Ambushed

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a re-written version of a story that I uploaded a few years ago. This story is a romantic one that contains some reluctance/non-consent content. With this warning in mind, please enjoy!

*****

Wallis leaned against the glazed brick wall as her eyes scanned Walker High School's crowded cafeteria. This lunch period consisted mostly of juniors and seniors with maybe a handful of sophomores who were registered in some of the upper division classes. She had to focus her attention on individual faces to identify each student easily as they made their way through the lunch lines.

Her gaze paused once it reached a particular table, and a faint smile crossed her lips. It was the dark headband and the color of the girl's hair that made her easy to spot. The hair resembled undulating waves of smoky amber which tumbled past the girl's shoulders and caught the light in just the right way.

For several minutes, Wallis watched the other girl conveniently hidden from where she stood. She wistfully admired the way she tilted her head when she spoke to the girl with glasses sitting across from her. She thought the way the girl spoke and used her hands whenever she got excited was positively adorable. But then, there wasn't a single thing about Gail Kleckner that Wallis didn't find charming and attractive.

Gail is so beautiful! She's absolutely perfect in every single way! Wallis's eyes devoured the sight of the stunning senior with longing and hunger. All Wallis had to do was walk across the cafeteria over to Gail's table, and her lips and tongue could be tasting the beautiful senior's luscious fruity lip gloss! A phantom hint of tart cherries filled Wallis's mouth, causing her to shudder with delight. She knew that all she had to do was walk several steps in the girl's direction, and she could be tasting it for real.

Gail Kleckner didn't even notice that Wallis was nearby watching. The cafeteria was extremely crowded and chaotic as everyone tried to get through the lunch line and find their friends sitting at their usual places. Besides, she was totally absorbed in a pretty animated discussion with the girl who sat across from her. The girl was pushing tater tots into the blob of ketchup on her plate before shoving a couple into her mouth. Wallis furrowed her brow as she tried to remember the other girl's name. Oh, yes—Beverly Lassandro.

Beverly and Gail are in Mr. Reed's Government class together, so they probably end up eating together most days until the next bell rings and they part ways. Beverly is a nice enough girl, Wallis supposed. She's a reporter for the school newspaper, made the honor roll last quarter, and is a member of the American Field Service Club. Gail and Beverly seemed to be getting along nicely today. Whatever they were talking about sure looked pretty exciting to Wallis—maybe even too exciting.

Wallis frowned a little. Sure, Beverly was nice and not a troublemaker or anything, but she didn't really think that Bev was the right sort of friend for the beautiful Gail Kleckner. Wallis made a mental note to talk to Gail about that some other time. A girl who possessed the sweetness and innocence that Gail had could find better friends than Beverly Lassandro!

Wallis looked out for Gail whenever she could, but she couldn't be there every single minute. For starters, Gail kept a different schedule. And Gail recently quit attending the afternoon Individual Sports Club meetings in the main gym. But Wallis worried sometimes that one day, when she wasn't at school, some boy might set his sights on dating the gorgeous senior. It would tear her soul apart if anything were to happen to her innocent Gail, so Wallis was determined to do anything she could to watch the young girl and protect her honor. In a large school like Walker, this often seemed like an impossible task! The third largest high school in Thatcher Blake has three floors with over 800 hormone-addled students enrolled this year! Distractions and temptations lurked in every classroom and hallway.

Suddenly Gail turned her head and caught Wallis gazing at her through a small cluster of students who dispersed to a nearby open table. She stopped eating her chocolate pudding long enough to give Wallis a shy smile. Her brown eyes lit up and she bit her lip demurely. The girl's fair cheeks warmed to a rosy pink.

Wallis figured that maybe it was memories of their last interlude that brought about that gorgeous blush of color to the senior's cheeks. She'd done things with the girl that pushed the bounds of propriety. The recollection of their last time together was certainly enough to make Wallis shudder with raw arousal. The nagging desire to approach Gail was getting worse, and Wallis called upon her inner strength to resist the urge to go over there and sit with her and Bev. But this just wasn't the time or place right now. She'd just have to wait.

*****

"Oh my God, I just hate Tom Dolan! He's always trying to look over at my notes and he's always poking my arm in class! He was trying to borrow another pen from me, but I know he has his own! Mr. Reed almost gave me a detention because he won't shut the hell up!"

