Nothing To Lose [A Teacher/Student Love Story]

"Amanda Montgomery."

I looked up cluelessly from my painted blue toenails, scanning the empty classroom for eyes upon me. It wasn't exactly my fault for entering the class early. My dad, finding out about my young, and must I mention, very good looking bus driver, persisted on driving me to school everyday in prevention of me falling in love with our old(only 6 years older, but whatever, you know?)yet handsome bus driver.

As if I would fall in love with someone 6 years older than me.

A figure stepped out from behind the sink in the corner. A tall, six-packed figure, with shaggy yet shifted to the right dirty blonde-almost brown hair. His eyes twinkled as he looked down at me sitting at my desk and swinging my legs under my desk. "Amanda Montgomery." he echoed. "That's your name, right?"

I nodded. Was this a new student? If so, how could he know my name?

"I'm Rick, otherwise known as Mr. Stone." he said, extending a hand and implying with his tone for me to shake it.

I obediently clasped my hand with his and shook it, then whipped my hand back and shoved it in the pocket of my blue sweatshirt, wondering why on Earth he called himself by Mr. "I'm Amanda, as you know already." I shrugged.

"Nice to meet you, Amanda. I'm your new Calculus teacher."

My jaw nearly dropped, but I snapped it shut in time before it could droop and possibly fall right to the ground, embarrassing me more than the time Oliver Barett pushed me into the fountain at freshman prom.

I stifled a smile. "Hi, Mr. Stone." I said, resisting the urge to ask him what his age could be, and if it happened to be anywhere within 6 years of my own--I'm 18, just to say so--possibly warn him about my father and what he would say to that.

With my reply, my new Calculus teacher strode over to his large, wooden desk and sat down in the swivel chair, swaying from side to side and looking at me in a nonchalant way.

I blinked, then ducked my head and went back to focusing on my toenails. The blue nail polish was chipping off on all my toes on both feet, except for my big toe on my right foot because I always stubbed it therefore had a cast usually made by toilet paper surrounding it to prevent the throbbing, therefore the nail polish--

"So, where did you go for summer vacation?"

I looked up, startled by my teacher's sudden question and tucked a stray piece of hair behind my ear. "I, uh, I went to Massachusetts."

"You have relatives there?" he asked, dragging his swivel chair closer to his desk to focus more clearly on me.

"Um, no," I responded. "We went to visit universities."

"Oh," he said, as if not expecting that a 17 year old girl would spend her summer looking at universities she wants to go to with her parents. "What universities are you looking in to?"

"Harvard, MIT, University of Cambridge, Tufts..." I trailed off, figuring the list would go on and on. "Stuff like that."

He gave a playful smile. "You must be a very smart girl, then, aren't you?"

I shrugged, frowning slightly. If anything, I was the opposite. I mean, sure, I was good in Language Arts and most subjects, but I lacked in math the most, which didn't help the fact a handsome guy was teaching my Calculus class. "I guess."

He leaned back with a sigh. "Well, you wanna help me prepare?"

I wanted to reply back with a simple, 'not really' as I didn't want to spend 5 minutes of my morning helping my new Calculus teacher prepare on the first day of my senior year, as I would rather continue to stare vigorously at my toenails, but pushed my chair back and said, "Sure, I guess."

He nodded abruptly and stood up from his own desk, grabbing a preperatory sheet from his drawer and skimming over it, then glanced at me and said, "Come."

I followed him to the supply closet, where he opened the doors and brought out a large rack of thick, polished textbooks all titled, 'AP Calculus - Grade 12 Level'.

"You can take that to the front of the room," he said, more as a demand then a suggestion.

I began wheeling the rack of textbooks away from the supply closet, but he stopped me and said, "Not the rack. That needs to stay here. Try taking the textbooks on your own. Maybe 10 at a time. If you need help, just say so."

I frowned, my shoulder deflating slightly, then raised an eyebrow. He expected me, a teenage girl of average strength, to carry 10 textbooks, 3 times, over to the front of the room, and place them somewhere?

He tilted his head sideways dubiously, then looked at me expectantly.

Once I grabbed ahold of 10 of those shiny textbooks, he went back inside the supply closet for something else.

I struggled my way over to the front of the classroom and grunted, placing the heavy textbooks on the large windowsill.

Mr. Stone returned, lifting an eyebrow in an unimpressed way. "I'm sorry, but can you move those to the corner of my desk?"

"Sure," I replied huffily, blowing a stray strand of hair away from my face while struggling to carry the 10 books to the floor of the corner of his desk. Once they hit the floor, I nearly sprinted back to the supply closet and grabbed another armful of books. I wanted to get this done with as quickly as I could, so I could spend less time practically doing my teacher's job for him and go back to staring at my unruly toenails. I placed the other set of textbooks on the floor beside the other 10, then started back towards the supply closet for the last pile of textbooks I had to take.

I paused, seeing only 7 textbooks on the rack left. No.. I was sure I only took 10 textbooks both times, and there were 30 textbooks, so this set should have 10, right? Then why didn't it?

I glanced around warily, then took the 7 textbooks as they were and carried them over to the two other stacks of books. There were definitely only 10 in both of them, and the lack of 3 books in this stack were obvious. What would Mr. Stone do?

Returning to the supply closet, I bit my lip, panicking slightly. This wasn't the impression I wanted my new, young Calculus teacher to have of me. I wasn't usually the type of girl to lose things. I always had my cell phone intact, always knew where I placed my homework, and never lost a thing. What would Mr. Stone think of me? Would he get mad?

Mr. Stone was crouched down, peering into a small box labeled, 'Templates'.

"Um, Mr. Stone.." I began, then bit my lip to stop me from talking. Would he yell at me? Should I tell him, or act like nothing happened?

My tongue reacted before I could. "I can't find the last three textbooks."

He looked up, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "How many textbooks were there in the beginning?"

"30." I replied hesitantly.

"And you only got 27 of them?"

I nodded.

"Then you should put the last three with the rest of the textbooks," he replied simply, frowning.

"Yeah, but," I started. "I sort of can't find the last three textbooks."

He stood up and dusted his hands on his pants. "Then you'll just have to stay after class to find them, won't you?"