Page 3

Miri

M iri stared at the clock on the wall. Three minutes to go.

One-hundred-eighty seconds. That was nothing, she could survive that no problem.

She’d once survived an entire semester of kids randomly attacking each other with glue sticks throughout the day.

If she could persevere through prying random objects off of screaming, glue-covered children, she could manage three minutes of listening to them fuss over their little backpacks.

“Ms. Brown, I’m thirsty,” a small voice interrupted her staring contest with the clock.

“The bell will ring in three minutes. You can stop at the drinking fountain on the way to the bus, Lily.”

Or she would forget entirely in her rush to get in her assigned bus line. Her students were barely six-years old, so it was a roll of the dice.

“But I’m thirsty now !” the tiny girl whined. “I’m going to die of d-dedration.”

“Dehydration,” Miri sighed. How did they pack so much melodrama into such small bodies? “And no, you will not die of dehydration in the three minutes we have left in class. Now please put your coat on and pack up your backpack.”

She stopped her tiny foot, her pink rain boot rattling around her skinny ankle. “Ms. Brown?—“

“Lily, you need to put your listening ears on,” she told her sternly. Miri’s patience was hanging on by a thread and the sassy girl was dangerously close to losing some of her free time tomorrow. “Coat, backpack, drinking fountain. Say it back to me, please.”

“Coat, backpack, fountain.”

“Good job.” Miri tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I bet you can’t remember those three words while you put your coat on.”

“I can!”

“I don’t think so, but why don’t you go ahead and show me.” She waved her over to the child-sized cubbies against the wall. “Coat, backpack, drinking fountain. Go!”

Miri went back to staring at the clock. Only three days of this left to go. She needed spring break almost as much as her fidgety class did.

Her students could sense freedom. The sugar-crazed bloodhounds could sniff out a vacation a full week away.

Three whole school days until spring break officially began but the little monsters had already gone full feral.

Miri had done her best to wrangle them, but there was only so much a person could do when they were having a standoff with twenty kindergartners holding crayons that made surprisingly effective projectiles.

After a student took a lunchbox to the face— for the second time, no less— she had waved the white flag and turned down the lights for a movie. She was one more screaming fit from a breakdown herself.

Was it the best teaching method? No, but Miri was in survival mode.

The only other choice was to bust out a tranquilizer gun and track them through the halls like a big game hunter—as tempting as it was, parents tended to get a little snippy when you played a junior version of The Most Dangerous Game with their children.

“Ms. Brown!” Lily shrieked as she ran back over from her cubby. Her coat was misbuttoned and her backpack was only half-zipped, but Miri was going to call it a win. “Coat, backpack… um… fountain! See, I remembered!”

“Well, I’ll be.” She clapped her hands together with false cheer. “You did remember! Now go get in line by the door?—“

The bell rang, ending their conversation. Miri shooed the chattering little gremlins out the door and let her sigh of relief burst out of her chest. They were officially their parents’ problems until the bell rang again tomorrow morning.

Crossing to the big calendar on the board, she crossed off another day. She eyed the cheerful flowers decorating the first day of spring break. It was so close she could taste it.

And it tasted like the double chocolate brownies she was going to make Saturday morning.

Miri had big plans for her vacation—doing absolutely nothing.

The most she intended to do was fold some laundry, maybe test out a recipe or two.

Her ultimate goal was to wear the same sweatpants for a week and see if she could grow roots on the couch.

She was so fucking excited.

A head of silver hair poked through the open doorway. Ms. Rhodes, the ancient teacher in the neighboring class, frowned at the explosion of color in the room. Lips thinning, she turned to Miri.

“Your class sounded so rowdy there at the end, I thought you might need a reminder about the staff meeting today. In case, you were overwhelmed or anything.”

Miri gritted her teeth. Just because she didn’t run her classroom like a super max prison—like some people—did not mean her class was unruly. Children make noise. It was sort of their main characteristic.

“Thanks, Ada. I remember,” she said through her clenched jaw.

With a final tut, the sourpuss moseyed off to ruin someone else’s day. The day that old bat retired, Miri would pop a bottle of champagne… or three. Hell, make it a case. After a decade of the bag of wrinkles’ criticisms, she’d earned it.

Miri glanced at her watch and sighed. As much as Ms. Rhodes annoyed her, she had actually forgotten about the meeting. Not that she was about to admit it. She’d been so looking forward to going straight home and becoming one with a pair of pajama shorts and pint of ice cream.

She quickly crammed her things into her bag and slung it over her shoulder. If she was going to be held hostage by the stuffy headmaster, at least she could make sure she’d have a quick exit when the time came. Miri turned out the lights and closed the door.

Hurrying down the hall, she did her best not to grumble out loud. Did they really need to have another meeting? The overbearing school board practically ordered this crap weekly. Miri had a life outside of school, thank you… okay, it wasn’t a busy life per se, but it was a life, damn it.

“A half hour of zoning out and then you can run,” she promised herself quietly.

And if she managed not to fall asleep this time, she could have an extra scoop of ice cream tonight. That was a good deal. Very responsible, very adult—and not at all desperate.

Miri hurried into the teacher’s lounge. If she could get a spot by the door, she could shave off precious seconds on the way to her car. Her eyes scanned the room and her stomach dropped.

