Brittney, the Tapgirl Princess

Way back in September, just before the school year was about to start, high school principal Blake Martin was forced into making a last-minute decision. His secretary (and one-time secret amour) had suddenly quit without so much as a day's notice. (The rumors about their affair had gotten back to her, and she felt it was best to completely disappear.) Mr. Martin quickly rounded up two employees from the county school district office staff who were available to be interviewed. One was an older woman who had a reputation for being smart and experienced but also argumentative; the other was a young woman who'd just finished a 2-year associate-of-arts degree in business and had been assigned to an administrator who didn't really need her after all. Mr. Martin played his hunch and went with the younger woman, Alison Dexter. After all, he thought to himself, running a school is a tough job; it's important to have people around who bring smiles to people's faces, and a pretty young woman is just nice to be around.



Alison liked the idea of working at a high school. She herself had graduated high school only a couple of years ago (at the local rival to Forest Glen), and high school had been so much more fun than community college. She'd made lots of friends there, and the parties had been much more fun than some of the ones she'd been going to recently. Back in the 11th grade, she'd secretly dated (and even gone to bed with) her history teacher, and to this day she remembers that as a great thrill.



It took Alison only a few weeks to get the hang of her job, which was partly office receptionist and partly personal secretary to Principal Martin. She found Mr. Martin easy to work with, and although he was about 20 years her senior, he treated her more as an apprentice than as hired help. But it was with the students whom Alison got along best. She was petite, about 5'3," with a sweet-looking face and medium-length dirty blonde hair and didn't look any older than 17 even though she turned 19 that November. Alison became kind of an older sister to both boys and girls, and often the office would be filled with kids hanging out talking with her between classes or even after the next period had started. Almost every day, Mr. Martin had to come out of his office at least once and shoo the students back to class. That was the one bit of friction between them.



When the Forest Glen girls started putting metal taps on their shoes and boots, it wasn't long before Alison joined them in this fad. Even before the students went on strike over the right to have taps on their shoes, Alison had taken some of her flats in to have metal taps put on them. As with the metal taps on other Forest Glen tapgirls' shoes, the taps on Alison's footwear got progressively larger and louder as the Spring semester wore on. Some days, she even wore to work her Mary Jane t-strap heels that had full-heel aluminum dance taps on them. Partly she did this to show the students that she was one of them. And partly it was that she enjoyed annoying vice-principal Hedley Hawkins, whom she knew hated hearing metal taps on shoes. In fact, she figured that when the vice-principal issued his order prohibiting taps on the students' shoes, it was her own tap-wearing that was partly responsible for putting the idea into his head. But Alison wasn't worried about Mr. Hawkins getting back at her personally. She knew that Mr. Martin had become very attracted to her, and that he'd come to her defense over anything that he tried to do that was unfair.



At any event, with the students winning the right to keep taps on their shoes, and with metal taps now being worn even by a number of the female teachers, Alison's own tap-wearing ceased to be an issue in the school office. In fact, when she followed English teacher Susan Wilms' lead and bleached her dirty-blonde hair a bright platinum shade, she became the center of favorable attention from the male administrators (except for "Hawkeye" Hawkins)—and especially from her own boss, Principal Martin.



On numerous occasions when he and Alison were working alone in his office, Mr. Martin would comment to her about how nice she looked, and more than once or twice he suggested that they should go out for a drink some time. He'd been very polite about it, but his interest in her seemed to get stronger and stronger as the Spring wore on. He'd started making disparaging comments about his wife, mentioning that "she can't hold a candle to you. She'd never even think of dying her hair blonde like you did, and she'll probably be the last woman in Forest Glen to put taps on her shoes." Alison tried to deflect those kinds of comments, because even though she liked Mr. Martin, she didn't think she should get involved with him in that way.



Finally, though, Alison decided she'd accept one of Blake's many appeals to "go out for a drink" after work. It was a Friday, and she'd come to work in a more casual outfit than usual, wearing a navy blue oxford shirt and blue jeans along with a pair of black lace-up ankle boots with small 2-inch kitten heels. Since the heels were fairly small—about an inch across—she'd had the shoe repairman put full-heel aluminum dance taps on them, like on her Mary Jane t-straps. The dark clothing made Alison's platinum hair seem even more striking than usual, and she'd had to fend off numerous catcalls from the male students all day long. So it actually felt good to be going out with a mature man, even if he was married.



Blake suggested that they should each drive their cars out of town to the Old Mill parking lot, and then they could meet up and decide where to go from there. Alison didn't quite understand why, but she decided not to question her boss' logistical plans at this point. When they arrived at the former Mill, Alison got out of her little Toyota Celica and walked over to Blake's Acura, the aluminum taps of her boots scraping against the parking lot blacktop.



"I love it that you have metal taps on your boots," he said as she got into his car.



