Schadenfreude

This one follows the tale of Dave and Shannon in "How to Be a Good Mentor" while also being a prequel of sorts to "Lucas and the Library Girl," though you can easily enjoy this whether you've read those or not. I've posted it here as an entry in Lit's National Nude Day contest, so please check out the other entries and vote on your favorites.

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"Christ," murmured my best friend Heidi. "Is there anything more nasty than when the guy teachers come to Senior Prom?"

I stirred at that; it had been long, heavy minutes since she or I had said anything; proms are boring for people who don't dance. We waited at the big, crumb-infested table for our wilder classmates to finish rubbing themselves against each other to the surging beat of some kind of strobing techno bullshit, maybe Skrillex or something. I'd, of course, put in a request for the overpriced DJ to play something good, like the Smiths or Belle and Sebastian or even something more recent like the Arctic Monkeys; he'd taken my list with the kind of smile that told me I was thoroughly wasting my time, so I'd gone back to my pocketbook at the table. I'd picked my dress to match that pocketbook, and I'd picked that pocketbook because my tablet would fit into it.

The tablet with the Fitzgerald short stories loaded in.

So let my classmates twerk, let them grind, hell, let them lambada or even watusi if they were feeling retro. I was happy with my F Scott and with Heidi, who was feverishly texting her much older boyfriend. The administrators hadn't let her bring him, and I was too bored to ask anyone, so we'd claimed to be lesbians and brought each other. I frowned. "What, the chaperones? They get paid to be here."

"No, I'm not talking about the chaperones." She sipped carefully at a cup of coffee to which she'd added some brandy from her false lipstick tube. Fucking brandy. Heidi always had thought of herself as a sophisticate. "I'm talking about the ones who just... you know, show up."

"Ah." At our school, prom was a big deal. A lot of the faculty came by for a free dinner and pictures with their students. "They come here to look at bare backs and deep cleavage, Heidi."

"No, I know why they come." She shrugged. "I just think it's nasty."

Whatever. "Chill, bitch. You're dating, what, a twenty-five-year-old? Why do you think he's seeing you?" I smiled, my thin lips cracking in the dry heat of the ballroom. "It's not for your sparkling conversation."

Heidi at least had the grace to blush a tad. She'd always been into older guys, so as soon as she'd turned 18 she'd headed off to a college party and found one. "Chip likes me for many reasons," she announced loftily.

"Two in particular." Heidi had gorgeous tits, and her purple sequined dress let everybody know that. I made a face as she glanced down to make sure she wasn't falling out; the dress was scandalous enough that she'd been doing that all evening. But all was well so far; no nipples had yet made an unscheduled appearance. "That's another thing. 'Chip' is a name for paperboys or child molesters."

"He's sweet," she claimed, and then she gave that sly wink of hers, the one that told you she knew a lot more than she seemed to. "And it's three reasons, thank you very much." She grinned wickedly. "Four, if you count my ass. He sure does."

I rolled my eyes. "See? You're a hypocrite. Plenty of the guy teachers here are no older than he is, or at least not by much. And you'd have brought him, if you could. What, you think he wouldn't have been staring at everyone's boobs just because he's your boyfriend?"

She frowned as she thought about that. "Huh. Well, it's academic anyway." She slurped again at her coffee. "He's not here."

"Right." I was already burying my head back into my tablet, but now Heidi had me thinking. Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of the brand-new English teacher, Mr Delp, him of the stringy hair and the sprinkle of beard, looking like Jesus. He had a decent suit on, maybe a Ben Sherman, and I pondered what it would have been like if I'd graduated last year, like I was supposed to. If my parents hadn't held me back in the sixth fucking grade. Then, I'd just be a normal girl about to hit twenty, he'd be twenty-three or whatever he was, and we could hook up and fuck without anyone caring.

I'd always had a thing for English teachers.

"Why'd you bring it up, anyway?" I asked, giving up on the tablet. Heidi was glancing around. "You see something creepy?"

She just stared off toward the far corner of the dance floor and nodded tightly. "The kids who had money on Lucy are going to be overjoyed," she muttered, and I understood. The will-he-or-won't-he bet that had been dominating the whispered conversations of the senior class for many weeks had involved slutty little Lucy Marsh and the crush everyone knew she had on Mr Dole, who taught the special ed skills class.

