Studious_Hustler
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- Dec 4, 2011
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Thanks to the readers who've pushed me into writing again. It feels great to finally put another fetish story out there.
The Teacher
Vehicles whizzed by in the city night, coughing and rumbling. Fifteen women lay on the floor of a hotel suite, wrapped in blankets. Somebody snored faintly. Christy White turned over and fastened her gaze on her music teacher.
She edged out of her sleeping bag and padded across the floor. She was pretty sure that everyone had been asleep for an hour, but didn’t want to risk waking any up. She ran her hands across the mess of cool blankets at the foot of her teacher’s prone form, fumbling to separate them. She pulled the thickest free, turned it up. A pair of tiny bare feet appeared in the darkness.
Christy exhaled softly. On either side of her, sleeping women continued to breathe quietly. Christy extended a sky-blue fingernail and dragged the tip down her music teacher’s sole. The toes wiggled and the legs shifted. The teacher continued to breathe quietly. Christy exhaled again.
The older woman would rouse her fourteen college students early tomorrow morning for a long day of sightseeing in the city, culminating in an expensive visit to a live stage musical. Christy was no fan of the performing arts, but would put up with it all. She had eagerly applied to this weekend field trip, hoping it would offer a chance at her teacher’s feet. These early morning hours were her payoff. Her first touch on the bare soles in close to a year…
_____
The stiff paintbrush in Christy’s hands had never been used. Its bristles tapered to a single point. How much did it cost? Was it bought individually or in bulk? The athletic blonde ran her fingers up and down the brush as she walked. She couldn’t direct her thoughts. Her whole body was flushed with pumping blood and she needed a moment of quiet solitude.
It was April Fool’s Day, the date of an evening soccer game where Christy would lead her team to victory. Hers was an all-girls college for the wealthy, but today boys from schools all around were visiting. They would watch her dominate the field, and then party late into the night. Right now the team was probably warming up in the locker room and wondering where their star captain was.
Christy spotted a dark doorway at the end of a hall and ducked inside. The unoccupied room was an announcer’s booth with a perfect view of the soccer field. A crowd was massing in the bleachers, and white lamps split the dusk. Christy would gather herself in here, and then find her team downstairs. In a few minutes, no one would suspect the wild thoughts in her head right now.
Creamy pink soles of a model, poking out beneath a table. A great bird of a woman, swooping down. A beauty from the top of the food chain humiliated by an awkward unknown. A crowd gathering to jeer. A crowd, enjoying the frantic laughter of a tickled girl. Christy, summoned to the thick of it. Her hands wrapped tight around the bucking ankles. She’d begged the perpetrator for a second strike, even begged her to tickle Christy like she’d tickled the other girl, and she’d been rejected.
She’d get over this in a minute. What was so compelling about a pair of tickled feet? Her mind would relax in a minute. What was it about the way that girl tickled the other one?
Footsteps came outside the door. Feeling hot, Christy dove into a darkened corner between the announcer’s desk and a closet. A light flicked on. Flip-flop! went the sound of the footsteps across the room. The person set a bag down on the desk, sat down, and began to rummage in the bag. Christy recognized the small woman as Ms. Lopez, who’d been teaching music at the school for a year and just taken over physical education, too. Ms. Lopez had a singer sister, Miami, who’d been to the charts a couple times. People tried to hit on her, hoping to meet her sister.
So Ms. Lopez was proving her P.E. credentials by announcing the big soccer game? If she was here already, then it was definitely time to head to the field. Christy straightened up, ready to make a swift exit before Ms. Lopez could ask what she’d been doing in the dark room. She doubled over again as a second person strode inside. This arrival was Mr. Leighton, one of the history teachers. People tried to hit on him, because he was a youngish man at an all-girls college.
“Putting makeup on?” said Mr. Leighton. “You realize it’s your voice they’re hearing, you’re not on TV.”
“Shut up,” said Ms. Lopez. “Why are you in here?”