Jason fucking Wilson. The pompous bastard was already perched in a seat by the door, his pale eyes looking everyone up and down as they entered the room. No doubt some kind of weak plan to kiss the headmaster’s ass. Jason was world-class suck up—a fact Miri had learned far too late.

She’d never been his biggest fan, but her neglected libido had somehow convinced her to accept a date with the moron. Miri had been regretting it ever since.

Jason’s cold face lit up as he caught sight of her.

Fuck. Before he could open his mouth and beckon her over, she hurried past him and took a seat on the opposite side of the room between two math teachers.

His eyes narrowed as she set her bulging bag on the floor at her feet.

He turned his back on her, his arms crossing over his chest.

Miri didn’t know why he was so butthurt about her rejection.

It wasn’t like he actually wanted to talk to her.

In fact, she would bet every dollar in her wallet that he wanted to brag about being next in line for the open deputy headmaster position.

The conversation—if you could call his grandstanding a conversation—would end with him asking her to put in a good word for him with her mother.

As if her mother wouldn’t be one of his loudest cheerleaders on the board already.

“Hello, devoted staff!” the Headmaster Dolan said as he walked into the room. Five minutes late, no less.

The teachers offered him a half-hearted hello. The uptight jerk tutted and shook his head.

“I think we can do better than that.”

Really? Because Miri was pretty sure the overworked staff would rather use their employee badges to dig a tunnel right out of the lounge. They might be a snobby bunch, but at least they hated the overbearing windbag as much as she did.

“Let’s talk about parent teacher conferences?—“

Annnnnnd Miri zoned out. What was there to know?

They’d all done this twenty times over at this point in their careers.

The pompous parents would show up in their fancy cars, with their designer bags, and trust fund attitudes, and spend the whole conference demanding to know why their flawless little angel couldn’t tie their shoes yet.

It was the same every semester… except that one year with the fistfight. But Miri was pretty sure the academy board had learned their lesson about providing wine to the waiting parents.

Miri’s bag buzzed against her foot. She grimaced.

They had strict rules about employee phone usage at Stoneworth Academy.

She had her cellphone on a preset silent mode; it lived in her purse, quiet as a church mouse until the final bell rang and silent mode automatically turned off.

Quickly glancing around her, she made sure no one was watching and fished out her phone.

The small screen lit up with dozens of notifications. She stared at the messages.

Her first few days on MONSTR had been uneventful as she waited for her account and profile to be approved.

She’d been allowed to swipe on prospective mates, but the matches were withheld until she was verified.

Apparently, that approval had come through at some point in the school day.

Dozens of flirty messages and vaguely alarming monster dick pics were waiting in her inbox.

Ivan

Hey lil mama. I bet your blood tastes as sweet as you look

Craig

I might be a ghoul, baby, but I’d never ghost you… get it? Ghost?

Josh

Hullo gorgeus. Ive got a monster crush on those sweet titties of yurs

Tony

Listen, I just need someone to help me molt my skin this weekend. I’ll pay you $100

Most his skin? What in the actual fuck?

Miri unmatched the scaly lizard man and kept swiping. The further she dug into her inbox, the dirtier the messages became. Her cheeks burned at the message offering to let her ride his tail. Tempting… but no.

The third-grade math teacher on her left peered over at Miri’s buzzing phone with interest. She quickly tilted the phone in her lap.

That last thing she needed was a rumor spreading around the school that she was on the hunt for monster dick.

She barely got along with the other prissy teachers as it was.

Miri turned muted the notifications and tapped her messaging app.

Miri

NICOLE!

Nicole

What?

Miri

Why didn’t you warn me that every single dude on MONSTR was horny AF?

Nicole

…did you think I had five monsters living in my house because I liked the company??…

Ashley

Are we just going to gloss over the fact that MIRI JOINED MONSTR???

Nicole

Okay, but seriously… you’re gonna want to start weeding some of those guys out. The last thing you need is to run into a horny werewolf or something at a gas station who’s still waiting for a response

Miri winced. Nicole would know. She had run into at least three monsters who had recognized her from her profile picture after she forgot to delete it from the app. Drake had nearly twisted the head off of a ghoul who had recognized her and tried to cajole her into a date.

Right. Time to get sorting. Dick pic, dick pic, terrible pick-up line.

Miri ignored the rest of the meeting. It’s not like they were telling her anything she didn’t already know.

She sorted through her matches for the profiles that interested her most, unmatching from any moron who had sent her a dick pic as she went.

Call her old fashioned, but she preferred a guy to buy her dinner before he tried introducing her to the tentacle in his shorts.

And by tentacle… she actually meant tentacle. Miri wasn’t sure how those suckers would feel around her lady bits, but she wasn’t sure she was adventurous enough yet to find out.

She cocked her head to the side and studied a towering set of horns on a blue demon.

The more she swiped, Miri had come to realize that horns were a bit of a turn on for her.

There was something about them that screamed handlebars and she couldn’t get the image out of her head.

She hearted a minotaur’s “hey girl” and kept scrolling her inbox.

Would it be weird to stack her spring break with a couple dates with hot monsters? Suddenly sitting around in her sweatpants didn’t seem quite as appealing.

It would be a fun time killer. And even if they sucked, at least Miri might get a good meal or two out of it. And she had been dying to try that new Mexican restaurant…