Hot For Teacher (43 page)

“And you’re here, with me?” Her eyes are wary. “Three years of your life thinking about her, and now you’ve been given the chance, and you’d rather be here with
me
?”

“I’d rather be here with you,” I tell her emphatically. “I take that back,” I say, holding up a finger. “I’d rather be eating pizza
with you
right now, because I never got a chance to eat dinner.” A smile spreads across my face.

“Oooh. Pizza!” Wiping eyes I hadn’t realized were wet, she scrambles for the brochures by the phone and starts dialing the first delivery number she finds.

“So what happens next? For you, I mean,” she asks after she hangs up the phone.

“I’m okay. I’m going to be fine. I obviously have a lot I need to talk to my parents about, but I’m saving that for awkward holiday get-togethers when I’m thirty. I figure by then I’ll have fun just watching them squirm.” I wink. But then I sober up and think about what she asked me. “Honestly, I don’t know. I know I have to choose a college or a job of some kind. I hadn’t really taken into consideration that I’d need to do much past Katie—I mean
Miss Shields.”
I cringe at Arleen’s dark expression to my overly familiar use of our teacher’s name.

“But now?”

“But now she means nothing to me. The only person I give a shit about is sitting right in front of me.”

Arleen looks away shyly and picks at an invisible piece of lint on the comforter.

“And I want her to know that I’m not going to leave her. If she wants me here, I’ll stay.”

She nods. “Stay.”

The debate will start early—eight o’clock—and by seven, Arleen and I are out the door and eating the complementary breakfast in the lobby restaurant.

“You ready for today? It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. Are you prepared?” she asks.

I shake my head and take a bite of bacon. “Nope. Not at all.” I laugh. “I honestly don’t even know what the topic is.”

“You’re joking, right?” I shake my head, biting back a smile. “Simon! Miss Shields told us the topic two weeks ago!”

“I’ve been a little distracted. A debate topic was the least of my worries.”

She laughs. “Well, you’ll be happy to know that there probably would have been very little research you could’ve done on the subject anyway, considering your own
experience
.”

I set my fork on the table and cock my head to the side. “What do you mean?’

She takes a sip of orange juice and smirks. “You’ll see.”

***

We walk into the debate hall with ten minutes to spare. Most of the students are there, along with teachers and moderators. The room is huge, and there are cafeteria-type rows of tables set out with each school’s name on a paper placard set in the middle.

Arleen and I quickly find our seats across from each other, and I look around for some hint of what the debate subject is. Arleen’s comment has piqued my curiosity.

The first half of the day will comprise a series of rapid-fire questioning. The debates will be about current events mostly centering around the tournament topic. The second half of the day we will engage in a debate with another school on the topic itself.

There are students with PowerPoint presentations ready to go—visual aids with charted statistics, pie charts, and percentages. Others have reference books, and are already mock-debating within their groups, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. None of these things can be used during the final debate, but we’ll have twenty minutes to discuss the side we want to take. And when the time comes, we will state which side we’re on: Proposition or Opposition.

“What’s it about, Arleen?”

She smiles widely and shakes her head. “Should contraceptives be made available to teenagers in high schools."

I laugh. “Are you shitting me?”

She shakes her head with a sly smile. “Nope.”

I lean back and look off to the corner of the ceiling. Of all the debate subjects…

“Simon, Arleen. Are you ready to go?” Miss Shields appears behind me.

“Yeah.” I nod reassuringly. “I think we’re the most prepared students here.”

“Good.” She raises an eyebrow. “Where is your research?”

Arleen swallows, and I glance up at Miss Shields. With a smirk, I point to my head. “It’s all in here, Miss Shields.”

Miss Shields frowns.

“Don’t worry. I’ve done extensive research on this subject.”

“Well, you two are my rebuttal speakers. You’ll be the last students to make your point. Make sure you reiterate the facts, Simon.” She looks back to Arleen. “We’re all counting on you two.”

The rest of our class joins us, one by one. And just as the MC is announcing that discussions will begin in twenty minutes, Arleen leans in and whispers, “Are you sure you know what you’re going to say?”

“Nope!” I laugh. “But I’ve got some time to think about it. Which side are we taking?”

“With
your
expertise? Let’s pray for Proposition,” Arleen giggles.

***

The first half of the day flies. They give us a set of fifty questions, where we have a few minutes to talk amongst ourselves and find our stance. Then the two teams debate. At the end, they tally the scores and declare the winner.

The second half of the day, the debate on the topic commences. First, Mallory and Francesca will deliver what’s called the first proposition constructive. This will be the six-minute foundation on which we make our case. Then the other team will present theirs.

There’s then a second constructive, where both sides will come back with further evidence to prove their stance, and refute the opposing team’s.

Then the rebuttal comes. This is where Arleen and I will have to come up with a five-minute conclusion to our team’s stance.

After receiving our victory on the morning debates, we go out for a brief lunch and are back again before the MC returns to the podium.

A short, stocky student stands on the opposite team and states her position. “We oppose the idea of contraceptives being made available to teenagers in high schools."

I smile, and Arleen peeks at me out of the corner of her eye with a smirk.

“We might just win this thing after all.” She winks.

We sit attentively, listening to the Opposition make their case. The points they make are valid, and worth consideration, but even with the strong moral points they make about promoting sex at a young age, I think it’s safe to say my entire existence has proven them wrong.