“Just wishing you good luck,” said Mr. Leighton. “You’ll do fine.”
“I know I will,” said Ms. Lopez. “The board needs to realize a woman under five feet tall can know as much about sports—.”
She broke off. Christy saw them kissing. Was it allowed for teachers to make out with other teachers? Mr. Leighton needed to leave so Christy could get to her team. She averted her eyes as the kissing progressed, looking instead at the floor under the announcer’s desk.
Her gaze was snared. While kissing Leighton, Ms. Lopez was curling her feet and breaking them free of her translucent white flip-flops. Each shoe made a soft plop! as it collapsed on the floor and revealed an exquisitely small bare sole. Ms. Lopez pushed the balls of her feet slowly against the ground, kissing the other teacher.
Leighton pulled away and strode to the door, closing it behind him. Ms. Lopez’s feet had gone still. Christy heard her clear her throat, then flip a switch on the desk control board. “Good evening, and welcome to our traditional April First soccer spectacular.” Ms. Lopez spoke clearly into her microphone. Christy could dully hear her voice booming across the field outside. “My name is Miriam Lopez, and I’ll be announcing tonight’s game as the Bluefins take on our talented neighbors and rivals, the Willowgrove Wildcats, in what’s sure to be—.”
Christy was aware that she was missing her star turn on the field. But a strange thought was nagging her. What color did Ms. Lopez paint her toes? She couldn’t see them, hidden behind the discarded flip-flops. Christy hoped the teacher would move her feet, move her shoes. After three minutes of waiting, Christy was frustrated. She was going to act before thinking better of it.
The blonde stretched out a thin, muscular arm and clenched Lopez’s left shoe between her thumb and forefinger. She slid it back along the floor toward her, into the closet. Apparently Lopez did not sense the movement. Christy went for the second flip-flop. With both out of the way, she craned her neck for a good look at her teacher’s toes. Like the rest of her, they were unbelievably small. The nails were unpainted. Lopez wiggled her feet and flexed her toes, and Christy felt that she’d done it for her.
The flip-flops were smooth and bore the prints of Lopez’s feet. A label at the heel bore the product name and size, “FLIP FLOP: 5.” Fascinated, Christy unlaced her own shoe, removed her sock, and slipped the flip-flop onto her foot. The effect was comical, her toes poking over the front of the tiny shoe.
She thought about the feet that she’d pinned down earlier today as they were being tickled. Those were prettier, but Lopez’s were more exciting. They were so small! How would one size up against Christy’s hand? It couldn’t be much larger.
And were they ticklish?
Christy had already lost the first minutes of the game. It was time to slip out of the room. But would her resolve carry her through the last thing she had to do? She pictured curved red nails skittering across naked feet. Those feet kicked in her grasp. She had wanted to tickle them, but been denied. “This is my moment.” Well screw you.
She quickly tickled both of Lopez’s soles. The woman’s announcement was cut short by her squealing cackle. She jerked her feet out of Christy’s reach and spun around to see the blue-eyed girl behind her.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Lopez hissed under her breath, so the microphone couldn’t pick it up. “Everyone’s looking for you out there. What are you doing? The hell, are you tickling my feet?”
Christy felt herself blushing under Lopez’s hard gaze. “No—.”
Lopez ignored her. “I get it, I’ve had people like you my whole life. My sisters used to tickle me—you think my feet are ‘so cute.’”
“That’s not—,” Christy stammered. She pictured three Miami Lopezes holding down Ms. Lopez and tickling her feet. “Your sisters—?”
Ms. Lopez pointed to the door. “Get out of here.”
Again footsteps. Christy pulled back inside the closet as a towering woman swung into the room. “What’s going on in here?” she demanded. “Are you announcing or are you messing about?”
“The microphone’s on,” shot back Lopez in a whisper. “They can hear you.”
“And I can hear you laughing like a schoolgirl,” said the woman. Someone from the board of directors, Christy thought. “Is Mr. Leighton in here with you?”
