Turning Good Girls Bad

Havermouth High School, Five Years Before

Reaching the transportable at the very rear of the school grounds was like obtaining sanctuary in a war field. After a day of dodging random touches, fighting her way through classes when her concentration broke and she could not hear the teacher for the thoughts of the thirty students sharing the room with her, and feeling the whiplash of disdain from the werewolf students whenever Heath or Cameron shared her class as they seemed to live for no other purpose than to make her miserable with humiliation, she leaned back against the wall to the side of the art class entrance.

The art teacher, Mr Graynor, liked to sneak down the little creek that ran through the back of the oval and have a joint before his afternoon classes, so he was always red eyed and mellow, with no interest in giving his students a hard time. Often, after delivering the content of the class, he would encourage them to take their work outside, so that he could sit in the little office attached to the art room and eat sunflower seeds whilst he indulged in his own artwork. This meant that with frequency, Aislen could escape the school early. Mr Graynor didn't care if she didn't return before the bell, as her work book was always handed in completed and in time.

“You are always early,” Rhett strolled around the corner of the building nearest to where she stood. He had been smoking in the alley between the two classrooms and offered it to her. “Want some?” He asked, flicking his black hair back from his face.

She shook her head, and he dropped it to the floor scuffing it out beneath his sole-heavy designer army-style boots. His shirt sleeves were folded back to his elbows, and he’d drawn tattoos on his knuckles and along the insides of his forearms, intricate twisting designs using triangles. He dropped his bag to the floor, heedless of the price tag that went with it, and leaned against the wall at her side.

It was stupid, she thought, that the piercing through his lip made it more inviting. She could imagine the softness of his full bottom lip contrasting to the ring of metal as she took it between her teeth.

“Do you miss the city?” He asked, his eyes searching her face, and his attention intense on her.

“I guess,” she wasn’t comfortable being the focus of his scrutiny, and was suspicious of these apparently friendly overtures, waiting for him to twist and turn them into mockery.

“Friends?” He prompted.

“Yes,” she missed her friends. She missed her old school. Unlike the Havermouth High School, her old school had gone from preparatory through to seniors, and she had grown up alongside her classmates. They had accepted her, even after, when she started bleeding at thirteen and had come into her strange gift, she had begun to dislike being touched by anyone.

“Have you made any friends here?” He asked her.

“Not really,” she flushed, awkwardly. If he was being friendly, if he was trying to be a friend, or if he was expressing an interest in her, she wasn’t helping him out at all, she thought. But did she trust him enough to answer him in more depth? “It’s hard to make friends here,” she volunteered uncertainly. “Because everyone here has grown up together. I know how it is. It was the same at my old school – I’d been with the same people from prep. It’s hard to, you know, fit in when you’re the odd one out.”

“I know,” he agreed with a grin, his teeth perfectly straight and white. “I found it the same when my mum moved us here three years ago. I was lucky though; I became friends with Cameron and Heath pretty quickly. It shouldn’t have worked – three friends, usually there’s someone left out, eh? But it works for us.”

“I didn’t realize,” she was surprised. “That you had moved here. I assumed… Because you’re such good friends with Cameron and Heath…”

The arrival of more students and then the teacher interrupted them, and they moved into the class. Aislen moved quickly through the room to claim her spot beneath the window. She wasn’t surprised when Rhett followed her. He had been sitting beside her in this class since her first day. She had always assumed that it was his unofficial spot, as everyone in the class seemed to have one, but as she often caught him looking at her out of the corner of his eye, she had begun to wonder…

“We’re going to work in pairs over the next four weeks,” the teacher, Mr Graynor announced. “Drawing the portrait of your partner. We’ve gone over the techniques to sketch, and then paint a portrait, and this assignment is worth thirty percent of your term marks, so get to work.”

Rhett rose to his feet and dragged his chair around the table. For a moment she thought that he was abandoning her for someone he’d rather work with, but he set the seat opposite to her and grinned. “This will make it easier,” he told her, opening his sketch book to a new page, and opening his tin of pencils.

Due to the length of his legs, the new position meant that, beneath the tabletop, he slid one leg between hers, using the footrest on her stool to rest his toes upon, with his other knee resting on the outside of hers. “Will you be comfortable like this?” He asked her as flashes of him sliding his hand under the hem of her uniform skirt under the cover of the tabletop flooded her mind.

