Take me, for example. Susan wasn’t that uncommon or complicated a name, now was it? Yet, even after almost a year of sharing a bench in class, she called me Sandy - if she deemed me worthy to be talked to at all, that is.
More often than talking to me, she just took whatever she needed. She had run out of squared paper? She simply took one from me. She forgot her ruler? She used mine, even though I needed it too.
Things came to a head one day before class had even started. I had arrived earlier than usual, and I had only stepped out a few minutes and gone to the loo when I caught her with my backpack on her chair and her hands digging through my belongings.
“What do you think you’re doing, bitch?” I shouted as soon as I realized what was going on.
She looked up at me, smirking like always and making no move to extract her hand. Her eyes twinkled, daring me to continue.
“Give me back my things,” I growled, my skin tingling with barely contained rage.
“Wow, cool down, Sandy!” Finally, her hand withdrew, but then she stare hard at me and pushed the backpack from her chair.
“Asshole!” I shouted and jumped forward in futile attempt to stop my things from spilling out. I was, of course, far too late. Pencils, pens, books and writing pads got strewn all over the linoleum floor, and a loose dime tumbled and rolled all across the classroom with a whirring noise.
“Oops,” she said with a grin. “I’m so sorry.”
With a huff, I got onto my knees and started to pick up and sort all the items around me. It wasn’t the first time that Allie behaved in such a way, but thing appeared to escalate lately. Perhaps being in her junior year and able to boss around all the college freshmen got to her.
I was just bent forward and pulling my history book towards me, when her expensive, neon-orange sneakers entered my vision.
Knowing that the last thing on her mind would be to help me pick up my things and expecting more mocking comments from her, I wasn’t prepared for her to crouch down right in front of me. For a moment, her skirt rode up and gave me a clear vision of her thong - a thin, equally neon-orange triangle between deeply tanned thighs which clearly showed the outlines of her pussy lips. What a slut! I tried to ignore that the flimsy piece of fabric probably cost as much as everything I was wearing together.
I put the history book down on the growing stack of books next to me.
Allie giggled. At first, I ignored it, but it grew louder and turned into all-out laughter.
I dared a look, and my breath froze.
“Give me that!” I cried out and tried to snatch the sheet of paper she had picked up from her hands.
“Oh no,” she exclaimed and jumped up, still laughing. “That’s too good to give back. Now who would have thought…?”
I wanted to die. Why had I kept that sheet, filled with scribbling, at all? My body trembled.
Allie lazily dangled the paper above me her, her index finger pointing straight down to the scribbled heart, and she whispered, “How sweet.”
I gulped, but I couldn’t keep myself from staring at the red heart that surrounded her name.
“It’s not…” I started to object, but she crouched down once more, and this time, the short flickering of my eyes to that forbidden spot between her legs did not go unnoticed.
“Lezzie,” she whispered, burying the fingers of her free hand in my long, black hair, pulling down until I was staring red-cheeked into her face. “Oh my god, you’re a lesbian. You’re crushing on me!”
I tried to tell her that it wasn’t true. My lips formed words, but those wouldn’t come. My skin tingled all over, and the way she had my hair in her grip and dictated where I looked at touched something deep inside me.
“Please,” I finally managed to whimper.
The calculating gaze which she ran up and down my body made me shiver with embarrassment. She slowly folded up the sheet into a roughly two-by-two square, and my breath hitched when she pulled away the neckline of her figure-hugging lime-green dress and pushed my unwitting confession inside her bra. Her eyes never left mine.
“Please, give it back!” I pleaded.
“But don’t you love the idea that your writing will be resting directly on the soft skin of my tits all day?”
Sarcasm dripped from her words, tears threatened to pool in my eyes, but visions of her perfect little breasts, small but firm halves of an apple, danced in my mind. When I finally managed to squash them back into a dark corner of my soul, I knew that I had taken too long. My hesitancy in answering was all the confirmation she had been waiting for.
The clattering of footsteps right outside the door broke the tension. Allie sat down on her chair as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, and I quickly put my things back into my bag and took my seat too.
The three lessons until morning break went by with agonizing slowness, and I embarrassed myself a few times when I was called on and had no idea what the class had been talking about. I earned three reprimands that day, which meant I’d end up in the principal’s office later that week. I was unable to look over at Allie. My thoughts raced.
Finally, the bell rang to announce the break, and I hurried out of the classroom and headed into the loo, locking myself into a cubicle and sitting down on the closed lid, desperate to get some order back into my tumbling mess of thoughts.
I was deep in thoughts and didn’t hear the lock turn. It was one of these ‘secure’ things for which only needed a coin to unlock it from outside.
I gasped when Allie was suddenly in the cubicle with me, smirking and giggling.
“Poor little Lezzie,” she drawled, her eyes twinkling beautifully with glee. “Afraid to confess your naughty thoughts?”
I looked to the side, unwilling to get drawn into her bitch-games again.
“Let me help you out,” she suddenly whispered from close up, so close that I could feel her hot, sweet breath caress my cheek.
I swallowed hard and closed my eyes.
What she said next made my stomach lurch and my thighs rub together involuntarily.
“Show me your boobs.”
My head snapped around and I stared at her. Whatever I had expected, it wasn’t this. Was there a chance that she…? My mind didn’t dare finish the thought. She had a boyfriend, after all. Anthony, or Tony as people called him, had been the biggest womanizer in our year before the two of them had hooked up. He was handsome, dark-haired, muscled and good with words. Also having a mean streak a mile wide, he was a female version of Allie and the perfect match for her.
I clenched my hands into fists. She was probably setting me up for some new kind of humiliation, I guessed. I couldn’t give in to the urge, even though she was smiling so sweetly at me now.
“Come on,” she whispered, “show me these pretty, big boobies. Let me see if they are as yummy as they look from outside your clothes.”
I tried to keep still, but then her hand softly cupped my chin and her fingers touched my face. The small sparkles that jumped from her touch broke my resistance.
My eyes blurred. My heart beat like mad in my chest. I was terrified that she was only playing with me and that I was making the biggest mistake of my life. My fingers, having their own mind, fumbled with the buttons of my shirt, and then it slid down my arms and laid my bra-covered C-cups bare to her eyes.
“Good girl,” she whispered, and the small hairs on my skin stood up.