Gail burst out in a fit of giggles after Bev's long-winded rant. Beverly has been complaining about Tom Dolan for nearly two straight weeks! Couldn't Bev see that Tom was bugging her so much because he's been trying to get up the nerve to ask her to go with him to the Winter Formal? The formal sounds like it's going to be a real blast this year. Gail had heard from her friend, Liz, that the theme is going to be "Peppermint Palace" with a great big castle, and a sleigh, and maybe even some reindeer! Gail wasn't sure how the formal committee was going to convince the principal to let them get reindeer into the gym for the dance though. Still, it sounded pretty neat. But Gail wasn't planning on going.

"And when we had that test? Tom kept making these stupid hissing noises at me! You saw what Mr. Reed did—he told me to keep my eyes on my own paper or I'd get a zero! He didn't do a damn thing about Tom!"

Beverly slammed her hand down against the table in a fit of anger. Gail almost burst out laughing because Bev's hand narrowly missed landing directly onto her ketchup smeared plate.

"I've got a mind to just slap the hell out of him the next time he looks at me! I should have told him to go fuck hisself with the last pen I loaned him—he STILL hasn't given it back!"

Gail put a hand over her mouth to disguise the shit eating grin spreading quickly across her face before she recovered. She replied with a dismissive nod before finishing the last of her chocolate pudding. When she was done, she stacked the little glass dish on the tray next to her books.

"Jesus, Bev, he just wants to ask you out!" Gail said. "He really likes you! It's written all over his face every time he sees you in class!"

"I wouldn't go out with him if he was the last guy on earth! He's friends with that weirdo, Joey Belcher!" A look of something like contempt (or perhaps disgust) crossed Bev's face. "He doesn't even have a car!"

Gail took a drink from her can of Coke. "So what if he doesn't have a car?" She asked. "Maybe he just drives his dad's car or something."

"Look, if he wants to go with me, he's gonna need his own car!"

Gail was getting tired of this. Big deal, she thought. She didn't have her own car either! "Are you done eating? All you've been doing is pushing those tots around."

That seemed to get Beverly going on an entirely new rant. Lunches here are the absolute worst! Sure, today they had a choice of cheeseburgers or beef stew. But every goddamn day they serve the same goddamn side dish. Tater tots. And the tots were almost always cold! The other high schools in Thatcher Blake served fries, mashed potatoes, or rice. But the cafeteria at Millie Walker High seemed to be overrun with these goddamn cold tater tots! It's like the lunch ladies have it in for the whole student body!

Gail halfheartedly listened to Bev's rant about cold tater tots, and then her lithe little body went stock still. It was as if all of her senses became perfectly attuned. She could sense Wallis was nearby watching her. She could feel her hazel eyes on her even before she turned her head. Her soul came alive and their eyes met. It felt like her heart would pound its way out of her chest. God, how she loved Wallis! Gail wanted to block out Bev's rant. She wanted to get up from the table, walk away from Bev, and go over to Wallis. She wanted to feel the safety of her strong, slender arms embracing her body. It always made Gail forget, in those brief moments, about who she was, and what she wanted to do with her life after high school.

Wallis is her best friend. Wallis is the steady, constant force that kept Gail looking forward to graduation and life after high school. Gail wanted to rest her head against her small breasts and lull herself to sleep with her steady heartbeats.

"Look at this! It's grayish! They call this damn thing a cheeseburger? You know it's probably horsemeat—from that one farm outside Bynum! And the cheese looks like a bunch of melted yellow crayons!"

Bev's voice was shrill—even against the wall of chaotic lunchroom sounds.

"Huh? It isn't that bad!" Gail responded absently.

She wasn't listening to Bev anymore. Everything in Gail's world stopped moving at the moment. It was as if time itself no longer existed. The cacophony of the crowded cafeteria fell away from the girl until everything was just her and Wallis. They couldn't seem to look away from each other's admiring gaze. Gail's breath caught in her throat when she detected the obvious look of longing that was present in Wallis's hazel eyes. She claimed Gail as her own with that intense look of hunger, and Gail felt a fluttering within the depths of her stomach. After an awkward second or two, Gail broke the gaze. She wanted so badly to go to Wallis right now! But she knew that Wallis just couldn't fight her way through the crowds of kids balancing loaded trays of food and books as they absentmindedly chattered their way to any open space at the crowded tables. Not right now anyway. Still, Gail did not want Wallis to see that she was upset by this, so she broke the gaze between them and turned back towards Bev.

