Queen of Spades (House of Car...

The man Alice had last seen when she stripped for him on his birthday stared at her in shock. Then he seemed to make a mental decision and acted like he didn't already know her. " Language Ms. Spade. I'll see you after school today as detention for inappropriate language." he wrote a detention slip and put it down in front of her.

Suddenly Alice didn't feel all that happy to be in school anymore. She put the detention slip in her shirt pocket and stared down at her Hamlet book without seeing the words. She could hear some of the girls tittering at her already receiving a detention and could feel the heavy weight of the male population's eyes already trying to undress her. Acid churned in her stomache as she suddenly felt nauseated, but forced herself to focus on the class work. They were only at the part where Hamlet is narrating the play and Alice's classmates were confused by the play within a play aspect. She listened carefully while Malco-- Mr. Vega walked the other students through the concept. She shut off the part of her brain that was freaking out over the fact that she had given her teacher a lapdance last week and instead wrote down his consice lessons. Just listening to him explain it all told Alice that he was not only a good teacher, but passionate about encouraging his students to enjoy learning it.

A folded up piece of paper landed on her desk, startling her out of her reverie. Alice looked around but no one was looking at her so she reached for it and opened it up. Scrawled across the paper was a messy question -how much will it cost for a blow job?- Alice could hear some muffled laughter as she crumpled the paper up and left it on the corner of her desk. They weren't worth reacting to, she reminded herself, taking in slow, deep breaths. Another paper landed on her desk but this time Mr. Vega saw it.

"Note passing?" he demanded and grabbed it before Alice could. Like all teachers, he opened it to read it out, but whatever it said stopped him cold. He looked down at Alice but she was staring at her desk, not wanting to make eye contact. Without reading the note outloud he crumpled it up and took the other ball of paper off her desk, realizing what it was. "Alright class. It seems you all need to have a little talk." Alice shot her eyes upwards, trying to silently beg him to not say anything. "If I catch any of you harassing another student, I will ask the principal for an immediate suspension. I don't care what the reasons are behind it, I simply will not tolerate bullying. Is that clear?" he warned the rest of the class. They responded with a dull 'yes sir', and Alice let out a mental sigh of relief.

There were no more notes dropped on her desk in that class, but as soon as it ended, she realized that the abuse was just getting started. Her locker had the word WHORE scratched into it, and every time she walked through a hallway alone she was either groped at by guys or jostled by girls. They tried to trip her, step on her feet, shove her, pull her hair and spit at her. When her friends were around they left her alone and Alice found out that Kim's dad was the Police Chief. No one wanted to piss him off by hurting his little girl. Science block had been worse than English, as throughout biology, physics and chemistry she'd been bombarded with notes from the guys and girls, either insults or offers. All of them ended up crumpled and thrown into the garbage without a response. The teachers saw what was going on and did nothing to stop it. It was very clear to Alice that the science teachers couldn't care less and probably had been unwilling to take her on, but had been forced to. When the lunch bell rang, Alice was out of her desk and through the door before any of the other students. She stuffed her bag into the locker and turned to find her friends waiting for her.

They saw the word carved into her locker and grimanced, then spent the bulk of lunch telling her ridiculous stories from their childhoods in an attempt to help her laugh and relax. Ace counted her blessings at meeting these people. Not everyone in school was horrible to her, or inappropriate; a lot of students just looked at her, unsure if the rumours were true or not. Mainly it was just the popular kids that Lexi hung around with that were horrible to her. Alice resolved to just ignore it like it wasn't happening when suddenly something cold and sticky was poured over her. Her friends jumped away from the table, yelling and cursing as it splashed and Alice just sat there while Lexi's friends laughed.

"There, maybe now you'll feel more at home. I figure a slut like you doesn't feel right unless she wet and sticky." Lexi taunted, dropping her cup to the floor. The pop had soaked through Alice's sweater and shirt, and was dripping out of her hair. Ace had to push down the urge to jump to her feet and scratch the little bit**'s eyes out. Instead she wiped as much of the pop off as she could and wrung a little out of her sweater.

Then she smiled at Lexi like nothing had happened. "You're the expert slut, you tell me." she retorted finally, smiling sweetly. "Or are you going to claim that you haven't worked your way through all the guys in your group already?" she guessed. From the stunned look on people's faces, she'd guessed right.