Arleen leans into me. “Do you want to take this, or should I?”

“I think it’s best if I go up there. Not that you couldn’t beat them easily, but I have a few things I want to say.”

“Okay. I trust you.” She nods and we both listen as the other team wraps up their rebuttal.

I know there’s only one way we can win. And that’s if I tell them all the truth.

Before getting to my feet, I reach into my pocket and pull something out. “I’ve been meaning to give this back,” I say, dropping the object in Arleen’s hand.

She looks down at the silver locket I had picked up all those weeks ago after falling asleep with her in the ruins.

Arleen looks startled and then a little weepy. Shit, am I going to make her cry again?

“I thought I’d lost it,” she whispers.

Maybe I shouldn’t have given it to her when we were expected to give a rebuttal, but the timing just felt right.

“My mom gave it to me. Before she left. It’s the only thing I have left of her—that’s good, anyway,” Arleen says softly, fingering the chain.

She grabs my hand and puts the necklace in my palm. “You keep it. For luck,” she says with a smile.

“I can’t—”

“Just take it. I want you to have it,” she insists, leaning over and giving me a kiss on the lips.

I tuck the locket in my pocket and know exactly what I need to say up there.

As the opposing team member steps down, I straighten my suit coat and tie, smoothing them out nervously. When I reach the podium, I clear my throat.

I look to the judge and he nods, giving me the go-ahead.

“My name is Simon Blackwell, the third.” I look around the room and see the faces of several of the girls I’ve slept with. “And I’m a douchebag.”

What had once been restless bodies in motion becomes absolute and total silence.

“I’ve shared my bed with several women. I’m not proud of it. To understand my story, I’ll need to take you back to a time when I was at a low point in my life. My parents were constantly traveling, I didn’t have many friends, and my imagination ran wild because I didn’t have anyone to keep my feet grounded. I’ve always been a guy with big ideas and big dreams, and I’ve always mapped out a plan to achieve the success for my future. But no matter how unrealistic those dreams were, I always found a way to make them happen.”

“That’s when I lost my virginity. And even though I was sixteen at the time, older than some in this room, I was still too young. But the problem with the opposition’s stance is not that they’re wrong. I can’t argue that they make a strong case. Contraceptives promote a certain promiscuity at any age. But let’s be honest: when we’ve got the King of Teenage Hormones asking us to go into battle, he doesn’t care whether or not we’re armed. We do as he says without asking questions. It isn’t often we’re given the opportunity to fight for the cause that doesn’t involve pornhub dot com and a bottle of lotion.” The room roars with laughter, and I wait for the crowd to settle down before I continue.

“Everyone in this room knows what it’s like when we’re in
that
moment. Self-control flies out the window. It’s hardwired into us. You can’t argue it if you’ve been there. If you’ve read the material on this subject, then you know that kids are having sex whether they have a condom in their drawer or not. So this argument has nothing to do with whether or not giving out free contraceptives is a moral question.” I pause to make the last sentence resonate.

“I’m a planner, a researcher, a loyal spreadsheet creator. I’m kind of a geek that way. But when I was fifteen, I passed my school office and the word SEX caught my eye, poking out from behind a brochure on suicide and mental health. I stuffed it into my backpack and read it when I got home. Have you ever read the brochures they give us about this subject? Well, I have. I can tell you that I read them when I was researching for more than just a debate. It’s been a couple of years now, but from what I can remember, those brochures inform the kids of STDs, pregnancy, and about dozens of other issues that only arise when you become sexually active.” I stare off into the audience. “But what they don’t tell you is who you should be sharing that sexual experience
with
.” I glance over to Arleen, and she smiles in that way of hers that I love.

“Emotions are at their peak when we’re teenagers. Hormones rage, and directly affect our…urges. What we think is love, isn’t. But it takes years of truly believing you’ve fallen in love and even more years of being rejected to know that what you felt really wasn’t that. So if you haven’t heard it until now, I’m going to give you a simple and brief education: sex should be with someone you love. And chances are, you’ve never felt it. No matter how much you may have convinced yourself you have. And until we can teach our teenagers, our students, and our sons and daughters that abstinence is the best way of preventing STDs, pregnancy, and having our hearts stomped on, then there’s absolutely no way you can stop us. And I’m pretty sure we all know that convincing us kids is impossible.” I shake my head with a half-smile.

“We all knew what sex was before we reached the age of nine. We knew how babies were made, and we all knew that someday we were going to do it. We may not have properly understood the
act
of sex, but you can bet your ass by the time we reached high school, we’d figured it out. It’s instinctual. Our very existence is based on reproducing—to create little humans so that they can create
more
little humans, and so on. You can’t convince me that the way our species continues to flourish is wrong.”

Arleen smirks, and I continue. “Condom or not, it’s going to happen. You can’t be naïve to the situation.” I look at the clock and realize my five minutes are almost up. “In conclusion, what I’m telling you is this: We knew about sex long before you wanted us to. Some of us chose to wait. Some of us chose to share it with the person they thought they were in love with.” I hesitate and clear my throat. “And some of us chose to be douchebags.”

I look down and state my final case firmly: “Making contraception available to us is the only responsible thing to do. Whether you like it or not.”