Story Of Her Life.

And Then It All Made Sense.

Beth lied in bet that night, thinking about the entire situation. Too bad Eric couldn't lie there with her, she had to shoo him out as soon as her mom came home.

She wondered why Mr. Conklin was all of a sudden so curious as to who was at her house. She wondered why he even came over. After he had moved out of his Family's house and into his own apartment, he rarely even spoke to her until he became her history teacher of course. There was something going on here, she just didn't know what.

The next morning, she found herself leaving for school twenty minutes later than what she usually would have. Mr. Inman and she decided he would leave first, then she since Mr. Conklin conveniently stayed the night at his new home. The moving truck was still parked in his driveway, half filled with boxes, so she didn't really see the need for him to stay there if the house was still pretty much empty.

After Mr. Inman had been gone for quite a while, she trudded down the steps and out the front door to her car. She pulled the door open, and spotted Mr. Conklin also getting into his car.

"Sup neighbor, race ya' to school?" he challenged.

She grinned and jumped in her car. She was backed out before Mr. Conklin even had his lights on, and was off. How dare he challenge her to a race, and then suck at it!

When she made it to school with time to spare, and chatted with Laura and Dana outside her locker. She felt a hand tap lightly on her shoulder.

"Beginner's luck," he whipsered in her ear.

"And losers suck!" she shouted her third-grade comeback with confidence as Mr. Conklin strutted down the hall.

Her friends looked at eachother in confusion.

"I raced him to school, and he clearly lost. He's being a bitch about it," she explained with a smirk playing at her lips.

They nodded a bit and said their goodbyes. Dana and Beth swiftly made thier way to class, and reached the door.

"Look who finally decided to come?" Mr. Inman greeted the two from the door frame.

"That's what she said." Beth replied not looking in his eyes.

A smile played at his lips. "Nice," he replied shaking his head.

Beth and Dana took their seats. She eyed Michael Miller and suddenly rememberd the large Hickey that was spotted on her neck two days ago. She quickly dug her mirror out from her bag and checked it again. It was still quite large, but not as intense as it was before.

"Are you even going to tell me who gave you that, if it wasn't you know who?" she cocked her head to Michael who was texting furiously on his phone.

"I told you it was a tree limb." she replied softly, putting her mirror away.

Dana raised her hand. Uh-Oh.

"Dana don't..." Beth hissed.

Mr. Inman stopped explaining today's lesson and nodded his head at Dana. "Yes Ms. Henderson?"

"Mr. Inman, can tree limbs give you hickeys?" she asked. Gasps and giggles erupted from the class.

Her face turned a deep color red as she sunk down in her chair.

Mr. Inman looked like he didn't know what to say for a moment, but when he realized the look on Beth's face, he thought of an answer.

"Well, you can't neccessarily distinguish a hickey from a bruise Dana. It could be from a tree limb, you never know. Or, even a slug, or perhaps your boyfriend. You never know. But you might want to go to the doctors and get it checked out." he winked at Beth. "But since none of us will be able to focus on the topic at hand if we get back to it, let's talk about safe sex now that we're onthe subject."

Moans and "ughs" scattered the classroom. Students dropped their heads on their desks and Mr. Conklin errupted in uncontrollable laughter from his desk. His goofy laugh was always contagious, so Beth even giggled a bit too. Sometimes in class over the years, he'd crack a really lame joke, and she'd begin to laugh only because of his laugh. She was always the only one, so he always high-fived her once his gag was over.

The rest of the class period was spent with the folding out of the most epic "Yo Momma" battle ever. Mr. Conklin, still the reighning champion, challenged each and everyvstudent and he almost always won.

Although Beth had prepared since their last epic battle the first day of school freshman year, he still prevailed. Dana was the last to face him. Even though Beth claimed to be almost perfect, Dana was perfect at these battles.

"Come on hickey girl," Mr. Conklin jumped in place and held his fists up like he was about to face her in a boxing match. "Show me whatchu got."

Dana stood up in front of the room on the left side, while Conklin wiggled around on the right. They flipped a coin, and Mr. Conklin began.

"Yo momma is so stuipd she put a piece of paper on top of her TV and called it pay-per view," Mr. Conklin started.

"Yo momma is so fat, she had to use cheat codes to get through the levels of Wii fit," Dana grinned, and cocked her head knowingly to the side.

"Yo momma so stupid, she peed on herself standing in a bathroom," Mr. Conklin came back quickly, making the classs laugh at the pathetic, but clever joke he spat.

"Yo Momma is like Burger King and believe me every body in the crew had it their way," Dana giggled.

Just then the bell rang, and everybody groaned in anticipation.

Mr. Conklin pointed to his own eyes with two fingers, narrowing them, and pointed them in her direction. "This isn't over."

As students filed out of the classroom, Beth lingured behind and motioned Mr. Inman to leave to. He did so with no question, leaving her with Mr. Conklin alone.

"We need to talk." Beth demanded.

"...Are you breaking up with me?" he joked, straightening the papers on his desk.

"I'm serious!" she whined.

"So am I!" he laughed, and he made his way to the classroom door, closing it. She sat on top of her desk, and he took the one beside of it.

"What's up?" he said in his most serious voice.

"Why have you been watching me?" she asked directly. He shot her a confused look. "Don't play stupid. You buy a house across the street from me, you come over to ask for nails for God's sake, and then you 'race' me to school I bet when I sped off you peeked through my window. I bet you're stalking me." she questioned using air quotes.

"Seriously Ben, what's going on?" she couldn't recall using his first name. Not since he was a teenager.

He looked her in the eye for a long moment, as if he were questioning his response. He sighed and looked away for several seconds.

"He's back Beth." he simply stated.

She shot him a confused look. "What?" she questioned.

"Your father."

Her heart sank. She couldn't believe it.