"You're disgusting. You don't belong in my school. You should just leave before you get chased out." Lexi hissed, beautiful face turning ugly in her hate.

"What's going on here?" Mr. Bottomswell demanded from the cafeteria doorway.

"Lexi here thought I was too hot and kindly tried to cool me down." Alice spoke up, catching everyone off guard. Maybe if she didn't get the little idiot in trouble they'd leave her alone.

"Don't ****ing help me. I'm better than you. Remember that." Lexi hissed again. "I tripped sir, I didn't mean to." she said outloud.

"Then I think it's only fair that you clean it up." The principal stated, not believing her. Lexi threw Alice a death glare and stomped over to the principal, movements angry as she grabbed a mop and started to get the pop off of the floor. "Alice, I'll write you a note explaining why you'll be out of uniform, go ahead and change into your gym clothes." Mr. Bottomswell offered. Alice grabbed the note and calmly walked out of the cafeteria, head held high. Inside she was shaking, a mix of anger, hurt and sardonic laughter. She'd known it would be bad once the others found out, she had just thought that maybe it would have taken longer. Maybe it was better this way, she reasoned. They'll get it out of their system and then leave me alone. Alice used the change room showers to rinse off and then pulled on her gym clothes. Because her phys. ed. was dance, her gym clothes were a dance body suit and sweat pants, which she pulled on as the end of lunch bell rang. She ran to the performance hall and arrived on time, if barely. With the teacher watching the dancers so closely, Lexi and her hoard couldn't harass Alice and so it ended up being the best class of the day. None of the dancers would talk to her, all of them went out of their way to shove her aside and align themselves with Miss Popular, but they also had to focus on the teacher. Alice stayed at the back and worked on her choreography, finally catching the last steps of the dance. This wasn't the big piece they were working on for 'the Gala', but it was practice and she was now determined to win the teachers over, even if the student body was a bunch of assholes. The final bell rang and everyone ran off in excitement. Alice deliberately lingered near the teacher so that Lexi couldn't corner her again and finally she was left alone.

When she made it back to her locker, Alice was tired and knew she still had to face Malcolm. Mr. Vega. God this was just going to get worse. He was the only person in the school who had every right to be disgusted by and furious with her. She'd known her age when she'd danced, and worse, when she'd kissed him. She'd known how wrong it was to give him the lapdance, and yet she'd done it anyways.

"Do you really think coming late to detention is going to make this any easier for you?" Mr. Vega demanded, voice cold. Alice looked up from her locker, startled to find him standing there.

"No sir. Was just seeing if my uniform was dry yet." she replied dully and closed the locker. His eyes flicked to words carved into the front of it. WHORE had a few friends now, like TRAMP, SLUT and a hilariously misspelled Syphillis junkie. He blinked at seeing the abuse and looked back at Alice, a little less coldly furious.

"Why was your uniform wet?" he demanded. Alice passed him the note the principal gave her but a slowly built anger prompted her to tell him most of the truth.

"Because one of my classmates decided that a slut like me needed to be wet and sticky." she explained, voice devoid of emotion. It was easier if she just didn't give a damn about anything. "So what is my detention Mr. Vega?" she asked, walking towards his classroom.

He stayed silent until they were in the room, and he closed the door. There were windows along the edge of the door, so it wasn't inappropriate, but it did give them a sembalance of privacy. "I'm going to ask that you not tell anyone how we met." he stated finally. Alice couldn't help it, she started to laugh. He frowned at her, not understanding. "I'm very serious. If I had known how young you were I would never--"

"Sir, it's alright. I'm not in the habit of ruining other people's lives. Just my own." she replied, no longer laughing. "I'm sorry that my actions in the past have put you in this situation. It was never my intent for it to be a problem." she stated, not looking at him.

"Can you tell me why you were doing that then?" he asked, leaning against his desk. Alice finally looked at him, then down at the floor. She slid onto a desktop, the same desk she'd sat in for class.

