Only Time Will Tell (Short Story Competition Benedict Cumberbatch)

Week 2

Standing before me I see the man that is supposedly my English Literature teacher and I am taken aback. None of the other male teachers in this school, that all of the other girls think are 'fit', have a hold on him. He has a slim, muscular frame which he compliments by wearing fitted black trousers and as he walks past me I notice that they hug his perfectly sculpted buttocks just right. He is also exhibiting an extremely tightly fitted white shirt of which the top two buttons are casually open giving view to the base of his neck and slightly protruding collar bones. Pairing this with a black fitted suit jacket. I quickly walk into the classroom, trying and failing to keep my equillibrium in check. 

Looking around I notice that almost the whole populace of the class are sat at the back, so with a small smile I seat myself at the table in front of the teacher's desk. I love sitting at the front of any class especially now that I'm in my last year of sixth form. For some unknown reason I find it riveting and really, when it comes down to it I'm a tad bit of a teacher's pet. I have this uncontrollable need for all teachers to like me. I don't very much care for what my so-called 'peers' think of me. They can think whatever they choose to. I don't care.

After retrieving my notebook and pencil case from my back pack I look up at the whiteboard and nearly choke on my own tongue, fighting the urge not to laugh. The teacher has written his name on the board in slant, cursive writing and it reads: Mr Cumberbatch. I continue to splutter and he gives me an odd look. This is the first time I've noticed how obtrusive his cheekbones are and my incoherent spluttering ceases causing a quiescent gasp to tumble from my lips, barely audible. I could cut my self touching those. Oh, how much I want to touch him right now. No, shut up brain. Mr Cumberbatch continues to look at me with his stentorious eyes. I can't quite place what colour that they're meant to be, but one seems to have more of a green pigment and the other a more of a blue hue. 

Expeditiously, I acknowledge that I have been staring at him and lower my gaze to my notebook. As I open my notebook a small girly giggle, that I had no idea I was ever capable of producing, slips out of my already simpering lips.

"Are you alright?" That deep voice laureates my ear drums and my eyes look up to see him sat at his desk directly opposite me. My face pales slightly and I clear my throat.

"Nothing, sir. Just a bit of a cough" I feign coughing into my hankerchief. His eyebrows raise.

"Really? You weren't laughing at my name?" He looks stern. His face stoney. Shit, he's hot. Wait, did I just think that? Oh my god, brain get yourself together. I promptly recollect myself and clear my throat again.

"I can't lie to teachers, but I was kind of laughing at your name... although it would be an exquisite pen name if you were an author" I confess, blushing ever so slightly. Trying to lie to a teacher is my achilles heal. It is unthinkable, impossible. Mr Cumberbatch leans back on his chair with a triumphant smirk upon his perfectly shaped, cupid bow lips. It's as if he's won some sort of contest. As if he knows something.

But what?

I am left to ponder this whilst he introduces himself to the class. Today it seems that he wants us to make a mind map about ourselves, so that we can write an 800 word essay about ourselves as homework. The whole class groans. Myself included. You see I am a very unextroadinary person. Apart from my love of literature, film and TV there's not really anything to me. Just plain old Stefanie Turner.

I sigh and try to start the mindmap. After half an hour I still only have the word Me written in the centre, so I stick my hand up. As rapidly as my hand went up I could feel him standing behind me.

"May I help you?" Mr Cumberbatch asks, now sitting leisurely at his desk in front of me.

"Well... the problem is I'm not a very extraordinary at all, actually I'm quite bland and dull if you ask me. And normally I never get writer's block but-" I start ranting, not quite looking at his piercing eyes.

"I reject that out of hand" I look up at him instantly. My jaw drops as the fact that he just quoted The Fault In Our Stars slowly sinks in. Tears start to brim at the bottom of my eyes. The only thing I can think of is Augustus Waters. Painfully, I look back at him again.

"The fault is not in our stars, dear Brutus. But in ourselves we are underlings" I spit, bitterly. He got me right in the feels and at that moment the bell sounds. The whole class rushes out but I remain sat, solitary. Staring him down.

Luckily I don't have a lesson next, but right then is when the tears decide to fall.

Slowly and surely.

"Miss Turner, are you okay?" My vision is blurred by the omnipresent tears and his voice sounds incredibly distant, although reason and logic tell me that he's sat opposite me. I'm not crying because Mr Cumberbatch made me cry. Oh no. I'm crying because I want my own Augustus Waters.

Someone to call mine.