June Young crossed her arms, tapping her heel against the tile floor with an ominous clacking sound.  The twenty-nine-year-old’s hazel eyes narrowed as they scanned over the entire hushed classroom, her pursed lips giving off a clear signal of her displeasure with them all.  The students stared back, terrified of what she was about to say.  Finally, sighing disappointedly, she spoke up, taking a step forward and placing a hand on her hip.

                “Class… as usual, I’m… underwhelmed with your performances on this last test,” the educator drawled, tapping a finger at the graded exams sitting on her desk.  “I have to say, I don’t understand it… I teach you the material… I give you the study tools… and then you just toss it all away and blindly put answers down when it’s time to take the test.  Tell me… is there something I’m doing wrong here?”

                The class remained silent.  All knew that when Ms. Young got like this, it was best not to answer her rhetorical question, even though there ironically was a very real answer to the question.

                “No one?  No one wants to speak up, hmm?  I guess I expected as much,” sighed June, rolling her eyes in near-disgust with the small crowd of eighth graders before her.  “None of you have demonstrated a particular aptitude for leadership.  It would be unfair of me to expect more of you right now,” she continued sarcastically.  Suddenly, June’s eyes snapped over to the back corner of the room.  All the students were looking down at their laps to avoid the cold glare of their teacher, but Kate Howard was the only one who seemed to be actively engaged in something despite looking down.  June raised an eyebrow, biting her lip.  She prided herself on her sense of attention to detail and hawk-like senses in a classroom setting.  Tapping her foot again loudly on the ground, June strode confidently between the desks toward Kate.

                “Ms. Howard?” asked June sternly.  “I thought we’ve discussed this before.  No texting in class, or it becomes mine.”  Extending a hand, June patted her fingers against her palm expectantly.  “Give it here.  Now.”

                Begrudgingly, Kate looked up and nodded silently, closing the cell phone and handing it to her teacher.  However, instead of marching back to the head of the class, June snapped the phone open.  A look of concern crossed Kate’s eyes, and a moment later it turned to panic as June calmly started thumbing through the phone’s menus.

                “If whatever you’re doing is so much more important than hearing about the test, Ms. Howard, I’m… very interested to hear about it.”

                “Ms. Young, that’s my phone, you can’t look in it!” protested Kate.  An audible gasp was heard over the classroom.  Standing up to Ms. Young was never in anyone’s best interest.  Smiling to herself, June ignored Kate for a moment, tapping on the screen of the phone.

                “That may be true, Ms. Howard, but I seem to recall a certain phone call being made to your mother last month… something about her saying she’d take away your phone for good if you were caught texting in class again.  Now… are you sure you want to make a big deal out of this?”  Accepting defeat for the time being, Kate snarled silently and crossed her arms, looking down.  June cleared her throat, finding the list of recent texts in Kate’s phone.

                “Let’s see… here’s one you got two minutes ago from Adrian Parker… let’s just take a look, shall we?  It says: can’t wait for tomorrow night, babe,” read June, her eyes widening and looking back to Kate, whose cheeks blushed ten shades of red instantly.  “Sounds like it’s going to be an enjoyable but not altogether unique evening for you, is it, Ms. Howard?”  No one said anything, but of course every student was thinking the exact same thing, and both June and Kate knew this.  Kate struggled to maintain her composure, frowning, then managed to speak up again.

                “We’re just going to a movie, Ms. Young.  I swear.  That’s all he’s talking about,” said Kate, her voice wavering slightly from sheer embarrassment.

                “I’m sure you are, Ms. Howard, I’m sure you are.  And we’ll see what your mother has to say about all this later on…” answered June with a satisfied quip of thick sarcasm.  Kate looked horrified and enraged at the same time, but knew better than to react at this point.  As usual, Ms. Young had won this round.

                “Please, Ms. Young, just leave her alone,” said a voice from the other corner of the room.  June slowly turned to face the source of the voice, as did every head in the classroom.  The softly spoken words had come from Ryan Hill, a boy a bit short for his age who upon first glance looked more like he belonged in elementary school.  His tousled blond hair made it look like he had spent too much time in the sun, and his frail frame suggested he wasn’t eating quite as much as he ought to.

                “Sorry, Mr. Hill, but I don’t suppose you could say that a little louder?” requested Ms. Young with a smile as she walked toward Ryan’s desk.  “I couldn’t quite hear you.”

                “I… I mean, please just leave her alone, Ms. Young.  You don’t have to do that to her like that,” he continued uncertainly.

                “Do what, Mr. Hill?  I’m merely trying to make a point to the class.  Surely you can understand that?”

                “I… well, yes, yes, I get that, but…”

                “But… nothing.  Nothing.  Tell me, Mr. Hill, where do you get the nerve?  I don’t remember hearing from you very much, and yet here you are sticking your neck out for someone you never speak to.”

                “I… I’ve spoken t-to her before, Ms. Young,” answered Ryan, stuttering creeping into his nervous words as June came slowly to stand directly next to his desk.  The slender and fit June Young was nearly six feet tall and, particularly when she was standing next to the seated Ryan, completely dwarfed the boy.