“Do you see Mr. Leighton?” Lopez said. “There’s no one in here but me.”
“And there will be no one but you, Miriam!” said the board woman. “I know you’re a music teacher, but you’ve got to understand how important this game—.”
“I understand perfectly well, Kimberly!” interrupted Lopez. “Thank you!” She made to stand, but her feet failed to find the shoes that were now in Christy’s closet. She remained sitting.
The board member seated herself on the opposite end of the room to watch Lopez, who put on a cheery voice and resumed announcing the game. Her feet paced up and down beneath her chair, searching for the missing flip-flops. Christy watched each step. “I’ve had people like you my whole life. My sisters used to tickle me.” She imagined a cheering concert audience as on stage Ms. Lopez, red-faced, had both feet mercilessly tickled by Miami.
Christy saw her hands going for Lopez’s foot. One seized the ankle, the other tickled right in the middle of the sole. “—Ha!” Lopez spat. Her foot tried to pull away, but Christy held it steady. She dug four fingers into the soft skin.
“What are you laughing about?” the board woman almost shouted. This time, there was no doubt that the game commentary had been noticeably interrupted. Lopez did not respond, and after a moment Christy realized that her tickling was robbing her teacher of the ability to form words. She reluctantly stopped, but kept holding on to the foot.
“Christy White!” Lopez gasped in her best disciplinary voice.
“What?” said the grumpy woman.
“Christy White’s not on the field and her team’s worried. Could you find her?”
Silence. The board woman sensed she was being played.
“I’m just worried, she’s missing and she could be in troub—HA!”
There was something so fun about tickling Miriam Lopez’s feet. Christy could not resist it for long. The teacher’s legs shook and Christy lost grip. Lopez attempted to play the motion off as a sudden back scratch against her chair. Christy leaned out from the closet to attack her teacher’s soles again.
“I can see that my presence here will not be necessary to ensure that you never announce another game.” The board woman was leaving. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your experiment in physical education.”
The door shut as Christy found her targets. She tickled Lopez’s feet, and the petite woman laughed more heartily than before, halfway climbing out of her seat to get away.
“Stop it!” she managed to cry.
“No,” Christy replied.
She needed to tell her friends on the team about this. She clasped one of Lopez’s feet and raked across the sole. It was amazing how she could tickle almost every part of the small foot at once with a single hand. Miriam flailed her arms, reaching for the switch to turn the microphone off. She couldn’t reach it. “Do you like this?” Christy asked, quiet enough so it wouldn’t be picked up. She could hear the teacher’s laughter echoing outside over the speaker system. “Is this what it’s like when your sister tickles you?”
“What do you want?” Lopez squealed between bouts of laughter, tears in her eyes.
“I guess I think your feet are ‘cute,’” Christy hissed.
“You’re ruining my P.E. job!” the teacher pleaded.
Christy felt a little bit bad about that. She spotted Ms. Lopez’s squirming toes. Those cute toes with no nail polish. She snatched at them and they curled in protection. She pulled them back with one hand, and tickled their softest bottoms. Lopez shrieked. “Please not my toes no my toes!” Christy tickled her teacher’s toes faster, and Lopez began to spasm. She was in serious danger of falling onto the floor. Christy was not getting tired of tickling these minute, unpainted, helpless toes, which seemed to be the weak spot on Miriam Lopez’s feet.
“Haha nooooo Christy please!” howled the teacher. “What do you want? What do you want?”
What did she want? She began to stroke up and down the wriggling feet, breathing in this control over the other woman. Ms. Lopez laughed and panted. She wanted Ms. Lopez’s feet, and she definitely had them. What else was there? She wanted Marion Dominique to know that, as far as Christy was concerned, she had done her stunt from earlier today one better. She’d gotten a pretty teacher. She searched both heels and the sides of the feet for weak spots. The inner sides of the feet were incredibly ticklish. Lopez went into streams of incoherent syllables. She’d gotten a hot teacher with a famous sister, and right now the tickling was being broadcast as commentary on her soccer game. What did she want?
