The School Bully (5 page)

When he finally released her she tried to stand, but the pain was so bad her legs buckled a bit as her hands instinctively moved to her bottom to rub at the stinging soreness. The headmaster took hold of her arm, steadying her as he carefully laid the paddle on the desk. He said nothing as he stood there, simply held Anna’s arm as he looked down at her, his eyes studying her pale, distraught face.

When she’d composed herself a bit he reached over and picked up the receiver to the cordless phone.

“Here,” he said.

She looked at it dumbly.

“The police, remember? You said you were going to call them?”

Anna Fowler took the receiver in a shaking hand and poised her finger over the 9. But if she pushed the button and the two after it to dial 911, what would she say? “I’d like to report a spanking?”
And then what?
They’d need proof. Anna tried to imagine the process. They’d need proof, possibly even photos. She’d have to bare her bottom, perhaps testify to what had happened in court. Details of what had transpired would hit the paper. The novelty of the story would be all over the news. The story would follow her everywhere.

Numbness settled over her. Of course, Logan Chance knew this - had thought about this - before calling her into his office. He knew that this was the one thing he could do that would be easier to endure than to report. She put the phone on the desk.

“You don’t want to call?”

She shook her head and wiped her leaking eyes on the sleeve of her blouse. “You know I can’t,” she said. “You knew that when you did it.”

Anna looked up at him, her eyes filled with hurt.

“I hope you enjoyed it, you sicko…”

“I didn’t,” he said, “contrary to what you think. I paddled you because I had to, Anna. You gave me no choice. I won’t have a loose cannon working at this school, sowing defiance.”

“Then why don’t you just let me out of my contract if that’s what you think?” She wiped her eyes again, more vigorously. The damn tears - they just wouldn’t stop coming.

“Because,” he said. “Bridgestone needs good teachers and you are better than good. You’re excellent. I’m not about to let you go.”

He walked around the desk, opened the drawer and pulled out a box of Kleenex. “Here,” he said, sliding them across the surface. Anna glared at him for a moment before jerking a handful from the box and mopping her face angrily.

“You never stopped being a bully,” she said. “You’re just the same as you were when we were students here, Logan. You’re still using your size and authority to make other people do your bidding. You still expect things to always go your way, just because you say so.”

The room was silent now, except for her sniffling.

“You’re wrong, Anna,” he said. “You are so wrong.”

“Please,” she said dismissively, sarcastically.

“Is that what you really think?” he asked. “That life has handed me everything on a silver platter?”

“I’d count on it,” she shot back.

He opened another desk drawer and pulled out a framed photo. He spent several long moments looking at it before walking around to where Anna stood. Logan Chance sat down on the edge of the desk and handed her the picture. It showed a pretty blonde woman with a girl. Anna couldn’t tell if they were mother and daughter or sisters. Within moments, she had her answer.

“That was my wife,” he said, pointing to the woman on the left. “Her name was Camille. She was bright, beautiful, fun-loving energetic.” He pointed to the younger woman on the right. “That was my step-daughter, Patrice. She was fourteen when I met her mother. Patrice was a carbon copy of Camille.
Just a wonderful girl.
But she fell in with the wrong crowd and her mother was adamant that we handle things the ‘modern way.’ She was against draconian discipline, and by draconian I mean anything she thought my hurt Patrice’s spirit or infringe on
her right to self-determination. Just about anything I wanted to do fell under that umbrella and I had to stand by and watch while that beautiful little girl slipped further and further away.”

Anna felt a sick feeling sink into the pit of her stomach. She knew this story would have no happy ending.

“Eighteen months ago, we got a call from the hospital emergency room. Patrice had overdosed at a party. Her mother never got to say goodbye, at not a goodbye that her daughter would hear. Patrice was in a deep coma for three days before she died.”

Logan Chance stood and walked towards the window. He looked out over the grounds of the school. He seemed to be struggling to continue.

“Camille...she…” He rubbed his forehead. “Camille joined her daughter three weeks later. I was at work when I got the call. I never thought she’d take her own life, but the grief and the guilt were just too much. She kept saying over and over that Patrice was afraid of the dark, and that she couldn’t let her be alone. If only I’d known what she meant. I made her go to therapy; I thought she was coping. But she wasn’t. She was pretending to cope.”

He turned to Anna.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think since I’ve been alone. Patrice was a child of privilege, just like I was, just like so many students here are. Camille was the same kind of parent as the ones who send their kids here. They think that overdoses and discipline problems are something that happens to ‘other’ kids. Kids like...”

“Like the ones I taught before coming here?” Anna said.

He nodded. “Yeah, just like those kids,” he said. “They think their social status immunizes them against the kind of horrific fate that befell Patrice. They think defiance is just a phase, a way of kids expressing themselves. They don’t see the danger. They let their kids down. Camille let Patrice down. I let Patrice down, and Camille. I should have done what my head kept telling me to do. I should have laid down the law to both of them and let them rant and rave and throw their tantrums. I should have taken them both across my knee for their attitudes. If I had, I’d have a wife and stepdaughter waiting at home for me. Now, when I want to take my wife flowers, I have to take them to the cemetery.”

“What happened haunts me, Anna. It will always haunt me. I know you oppose my being in this position given that I’m not from an academic background, but I think my experience with Patrice gives me the kind of insight that will benefit Bridgestone. I don’t pretend to be a teacher, but I know good ones when I see them. You’re a good teacher. You may not like my philosophy on discipline, but what I’ve learned in the last two years has taught me that a good, sound spanking is far less traumatic than other options. And believe me, these kids at this school need someone with that philosophy watching over them, because their parents sure as hell aren’t going to do it.”