"Oh, but weren't you against the students wearing taps?" she asked half-kiddingly, knowing this was the vice-principal's doing.



"Well, it doesn't matter about those kids, but women like you are just so much more sexy when you make those clicking sounds when you walk."



"So where do you want to go," Alison asked as she sat down in Blake's car, pleased that he'd called her a 'woman.'



"There's a really nice tavern in Derbyville," Blake answered.



"But that's an hour away!" Alison exclaimed.



Blake replied that he didn't want to run into someone his wife knew "or she'd get the wrong idea." So Alison agreed, and he put the car in gear and they drove off.



The Derbyville Tavern was well known in the county for having a great microbrewery, and Blake and Alison thoroughly enjoyed glasses of several of the beers on tap. This was the first time they'd talked much about each other's lives outside of school, and the conversation relaxed both of them. Alison even lit up a cigarette and that surprised Blake since she'd never smoked around school. "I like to smoke," she said, "especially when I'm having a drink. Luckily, I don't seem to smoke enough to get addicted, though." After awhile, Blake slid around and sat next to her while they talked, drank, and nibbled on some cheese nachos. Alison was finding Blake to be really quite humorous and, in her mildly inebriated state, was basically happy to go along with whatever was happening.



About 6 o'clock, after they'd been at the tavern for an hour or so, Alison started wondering about Blake's obligations to his family that evening. "Isn't your wife expecting you home for dinner?" she asked him.



"Actually," he answered, "Martha and the kids have gone off to her parents' house in Port City for the weekend." He turned towards Alison, smiled, and put his hand gently to her neck and caressed it. "I was thinking you and I could just spend the evening together." She put her hand on his and squeezed it. "Maybe we could," she smiled back. Alison had not been thinking when she left school that she was headed for bed with her boss, but given the way she was feeling at this particular time, it seemed like it might be nice if it turned out that way.



After a quick meal at the restaurant next door, they drove back to Forest Glen and went directly to Blake's house. He'd thought of having them stay at the Inn by the tavern, but decided it would be better to be at home, in case his wife telephoned.



Once inside her boss' house, Alison began to have second thoughts. Although she'd met his wife and two children on several occasions when they came by the high school, seeing all the family pictures and his wife's handiwork and home furnishings, she felt out-of-place. But Blake was very reassuring and quite fun to be around and so she was torn about what to do. As a result, although she didn't stop his advances she also couldn't quite enjoy the love-making, neither downstairs on the sofa nor when they went up to the bedroom.



However, for Blake, making love to Alison was the fulfillment of a year-long dream. When he'd hired her, he already was smitten. But seeing her change during the year—growing into her job, becoming a really sexy looking blonde, and particularly clicking around the school office with those loud taps she now always had on her shoes—he'd become quite obsessed with having her, although he was careful not to let it show.



The next morning, Blake asked Alison to stay with him that evening as well, but she tried to beg off. She didn't want to make him angry—after all, he could easily get her transferred back to the district office, and she was having so much fun working at the high school, she definitely did not want that to happen. He was insistent, though, so she agreed to go out to dinner with him and "we'll talk about the overnight thing later." So he drove her back to the Mill to pick up her car, and they agreed to meet again at 7 p.m. at the Woodhaven, a rustic country restaurant well out-of-town.



Alison returned to her apartment and then got started on her Saturday chores. She did her laundry and some food shopping, and then she remembered she needed some cosmetics so she drove out to the mall to stop at Reed's Drug Store. When she walked into the drugstore, clickety-clicking in her penny loafers, she saw Brittney working at the cash register, and they waved hi to each other.



Brittney was one of Alison's favorite Forest Glen students. Apart from inducing her to put larger taps on her shoes, Alison liked Brittney because she reminded her of Dayna, her best friend from 10th grade. Dayna, like Brittney, was a lot of fun, flirting with guys all the time, and a bit on the wild side. In Dayna's case, she'd ended up getting involved with some hoodlum types and dropped out of high school. These days, unfortunately, she was totally wasted on meth-amphetamines. Alison had made a promise to herself to watch over Brittney to make sure this high school freshman didn't go down that road.



When Alison had bought the things she came for, she came up to Brittney to pay for her purchases. But Brittney pulled her aside and then called out to her manager that she was going out on her break. She led Alison outside the store, ignoring Alison's protests that she hadn't yet paid her for the cosmetics she was carrying in her hands.



"Shhh!" whispered Brittney. "Be quiet about that! Come on, I've got some important stuff to talk to you about." The two girls walked outside the mall over next to the stone wall at the side of the entry way. Brittney took the cosmetics from Alison, told her to open up her purse, and dropped them in. "Now listen!" Brittney continued, as she reached into her pocket for her cigarettes and lighter. "Susan Wilms is in trouble at school, and you've got to help!"



