Hillary

Introduction:

Last summer the school district where I’ve worked as a permanent substitute teacher for a couple of years hired me to teach several make-up classes. One of them was an English class for a few students who would have graduated but for failing English. There were four students in the class, three boys and one girl, Hillary Watkins. Hillary is a bright girl, but her interest in social activities far exceeds her interest in doing class work. Her parents wanted her to go to college and had somehow arranged to get her admitted to a small New England teachers college. The only problem was, she needed her high school diploma and didn’t have enough credits to get it. Her parents, though indulgent, did expect her to do the work, much to Hillary’s dismay.

Hillary is eighteen, has shoulder-length brown hair she wears straight, and while she isn’t super-attractive, she certainly isn’t homely. The phrase is over-worked, but I guess you could say she has “All-American Girl” looks. She probably weighs a hundred thirty or so pounds, that weight is well distributed, and she generally dresses in ways that make sure the male members of society know that weight is very well distributed. I heard she was dating the captain of the football team. She often seems a bit snobbish, but when she wants to, she can be quite personable.

Hillary was exercising her charms considerably when, unannounced, she stopped in at my house one afternoon an hour or so after the end of summer school. I happened to be home alone because my wife and kids were at her family’s beach house on the coast of Maine. My wife’s great-grandfather built the beach house and family tradition is that the entire family gathers there for at least a month every summer. Believe me, spending a month in a small house filled with people who give new meaning to the word “contentious” has never been one of my favorite things, so I jumped at the opportunity to teach summer school. That meant I only had to go to Maine on the weekend, which suited me just fine.

As it turned out, Hillary came to my house hoping she might be able to accomplish with feminine wiles what she hadn’t been able to accomplish with her half-hearted attempts at schoolwork, namely getting a passing grade. She learned she was wrong about that, and learned some other things, too. Why don’t I let her tell you? Here’s the paper she wrote to complete the assignment I gave her that day.

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What I Learned This Summer

By

Hillary Watkins

This is without question the weirdest and wildest school assignment I ever had in my life. I messed around in school a lot. I know that, but I never thought I wouldn’t graduate. I mean, it isn’t like I’m stupid or anything, it’s just that there are so many other things I needed to do that sometimes I didn’t get all my homework done. Anyhow, Mrs. Fraley, the English teacher, had the nerve to give me a failing grade, which meant I had to go to summer school before I could get my diploma. What a bummer!

There were three boys in the summer school class with me; really creepy guys. I mean, I could understand why they didn’t pass. They let me alone because they knew my boyfriend Dave would break them in two if they messed with me. Mr. Dornier was the teacher. I know him because he substitute teaches a lot. He’s a little younger than my parents, but not much. He has a daughter who just started in Middle School, I think.

Anyhow, a couple of days ago, Mr. Dornier told me I wasn’t going to pass the makeup class if I didn’t start “buckling down,” as he put it. I couldn’t believe it! I mean, it’s bad enough I have to do go to summer school, then the teacher has to go and be a jerk! I figured summer school was just a formality, you know?

I was really pissed at first. After all, it’s bad enough I have to take the darn class, then Mr. Dornier tells me he’s going to fail me! Jeezum! I mean, it sucks to spend prime party time sitting at my damn computer typing up papers and doing homework assignments. Then I had an idea. I’ve seen the way Mr. D looks at me. I think I’ve got a pretty good body – Dave and other guys I’ve gone out with tell me I do, anyhow – and I could tell from the way he looked at me that Mr. D thought so, too. Some of the my friends are “creeped out” by the way some of the male teachers look at them, but not me. I kinda like that guys think I’ve got a good body and that I’m pretty, you know?

Well, I thought that since Mr. D seemed to like the way I looked, maybe I could convince him to, you know, do me a favor. I heard him talking to one of the other teachers about how his wife and daughter were over in New Hampshire or Maine someplace, which meant if I went to his house I would catch him alone. The way I figured it, I wasn’t going to get into trouble for going there, but depending on how things went, it was possible he could get in trouble because he was alone in his house with me. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I didn’t plan to blackmail him or anything, but I figured maybe if I showed up at his place, I could talk him into being nicer to me. Well…