She stared at her feet for a second, not wanting to get into it. But her actions had affected him, and she felt guilty enough to give him the truth. "Because my dad died when I was nine. And the family that owned me decided that letting their son do what he wanted to me was worth the monthly foster care cheque." she laughed without humour. "No one would believe me if I said I was a virign. But I think you might understand if I were to say that I have never willingly had sex." she stated, not able to bring herself to say that he'd raped her repeatedly. "I fought back everytime and it never changed anything. When I was fourteen I lost it and attacked him. I had this one chance to kill him and I couldn't do it. He decided to teach me a lesson, something I would never forget and poured boiling water over me. I had third degree burns  down my back and left arm. The skin had blistered and bubbled off in some spots. I woke up in the hospital and thought that maybe now they couldn't cover it up. But the nurses all believed that I'd had an incident with the laundry machine's hot water valve. No one believed me when I told them what was being done to me. Apparently the Walters had already told eveyone I was a pathological lier. When I was back at the house, everything continued on as it had before. Until I had had enough and ran away." she swallowed the lump in her throat, and roughly wiped the tears off her cheeks, suddenly ashamed at being weak enough to cry. Suddenly two arms wrapped around her and hugged her to a hard chest. Malcolm didn't say anything, just held her.

"Will you get in trouble for detention?" he asked, still not letting her out of the hug.

A blush was making its way to her cheeks as she couldn't help but realize the last time they'd been this close she'd been on his lap and he hadn't been entirely upset at having her there. Actually it'd been his own body's reaction that had made him so uncomfortable at having a lapdance. "No." Alice fianlly mumbled against his shoulder. He released his hold on her but stayed standing close to her. She could smell a tang of old spice and clean man from his skin and tried not to think how very good he smelled. "As long as I don't get social services or the police involved, they don't care what I do. They just want to be able to collect the foster care cheques every month." she explained.

"Do you want me to give you detention every day so you have an excuse to stay away?" he offered, a slight smile dancing on his lips. The blush flared to full life as Ace tried not to remember how soft they were or how his breath tasted spicy.

"Ah... maybe. I have to find a community service thing to do though and I might have a legitimate excuse not to be at home." she explained. "It's not so bad. While I was missing, their son moved out of the house and now is only around for weekends. Mr. and Mrs. Walter aren't bad, strict, but not cruel." she felt a little bit lighter now, having told someone the worst of it and they believed her.

Malcolm wiped a tear off her cheek and she nearly blushed again. God she'd have to stop reacting to him like that. It'd felt so good to flirt and kiss him when he'd thought she was an adult, but things were different now. He was her teacher and that was supposed to make him off limits. Even if she still really wanted to kiss him again. And she knew he thought of her only as a student who knew something embarassing about him.

"If you ever need help, or anything at all; I want you to call me." he stated, leaving no room for arguement. Alice blinked, a little surprised when he grinned at her. "I know you have a cellphone, what respectible seventeen year old doesn't now a days?" he asked, laughing. Ace smiled a little, and pulled out her cell. It was a pay as you go, and cheap, but it worked and lasted forever. She handed him her phone so he could type in his number. "I expect you to use that, I don't care if you think it's not important. If anything happens that makes you uncomfortable, use it. Everyone deserves to feel safe." he stated.

Alice stared at him, a little bit awed and amazed at his change in behaviour. She'd expected him to be furious and disgusted with her, not offering to be her knight in shining armour. "Why are you being so nice to me? You have every right to hate me and consider me a horrible embarassment." she asked.

He blinked and looked at her. "Ace, Alice, we've all done things in our past that we're not proud of. I used to run with a street gang." he confessed softly. "Life isn't about the worst thing you've done but instead what you choose to do next." he couldn't resist stating.

"I...I..," Alice stuttered, suddenly nervous with him standing so close still. "I really should get going." She slid off the desk, a little embarassed that she was wearing her dance uniform and baggy sweats in front of him. Not that it mattered, she told herself. It wasn't important how she looked, especially considering he'd already seen her in a lot less. She looked up, realizing that he hadn't stepped back when she'd stood up. Now they were standing chest to chest and the heat of their bodies was trapped between them, a coiled, caged animal. It made her mouth go dry and her blood rush through her ears, making it seem like her body hummed. He looked down at her, eyes a little stunned looking as he stayed just that little bit too close.