Christy caught the label on Lopez’s dirty white shoes out of the corner of her eye. That seemed as good an answer to the stupid question as any. She read it out loud.
Lopez struggled for breath to repeat the phrase. Presently she found it. “FLIP FLOP: 5,” she begged into the microphone. She laughed as Christy continued to torture her soles, and she shouted it twice more. “FLIP FLOP: 5! FLIP FLOP: 5!”
Leighton had burst into the room. Christy grabbed her belongings—her shoe and sock, the flip-flops that she had rightfully taken for her own, and the paintbrush that she had forgotten to use on Lopez—and ducked past the history teacher. “I’m fine,” Lopez was telling him. Tears were dripping down her smile. Christy sought a quiet room where she would not be seized by the temptation of ticklish feet. Her teacher would keep them out of reach from now on, but Christy could wait. Eventually, she’d have them again.
_____
Girls and boys got drunk that night as planned, but the topics of conversation were unexpected. For one thing, Christy White had never appeared to play against the Wildcats, and a plucky freshman named Jessica Pedersen had emerged instead to win the night for the Bluefins. She would fill the Christy White role well—same build, same white-blonde hair, same sexy flair.
Secondly, word was spreading that Amanda Lauren Lowman had been dethroned as haughty beauty queen of the school during an afternoon class period. She’d had her modeling-gig-winning feet tickled by a red-haired girl that everyone claimed to recognize, and apparently she’d totally spazzed out in front of a whole crowd. She knew what would happen if she paraded her prized tootsies around again like she used to!
But for its sheer freak value, the most popular subject of debate that night was the music teacher Ms. Lopez’s hysterical outburst in the middle of announcing the soccer game. Three times she’d squealed “Flip Flop Five.” It was alliteration, but besides that it made no sense. Afterward, she’d refused to explain.
It sounded like a prophecy of something new at the school.
The Teacher
Vehicles whizzed by in the city night, coughing and rumbling. Fifteen women lay on the floor of a hotel suite, wrapped in blankets. Somebody snored faintly. Christy White turned over and fastened her gaze on her music teacher.
She edged out of her sleeping bag and padded across the floor. She was pretty sure that everyone had been asleep for an hour, but didn’t want to risk waking any up. She ran her hands across the mess of cool blankets at the foot of her teacher’s prone form, fumbling to separate them. She pulled the thickest free, turned it up. A pair of tiny bare feet appeared in the darkness.
Christy exhaled softly. On either side of her, sleeping women continued to breathe quietly. Christy extended a sky-blue fingernail and dragged the tip down her music teacher’s sole. The toes wiggled and the legs shifted. The teacher continued to breathe quietly. Christy exhaled again.
The older woman would rouse her fourteen college students early tomorrow morning for a long day of sightseeing in the city, culminating in an expensive visit to a live stage musical. Christy was no fan of the performing arts, but would put up with it all. She had eagerly applied to this weekend field trip, hoping it would offer a chance at her teacher’s feet. These early morning hours were her payoff. Her first touch on the bare soles in close to a year…
_____
The stiff paintbrush in Christy’s hands had never been used. Its bristles tapered to a single point. How much did it cost? Was it bought individually or in bulk? The athletic blonde ran her fingers up and down the brush as she walked. She couldn’t direct her thoughts. Her whole body was flushed with pumping blood and she needed a moment of quiet solitude.
It was April Fool’s Day, the date of an evening soccer game where Christy would lead her team to victory. Hers was an all-girls college for the wealthy, but today boys from schools all around were visiting. They would watch her dominate the field, and then party late into the night. Right now the team was probably warming up in the locker room and wondering where their star captain was.
