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"May I go to the bathroom?" Brissa Reichenbacher asked as she stood up from her desk, assuming the affirmative.
"Absolutely not," Mrs. Stenning replied. "I thought I made myself clear. No one may leave until the item is returned."
"But I'll come right back," Brissa argued as she twisted the lower half of her body back and forth.
"No exceptions."
"But what if it's an emergency?" she whined as she continued to fidget.
"This is an advanced high school history class, not a kindergarten. I don't believe that will be a problem."
Brissa crossed her legs theatrically as she sat down with a "humph." She was being overdramatic, but she honestly was quite overdue for a restroom visit. She wasn't the only one, either. Because of the inconveniently brief breaks between classes, many students waited until after school to take care of their needs. The current situation seriously interfered with that routine.
The final bell had sounded almost half an hour ago, but Mrs. Stenning refused to dismiss her class until this matter was solved. She'd passed around four coins from the time period they were studying, but only three made it back to the front desk of the first row. The missing coin was quite valuable. More importantly, the teacher loathed the thought of having to explain to her superiors that one of the visual aids lent to her classroom had been stolen by one of her students.
Her class was in just as bad a mood as she was, with lots of complaints getting thrown at her and lots of accusations going back and forth among the students. Two boys were talking to each other when the teacher snapped at them.
"Is there something you'd like to share with the rest of the class?" Mrs. Stenning asked in a harsh accusatory tone. They each mumbled something sheepishly and then clammed up. The teacher glared at them both before focusing her attention on one. She loudly and slowly pronounced the young man's name. "Theodore Gillis, you're looking awfully nervous. Perhaps you have something to confess?"
"What? I...no, not at all, no." He was indeed sweating like a guilty suspect, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat even as he spoke. "It's just hot in here, you know, and it's like...I'm like...I wanna go home." He actually had the same problem as Brissa, but was too embarrassed to admit it out loud.
"We all want to go home," Mrs. Stenning said, "but I'm not letting you leave with something that doesn't belong to you." The last part was addressed to the entire class. Her eyes scanned the room, looking for any signs of guilt. "There will be no punishment if you return the item willingly. Only a small lecture on your life as a student and your future as a member of adult society." During the course of these few sentences she gave icy glares to half a dozen different students she suspected of taking the coin.
One student she didn't suspect was Kelly Carrington, the fresh-faced blonde at the fourth desk of the third row. She was fidgeting nervously like some of the other young men and women in the classroom, but the teacher's eyes always passed her without a second thought. After all, who would suspect a straight A student with an unblemished record?
Kelly was feeling very uncomfortable at the moment, but not because she was missing her after-class pit-stop. A large silver coin, warm with her body heat, was currently sitting in the valley between her cheeks. She'd put it in her pocket at first, but taken it out when no one was looking and slipped it inside her jeans where no teacher would search. She'd unintentionally put it on the inside of her underwear, where it had migrated to its current unpleasant position.
She couldn't return the purloined item. Not only would she reveal herself to be a thief, but she couldn't physically remove the coin from inside her tight jeans without unzipping them, which was out of the question. She was ashamed, remorseful, guilty, and uncomfortable, but she kept silent.
She'd committed the crime out of love. Perhaps "love" was too strong a word, but she had an overpowering crush. She'd given the wonderfully dreamy Ted Gillis all the signs a girl like her could show, but he still just treated her like a friendly acquaintance. She'd heard through the grapevine that the reason he wasn't interested in her was because she was too goody-goody. She couldn't wait to put her cleverly naughty side on display by showing him the stolen coin after class. Unfortunately she had to wait, because this class wasn't ending anytime soon. Little did she know she was setting her crush up for the biggest humiliation of his teenage life.
Ted squeezed his legs together as his hand tightened around his pen. If he wasn't inside the boy's room in the next few minutes he'd be the first student in this advanced history class to wet his pants like a kindergartner. He wanted to jab that pen right into the aorta of whichever despicable thieving delinquent was keeping them in class.