The intensity of these feelings completely overwhelmed Gail. She'd felt this way before Wallis, but today the feelings were unlike anything she'd ever experienced before. It was as if, for the first time, Gail felt the first stirrings of an all-consuming love for Wallis. Perhaps it was the distance between them just now. Maybe it was the crowds that made it too difficult to run to each other or communicate discreetly from across the room. It confused Gail a little; she wasn't quite sure how to process it all.

Bev didn't even seem to notice the sudden change in Gail's facial expressions. It was right about then that Gail noticed someone else in the cafeteria watching them. Bev continued ranting about the food:

"You know that some of the desserts come from that day old bakery on Hunt Street?" She asked. "The one by the railroad tracks downtown! Marcy Sutcliffe—she sits by me in Geometry—told me that one of the lunch ladies is her neighbor, so she heard all about it!"

Gail's fine eyebrows furrowed a little as she listened. Yes, she definitely noticed a familiar figure staring at them from a couple tables away. She seemed to be staring poison daggers at the back of Beverly's head. Bev just kept talking:

"Did you see that fatass Darlene White? She was ahead of us in line earlier—it's not like you could miss her! She took three goddamn slices of apple pie today! Three! You know, Miss Moody told us in gym the other day that one lap around Darlene is probably equal to a mile!"

The familiar figure quickly advanced towards Gail and Bev. Gail flinched a little when the girl stopped behind Bev and slammed her pile of books onto the table next to her. A loud SNAP! Sort of like a shotgun sound startled Bev and she almost knocked her ketchup smeared plate off the table.

"Hey—what the hell? Watch it!" Bev shouted purely out of reactionary instinct.

"No, YOU watch it, you stupid WHORE!"

It was Hildy Meyers. Hildy was in Mr. Reed's Government class with Gail and Bev. She sat in the first row, closest to Mr. Reed's desk. Hildy wasn't just pretty, she was a knockout! She's on the varsity cheerleading squad and a notorious teacher's pet. There'd been some rumors that Hildy was sleeping with one of the male teachers, but no one could really confirm it. To her knowledge, Gail wasn't aware of Hildy having any problem with either her or Bev. She wondered what her problem was today. It didn't take long to find out either.

"Hey, what did I even do to you anyway?" Bev nearly shrieked.

"You better stay away from Tom Dolan if you know what's good for you!" Hildy sneered. "He's mine—you got that?"

"Bev doesn't even like Tom!" Gail protested.

Before Beverly could offer a word in her own defense, both girls were startled as Hildy seemed to calmly pick up her books and walk away from the table. But at the last minute, she grabbed a handful of lukewarm tater tots off of a plate at the next table. She pitched the tots at the back of Beverly's head, pelting her with them. The impact jarred the girl's glasses, causing them to slide down the bridge of her nose. There was a sudden outburst of laughter from the neighboring table. To say that Bev was pissed off was an understatement.

"Goddamn it!" She growled.

Bev reached for the only thing she could find in front of her. That ketchup smeared plate, now empty of tots, was promptly hurled in Hildy's general direction. Hildy ducked as the plate flew past her blond head and shattered on the terrazzo floor behind her in a million little pieces.

Without giving it any thought, Gail picked up her lunch tray and launched it in the air past Bev. Plates, silverware, and the glass pudding dish went flying across the table in Hildy's general direction. But Gail missed her target. Out of sheer anger, she snatched up her Government textbook and threw it at the blond cheerleader. This time she managed to hit her intended target right on the ass. This was followed by a thunderous wave of hoots, hollers, and screeching laughter from the nearby tables. It sounded like a pack of howler monkeys! Then from somewhere in the crowded space somebody yelled:

"FOOD FIGHT!"

"What the fuck?" Bev hollered.

No one could hear her. No one was paying attention to Bev anyway. Suddenly the cafeteria of Millie Walker High plummeted into the depths of utter chaos. Cold tater tots, cheeseburgers, and even milk cartons went flying this way and that. Globs of congealed beef stew splattered on the floors and walls, mingling with milk, soda, and the contents of various brown-bagged lunches to create a sticky nauseating glaze over everything! In the chaos, Hildy managed to fight her way towards Gail. Gail started to pitch the remains of someone's cream cheese and jelly sandwich at Hildy, but the other girl was too fast. She grabbed the front of Gail's blouse, pulled her arm back, and punched Gail right in the mouth. The force of the punch caused Gail to slip backwards. She landed with a hard thud onto the terrazzo floor. The cacophony of voices in her immediate area seemed to quiet a little as a wave of riotous laughter ensued.