Christy spotted a dark doorway at the end of a hall and ducked inside. The unoccupied room was an announcer’s booth with a perfect view of the soccer field. A crowd was massing in the bleachers, and white lamps split the dusk. Christy would gather herself in here, and then find her team downstairs. In a few minutes, no one would suspect the wild thoughts in her head right now.
Creamy pink soles of a model, poking out beneath a table. A great bird of a woman, swooping down. A beauty from the top of the food chain humiliated by an awkward unknown. A crowd gathering to jeer. A crowd, enjoying the frantic laughter of a tickled girl. Christy, summoned to the thick of it. Her hands wrapped tight around the bucking ankles. She’d begged the perpetrator for a second strike, even begged her to tickle Christy like she’d tickled the other girl, and she’d been rejected.
She’d get over this in a minute. What was so compelling about a pair of tickled feet? Her mind would relax in a minute. What was it about the way that girl tickled the other one?
Footsteps came outside the door. Feeling hot, Christy dove into a darkened corner between the announcer’s desk and a closet. A light flicked on. Flip-flop! went the sound of the footsteps across the room. The person set a bag down on the desk, sat down, and began to rummage in the bag. Christy recognized the small woman as Ms. Lopez, who’d been teaching music at the school for a year and just taken over physical education, too. Ms. Lopez had a singer sister, Miami, who’d been to the charts a couple times. People tried to hit on her, hoping to meet her sister.
So Ms. Lopez was proving her P.E. credentials by announcing the big soccer game? If she was here already, then it was definitely time to head to the field. Christy straightened up, ready to make a swift exit before Ms. Lopez could ask what she’d been doing in the dark room. She doubled over again as a second person strode inside. This arrival was Mr. Leighton, one of the history teachers. People tried to hit on him, because he was a youngish man at an all-girls college.
“Putting makeup on?” said Mr. Leighton. “You realize it’s your voice they’re hearing, you’re not on TV.”
“Shut up,” said Ms. Lopez. “Why are you in here?”
“Just wishing you good luck,” said Mr. Leighton. “You’ll do fine.”
“I know I will,” said Ms. Lopez. “The board needs to realize a woman under five feet tall can know as much about sports—.”
She broke off. Christy saw them kissing. Was it allowed for teachers to make out with other teachers? Mr. Leighton needed to leave so Christy could get to her team. She averted her eyes as the kissing progressed, looking instead at the floor under the announcer’s desk.
Her gaze was snared. While kissing Leighton, Ms. Lopez was curling her feet and breaking them free of her translucent white flip-flops. Each shoe made a soft plop! as it collapsed on the floor and revealed an exquisitely small bare sole. Ms. Lopez pushed the balls of her feet slowly against the ground, kissing the other teacher.
Leighton pulled away and strode to the door, closing it behind him. Ms. Lopez’s feet had gone still. Christy heard her clear her throat, then flip a switch on the desk control board. “Good evening, and welcome to our traditional April First soccer spectacular.” Ms. Lopez spoke clearly into her microphone. Christy could dully hear her voice booming across the field outside. “My name is Miriam Lopez, and I’ll be announcing tonight’s game as the Bluefins take on our talented neighbors and rivals, the Willowgrove Wildcats, in what’s sure to be—.”
Christy was aware that she was missing her star turn on the field. But a strange thought was nagging her. What color did Ms. Lopez paint her toes? She couldn’t see them, hidden behind the discarded flip-flops. Christy hoped the teacher would move her feet, move her shoes. After three minutes of waiting, Christy was frustrated. She was going to act before thinking better of it.
The blonde stretched out a thin, muscular arm and clenched Lopez’s left shoe between her thumb and forefinger. She slid it back along the floor toward her, into the closet. Apparently Lopez did not sense the movement. Christy went for the second flip-flop. With both out of the way, she craned her neck for a good look at her teacher’s toes. Like the rest of her, they were unbelievably small. The nails were unpainted. Lopez wiggled her feet and flexed her toes, and Christy felt that she’d done it for her.