I was in that class, biding my time amid the storm of body odor and mediocrity given off by the nine male shitheads in there; ten, counting Mr Dole. Lucy had a far, far higher opinion of him than I did. I could understand crushing on teachers, but not that one. I'd watched all year as she systematically tore him apart, and it was entirely unfair: she had an absolute top-ten grade-A body, a matching face, and a sexual reputation that had the whole of East Seaborne Memorial High School in awe. Myself included; I'd done a few nasty things here and there, in my own quiet and mysterious way, but I'm not too proud to admit when another woman sucks a better dick than I do.

The contrast could not have been more pitifully, bleakly evident between her and poor Mr Dole, who was only a first-year teacher. That wasn't his fault, but he had only graduated from this very high school a few years ago; he should have known better than to act like a warm, caring friend to his students. They ate him alive.

His saving grace was his mentor, Ms Boyle, who came by sometimes to observe him. Everyone in the building loved Ms Boyle, a sweet woman with a sharp mind and an easygoing authority with the students, and when she came by to observe him in class it was clear they got along well. Or, at least, they had until February; at some point there, they seemed to have a falling out, and she stopped coming by so much.

That was when he'd turned into a first-class prick.

With me, it had come from out of nowhere. I'm pretty much silent for all my teachers, but the SPED classes had always intimidated me. My parents had insisted I had some sort of learning delay back when I was nine or ten, based on the fact that I sucked at math and disliked books at my own grade level. It didn't seem to matter to my teachers that what I was reading was considerably above grade level; no, they tested and prodded me until they decided I needed a special ed plan, and I'd been languishing with cretins like Mr Dole ever since, an hour a day, learning "skills."

That day, in early March, he'd had us reading some sort of useless, remedial drivel by Pearl Buck or Mark Twain or something. He even had us using the abridged version, so of course I ignored him and kept my own book underneath my desk. I'd been rereading my beloved Tolkien at that point, largely to cleanse the palate before I tackled Joyce for my AP class, when Dole had stopped talking and glared at me, tucked away in my little corner.

"I swear, Beth," he'd grated, from out of the blue; it might have been his third or fourth time all year talking to me. "You people seem to think the area under your desks is invisible or something. I can see your book. Give it here."

I'd stared back up at him. "Sorry. I'll put it away."

"No no," he'd fired back, the rest of the class watching me as if noticing me for the first time. "I said give it here. You can have it back at the end of the day."

Oh. I see. I've never been one to look for trouble, but I'd be damned if he was going to take my book. I felt my pale green eyes narrow. "You can't take my book," I told him flatly.

Well, it seemed he could, and he did, and I'd had two days of detention to show for my stance on property rights. Fucker. "Huh," I said to Heidi, finally picking out him and Lucy among the swaying bodies. Everyone had known she'd ask him to dance, but the bet had been whether he'd show such colossally bad judgment as to accept.

Apparently yes.

Jesus, he was even a bad dancer. Did this man have no redeeming qualities at all? The song was what passed for "slow" these days, James Arthur maybe? In any case, the couples on the floor were pasted together in various states of awkwardness, with the girls generally leaning dreamily in and their partners usually rolling their eyes more effectively than their hips, both sets of feet shuffling more or less at random, both sets of hands resting chastely between ribcage and hipbone as long as there were grown-ups watching.

Lucy Marsh was different. And everyone was watching to see what she'd do; once the music started, though, they became more interested in what Dole would do. Because Lucy was, as it turned out, not a bit shy about where she put her hands and how she moved her body.

Contrary to what I'd told the Prom Committee, I'm not really a lesbian; Heidi and I had done some furtive groping, in an awkwardly experimental way, and though it had felt nice it hadn't really been anything special. Still, when I see a sexy woman do sexy things, I'm quite capable of getting turned on. That's why my mouth dropped as I watched Lucy dance. God, but the girl moved like she was made of rubber bands in a stiff breeze: the movements were constant and snakelike, effortlessly sensual and overtly seductive.

The keen observer I'd turned myself into could see the subtleties of the dance floor: couples moved away from them, the disgusted girls steering their obsessed dates safely clear of such a dangerous sexual shoal; I saw the boys' eyes creep back toward Lucy, like gyroscopes settling down, their bodies drifting subtly away from their partners' to make room for the erections Lucy was giving them.

