Teacher's Pet

Leo crossed his arms and looked up at the ceiling for a second. “His fucking mother,” he said. “Of course. Carla Douglass.”

“You really think it was her?”

“Oh, I know it was. And you can go ahead and write that article if you want, but I am going to talk to his mother about this.”

“What are you going to say?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think of something, I’m sure. Carla Douglass.” He shook his head. “I can’t fucking believe it. What a bitch.”

“Stop,” I said. I didn’t really know Seth’s mother, but I had seen her around, and she seemed like a nice person. It was hard to think that she would do something like this, especially since she was also a teacher at the school and would probably get into a lot of trouble if word about this got out. “Don’t you think it would be better if I just did the last assignment and then we never talked about this again? It would be over and done with, and everyone could just move on with their lives?”

“Yeah, except what if it doesn’t? Seth’s got another year left of school. What if they’re so happy with the quality of the papers you’re writing that they just decide you’re the one who’s supposed to do it for the rest of the year? No. If you’re adamant about doing this last assignment, then go ahead, but that shit stops after this one.”

“You don’t care if they tell everyone?”

“You know what? They can go ahead and try, but really, what proof do they have? And it goes both ways here. Let’s just say she does have some sort of proof—we also have proof that her son has been handing in work

that wasn’t his, orchestrated by her. There’s no way that she’d be able to talk her way out of that one, and I really don’t think she wants to risk it.”

“I have proof,” I said.

“Proof of what?”

“Of us.”

He cocked his head. “What—you mean that video you took of us?”

I nodded. “Yeah. And . . . the first time I ever came over here, I had the voice recorder on my phone turned on.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I had kind of forgotten about it until just now, but talking about proof made me remember. I haven’t shown it to anyone. I’m not going to.”

“Well isn’t that something. Am I supposed to feel violated now? I had kind of wondered why you wanted to video it that first time, but I thought maybe you were just into that sort of thing. Have you watched it?”

“No.”

“Maybe we should. What’d you do it for? Insurance in case the end of the semester rolled around and I didn’t give you a good grade?”

“Originally, yes. But that’s before things had really happened between us. I mean, I hope you know that I wouldn’t do anything like that now.”

“I think I know that,” he said. “And I appreciate you being honest with me. But you didn’t need to worry—I was prepared to give you an A after that first time together, regardless of what happened after.”

I smiled. “I believe you,” I said. “At the time, though, I just couldn’t totally believe that someone like you would really want to be involved with someone like me.”

“Someone like you. What is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know . . . you could clearly get with anyone you wanted.”

“Stop—you’re going to make me blush.”

“I just wasn’t expecting things to turn out like this. I didn’t know what was going to happen, to be honest, and it seemed like it would be good to have some sort of insurance in case you ended up being an asshole about it and telling me you weren’t going to give me a good grade after all.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “Now why don’t you come over here and we’ll work on a little more extra credit . . .”

Lindsey and I were both done with our classes at the same time the next day, so went out to lunch, off-campus, and I told her that I had finally figured out who it was that was sending me those letters.

“I can’t believe it was Seth,” she said. “He’s like one of the last people I would have guessed. That’s so . . . weird. You should slap him the next time you see him.”