Rene Agassiz, recently hired Science teacher at Beauneville Latin, received her Master's degree from the University of Lake City last year. The topic of her thesis: Patterns of Dominance and Submission among University Students and Faculty.
To finance her education, Miss Agassiz transformed herself at night into Mistress Rene, dominatrix, a persona that her affluent clientele found to be most compelling. Miss Agassiz also found it to be most compelling, and lucrative.
Since she began teaching at Latin in September, Miss Agassiz is well on the way to "Most Popular Teacher". The students adore her. Girls respect and admire her presence. Boys think she's hot and respect her, but mostly they think she's hot.
Dressed in her colorful Hermes blouses, standard black leather miniskirt and leather boots, Miss Agassiz is stunningly hot. Searing, close-to-the-sun, jaw-dropping hot. Boys do not misbehave in her class; they are transfixed, mesmerized by her raw energy.
Miss Agassiz is currently ranked number one on Dickie Wickett's secret website The Hot Women of Beauneville Latin. Dickie uploads pictures from the school yearbook, supplemented by candid cellphone pictures, and browsers can "Like" the pictures to drive up ratings. Actually, the website is not secret at all; every girl in school has checked it out before complaining the site is stupid and sexist. Dickie has an open offer to personally evaluate the hotness of any girl who is unhappy with her rating, but so far he's had no takers.
Bibi Ericson is ranked number two. Dickie lives on Dogwood two doors from Bibi's house, and he has a telephoto lens on his Nikon.
Thank to some candid photos from art class, Molly Bloom is currently number three. She couldn't care less.
Megan Cupcake doesn't rank very high, because she is more buxom and bubbly than hot. Roderick doesn't mind. He rather likes her easygoing buxom bubbliness, as well as her propensity to fool around. Megan doesn't care about her rating either. "I'm an Earth sign", she likes to say, "and Earth signs are rarely hot."
Betsy Flapper is a Leo, and she desperately wants to be hot. She did her best to influence the ratings, by sending photos of herself to Dickie, bullying him in the hallway and ordering her entourage to log on and "Like" her pictures. To no avail. She lags well behind in the ratings.
Mary Bloom thinks the website is disgusting, that boys have dirty minds, and there's no way they are getting to first base with her unless they pay for it.
Grading papers Sunday evening, Miss Agassiz makes helpful comments and suggestions, and writes friendly little notes on most. But when she picks up Mary Bloom's paper, her mood turns dark: the little tramp better be perfect, she says to herself.
Mary's paper is actually quite good, better than most, which is not too surprising since Margaret wrote it for her. At the bottom of page two, however, the word Avogadro is misspelled. Mary had to look it up in Wikipedia to find the right spelling so she could be sure to get it wrong.
Miss Agassiz circled the misspelling several times in red and attached a note to the paper with a terse: See me after school.
After school, Mary knocked nervously on Miss Agassiz's door. "Enter!" came the response.
Mary stepped inside tentatively, closed the door and stood before Miss Agassiz's desk. She wore a light blue sweater, white blouse, plaid skirt, knee socks and penny loafers: her "schoolgirl" outfit.
Miss Agassiz licked her lips.