She was in the lowest of low-cut gowns, a bright peach number that blended nicely with her overtanned skin, and there was plenty of that as well. The skirt, tight across her sleek hips and ass, was slit almost high enough to tell what color her underwear was if she bent the wrong way, which she was teasingly careful not to do. Up top was a flat belly and a pair of breasts that would never, without expensive surgery and a thorough workout regimen, look as sexy as they did tonight, now twisting and curving against poor Dole in a way that defied physics and common decency both.

It was pretty simple to guess what all this was doing to Mr Dole, who shuffled in aimless humiliation in front of the entire senior class. You could see it, too, in his bright pink face and the way he strained to keep his eyes up and his groin, in vain, out of contact with his partner. It was his own fault, though, for accepting a dance, so I felt nothing for him but my usual scorn tinged, now, with the buoyant joy that schadenfreude so often brings.

"He's going to cum in his suit pants," Heidi marveled, her eyes wide. I had to agree; there was scant chance he'd make it intact through this dance, and even less he'd be able to slink back to his seat afterward. Even if he did, of course, his reputation would be trashed after this. Everyone but him knew she was making a fool out of him.

"I wonder if everyone hates him as much as I do," I frowned, looking around.

The song couldn't last forever, but you could tell from the look in Dole's eyes that he regretted from the first beat his decision to dance with Lucy. I squinted, observing, and watched from across the room as the regret turned to discomfort, then a sort of dazzled amazement, and finally, as the song ground into its final thirty seconds or so, a hooded sort of desire, the kind men can't control because they don't even realize it's happening.

"This is cool." Heidi was filming the entire thing on her phone.

I disagreed. "This is disgusting." I groped for a reference and fixated on Salome, famous for lascivious and evil dancing, a temptress of great and terrible ambitions. Lucy had her back to me now, and I watched as she hiked herself slowly up and down against her target's body, each motion bringing his hands just a little bit lower across her spine, where the peach silk ribbons crossed her naked skin, down past where her hips swelled out, and soon enough a few other kids were clapping halfheartedly as, at long last, his uncontrolled hands came to rest along the top slope of her ass. "Oh my God." The DJ was bringing the song back down as I sighed and went back to my Fitzgerald, a clammy air of voyeuristic awe falling over the banquet hall.

"Fuck." Heidi drained the last of her spiked coffee. "Well, that was the evening's porno."

"She should be arrested for rape," I muttered.

Heidi wagged her finger at me. "It takes two to tango, Beth," she corrected. "Or whatever kind of dance that was." And, from out of the scrum of overdressed adolescents, Lucy Marsh emerged in triumphant glory, headed back to her table with her cronies in her wake.

I forgot about her after that, engrossed as always in my tablet. And then they served dinner and some shitty coffee, and there was the kind of stilted conversation there always is at events like that, and the entire time I was wondering when Heidi and I could decently leave. I leaned over to her after my second coffee. "Where's the bathroom?" I asked with predictable low urgency.

"Right where we came in," she replied promptly, shutting down her texting app. "It's going to be packed, though." She snapped her fingers. "Actually, no. There's another bathroom downstairs. I came to a wedding here last year; I bet nobody knows about it. Head on down."

"What, like, which stairs?"

"The ones in the back, near where the food comes out." She pointed. "I think it's a service area down there, but it was a pretty nice bathroom." She shrugged. "Three stalls, little bench; you might as well just hang out down there. Pretty clean, too; I didn't even need to hover over the toilet seat."

"Eww. I always hover, even when it looks clean." I got to my feet. "It's a public bathroom, Heidi. You have no idea what kinds of diseased asses have been peeing there." All the flashing lights were giving me a headache. "I might take a walk afterward, get some air. Want to come?"

She looked up and made a face. "I'm sexting my boyfriend. But I might come find you in a few minutes. Don't miss the bus!"

I scowled. My high school chartered buses to take everyone to prom; it saved on limo fare, and gave the school yet another way to control us. "Wouldn't dream of it." I gave the dance floor a wide berth on my way around toward the back stairs, not even looking at all the gyrations happening out there. I did not fear being asked to dance; I was what my classmates might describe as "standoffish," and that's being polite.

