of the principal’s office toward the blistering heat of SoCal. Anger, humiliation and self-loathing coated every inch of my soul, creating a clay of desperation I was desperate to itch away.
Rock. Meet. Bottom.
I’d just found out All Saints High was not going to renew my contract as a teacher next year, unless I pulled my shit together and performed some magic that’d transform my students into attentive human beings. Principal Followhill said that I showed zero authority and that the literature classes I was teaching were falling behind. To add fuel to the fire, I found out that day that I was getting kicked out of my apartment at the end of the month. The owner had decided to remodel and move back in.
Also, the blind date I bagged through a questionable dating site just fired me a message saying he wouldn’t be able to make it because his mom wouldn’t give him her car tonight.
He was 26.
So was I.
But being picky was a luxury a woman who hadn’t seen a real-life cock in four years didn’t really have.
When did it all go wrong?
I’ll tell you when—the summer of 2009. I got accepted to Juilliard and was about to fulfill my dream and become a professional ballerina. See, this is what I worked for my whole life. My parents had to take out a loan to pay my way through dancing competitions. Boyfriends were deemed an unwelcome distraction, and my only focus was on becoming a prima ballerina, to join the Bolshoi.
Dancing was my oxygen.
When I said my goodbyes to my family and waved at them from the security point at the airport, they told me to break a leg. Three weeks into my first semester at Julliard, I literally did. Broke it in a freakish escalator accident on the subway.
It not only killed my career, dreams, and lifelong plan, but also sent me packing and back to SoCal. After a year of sulking, feeling sorry for myself and developing a steady relationship with my first (and last) boyfriend—a dude named Jack Daniels—my parents convinced me to pursue a career in teaching. My mom was a teacher. My dad was a teacher. My older brother was a teacher. They loved teaching.
I hated teaching.
This was my first—and judging by my performance, only—year at All Saints High in Todos Santos, California. Principal Followhill was one of the most influential women in town. Her polished bitchery was formidable. And she absolutely despised me from the get-go. My days under her rein were numbered.
As I approached my twelve-year-old Ford Focus, tucked between Principal Followhill’s Lexus and her son’s monstrous Range Rover (Yeah. She bought her son, a senior, a fucking luxury SUV. Why would an 18-year-old need a car so big? Maybe so it can accommodate his giant-ass ego.), I realized my situation couldn’t possibly get any worse.
But I was wrong.
Sliding into my car, I adjusted the rearview mirror, took a deep breath and started backing up, slipping from between the two pricey, small dick symbols. At the exact same moment, Mr. Living With His Mom had texted me again. The green bubble flashed with “GOT THE CAR, R8DY TO SEX IT UP?” accompanied with approximately three thousand question marks.
I got distracted.
I got annoyed.
I bumped straight into Principal Followhill’s son’s SUV.
Choking the steering wheel and gasping in horror, I slapped my hand over my heart to make sure it didn’t shoot out of my ribcage. Shit. Shit. Shit! The thud that filled my ears didn’t leave room for doubt. I did to his SUV what Keenu Reeves did to the movie Dracula.
I fucking ruined it.
My fight or flight adrenalin kicked in, and I briefly contemplated whether I should use an alias and run out of the country to hide in a cave somewhere in the Afghan mountains.
How was I going to pay for the damage? Principal Followhill was going to kill me. Technically speaking, her son wasn’t supposed to park in the teachers’ lot. Then again, Jaime Followhill got a lot of free shit he wasn’t supposed to get due to his looks, social status and powerful parents.
I mustered the courage to peel my sorry ass off my seat and examine the destruction I’d caused to Jaime’s precious black Rover. I crawled out of my car and circled around to find my cheap car’s ass kissing the Range Rover’s backdoor, leaving a dent the size of Africa.
Bending down, I squinted at the white scratches, not giving a damn about the fact that my brown