"What do you mean?" asked a totally surprised Alison. "Are they getting on her for wearing short skirts and for her punk haircut or something?" Brittney offered Alison a cigarette, but she waved her off.



"Shit, I wish it was that simple!" cried Brittney. "No, you know how she and John were a couple for awhile, although they've cooled it lately?" Alison nodded; she'd not seen them together but she'd heard they were going out. "And you know how Susan and I have become pretty good friends? She's even gotten me into bars and shit, and we play around with some guys we both know. Well, old fart Hawkeye found out something about all this and he's threatening her with calling her before the school board or something—he might even make her lose her job!"



"What does he have against her?" Alison asked. "Why is he doing that?" Brittney lit her cigarette and exhaled a thick plume of smoke over Alison's head.



"He just has it in for her, that's all," answered Brittney. "Maybe he doesn't like her style or something, and I KNOW he doesn't like it that she wears horseshoe taps to school sometimes. He probably thinks she's a bad influence on us!" Brittney laughed loudly while Alison smiled supportively. "Little does he know it's us kids that have changed HER!" She laughed again. "Anyway, we've got to get something on Hawkeye so he can't do that. What do you know about him that we can use to stop him from hurting Susan?"



"Gosh, Brittney," said Alison, as she tried to think. "I don't know. He doesn't talk to me much other than just to ask me about school business stuff, supplies, and so on." She thought some more. "But Brittney, umm, I do have something to tell you that just happened, and, umm, maybe this would help." She wasn't sure her night with Blake Martin had anything to do with helping Brittney, but in some ways she wanted Brittney's advice anyway, about what to do tonight, so this seemed like the right opening.



"Oh, cool!" shouted Brittney. "What is it? What did that motherfucker do?"



"No," said Alison as she tried to clarify. "It doesn't have anything to do with Hawkins. It's just that, umm, last night, I, uh, slept with Blake Martin. And," she quickly added, "he wants to sleep with me tonight too, and I've agreed to go to dinner with him, and,"—her voice was getting quicker and more agitated—"and I'm really not sure what to do!"



"Wow!" exclaimed Brittney. "No shit! Well, like, how is he in bed? And, I mean, do you like him?"



"Well," said Alison as she tried to answer as best she could. "I don't know. He's really very nice, and we had a good evening last night, but, like, he's married and has two kids and we were in his house, and—Brittney, could I have a cigarette?"



"Sure, sweetie," answered Brittney as she pulled out another one from her pack and extended a light to Alison. "Well, do you think Mr. Martin knows about what Hawkeye's planning to do to Susan? Do you think he'd help us stop him?" Brittney thought some more. "Alie, you know it all depends on how you feel about him, but if you decided you weren't really interested in being with him, we could maybe get him to hush up old Hawkeye. You could tell him that if he couldn't get Hawkeye to lay off, you'd feel you had to tell the school board about what he did to you last night, if you know what I mean." Alison was inhaling really deeply now.



"Look," continued Brittney. "If it was wrong for Susan to pair off with John or wrong for her and me to go out to bars then it's got to be just as wrong for a school principal who's married and has kids to be fucking his secretary, right?"



Alison burst out crying.



"Oh shit, honey!" said Brittney. "I didn't mean that. I wasn't saying anything bad about you. You haven't done anything wrong!" Brittney put her arm around Alison and stroked her hair. "It's Mr. Martin who's the guy in charge here. He's the one who led you to bed, didn't he? Hell, if you really loved him, there's no way I'd even think about asking you to tell on him, but if it's more like he's been egging you on and you don't really want to get involved with him, then that's what I was thinking of."



That explanation made Alison calm down. She wiped her eyes with her hands and took another drag on her cigarette. "Well, I brought it up because I wanted to ask you what you thought about my seeing him. I really don't want to get him in trouble over me, and I don't think I could really use him like that to get at Mr. Hawkins."



"O.K., baby," replied Brittney. "Forget I ever mentioned it. We'll think of some other way to get old Hawkeye to back off. I would really hate to lose Susan, though, wouldn't you?"



"Oh, yeah. For sure!" agreed Alison. "Susan is awesome. She's the best teacher at the school."



"Well, chicky," said Brittney. "Go out with your guy tonight and fuck him really good, and then you'll know whether you want to continue. But my advice is don't go back to his house. That's a terrible place to make love. Take him to your place. Then you can throw him out whenever you want!"



"Just kidding, kiddo," Brittney added, then changing the subject. "And enjoy your blush and your mascara and stuff!" She smiled and gave Alison a big hug.



Alison held on to Brittney for awhile, and then released her grip. She wiped her eyes one more time, gave her a kiss on the cheek, and said, "Thank you, Brittney. For a 14-year-old girl, you are really amazing."



"Shit. I'm just me!" said Brittney, and she dragged one of her loafers across the cement, her metal tap making her signature long and loud scraping sound. "The tapgirl princess!"