by Frank Martinet
Do you ever think about the future? Do you wonder about fate and the nature of choices and consequences? I find it fascinating.
I'm a sports fan but I rarely have time to watch stuff live, so I record games to watch later. That's the worst, because often I'll hear the scores or details from some idiot at work or a news broadcast or email or website. Later, when I bring up the game on my DVR, there's a weird feeling of power: I already know the final score. I know about a dramatic event that happens a quarter of the way into the game.
Yet the players - and I watch them carefully - don't seem to have a clue. The losing team comes out of the locker room with a swagger and confidence, not realizing that they are about to suffer humiliating defeat. Even seconds before a player makes the crucial mistake that will cost his team he has no inkling of what is about to happen.
I find that fascinating. It seems like one should be able to sense what's going to happen. Perhaps not the specific details, but at least the tone or direction. Shouldn't we have a sense of foreboding, a sort of premonition that something bad is going to happen? Yet there is nothing.
That Friday morning I was oblivious. I vividly remember my morning shower. You see, I was in a good mood. There was this guy I had a crush on. His name was Eric. He was on the baseball team - he played shortstop - and just a dream. The previous day we'd chatted and I had gotten the feeling that he liked me and wanted to ask me out. I was so hoping to run into him during the day and see if I couldn't get him to ask me out that night. I had been thinking a lot about Eric during the night and that morning I was aroused and hot. So my shower took a little longer that morning, if you get my drift. Okay, a lot longer. I must have come two or three times. When I finally got out I was a prune with wrinkled fingers.
I remember studying my naked body in the mirror. Keep in mind this was back when I was just eighteen and only newly a woman. I had some self-esteem issues. I was a bit of a late bloomer and my breasts had only become noticeable that summer. For the previous two years I'd worn ugly metal braces on my teeth and even though now my teeth were fine, I was still shy about smiling. Though intellectually I knew I was good-looking, I didn't really believe it in my heart. I tended to be overly critical of my flaws and self-conscious; like my big butt: I hated it and thought every guy I met was staring at my ass.
On this Friday, dripping wet from the shower, hot and horny from my imaginings of what Eric and I would do together, I looked my body quite critically in the mirror. I especially remember looking at my butt, trying to convince myself that the cheeks weren't too full and heavy, that I wasn't fat, that some guys liked girls with 'junk in the trunk'.
I was not very successful, doubting myself. For five minutes I tried various poses, hoping I could find a more flattering angle or a position that would make my ass less prominent. I clenched my cheeks, stood up straight, tried to straighten my back, but nothing worked. My obvious 'bubble butt' was still embarrassingly distinct. It was frightfully easy to do the opposite: just bending over a little or dipping in my lower back to thrust my ass out made it seem twice as big. But nothing I did reduced the appearance of those meaty cheeks. For about the millionth time I wished about half that ass flesh could have been up front, in my boobs. Why did I have to be so lopsided?
The significant thing about my ass-studying that morning, what makes it so memorable for me, is how I had no inkling of what was going to happen to my ass that day. How could I not have known? How could I have stood there running my hands over all that smooth, velvety flesh and not known that within a few hours that same butt would be purple and red and covered with blisters?
Of course in retrospect such criticism is silly. Why should I have known? How could I have known? It does seem coincidental that I happened to study my naked butt in the mirror that morning, but in truth I probably did that nearly every day. I was a teenage girl with low self-esteem. My body was changing and growing and I was overly sensitive. I examined myself all the time, wondering and wishing. I probably spent time that morning looking at my tits, too, but I just don't remember that because they didn't get spanked. If nothing had happened that Friday I would never have remembered that morning ritual. It would have been a routine day like any other. But considering what did happen, and how my butt was transformed from smooth pale cream to raw hamburger, suddenly that ordinary self-study magnified into something far more dramatic and significant.
I went downstairs for breakfast, a routine of wolfed down cereal and toast and orange juice as I ignored my parents, kid brother and sister and ran out the door to meet my girlfriend, Amy. We walked to school together, neither of us dreaming what was going to happen. It was a beautiful spring day, sunny and warm, and we talked of exciting summer plans, the spring formal in a few weeks, and I told her about how I'd been flirting with Eric.
My first period class was French, a horrible subject, especially at eight in the morning, and the teacher, Madame Chloe, had strict rules forbidding English in the room. Thus I was completely baffled when midway during class, while we were attempting to read a short story in French, she suddenly told me, "Anita, M. Macklin veut vous voir."
"What?" I asked.
