Forbidden Fruit

At 24 Stella had her life pretty much where she wanted it. Fresh out of college she had landed a job at Cresswood High as the AP English lit teacher and had already made quite a name of herself. Stella had always been the quiet shy girl growing up and now she was known as the teacher with ice running through her veins. It was fine with her, the senior group tended to be a bit rowdy knowing it was their last year of school before college but not when they stepped foot in her door.

Looking around Stella noticed the group of guys in the back of the class doing everything but the assignment she had given them.

“Mr. Johnson, Mr. Chiles I’m sure whatever it is the two of you are doing can wait till after class is over. Neither one of you can afford to fail another assignment.”

The “oohhs” filled the air and although Michael Chiles looked down guiltily Levi Johnson’s gaze held strong with Stella’s. She had her hands full with him. Levi was the token bad boy every class seem to have. At 18 he already had more tattoos than most rappers and had the girls eating out of his hands. Captain of the football team or not Stella never cut him any slack unlike most of the teachers at Cresswood. She wasn’t going to pass him just so he could lead their Cresswood Tigers into another win on their road to state. Stella couldn’t care less if the Tigers won their next game, hell she couldn’t even tell you the last time she had been to a high school football game.

Stella held her gaze strong with Levi untill he gave her a smirk looking down. Even though she had won the battle of wits with him he still left her feeling a little unnerved. Truth was Levi was failing her class, failing horribly. Each six weeks she assigned them an 8 page essay about one of the stories they had covered and not only did he turn his in a week late, it had only been 3 pages. Progress reports had went out this week and she was more than a little suprised that Coach Russell hadn’t already been pounding at her door. Like it or not his star football player looked like he would be sitting the bench.

Stella wasn’t a bitch, well not all the time. Levi could have come and asked for extra credit, he could have at least turned in a complete 8 pages. Hell he could have gotten one of his groupie girls that followed him around to plagiarize something but he didn’t try. Stella believed that if you tried you deserved help and she would go out of her way to help you. But if you treated her class like it was all fun and games you could forget coming crying to her last minute. It wasn’t happening.

As the bell rang Stella stood at the door as the student’s handed in their assignments. Levi had dragged and was one of the last ones out.

Handing over his paper to her he tilted his head giving what Stella was sure one of his best grins, “you know you need to lighten up some Ms. W.”

Stella frowned at him, “And you need to worry about your grades Mr. Johnson.”

Levi shrugged but before he could say anything else a cute blonde headed girl made her way to him and his attention was drawn away from her. Stella watched as he threw his arm around the girl named Jillian, Levi turned his head back around and winked causing Stella to frown at him. This boy was definitely full of himself.