Comfortable, she thought, was not the word she’d use for it - her entire body seemed to focus on where his legs touched hers. There was an intimacy to the position that sent her hormones onto the boil when combined with the imagery from his thoughts that the contact of their legs gave her access to. Sitting there like that and staring at him was going to be an agony, she thought. She’d soak through her underwear in no time.

“Sure,” she said when her tongue would work again. She distracted herself by preparing her sketch pad and pencils. They worked that way for an hour, and their faces began to take shape on the paper. “That’s really good,” she admired his piece, flattered by the way he had drawn her. He’d put a lot of work into her eyes, and the realism was impressive she thought.

“I like me, too,” he smiled, dropping his pencil, and leaning back to stretch out. “Do you want to go somewhere else? Graynor is letting people go work outside. We could ditch school early and go to the park down the road, put in another hour there? It’s nicer than here.”

She shouldn’t, she thought. She really shouldn’t…. “Okay,” she began to pack away her pencils, unable to resist the appeal of keeping company with the nicest one of the Triquetra in public. The afternoon was warm, and the moment that they stepped outside of the airconditioned classroom the heat hit them.

“F-k it’s hot! Do you want me to hold your stuff so you can take your jumper off?” He held out his hand.

She surrendered her bag and pulled off the jumper, knotting it around her waist, blushing, knowing that he was looking at her.

Her mother had been a beauty queen and model, and she was always disappointed by what she called “Aislen’s lack of style”. If Tiffany Carter had her way, Aislen would be bleached blonde, and go to school with a full application of makeup. Her latest effort at beautifying her daughter had involved tailoring all of Aislen’s school shirts to a snugger fit. Unfortunately, Tiffany’s idea of a snug fit had the buttons over Aislen’s breasts straining.

Being nearly eighteen, curvy and in snug-fitting shirts around boys her own age, especially the Havermouth boys, was like an open invitation to touch. With Aislen’s gift, touching was simply not welcome.

Rhett didn’t comment, handing back her bag. “There’s plenty of shade at the park. And there won’t be many people around.”

They passed out through the school gates, and entered the tree-lined streets, the shade beneath them immediately cooler than it had been crossing the concrete of the school. Rhett fished a cigarette packet out of his back pocket and offered it to her.

She took one hesitantly. She’d never smoked before, but there was a certain anti-glamour walking beside the handsome Rhett, smoking his cigarettes. It was almost like being his girlfriend, she thought, and that was a position that any number of girls from school would envy her for. Not to mention, a position that Aislen wouldn’t mind holding, she admitted to herself, looking up at him as he cupped a hand in order to light his cigarette and then holding the end out to her.

She put the cigarette into her mouth and breathed in, the draw of air through the dried tobacco sucking the embers at the end of his into glowing. He watched her as she took a breath and fought back the urge to cough before releasing the smoke. His grin was mischievous, she thought. He knew that she didn’t smoke, that this was her first, and he enjoyed being the one to get her to try it.

“Turning good girls bad,” he said with a laugh, confirming what she already knew.

“I’m not a good girl,” she protested, not wanting to be labelled as that when he was so much the opposite with his overgrown dark hair, drawn on tattoos, and lip piercing.

“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows teasingly. “What secret rebellion do you hide, Aislen? Let me guess, your nipples are pierced,” his eyes dropped to where her breasts strained against the shirt. “Nope,” he said. “Or they’d show through that top. Your clit then?”

“Rhett,” she protested blushing. “You can’t just ask that.”

He shrugged. “Call it professional interest if it makes you more comfortable. My parents are pissed with me,” he told her. “Because I want to pursue becoming a tattoo artist and piercer, not study law, or anything dull and responsible like that.”

“How do you become a tattoo artist and piercer?” She wondered.

“An apprenticeship, and courses,” he said. “Maybe you’ll let me pierce you, Aislen?” He suggested heavy with inuendo. “I’ve done a few already, including my lip. It’s sexy to pierce someone, and to know afterwards that their clothing is hiding something naughty,” his eyes lit with his wolf and his grin was sexy.

She was flustered and intensely aroused by his attention and the things he was suggesting. “Oh, I don’t know…”

“Ah, look, the guys got here before us! Hey!” He called out as they approached the park. She could see Cameron and Heath were at a picnic table, with a slab of beer between them. “And they have beer. Come on, Aislen,” he put his arm around her shoulders, and she saw clearly him leaning towards her, his eyes flicking between her lips and her eyes, the vision fading just at the point of his lips meeting hers.

Her heart raced. Every instinct said to run, but with the promise of that kiss tantalizing her, there was no way that she could listen.