She frowned. "En cette classe, nous parlent seulement francais!" she commanded.
"Pardon, madame," I apologized and tried to figure out what she'd said. Something about Mr. Macklin, the principal.
"M. Macklin veut vous voir. Allez!" She waved toward the door.
Apparently the man wanted to see me. I had no idea why, but anything was better than being in French class. I grabbed my bag and bolted.
I had never been to Mr. Macklin's office. I'd met the man, once or twice, I can't remember exactly when. I saw him in the halls on occasion and he'd nod and smile at me. He seemed okay, if perhaps a little rigid. He was a tall man, heavyset, but not the athletic kind of weight. His was more paunch from sitting behind a desk most of the day. Some people found him intimidating and I guess he could be if he was upset, but he'd always been nice to me, so I went to his office without a clue. His secretary sent me right in.
"You wanted to see me, Mr. Macklin?" It had suddenly occurred to me that maybe there was a problem at home. Why else would I have been called out of class. "Is there an emergency?"
His gaze to me was cold and stiff. He motioned for me to sit and waddled to the door to shut it solidly. I sat on the edge of the chair nervously, my heart starting to pound. His expression was so grim and dour that I knew something bad had happened. I felt a chill go through me and I tried to remember what I'd said to my parents that morning. What if Mom had been in a car accident or something? I'd never forgive myself.
"Is my family okay?"
"Your family is fine, Anita. I haven't called you in here about anything like that. No, I'm afraid this is a problem of a disciplinary nature."
"Oh. You mean... I've done something wrong?"
"I believe so." He sounded gravely disappointed.
Now, I was no angel back then, but I was rarely in serious trouble. I might have skipped a class or two (probably French), I was tardy at times, and I once got detention for arguing with Shelly Beuller about why she was a ho, but I had never done anything deserving of being sent to the principal. Even at that moment, when I should have known something was up, I was clueless. I was still happy and silly, and had no idea of the fate that was about to hit me. Literally.
"What did I do?" I tried to remember if I'd broken any school rules lately, but I couldn't think of any, or at least not any serious enough to involve Mr. Macklin.
"Do you know Eric Orosco?"
My heart beat faster at the mention of my baseball crush. "Sure. He plays shortstop. We're friends." Hopefully more than friends soon, I added to myself.
"Last week Eric Orosco had a history exam. You helped him... study."
"Sure."
"You are also Mr. Novakovich's assistant for fifth period."
"Uh, yeah, I guess. It's really just a study hall. I dropped out of Algebra II and had an empty period."
"But you help him out. You run errands, fetch papers, and so on."
"Sure."
The principal looked at an open file on his desk. "Last Monday Mr. Novakovich provided you with the key to his filing cabinet."
Suddenly everything started to get clear. My heart began to pound and I felt the walls closing in around me. The room seemed much too small. I squirmed and nodded. "Uh, I guess so."
"Mr. Novakovich says he left you alone with the filing cabinet for a period of approximately fifteen minutes."
My face was growing hot and red. How could they have found out? What had gone wrong?
"Mr. Novakovich tells me that on Wednesday he noticed his mid-term exam was in the wrong folder. Actually, it wasn't in any folder: it had slipped between two folders."
I shrugged and looked away and waited, trying to not look guilty. Inside, I was raging. How could I have been so stupid? I was totally, utterly fucked.
Mr. Macklin pushed a sheet of paper across the desk so I could see it. I glanced down and my heart thumped loudly. It was a copy of the test with a '94' written in red and circled. I saw 'Eric Orosco' written at the top and my heart sank. The idiot! He was just supposed to get a passing grade, a C. The moron had aced the test!
"Mr. Orosco has never scored higher than an eighty percent in history, Miss Alan. Never. He's been averaging a fifty-four percent this semester. You can understand Mr. Novakovich's suspicions when he suddenly turns in a near-perfect exam."
My mouth was dry as dust and my voice came out scratchy, but I pushed forward desperately. "Well, we studied. I helped him study. He's probably just never studied before!"
"Then how come when Mr. Novakovich gave him an oral exam, he seemed to only know the answers to the questions on the test? He didn't know any of the surrounding material, nor the context." After a long pause while I stared at the floor and didn't answer, the principal continued, "Eric Orosco cheated on this exam, Miss Alan. There is no doubt about it. He had an advance copy of the exam and memorized the answers to those questions. And you provided him with a copy of that exam."
I bit my lip and stared at the man, then looked away in terror. My whole world was crashing around me. I couldn't breathe or think or move.
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