Becky was going to find out.
After the last boy on the track team left the locker room, she waited five minutes. Then she swept in, surprising Coach Rigo, who was packing a small duffel bag with his teacher clothes. He wore loose-fitting track shorts and a Franklin West tank top. His mouth hung open as she drew closer to him, dropping her own bag on the floor. He was standing by one of the benches between two rows of lockers. When she got close to him, he moved—putting the bench between their bodies.
Becky frowned.
“Miss Wu,” Cash began.
Her frown deepened.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about . . .” he hesitated, as if trying to find the right word for what they’d been doing. He finally settled on, “Things. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about certain things that happened between us last week.”
She raised her eyebrows and wiggled them suggestively. “You mean the kissing, the heavy petting, or the blow jobs?”
His face went instantly red, glowing like a burner on an electric stove. “Oh God,” he groaned. “All of it, Beck—Miss Wu. It was completely inappropriate, and it cannot happen again.”
Becky stepped over the bench, but he moved away from her until his back was against the lockers.
“Because you don’t want it to?” she asked, pressing the length of her body against his. She immediately felt his erection against her stomach.
He slid away, to the side, along the row of lockers. Putting more distance between them. He held up both hands as if to ward her off. “Miss Wu,” he said. “I am a married man. You are my student, and you’re underage. I should never have let you . . .” he trailed off, like he couldn’t bring himself to say out loud what they had done. Which was laughable, considering the size of the erection tenting his shorts. “I’m sorry,” he added. He licked his lips and cleared his throat. “Nothing can ever happen between us again.”
She waited for the punchline, but it didn’t come. “You’re kidding me, right?” she said, stepping back and putting a hand on her hip.
He shook his head. “No, I’m not kidding. I’m sorry. What happened between us was a mistake.”
She gave it one last effort, stepping in front of him again and placing her hand on his dick. He jumped as if she’d shocked him. “It didn’t feel like a mistake,” she whispered, drawing out the word feel.
This time, he forcefully pushed her away. The backs of her legs hit the bench and threw her off-balance. She half fell, half sat on the bench. She felt her shock as a real, physical thing, as if she’d touched a live wire.
Becky was not used to being rejected.
She planted her feet and sprung up, pushing his chest with both hands. The sound of him smashing into the lockers was explosive, loud and reverberating. His shock mirrored hers, but now hers morphed into anger. She poked her finger at his chest. “How dare you?” she shrieked.
He looked around, as if someone might happen by them at any second. “Keep your voice down.”
Before she could speak, the creak of the locker room door froze them in place. Becky took a step toward the door and poked her head around the row of lockers. The door was still and closed. No one was there. She turned back toward Rigo, arms akimbo. Her chest heaved; her whole body abuzz.
“Don’t you get it? I can ruin your life. I can go to the principal or to the police right now and tell them you made me do those things.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. His eyes darkened. “Becky, please.”
She sneered. “Oh, it’s Becky now, is it? Not Miss Wu? So, what? Are you not dumping me after all?”
“I wasn’t dumping you. You’re a great girl, but we cannot be together. I’m married.”
She drew closer, ran a finger down the center of his chest, hooking it into his waistband. He stared at it, his face frozen in horror, as if it were a deadly spider crawling on him.
“I’ve heard the rumors,” she said. “That you can’t get it up for your wife. But obviously, you can for me. What if I told your wife? Yes, let’s tell your wife about us. I’m guessing then you won’t be married anymore.”
“Becky,” he said in a slightly begging tone, “Please don’t.”
“Please don’t,” she parroted, her voice high-pitched and mocking.
She turned, picked up her bag, and walked toward the door. Glancing back at him, she mimicked him again. “‘Please don’t.’ That’s what I’ll tell everyone I said when you came onto me.”
She let him sweat it out for a few days. She avoided him at school, cutting his class and steering clear of him in the halls so he couldn’t get her alone. Every time she saw him, he looked more and more like a man standing before a time bomb that he didn’t know how to diffuse. She had no intention of telling his wife or the principal or the police. What she wanted was him, and she had him in the palm of her hand. In another day or two, he’d be willing to do anything she asked.
Until then, she wouldn’t be waiting for him outside of the boys’ locker room. She grabbed her duffel bag out of her locker and headed toward the track behind Franklin West. The sun was high in the sky, but cool air glided over her bare legs. She’d worn the shortest pair of track shorts she owned, for Coach’s benefit. Besides, in a half hour, she’d be sweating.
She smiled at her teammates, dropped her bag on the grassy area at the center of the track, and started loosening up. A few minutes later, Cash emerged. She felt his eyes on her as she stretched and almost laughed. This was going to be fun. She peeled off her jacket and knelt by her bag, unzipping it and stuffing her jacket inside.
She felt a prick on her hand before she heard the buzzing or saw the bees. One by one, they alighted from inside her bag, buzzing angrily and attacking her. How the hell did they get into her bag? Becky tried to scream, but her throat was already closing. Her skin felt hot and tight. She looked at her hand. It was beginning to swell. So was her tongue. She stumbled to her feet, unsteady, clawing at her throat as more bees stung her arms and legs.
She looked around, panic setting every cell in her body on fire. No one even noticed her distress. Most of her teammates were already doing laps around the track. A handful were still stretching only a few feet away. Becky swatted at the bees and ran toward Coach Rigo. He would know what to do. She’d left her EpiPen in her locker, but the school nurse would have one, too. Her mother had always insisted that she have it on her person at all times, but Becky hadn’t been stung by a bee since she was two years old. She had no memory of it and had always thought her mother was just exaggerating the severity of her allergic reaction. Her mother exaggerated a lot of things.
Except this.
Becky fell three times before she reached Coach Rigo. Her teammates finally noticed her flailing her swollen limbs as she stumbled toward him. She heard them screaming, felt their hands gripping her, trying to keep her upright.
“Oh my God!”
“Becky!”
“What the hell?”
“What happened?”