to write for English class.”

Again, while everyone laughed, Gill’s laugh was followed by her speaking. “My prayers have been answered,” she rejoiced, gazing up at the ceiling. “There are just so many things I want to know about you, but know I’d be stoned for asking.”

“Yeaaaahhh. You probably would be.”

I gave her a snarky smile, which she returned as everyone started to laugh.