Blackmailing Miss.Perfect

Chapter 1

        Neil was the one to notice it: Stacy Richards cheating on an examination! He nudged his friend Gary and pointed towards the front of the class.

"Check it out," he whispered.

        Gary saw, but couldn't believe what he was seeing. Stacy Richards - the ice-queen cock tease of the senior class at Greenwood High - was staring intently at a slip of paper hidden on her desk under the exam. Just then, Mr.Edgar, the teacher, coughed quietly and shifted position in his seat at the front ofthe class. Stacy quickly pushed the cheat-sheet back under the exam paper and looked up guiltily, her face flushing a pretty shade of red. If Mr.Edgar had glanced over at her at that moment he would certainly have known that something was wrong with her. But why would he be checking out Stacy Richards, who had been getting straight A grades ever since she had begun attending Greenwood High four years ago?

        Instead, he turned his attention to Neil French and Gary Syms, who were the class trouble-makers: Neil with his long, greasy hair and semi-stylish ripped clothes and Gary with his cynical, cutting sense of geek humour. Sure enough, they were grinning and whispering together at the back of the classroom rather than writing the exam.

"French... Syms," he called out, drawing himself laboriously out of his chair and up to his rather unimpressive full hight "Front of the class."

        No longer smiling, the two boys got up and walked slowly forward, the centre of attention, with everyone in the class looking up at them from their exams. Neil noticed Stacy smirking at him with her typical, haughty sneer. Bitch, he thought, we'll see who's laughing in a second.

"Mr.Edgar," he blurted as he reached the front of the room,"We saw..."

        He was cut off by Gary elbowing him subtly, but stiffly, in the side. He drew in a breath to continue speaking, but he was interrupted by the angry teacher.

"You two have been nothing but trouble since you started this class in September," Mr.Edgar announced, his full white moustache quivering with indignation.

"I can no longer allow you to disrupt this class with your infantile jokes and games, particularly during exams."

        Neil started to protest, but was again cut off by Mr.Edgar, who had worked up a full head of steam.

"You have both failed this examination. You will apologist the class for the disruption, and then you will leave." He glared at the two boys. "Do you understand?"

        Both boys nodded a sullen 'yes'.

"Any further problems," the teacher finished his pronouncement of sentence, "And you will be removed from this class permanently. Perhaps you will be able to make up the course in summer school."

       Gary didn't react, but Neil looked up in alarm.

        That was about the most serious threat a teacher could make, short of outright expulsion. Bakersville was a beach town in southern California, and summer was by far the best time of the year, particularly for the teenagers. Being forced to waste the summer months inside the stuffy high school while everyone else partied on the beach was about the worst fate a teenager could suffer. Apparently cowed, Neil and Gary turned around and stammeredout an embarrassed apology to the class. A few kids giggled -Neil noted that Stacy was one of them - but most looked away, uncomfortable at the humiliation of their fellow students. The two boys then filed out of classroom and into the hallway.

*****

Stacy shrugged her blonde hair off her shoulder and looked back down at the examination as the class returned to normal. Thank god those two geeks were gone, she thought, and tried toput Neil and Gary from her mind. In her world, there were"people" and there were "geeks", and Neil and Gary definitely fell into the latter category. She wouldn't even have known their names except that Neil had spent the better part of the first term of the previous year following her about, and had even asked her out on a date. As if! She had refused in as cruel a manner ass he knew how (which was pretty cruel), and had later asked Pete, her then boyfriend and captain of the football team, to beat Neil up, just to warn him off. Pete had dutifully administered the beating, and Neil had backed off. She had soon afterward broken up with Pete - he had lost his place on the football team that spring - and had put the entire episode from her mind.