DETENTION SUCKS

copyright: Lesley Tara, 2009


I was not usually a naughty girl at school, but there was something about Miss Wilton that made me act badly around her. Although she was comparatively young, she was one of the strictest and most authoritarian of our teachers, and she always seemed to have a particular down on me – criticising my work, and pulling me up sharply for little things like running in the corridor between classes, the sort of things that everyone did and were nothing out of the ordinary. I was not sure of her age: she had been teaching at our school for several years, and was either in her late 20s or perhaps a little over 30. She was always dressed very smartly in a rather severe style – trouser suits, or jackets and matching skirts, in a dark colour; generally black, but sometimes navy blue or a charcoal grey, with a faint pinstripe. She favoured pencil-cut skirts which suited her slender waist, trim ass and slim legs, and which were long enough to just overlap the top of the boots that she liked to wear. Under her suit jackets she usually had a high-neck buttoned blouse in white, and when she walked or turned round there was just the hinted outline of a dark-coloured bra and a fuller figure than her austere style of ‘professional’ clothes would suggest. She had dark hair kept fairly short in a neat cut that shaped her face, which would be attractive if she smiled instead of looking so stern and sharp all of the time.

At the time this happened, I had just turned sixteen. Our school was co-ed but I hadn’t felt very attracted to any of the boys or had a regular boyfriend, just messed around a bit at parties as we all did, allowing some heavy petting but nothing further. I was one of a little clique of female friends and spent most of my free time with them, in and out of school; we weren’t quite the coolest set, but were not far behind and quite ‘in’, and we were all good-looking and up with the fashions. At this time I was about 5 feet 5 inches, and my figure was coming in nicely – well-shaped breasts that were starting really to need the support of a bra and, if I say so myself, a really pert ass and good legs. My hair is naturally brownish, but I had it dyed blonde in a layered cut that made it quite thick and bouncy. The school was old-fashioned in many ways, and one of these was its strict uniform rules. So on this day I was dressed as usual like the all other girls, in black shoes, white ankle socks (no tights or stockings allowed), a plain grey knee-length pleated skirt, white shirt and school tie, and a matching grey jacket with the school badge on the left breast.

Miss Wilton was our maths teacher, and it didn’t help that I have never been good at maths. On this warm afternoon in late spring my concentration wandered more than usual, and she had already reprimanded me for inattention a couple of times. The next time she was quite sarcastic about my ‘wool-gathering’ and remarked that I must have ‘cotton wool for brains’, and some of the other pupils smirked which got me cross. I glared at her and muttered under my breath ‘dyke bitch’ – I still have no idea why that expression came to mind, but I hadn’t been careful enough because she must have heard it (I don’t think anyone else did, as she had come to stand near my desk while she was telling me off). She went stiff and quite white, I thought with anger, and immediately gave me a detention, telling me to report to her classroom fifteen minutes after the end of the school day, which finished at 3.30 p.m.

My friends commiserated with my bad luck, and left as the school quickly emptied of both pupils and staff on this bright and sunny afternoon. Feeling victimised, I trailed grumpily along to Miss Wilton’s classroom, deliberately arriving about five minutes late. Her room was the last one on the right in the upper corridor of the science and maths block, which was now quiet and deserted. When I arrived at Miss Wilton’s room I saw that she was the only other person there. Although it was warm weather, today she was wearing her usual black boots and a closely tailored black skirt; she had taken off the matching jacket and hung it over the back of her chair. She was standing beside her desk, and seemed a little pre-occupied. When I came in, she swung towards me and – before I could trot out some lame excuse for being tardy – she asked me sharply why I had used those words in the classroom.

There was something about her demeanour and tone of voice that was a little bit off – just a hint of nervousness in her normally steely authority, and somehow I picked up on it.