I relaxed for the first twenty or thirty repetitions, anyway. I hadn't realized at first that Cassie's huge, loopy handwriting was taking a lot longer than it had the others. By the time she was nearing fifty, I decided that was good enough and told her to stop."Can't. Need to do a hundred," she murmured, continuing unabated.Isa and I shared an exasperated look, but I didn't push things. On some level it was a relief. Her minuscule defiance here wasn't confirmation that we couldn't plant contradictory commands in her, but that we'd told her to do something and then been unable to tell her to stop corroborated my suspicion at least. With that, we let her go. Even after the encounter with the Sterns and the conference beforehand, it was still only just past four. Cassie's predecessors had all needed several hours before waking up. Candy had needed over four. We simply needed to be patient. Everything was taken care of now; all that was left was to--My phone buzzed. Cassie was on line

There. My desk was put back together. Better double check and make sure nobody dribbled anything anywhere. Hmm. Couple little spots where Taylor didn't get her mouth in place on time. Some tissue, dab dab dab, aaaand good. Cleaned up. Very good. One thing down. Cassie yawned, the first sound she'd made since I'd pumped her full of Serenex. Somehow it made her look even less alert. Now, what else needs doing... Knock, knock, knock. "Can's in the hallway! Testing!" I called once my heart started beating again. "It's Candace and Louisa," came the reply. Cassie blinked. Sort of. One eye, then the other a second later. But that was about it. I let them in. Their expressions said they knew perfectly well what had transpired between me and the Stern sisters this afternoon. At least in terms of the carnal, that is. Not the other thing. Even so, their disapproval was apparent. "Is she...?" I nodded. These two had never been around someone in a Serenex ingestion trance before, other t

She withdrew, and I was amazed at how much easier I could breathe. How could I be so frightened by someone who I knew for a certainty couldn't hurt me? I glared at her shapely backside as she made her way back to the far side of the room.Don't treat me like a pussy! I wanted to scream at her, except what could be more of a pussy thing to do than that?For the first time since I'd dosed her, I approached Cassie, pulling up a desk in front of her, seating us face to face. Her eyes were barely open. Had she fallen asleep? No, when I said her name, those soft green orbs slowly focused on me, a bit dazed and droopy, but focused nonetheless.After jotting down a few words on it myself, I slid a piece of paper across the desk, along with a pen. Inwardly I chuckled; my policy on lending students a pen was to take collateral to make sure I got them back, but I supposed I had reasonable assurances of its return. "Cassie, I want you to read the words I wrote on that paper and copy them a hundred

Every other Tuesday in our district was an e-learning day for the students. For most of them, it meant sleeping in, waking up two minutes before sign-in was required for attendance, then brushing their teeth and eating breakfast while they half-listened to their first recorded lecture of the day. Then another lecture or two, along with a series of half-cocked worksheets and quizlets that were so basic it insulted even the dullest student's intelligence. While the student body had been excited for it at the onset, after a while the comforts of home became less and less of an allure. E-learning meant no socialization, boring lessons, technical glitches, minimal engagement, and a tragic exacerbation of the hardships our impoverished students suffered. For teachers, it was little better. The morning was a series of meetings, most of which were either updates on the state DoE's latest bit of fuckery or collaborating to respond to them. The afternoon was departmental work on curricular coo

"We are where we are now, anyway," I said at last. "And as a history teacher, you don't need any reminders that we can't go back and undo the past." "That I don't. And... if I tell you something, do you swear not to tell anybody?" "Even Isa?" "Especially Isa." She walked up to me and, to my complete shock, flicked me right in the fly! "I'm not sure I want to undo it. There's no point pretending I didn't have fun Sunday, and whether or not I ever would have initiated it, teaching a couple bigots to be a little more open-minded and sex-positive felt good. I've been thinking about it a lot, and maybe our glass is half full, not empty. Maybe it's more than half, even." I arched an eyebrow. "How do you figure?" "You don't think those girls will be better off with us being able to push them this hard towards a right direction? You're not wrong that if you hadn't intervened, Taylor wouldn't have finished high school. She was failing three required classes with only weeks on the clock. A