The flip-flops were smooth and bore the prints of Lopez’s feet. A label at the heel bore the product name and size, “FLIP FLOP: 5.” Fascinated, Christy unlaced her own shoe, removed her sock, and slipped the flip-flop onto her foot. The effect was comical, her toes poking over the front of the tiny shoe.
She thought about the feet that she’d pinned down earlier today as they were being tickled. Those were prettier, but Lopez’s were more exciting. They were so small! How would one size up against Christy’s hand? It couldn’t be much larger.
And were they ticklish?
Christy had already lost the first minutes of the game. It was time to slip out of the room. But would her resolve carry her through the last thing she had to do? She pictured curved red nails skittering across naked feet. Those feet kicked in her grasp. She had wanted to tickle them, but been denied. “This is my moment.” Well screw you.
She quickly tickled both of Lopez’s soles. The woman’s announcement was cut short by her squealing cackle. She jerked her feet out of Christy’s reach and spun around to see the blue-eyed girl behind her.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Lopez hissed under her breath, so the microphone couldn’t pick it up. “Everyone’s looking for you out there. What are you doing? The hell, are you tickling my feet?”
Christy felt herself blushing under Lopez’s hard gaze. “No—.”
Lopez ignored her. “I get it, I’ve had people like you my whole life. My sisters used to tickle me—you think my feet are ‘so cute.’”
“That’s not—,” Christy stammered. She pictured three Miami Lopezes holding down Ms. Lopez and tickling her feet. “Your sisters—?”
Ms. Lopez pointed to the door. “Get out of here.”
Again footsteps. Christy pulled back inside the closet as a towering woman swung into the room. “What’s going on in here?” she demanded. “Are you announcing or are you messing about?”
“The microphone’s on,” shot back Lopez in a whisper. “They can hear you.”
“And I can hear you laughing like a schoolgirl,” said the woman. Someone from the board of directors, Christy thought. “Is Mr. Leighton in here with you?”
“Do you see Mr. Leighton?” Lopez said. “There’s no one in here but me.”
“And there will be no one but you, Miriam!” said the board woman. “I know you’re a music teacher, but you’ve got to understand how important this game—.”
“I understand perfectly well, Kimberly!” interrupted Lopez. “Thank you!” She made to stand, but her feet failed to find the shoes that were now in Christy’s closet. She remained sitting.
The board member seated herself on the opposite end of the room to watch Lopez, who put on a cheery voice and resumed announcing the game. Her feet paced up and down beneath her chair, searching for the missing flip-flops. Christy watched each step. “I’ve had people like you my whole life. My sisters used to tickle me.” She imagined a cheering concert audience as on stage Ms. Lopez, red-faced, had both feet mercilessly tickled by Miami.
Christy saw her hands going for Lopez’s foot. One seized the ankle, the other tickled right in the middle of the sole. “—Ha!” Lopez spat. Her foot tried to pull away, but Christy held it steady. She dug four fingers into the soft skin.
“What are you laughing about?” the board woman almost shouted. This time, there was no doubt that the game commentary had been noticeably interrupted. Lopez did not respond, and after a moment Christy realized that her tickling was robbing her teacher of the ability to form words. She reluctantly stopped, but kept holding on to the foot.
“Christy White!” Lopez gasped in her best disciplinary voice.
“What?” said the grumpy woman.
“Christy White’s not on the field and her team’s worried. Could you find her?”
Silence. The board woman sensed she was being played.
“I’m just worried, she’s missing and she could be in troub—HA!”
There was something so fun about tickling Miriam Lopez’s feet. Christy could not resist it for long. The teacher’s legs shook and Christy lost grip. Lopez attempted to play the motion off as a sudden back scratch against her chair. Christy leaned out from the closet to attack her teacher’s soles again.
“I can see that my presence here will not be necessary to ensure that you never announce another game.” The board woman was leaving. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your experiment in physical education.”
