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I pointed to the opened notes scattered around my bed. There were still four notes, unopened.
“They’re from Andy,” I said shakily.
Angela picked one of them up and read it. “What the fuck,” she murmured under her breath. “What an asshole! Where the hell does he get off talking to you like this?”
I shuddered. “I don’t know,” I admitted softly. “But I’m scared.”
Angela frowned. “Don’t be,” she said. “He’s probably just fucking with you.”
“I hope so,” I mumbled. “I really do.”
--
The rest of the weekend was quiet. It stormed all day on Sunday, so I curled up by the window and planned my lessons for the rest of the week. Thankfully, there was no word from Andy…but troublingly, there wasn’t word from Thomas, either.
Monday morning felt warmer than it had in weeks. I only wore a light sweater over my knit dress as I took the subway to P.S.151. I wasn’t looking forward to Andy. Angela and I had decided that if he confronted me, the best thing to do would be to lie. Say I was sick, that I forgot, anything. And then I had to be firm with him – I had to tell him that I wasn’t interested, or that I was dating someone else.
When I got to school, I went into the break room. Thankfully, Andy wasn’t there. Michelle and Ruth were, though.
“Hey guys,” I said, tucking my sandwich into a corner of the fridge. “How was your weekend?”
Michelle stared blankly at me before turning and leaving.
I turned to Ruth and frowned. “What’s up with her?”
Ruth flushed. “No clue,” she said. “Come on, we should get going.”
I nodded. “Okay, yeah.”
Thankfully, my class was well-behaved. Even Brett didn’t make a peep. He was very obedient that day, and I wondered what the principal had said to him…whatever it was had seemed to work. Brett was a model student all day, and I was so relieved when the last bell rang that I gave all the kids a piece of candy from the treat jar on my desk.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Thomas. During planning, I even spaced out and started doodling his name all over my notebook like a little kid. When I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder, I shrieked.
“God, June, calm down,” Ruth said. She sounded exasperated. As she glanced down at my notebook, I grabbed it and tucked it out of sight, blushing furiously.
I narrowed my eyes. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “You just startled me. What’s wrong?”
Ruth cleared her throat nervously. “I…I wanted to speak with you about something.”
“Okay.” I swallowed. “That doesn’t sound good. What’s wrong?”
“Well…” Ruth trailed off, looking anxious. “I don’t know, June. Maybe I shouldn’t say anything.”
“What?” I stood up. My palms grew cold and damp and I wiped them on my skirt. “What’s going on?”
Ruth looked helpless. “Come with me,” she said. She led me down the hall and into the teacher’s lounge before pointing at the wall. “You might want to take that down,” she added. She pointed to a piece of paper tacked onto the wall.
I gasped. A piece of white copy paper was stuck to the wall, covered in crude drawings of a female stick figure with long black hair. Another stick figure – actually several of them, all male – were surrounding the female and laughing at her. I flushed hotly when I saw that all of the male figures had huge, crudely-drawn penises.
“Oh my god!” I shrieked. “What is this?”
Ruth looked guilty. “This was there, too,” she said. She handed me a crumpled piece of paper and I unfolded it, gasping in shock when I read the words scrawled on the page.
“June Rogers is a fuck slut!! She is a sexual predator!! She will fuck your male students so keep them locked away!! She is a pedophile and should be arrested!!!”
I screamed and grabbed the page with stick figures off the wall, crumpling it and tearing it into a thousand pieces. Tears stung my eyes and I covered my face with my hands before I began to cry.
“Ruth, what’s going on,” I cried, feeling helpless. “Why would someone do this to me?”