Other than Heidi and a few other acquaintances, I was not popular. In a culture that celebrated tall, thin, clear-skinned beauty, I was skinny in the wrong places and had a blotchy face. I'd been told my ass was okay, but I'd never really believed it; I had my mother's hips, nice and wide and the height of sexiness circa 1854. Which would have been fine if I'd had breasts to match, but I didn't; bras tried hard to be useful for me.

In fairness, I reflected as I saw Jason Boolman getting twerked by Marcy Reilly, none of that had really held me back much. I'd learned there were guys who found themselves drawn to sassy, blunt-spoken girls with glasses, no matter what their bodies looked like. So far I'd mostly attracted the kinds of mildly emo boys who hung out near the library where I worked, the ones with poor social skills. I'd learned over the past year or so that some of those were worth pursuing and some not, but that by and large they represented a fairly accessible pool of dick.

I'd still been a virgin well past my eighteenth birthday, and although I'd made up for it since then it still made me cringe, the way I'd fumbled through my first encounter with a penis. I'd been left sated, sure, but still embarrassed that I'd been so awkward. The guy, naturally, hadn't cared much; he was just happy to get near a real, live vagina. But I'd decided that if this was something I was going to do, I had better learn to do it better.

The boys by the library had been happy to let me learn with them.

Heidi's door was an unremarkable one in a corner, the second I'd tried, and the stairway beyond was drab and functionally clean in the way that service areas often are. The bathroom was easy to find, first door off the hallway; I saw a simple red door with a deadbolt and one of those ubiquitous female-shaped stick figures posted in the middle. Another red door a little ways down the hall told me where the guys peed; just next to the stairwell, a set of metal double doors was painted "LOADING DOCK" in glossy red letters.

Inside, it was exactly as Heidi had described: two sinks, three stalls, a bench by the door, and even a little potted palm in the corner; I had no doubt it was fake. The last stall, its doorway wide for the handicapped, was shut tight; the other two gaped open slightly. I crossed to the first stall in the usual way people do in public restrooms, with my mind off and my nose shut, and shot the bolt on the stall door so that I could do my business.

A rustling sound from over in the handicapped stall made me pause in mid-piss.

Not that rustles in bathrooms are very remarkable; what drew my attention to this one was a certain furtive quietness about it, as if the rustler was being careful not to rustle more. I finished up thoughtfully, my tight purple dress awkward as I held it up underneath my armpits, and wiped up, and it was while I was doing that that I heard the whisper.

"Calm down." An insistent voice, sounding female, hissing urgently. Another rustle followed, then a short snorting giggle. "Just stay still. They'll go away."

Ah. I understood at once: someone was doing something improper in the handicapped stall. Drugs? Necking? A blowjob? I was curious, or maybe just bored, so I reassembled myself, flushed, and went to the sink to wash my hands. I felt eyes on me from behind, of course: whoever was in there was plainly peeking out the crack in the stall door to see who I was. No matter. I took a paper towel, opened the door, and then stepped out of my heels as I let it close without walking through it.

The tile was unpleasantly dank on my bare feet, but I ignored that and stole back to the nearby bench as the door clicked shut. I set my shoes quietly on the bench beside me, settled in as comfortably as I could next to the potted palm (yup. Fake.), and waited curiously.

Whoever was in the handicapped stall did not take long. "Shit." A perfectly normal tone of voice now, the bored voice of a young woman. A voice I knew. "Told you they'd go away. Now then." I could hear mischief in that voice, and laughter carefully held back. "Where were we?"

A whisper came back, her partner still cautious. "We should lock the door, Lucy."

She did laugh this time. "You're silly. We've been down here ten minutes already and that's, what, one person who's come in? We're fine." Another rustle, louder and more prolonged. "Get back to work." Lucy Marsh sounded more excited than anyone ever should be in a bathroom.

A pause.

And then a rushing hiss of air as Lucy sighed long and hard. "There you go." She sounded like she'd just had a nice relaxing piss, long held. "Keep doing that." A gasp followed, and by then I'd figured out she was getting eaten out by someone.

This was new to me. The only person I'd ever heard get eaten out was me, and it had only happened twice. Well one and a half, more like; the first guy had no idea what he was doing, and neither did I. Lucy suddenly developed a strange and vaguely unsettling breathing pattern, as if she was in labor. The rustling rose and fell, but never really stopped; it was her dress, obviously.