Gail started to pick herself up from the floor. She brought her hand up to her mouth and stared incredulously at the bright blood that appeared on her fingertips. Suddenly the girl was roughly hauled to her feet. Her small upper arm was held in a painful vise grip as Mr. Wise glared down at her. Gail shuddered.

"Miss Kleckner, just what in the hell has gotten into you lately?" Mr. Wise snapped. "Fighting again? You know, there hasn't been a peep out of you—a peep—until senior year, and now this is the third time this semester!"

Gail froze up as her eyes looked up at the flush faced balding man. The heavy dark frames of his glasses made him look all the more severe as his eyes passed over the girl in his grasp. Gail turned her head now, and her soft brown eyes widened in fear when she saw that the principal, Mrs. Needham, already had Hildy restrained. While Gail stared, Mrs. Needham yanked the cheerleader's arm backwards and began steering her towards the exit in the general direction of the office. Gail shuddered when she heard Hildy cry out in pain as the poor girl tried to plead her case. Suddenly Gail was almost grateful that Mr. Wise had grabbed her first. Silently Gail was being led to the same exit and dragged towards the door. When they were out of the cafeteria and in the stairwell, Mr. Wise released Gail. The assistant principal roughly prodded the girl in the back as they continued to walk up the stairs.

"Hurry up. I'm sure you know the way by now, Miss Kleckner." Mr. Wise snapped.

Mr. Wise wasn't wrong about that. Gail hurried down the first floor hall until they reached another stairwell. She walked up the stairs with Mr. Wise trailing close behind her and then she walked down the second floor wing until she stopped in front of a large dark windowless wood door. When Mr. Wise reached Gail, the girl was shoved aside so that the balding man with glasses could fish out his keys to unlock the door. When the door opened, Mr. Wise poked the girl's arm and pointed the way inside.

"We've had an unusually busy day...the office is full." Mr. Wise muttered more to himself than Gail. "Got a group of boys from Mr. Warner's class besides your friend down there. I was told to bring you up here to wait awhile instead."

Gail was too distracted at the moment to reply to Mr. Wise. When Mr. Wise unlocked the door and she walked through, she immediately recognized the space.

This room on the second floor of the wing was known as the model apartment. It is a series of rooms belonging to the Home Ec. Department. The first room was a living room or parlor of sorts with a sofa, armchair, a couple tables and lamps, and a big beautiful fireplace. Gail wasn't enrolled in any of the Home Economics courses, but she'd heard that the teachers liked to use this room and the adjoining dining room for the faculty Christmas tea and other small parties. She'd never been in this room before. She was tempted to go over to the fireplace mantel and pick up a couple of the little porcelain figurines that adorned it, but Mr. Wise started talking again.

"There aren't any classes in here for the rest of the day. You might be here for a little while...maybe an hour or so. You behave yourself. I'm tired of seeing you get into trouble, Miss Kleckner."

Gail replied with a silent nod. She felt like a reticent child. That was how most of the teachers at Millie Walker treated her. She was 18 years old! Outside of school, she was considered an adult. She could drive, hold a job, and pay taxes...even get married! But in this building, she might as well be 10 years old. Mr. Wise sighed.

"There's a few magazines and books laying around on that table over there." He pointed to a pretty wood sideboard in the dining room. "Just have a seat on the sofa and read. Do you have any homework you want to work on?"

Gail shook her head no, and told Mr. Wise she'd do her homework after school. Mr. Wise shrugged and pulled the door closed behind him as he left her alone in the apartment. When the lock clicked soundly into place, Gail released the breath she'd been holding in. Slowly Gail walked over to the dining room and snatched up a couple magazines from the sideboard. Her soft dark eyes settled on the sofa that was in front of the fireplace. She figured that as long as she was being kept a prisoner, she might as well get comfortable. Gail settled onto the cushions and imagined that the fireplace was alight with the most glorious dancing red and gold flames. She stuck her feet straight out for a second before opting to recline on the sofa rather than sit while she flipped through the pages of the magazine.