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And that set Chloë off.

“Morgaaaan!” she called out when the orgasm took her. “Ohhhh!”

Chloë let herself surrender to the bursts of pleasure and be her normal loud self while her center shuddered and convulsed. Morgan coaxed her through the climax, stroking and curling those fingers, Chloë knowing her pussy was absolutely coating them with her juices, the wet, sticky sounds caused every time Morgan moved her hand adding an extra level of lewd raciness to what was happening and making Chloë’s pussy clench even more with excitement.

“Fucking hell, Miss Banks!” Chloë huffed when it was over, her breath ragged. “Dude, that was good! Did we draw a crowd?”

Morgan smirked.

“Do you hear any applause?”

Chloë giggled.

“Shall we finish this up at my place?” Morgan purred, nuzzling Chloë’s neck.

“Yes, please.”

Chapter 36

“Ms. Banks. I would like to hear your beliefs or your concepts, if you will, of what a Literature department in a twenty-first century high school should be.”

It was Tuesday, the day of her formal interview with the board of directors of Barrington Woods and Morgan had been hoping for this question. She didn’t care which of the board members asked it but she knew she wanted a chance to answer it. Turns out it was Dr. Gedney doing the asking, one of the six members of the board who, along with Dr. Kenworthy, had been interviewing her via Zoom for the past forty-five minutes.

So far, the interview had been going well. Nothing the board members asked her had tripped her up or made her feel unprepared. Instead of feeling relief at that, though, all it had done was reinforce the notion Morgan still harbored that this inter

view was truly nothing but a courtesy and that the panel was tossing her softballs.

Well, so be it. At least she was going to take this opportunity to express her ideas.

“Excellent question,” Morgan began, looking directly into her laptop’s camera. “To begin, I believe the first thing we need to do is stop calling it the Fine Literature department.”

Dr. Gedney, the asker of the question, raised an eyebrow.

“Say more, please,” he prodded.

Morgan swallowed and continued.

“The name ‘Fine Literature’ is too narrow in scope, too confining. Yes, the great works of writing by the greatest writers who ever lived ought to continue to be taught, and I want to continue teaching them but I feel we are doing our students a disservice by not also exposing them to and inviting discourse on works by writers who have not achieved the stature of Shakespeare or Hemingway.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are in charge of educating a generation of kids that has access to the most information and knowledge than any generation of kids before it. I mention this because they are truly more a part of the world than you and I ever were at their ages. They text instantly with kids on the other side of the planet; they use their iPads to go on virtual tours of cities in Italy or Japan; they have friends of all races and sexual orientations. They participate—even virtually—in protests against racial injustice or climate change. These kids want to hear from writers who can do more than teach them what life was like for white people in the eighteenth or nineteenth century.”

“And how do you propose doing this?” Dr. Marcano, another board member asked.

“By adding works written by more Black writers, for a start. James Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston, for example. Also, by adding works written by more LBGTQ writers like Highsmith and Bannon. Another thing: Europe and America haven’t been the only parts of the world creating great writing. I would add books to our curriculum that were written in places like Africa, India, Australia. We also need more books written by women. Ask a high school kid to name a famous female writer and she’ll say ‘Jane Austen’ or maybe she’ll name one of the Brontë sisters. That’s it. Do you realize that most girls have no idea that Frankenstein was written by a woman? We need to change that.

“We also need to change the idea that only books that were written at least a century ago are worthy of being discussed in school. In the past fifty years alone there have been some groundbreaking novels and plays written and we need to show our kids that something new can also be something great.”

She was done. True to form, the faces in all the Zoom windows on her laptop’s screen were impassive, betraying nothing. Finally, Dr. Kenworthy cleared his throat.

“And so, what new name would you give to the Fine Literature department if you were able to make all these changes?”

Morgan was ready for this question also.

“I’d call it the Department of Written Arts.”

***

“Dude, that’s a fucking brilliant name!” Chloë gushed later that evening after Morgan recounted the interview to her while they drank some white wine on her sofa.