Controlling Miss Lovekey by Sara Jacobelli

After reading Demian by Hermann Hesse he became obsessed with the idea of controlling his teachers’ behavior. He decided to start with the weakest one, his math teacher, Miss Lovekey. She was new. New, young and nervous. She was so young a few guys had even asked for her phone number. They dubbed her “Miss Love Me.”

He had her for sixth period and liked her short skirts, especially the red one. He stared at the back of her head when she wrote math problems on the dry erase board, silently willing her to call on certain students. Day after day nothing happened. He began to doubt the merit of the exercise. Maybe Hesse was full of it.

One afternoon, he kept repeating Shelby-Shelby-Shelby inside his head, willing Miss Lovekey to call on Shelby Pope. He was startled when Miss Lovekey turned around and loudly asked Shelby to come to the board and find the equation of a line.

Shelby was pissed. She quit texting Katie and shoved her phone in her pocket. She loped to the front of the room, scowling.

It worked. He now had power and must decide what to do with it.

Sara Jacobelli lives in New Orleans.