The door shut as Christy found her targets. She tickled Lopez’s feet, and the petite woman laughed more heartily than before, halfway climbing out of her seat to get away.
“Stop it!” she managed to cry.
“No,” Christy replied.
She needed to tell her friends on the team about this. She clasped one of Lopez’s feet and raked across the sole. It was amazing how she could tickle almost every part of the small foot at once with a single hand. Miriam flailed her arms, reaching for the switch to turn the microphone off. She couldn’t reach it. “Do you like this?” Christy asked, quiet enough so it wouldn’t be picked up. She could hear the teacher’s laughter echoing outside over the speaker system. “Is this what it’s like when your sister tickles you?”
“What do you want?” Lopez squealed between bouts of laughter, tears in her eyes.
“I guess I think your feet are ‘cute,’” Christy hissed.
“You’re ruining my P.E. job!” the teacher pleaded.
Christy felt a little bit bad about that. She spotted Ms. Lopez’s squirming toes. Those cute toes with no nail polish. She snatched at them and they curled in protection. She pulled them back with one hand, and tickled their softest bottoms. Lopez shrieked. “Please not my toes no my toes!” Christy tickled her teacher’s toes faster, and Lopez began to spasm. She was in serious danger of falling onto the floor. Christy was not getting tired of tickling these minute, unpainted, helpless toes, which seemed to be the weak spot on Miriam Lopez’s feet.
“Haha nooooo Christy please!” howled the teacher. “What do you want? What do you want?”
What did she want? She began to stroke up and down the wriggling feet, breathing in this control over the other woman. Ms. Lopez laughed and panted. She wanted Ms. Lopez’s feet, and she definitely had them. What else was there? She wanted Marion Dominique to know that, as far as Christy was concerned, she had done her stunt from earlier today one better. She’d gotten a pretty teacher. She searched both heels and the sides of the feet for weak spots. The inner sides of the feet were incredibly ticklish. Lopez went into streams of incoherent syllables. She’d gotten a hot teacher with a famous sister, and right now the tickling was being broadcast as commentary on her soccer game. What did she want?
Christy caught the label on Lopez’s dirty white shoes out of the corner of her eye. That seemed as good an answer to the stupid question as any. She read it out loud.
Lopez struggled for breath to repeat the phrase. Presently she found it. “FLIP FLOP: 5,” she begged into the microphone. She laughed as Christy continued to torture her soles, and she shouted it twice more. “FLIP FLOP: 5! FLIP FLOP: 5!”
Leighton had burst into the room. Christy grabbed her belongings—her shoe and sock, the flip-flops that she had rightfully taken for her own, and the paintbrush that she had forgotten to use on Lopez—and ducked past the history teacher. “I’m fine,” Lopez was telling him. Tears were dripping down her smile. Christy sought a quiet room where she would not be seized by the temptation of ticklish feet. Her teacher would keep them out of reach from now on, but Christy could wait. Eventually, she’d have them again.
_____
Girls and boys got drunk that night as planned, but the topics of conversation were unexpected. For one thing, Christy White had never appeared to play against the Wildcats, and a plucky freshman named Jessica Pedersen had emerged instead to win the night for the Bluefins. She would fill the Christy White role well—same build, same white-blonde hair, same sexy flair.
Secondly, word was spreading that Amanda Lauren Lowman had been dethroned as haughty beauty queen of the school during an afternoon class period. She’d had her modeling-gig-winning feet tickled by a red-haired girl that everyone claimed to recognize, and apparently she’d totally spazzed out in front of a whole crowd. She knew what would happen if she paraded her prized tootsies around again like she used to!
But for its sheer freak value, the most popular subject of debate that night was the music teacher Ms. Lopez’s hysterical outburst in the middle of announcing the soccer game. Three times she’d squealed “Flip Flop Five.” It was alliteration, but besides that it made no sense. Afterward, she’d refused to explain.
It sounded like a prophecy of something new at the school.
