Page 30 of Fundamentals of Chemistry

Janelle sighed dramatically. “The best kind.”

I thought about the copious smut in the romance bestsellers I liked to read and mentally cringed at the idea a teenager might be reading the same ones.

“And you should see him run in the mornings,” she continued. “He wears these short shorts, and his thighs—”

“Janelle!” Russel and I scolded in unison.

“—are like tree trunks,” she finished, completely unrepentant about causing our distress.

I rubbed my temple where a headache was beginning to form. How had we gone from apple picking to Cooper’s thighs in less than five minutes? “He’s a teacher,” I said. “And an adult. Not appropriate.”

She shrugged. “There’s no rule against looking. You’re not going to sit there and tell me you never had a hot teacher?”

Every pair of eyes turned to me.

“No!” I insisted. “All of my teachers were old enough to be my parents. Or grandparents.”

Miriam leaned in. “Not even in college?”

“Well,” I said and rubbed my palms, sweaty on their own accord, on my jeans again. “That was different. I was a non-traditional student—a lot older than everyone else. But I still didn’t thirst after my professors.”

“Nobody says ‘thirst’ anymore,” muttered another boy, and I flinched. So much for being cool and relatable.

“I guess we’re just lucky.” Janelle had the misty countenance of a girl crushing hard. “I hope he stays.”

The group dissolved into side chatter around me. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath. If I didn’t get this job because of horny teenagers, I was going to lose my mind.

The most frustrating part about all of this was that I couldn’t even argue with them. He was attractive as hell, physically at least. It was unfortunate that he had a personality equivalent to a porcupine. Though, the students seemed to like him quite a bit, not to mention TJ and the hens. This conversation was just further evidence that his prickly, marker-stealing, abs-holiness was reserved solely for me…

It was bullshit. I had been nothing but nice to him, plus spent hours improving his lesson plan. But, marker-gate aside (and that had been an accident), being nice wasn’t working. The man still hated me, and it was really starting to bother me.

Albert Einstein said that doing the same thing over and over expecting different results was the definition of insanity. I definitely felt like I was going insane… What I needed was a new strategy. Maybe I should reconsider Silvia’s suggestion. I didn’t love the idea of bringing tampons and voodoo dolls to class, but I could probably come up with something a little more me to send a new message.

I needed to think about this. I needed to research. Later. Now, surrounded by sweaty, eager students, was not the time to be plotting retaliation against Jack Cooper.

“Okay, let’s get back on track,” I said. “Who can tell me more about this bonfire? Also—where do I get one of those sweatshirts?”

Chapter 10

Game On

Thursday morning when, once again, there were no markers in the classroom, I’d had enough. If Cooper wanted to play, then I would play too. And I would beat him at his own game.

Monday would be the perfect day to begin my assault. I would play it cool for the rest of this week and let him think he had won. Then, I would implement a little surprise while my first period class took their quiz. I wanted to see Cooper’s reaction, to see him scowl and sneer when I had actually earned it, done more than just existed.

My goal wasn’t to ruin Cooper, and I didn’t want him to hate me. If anything, I wanted him to like me—I wanted everyone to like me. But being polite and friendly wasn’t working. The only thing left to do was turn everything on its head. Maybe then he would finally like me. Probably not, but maybe…

The mental gymnastics that served as the foundation for that hope were more messed up than the school yard adage that teasing a girl meant the boy liked her. I definitely felt like I was being more than teased. So maybe pushing back would garner some kind of kinship. A girl could dream.

My dad always prided himself on being calculating in his business dealings. It never really struck me as an appealing personality trait, though I could admit there were times and places when it was practical. But this wasn’t it, and certainly not for me.

If nothing else, I hoped to reach a truce with regards to the damn markers. Hoarding a personal stash felt ridiculous, but it was still better than the alternative of explaining to TJ why I needed even more markers.

The internet was a bottomless pit of office joke suggestions, ranging from gags so small that they might not be noticeable to things that I was pretty sure were felonies in most states. The deeper I got into Reddit threads, the more excited I became. Being petty would be fun. Hell, just doing the research was proving to be oddly cathartic.

While it was tempting to break into his apartment and explode a glitter bomb or lace his tea with enough laxatives to blow out a rhinoceros’s large intestine, I didn’t have it in me to be that mean. I needed ironclad rules for engagement.

First, the gag couldn’t break any school rules or do any actual damage. This was supposed to be clean fun with the intent to amuse and annoy, not injure.