Filed to story: Shhh Professor! Please Don’t Tell! Novel Free
I changed into swim trunks but put on a t-shirt. I didn’t plan to swim, just sit on the beach and read. Or pretend to read. I felt fairly certain I would just lie there and pine for Ellie.
All of the students were already on the beach when I arrived, as well as the other professors, even Professor Spaulding. Most of the girls were spread out on towels, giggling, reading, and sunbathing. The boys were flirting with the girls by making obnoxious comments and starting a highly competitive game of volleyball near the water’s edge.
I’d brought
Great Expectations
with me. Dickens knew how I felt. I sat down in one of the beach chairs and forced myself not to look at Ellie. I’d seen her out of the corner of my eye, lying on a mint green and white striped beach towel, wearing a pink bikini and looking like a goddess. She had sunglasses over her eyes, and she was lying flat against the ground with her face turned towards the sky. I didn’t know if her eyes were closed or not.
I let Professor Spaulding, who had settled down in the chair next to mine with a very thick book entitled,
John Brown: Abolitionist,
and a sigh of contentment become absorbed in his reading before I risked taking a long look at Ellie. Even though I was also wearing sunglasses, I didn’t want to risk any suspicion.
She was definitely looking up at the sky. I could see her head move slightly from side to side as she watched the movements of the clouds.
My eyes traced over her body. The body that I had caressed, fondled, explored every inch of last night. It felt like a dream. It would have felt like a dream, except that all the intimate parts of her that I should know nothing about were familiar to me. I knew the softness of her hips, her butt, and her breasts. She had a birthmark near the top of her right breast. She had a ring in her bellybutton. She had a tattoo of the Eye of Horus on her left hip.
I closed my eyes. I hadn’t dreamed it. I wished I was dreaming the way she was acting now. It couldn’t be just because she was afraid someone might notice. She could have texted me. Something was wrong.
Ellie’s distance continued for the rest of the trip.
We left the resort in Hurghada and made our way back to the airport. We spent one last night in Egypt at the same hotel in Cairo that we’d stayed at before.
I stood on the balcony in my room, gazing out at the city. Neon signs mingled with old stone buildings. Below me in the alley, a cat meowed plaintively.
I gazed up at the moon. I could hear the young people talking and laughing in the lobby. I didn’t hear Ellie’s laugh. I hadn’t heard her laugh once since we’d slept together.
I wasn’t the only person who had noticed her shift in energy. Yesterday I had overhead one of the other girls not Annie. Annie seemed to just have a witchcraft about her. She knew things without having to ask. I wondered if she knew what had happened between Ellie and me.
She asked Ellie “what was up with her.”
“I’m just tired,” Ellie had said.
I leaned against the stone balcony and gripped my hands together. I couldn’t rid myself of the fear that I had done a terrible thing. That even though she had wanted me to take her like that, she had been too young. We shouldn’t have done what we’d done. I was older, I was supposed to be wiser. I should have protected her. I should have told her “No.”
And she had been worried about gossip. What if it got out that we’d made love? Gossip of that kind was something Ellie had been trying to avoid all semester.
I heard another burst of laughter from the hotel lobby. I wanted to go there. It was the last night of the trip. I wanted to see Ellie smile and hear her laugh. I wanted to feel sure that she was still okay.
I walked through my room and out into the lobby of the hotel. It was dimly lit and held a conglomeration of red and green couches with narrow cushions. The students were sitting on them or on the floor, braiding each other’s hair, drinking sodas, and throwing kernels of popcorn at each other.
“You’re going to have to clean up all that popcorn before we leave this lobby,” said Professor Johnston. “I don’t want us to be bad guests, especially on our last night here. The world has enough reasons to dislike Americans, so let’s not give them anymore.”
A few students made faces, but I smiled. I was glad Professor Johnston was here it made me feel less out of place.
“Professor Steele!” shouted Henry, calling out my name like I was a cheer for a sports game. “Welcome to the madness!”
“Is that what this is?” I said with forced cheerfulness, looking around the group. I didn’t let my eyes linger on Ellie, but I saw her sitting on the ground, leaning against Annie’s legs. She had a book on her lap like she was only partially participating in the fun. She wasn’t smiling. She looked pale. My heart sank.
“What should we do now that Professor Steele is here?” one of the other girls asked.
“Spin the bottle,” said Tony.
Someone threw a pillow at him, and everyone laughed. Ellie didn’t. I saw her cheeks flush slightly.
I felt something in my core like sandpaper scraping together. Or gravel rattling around in a glass jar.
But I laughed along with everyone else. Like it was all a joke. Like I would never, and never had, kissed any of my students.
“Let’s play Truth or Dare,” suggested Melanie, one of the girls. She had an impish gleam in her eye.
Oh god, please no.
“Yeah!”
“I’m down.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“I want to hear all about Professor Steele’ dark past.”
“I want to see Tony take his pants off.”
Professor Johnston exchanged an exasperated glance with me.
“It’s a good thing we’re here,” she said. “I can’t imagine what these hooligans might get up to without adult supervision.”
I swallowed and smiled back at her.
“Okay,” Melanie said. “I’ll go first. I choose Dare.”
“That’s because she doesn’t want anybody to know what she did last night,” said Tony.
“Set a building on fire obviously,” said Melanie smoothly. “Don’t worry, it was a sad little building, nobody cared.”
Professor Johnston shook her head as if Melanie actually had set a building on fire. She was knitting something tube-shaped that looked as though it would end up as a sock. Impressive.
Melanie was dared to lick the floor, but Professor Johnston forbade it, her expression utterly horrified. “Parasites!” she said. “Bacteria! Roundworms! This trip is dangerous enough without outright stupidity.”