                “Oh, I highly doubt that.  I actually doubt you’ve spoken to any of the girls in this room,” continued June casually, once again making a somewhat obvious insinuation without actually speaking the words and thusly indicating herself in the verbal crime.  “I doubt you’d want to, in fact, Mr. Hill.  Would you?”

                “I… I… that’s n-n-not true, Ms. Y-Young, I…”

                “Speak clear and confident English, Mr. Hill, or neither I nor any of these young women you profess to being able to speak to will be particularly impressed,” said June, cutting off the whispered words of the terrified boy.  “You may have to someday, if you get a job doing a hairstyle in a beauty parlor for one.”

                “Oh my God, Ms. Young, stop it already!” called out a much louder voice from the other side of the room.  A hush fell over the class again, and June stopped in her tracks, turning away from the humiliated Ryan and facing Kayla Carter, the second voice of the rebellious dissent within the same few minutes.  Undoubtedly, this was an unprecedented number of student rebuttals, and it was disturbing June to the point that, at this moment, the well-kept and steely-eyed teacher resolved to discourage it once and for all with Kayla as an example.

                “What was that you said, Ms. Carter?” asked June with false sweetness.

                “I said stop it.  It’s not fair what you’re saying to him, he’s just trying to be nice.  Leave him alone,” said Kayla, sounding much more confident and even angry than anyone had ever dared speak to June before in the classroom setting.  Admittedly, the idea of Kayla’s impending social downfall due to her foolish sense of pride was a deliciously enjoyable one to June.

                “Ms. Carter, your rudeness notwithstanding, you actually are the perfect example for what, exactly, seems to be the trend in this classroom,” continued June, gliding back to the front of the classroom and picking up the stack of tests.  “Many of you performed poorly on this test, and I’m beginning to suppose that it’s due to your social lives getting in the way of your studies.  For example… Ms. Carter, you received the lowest score in the class on this exam.  A… forty-two percent, I believe.”  Kayla blushed, wholly embarrassed, but managed to stand her ground.

                “That doesn’t have anything to do with who I talk to, Ms. Young, and it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with me wanting you to leave Ryan alone, I…”

                “Then what does it have to do with, Ms. Carter?”

                “I… I can explain, but I want to talk to you later,” babbled Kayla, flustered by the question.

                “You will explain now, Ms. Carter, or not at all.  Surely, since you spend so much time getting friendly with people in the class, you won’t mind sharing with them as well?”

                “I… I…”

                “Spit it out, Ms. Carter, we’re all ears,” grinned June, slowly passing back the test papers and causing a chorus of disappointed groans to rise up from students who hadn’t done well.  For a moment, Kayla looked like she was going to say something, but finally closed her lips and hung her head, effectively silenced.  “I didn’t think so,” finished Ms. Young coldly as she finished passing back the papers.  At that moment, the final bell of the day rang.  “I’d suggest you all study if I thought it would make a difference,” called out June as the students hurriedly escaped the vicinity of the room and headed for the buses home.

                June sauntered into the back room where the chemistry supplies were kept, placing Kate’s cell phone on a cabinet table for a moment before hearing a soft hissing sound emanating from the corner of the room.  Flipping the light switch on, June peered at one of the gas hoses and realized it was turned on.  Gasping, June dashed to turn it off, closing her eyes and coughing quietly as a puff of fumes filled her lungs, then backed up for a breath of fresh air.  Although it seemed the gas had been on for a little while, the faucet was fortunately just barely twisted, meaning the gas had been released very steadily over time.  It probably wasn’t dangerous, but just as a precaution, June decided she had better call a custodian in.

                Stepping quickly for the door and snapping the light switch to the off position, June stopped in her tracks and clutched her stomach, which suddenly was experiencing a painfully tight, clenching sensation.  The teacher doubled over, feeling like her innards were being rattled around, and backed up into the darkness of the room.  She bent over the sink and retched into it throatily before feeling the strength in her legs being leeched from her body.  Instantly, she collapsed painfully to the tile floor, smacking her head against the base of the sink which sent everything around her into a dizzy swirl.

                June struggled to clear her vision up, the clenching in her stomach finally lessening, and reached upward to grab at the leg of a desk to pull herself up.  However, she was surprised to find her hand meeting empty air as she flailed about, grasping for it.  Chalking this up to disorientation after such a hard head to her skull, June blinked a few more times and reached up again, and instead of grabbing at air found herself grabbing at thickly bound fabric threads.  Confused, June rolled over and suddenly found herself being lost in a surreal jungle of soft shirt fabric.  It didn’t take the woman more than a few seconds to realize she was in the nude, as well.

                This had to be a dream.  It had to be.  A nightmare induced by what June suspected by now was a concussion.  Breathing heavily, a sharp headache was soon wracking the teacher’s brain, and in agony the woman clutched her temple as she rolled down a slope of fabric, finally finding herself back on the tile floor again, still completely de-clothed.

                The pounding in June’s confused and sore head was only compounded as a loud shout rattled her eardrums from the classroom next door to the storage room.

                “MS. YOUNG!” boomed a voice.