Lesson by Her [Book 1]

Chapter 19

"Dust-Rose, are you following this?" Valentine asked as she stood beside the whiteboard, Valentine pen held poised as she was in the process of solving a complex equation. Dusty sighed wearily and nodded. They were two weeks into her extensive tutoring schedule.

Each day after school, she studied in a dedicated effort to raise her grades across the board. She met with Valentine three nights a week. Even though she was only into the second week, she'd already started to hear the vicious rumors of school gossip.

"There goes Ms. Quinn' pet," girls would snipe as Dusty walked past them. She was no longer able to hold her head high. Without the armor of her cheerleading uniform, she'd become a target for other students to belittle and poke fun at. What worried her was how much all the negative attention would intensify if people found out about her trailer roots.

She'd been so careful to hide it, so meticulous in the creation of her alternate persona, but now she risked it all unraveling around her.

"What do you and Ms. Quinn do after school?" Justin had launched a surprise attack on Dusty as she was walking down the corridor solo, abandoned by Cora, who was at a lunchtime cheerleading practice. "Or does she just do you?" Justin had added, a comment that caused his surrounding jock friends to erupt into fits of laughter.

Dusty had turned bright red and scurried away from their taunts. "Dusty-Rose," Valentine called her name a second time from the front of the classroom. "It's negative four," Dusty said.

"I'm in the process of solving this for you," Valentine objected.

"Well, you're wasting your time. The answer is negative four," Dusty retorted, playing the part of the petulant teenager. She knew she was being difficult. She saw the exasperation in Valentine's eyes each time she played up, and was sassy towards her, but she couldn't help it.

Whenever she sat in a room with her, she felt deafened by the catcalls of the other students that had haunted her day, making her unable to concentrate. What bothered her more than anything was a recent story that had broken about a girl in a neighboring school who had been caught having an affair with her history tutor.

The man in question was much older than Valentine and married with children, but the community's reaction to the story revolved around the abuse of trust enforced by the tutor, and the wicked seduction displayed by the girl. Somehow, both parties had come out of the scenario as villains. The history tutor had been unceremoniously fired from his post with immediate effect, whiles the female student, unable to withstand the relentless bullying from her peers was now being homeschooled.

The leak ruined both her name and reputation. Dusty didn't want the same for herself. Nothing sexual had occurred between her and Valentine. That didn't mean that she hadn't thought about it. A lot. In fact, she thought about it so much that it added to her unease and frustration.

Dusty feared that the more time she spent with

Valentine, the more she opened herself up to temptation and the possibility of overstepping the line that would forever define her as a whore and rob Valentine of her hard-earned career. Yet the fact that nothing had occurred between them did not stop the gossips or the bullies.

Graffiti had appeared in various stalls declaring that Dusty acted out explicit sex acts on Valentine during their extra tutorials. When she first saw the comments, Dusty tried to dismiss them, but eventually they soaked into her conscience, and she became fearful of what people thought of her. Even though she'd done nothing wrong, the rumors alone could be enough to seal her fate.

The only people who knew the truth were her and Valentine, but if the scandal continued to grow as it was, their testimonies, while truthful, wouldn't be enough to convince people who were already so certain of what had transpired.