Anna regarded him in silence. Her anger at him - in spite of what he’d done - had seeped away, leaving pity in its wake. She was still offended and sore, but more ready to talk to him. And to listen to what he had to say.

“Why didn’t you just tell me these things instead of…?” She looked at the paddle, laying there on the desk. It was hard to believe that something that still and lifeless could cause so much pain.

“...Instead of spanking you?” he asked.
“Because you deserved a spanking, for one.
I told you I wouldn’t be defied. And also because I suspect you’ve never been spanked. I wanted you to see that you could come out of it having learned a lesson.”

“It hurt!” she said, her lip beginning to tremble. She tried to stop it, and the tears that started
to flow again, but could not.

He smiled sympathetically and then moved a hand forward, slowing as she flinched a little and then a little more until he was brushing the tears from her face with his fingers.

“I know it hurt,” he said gently. “But that’ll go away soon enough. And now you know what to expect if you try to rally these kids against me, don’t you?”

She looked at him, wide-eyed. “You’d do…that again?”

He nodded. “Consistency, Anna. If you defy me, I’ll spank you. You can count on it. And so can your students. Which means tomorrow
you’re
going to have to inform them that you gave them some erroneous information about your power to override your headmaster’s policy, understand?”

Anna closed her eyes and sighed.

“If I do that, then they won’t respect me,” she said.

“They’ll still respect you,” he said. “They’ll just respect you as someone who has to live within the same framework as everyone else. You can even tell them you don’t agree with it if you’d like. I’m not going to make my teachers pretend to agree with every policy I implement. But I won’t have them badmouthing policy. And I won’t allow them to defy it. Is that something you can live with?”

“Would it matter?” she asked.

The headmaster considered this and then slowly smiled.

“No,” he said.

Anna couldn’t believe it, but now she was smiling, too. And then laughing with him for a moment before they both fell silent and she realized they were making eye contact. She broke it before he did.

“I need to get home,” she said. “I’ve got lesson plans to prepare.”

“Yeah I’ve got to go, too,” he said. “There was a storm last night. It probably ruined the flowers on Camille’s grave. I’m going to go replace them on the way home. I don’t want to miss the florist’s.”

Anna nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. He made the statement almost casually, as if failing to understand how sad the admission seemed to someone outside his situation. Anna felt guilty thinking so badly of him, imagining that he’d had such a charmed life. She’d been so wrong; it was hard to imagine that kind of pain.

She thought about his situation all the way home, especially when she arrived to find her mother sitting in the chair staring out the window. Anna’s father had died under less traumatic circumstances, and she’d not lost a child, but even so the loss had nearly crippled her.

“Have you eaten?” Anna asked.

Her mother looked at her blankly. “No,” she said. “I was sitting here looking at pictures….”

Anna looked down; her mother’s laps were filled with photo albums.

“Mom…” She took the albums from her lap and placed them on the shelf, resisting the urge to tell her she couldn’t keep doing this, that she’d just waste away if she didn’t. But Anna knew she couldn’t control her mother’s grief. Different people dealt with loss in different ways. Right now, Anna’s mother’s grief was still too fresh and raw. Its weight was still too heavy to throw off.

“How about some Chinese food?”
Anna asked.

“Jack loved Chinese,” her mother said quietly, staring out the window. “You know, I need to tell the gardener to trim the grass around the tennis court better. It looks uneven.”

That was something else Anna was trying to get used to - her mother’s newfound tendency
towards randomness. Beth Fowler had never been like that before, but her daughter understood that things changed, especially in the wake of a loss.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “We’ll leave him a note.”

Anna left the room and went to the kitchen, where she rifled through the drawers until she found the menu for the Chinese restaurant. She ordered orange chicken and spring rolls and crab
rangoons
. When the food arrived she served it to her mother with a large glass of tea and a Valium. Anna got her upstairs and into bed just in time. Within moments the older woman was out like a light.

As Anna sat preparing her lesson plans, she wondered how she ever could have threatened to leave Bridgestone. Her mother was dependent on her now, not financially –she was the classic rich widow– but Elizabeth Fowler sure needed her daughter in every other way. And Anna knew if she’d quit her job she’d go mad sitting home all day trying to get her mother off the couch before she was ready to rejoin the world.

After finishing her paperwork, Anna tidied the house even though the maid had left little to do. She showered then, and in the bathroom mirror caught a glimpse of her naked bottom. The faint imprints of Logan Chance’s large hand still remained on her alabaster skin. He’d spanked her. He’d actually spanked her. Anna’s mind replayed the incident in spite of her efforts to stop it. It had hurt so
badly,
and yet she’d been wrong. The spanking had not felt cruel; at least not the way he’d delivered it. Afterwards, he’d explained exactly why he’d done it. He’d been almost tender, his blue eyes looking into hers intently.

Anna felt a flush of blood and heat suffuse her breasts and then spread lower. To her horror, she realized the memory was having an unexpected physical effect. Her pussy felt swollen, her clit ached. Thoroughly embarrassed with herself, Anna dropped the towel she’d been drying herself with and jumped back in the shower, turning it on the coldest setting until she was shivering and the wanton feelings abated.

What in the world had happened? Where had that come from? Anna asked those questions over and over until she convinced herself it was fatigue and nothing more.
Fatigue and stress.
What else would explain that kind of reaction to a man she’d disdained since they’d been classmates?