"I'll give you a ride. The buses have already left and it's raging outside. There's a massive snow storm expected sometime, to kick off winter. It may not seem like it now, but it'll be freezing before long." Malcolm offered, breaking the tension by pulling on his jacket. It was a motorcycle racer style, a dark green, black and a flash of white. Robbed of words, Alice grabbed her bag and went out to her locker. He waited patiently as she grabbed her damp uniform out and her books for class. She pulled on her battered hoodie and hoped it wasn't too cold yet or this would suck. Her dancing leotard wasn't the thickest material around. They headed outside and it was windy and damp. The air wasn't cold enough for snow but it made the occasional drizzle suck all the more. They dashed through puddles and skidded to a car that made Alice blink in surprise. He drove a Jeep, rugged looking and battered to hell. Alice slid in, relishing the comfortable fabric seats. It wasn't a flashy vehicle, but instead a reliable ride and it suited him.

Alice gave Malcolm the directions to her foster house, quietly enjoying the ride. It was a comfortable silence as the radio babbled the top 90 around them. Before it could get uncomfortable they were there and he'd stopped the Jeep. "Remember, if you need me." he stated.

A grin spread across her face as she caught a movie reference out of that line. "If I need you Ludo." she agreed and closed the car door on his confused face. Then she hurried to the door to escape the crummy weather. She didn't even catch hell for not being in uniform and having detention. They just ignored her until dinner, fed her and went back to ignoring her. She got through homework easily, not being behind thus far on any concepts. They weren't easy, but she wasn't scratching her head confused.

She was sitting over a list of buisnesses from the yellow pages and writing down those most likely to need a student doing community service. It was late enough at night now that she didn't feel right calling in to the numbers listed, she knew most places had closed long ago. But she stared down at her cell phone, remembering an off hand remark that Malcol- Mr. Vega had made when she'd proven to him that she'd saved his number. He'd said that her contacts list was depressing. She stared down at it, scrolling down the list and coming to the conclusion that he was right.

Foster House  Malcolm Vega  Mask   Social Services Agent   Speedy Pizza   {empty} {empty} {empty}

The Walter's house number, Mal's number, her answering service for DJ Mask, that useless Service Agent's number - as if she'd actually help if Ace called, and the pizza joint she called whenever she'd not wanted to attempt to cook while living alone. Which was a lot. She could bake, and loved to try new things, but the stove top confused her somehow. That was it, and he was right, it was depressing. Alice chewed her lip and decided to try and get the cell numbers off of her new group of friends. They seemed willing to stick with her, even agaist the taunts of the other students. That'd put more names into it so she didn't seem so terribly alone.

"Well this is certainly cheering me up." Alice huffed at herself, aiming for a scolding tone but instead sounding whiny. She frowned at the pitiful voice and gave her head a rough shake. And then her phone buzzed. She stared at it, surprised. This would have to be the first text she'd actually received. Then scrambled to pick it up and see who the hell had found her number.

Found ur # on ur phone. Mal.

Alice stared at the phone is shock and laughed at it, a weird little rush tumbling through her belly. Then she smirked at the phone even if he couldn't see it.

Stalker much? I know I'm fantastic but get control of yourself lover-boy. BTW for an english teacher your grammar sucks.

replied Alice, grinning. She left the table and flopped down onto her bed, finding a more comfortable position to lounge in.

ur hilarious. tryin 2 txt fast. i'v got no proof of what they do 2 u. so no fuzz. but i xpect u 2 txt me evry nite so i no ur ok. gtg grlfrnd givin me death glare.

And just like that the happy feeling in Alice's gut shriveled up and died. Of course someone as delicious and sweet as him had a girlfriend. She was probably a real sweetheart, innocently pure and angelic like beauty. Alice worked herself into a nice little funk before she finally threw the phone on the bed and decided a shower would be great. It was almost midnight and she was as quiet as possible moving around to the one bathroom. The water pounding down on her drummed away the thoughts bouncing around her skull and let the knot of tension cording her back melt away. She shuffled back to her room wrapped in a towel, crawled into her battered sleep wear and passed out.

####

By the third day everyone was whispering about her. Now the looks had a little more scorn and disgust mixed into them, making Alice wonder what lies Lexi had added into the rumour mix. She found the locker, expecting even more obscenities to be carved into it, but to her surprise there was a janitor just putting away his equipment and a sanded patch where all the words had been carved. He caught her standing there, staring at it in surprise.

"This your locker miss?" he asked polietly. Numbly Alice nodded her head. "Well don't worry. These things keep up, we'll just keep taking it down. This school doesn't truck with nonesense like that." he informed her with a kind smile.

"Ah... thank you." Alice stammered in reply, once again amazed at a strangers kindness. He nodded his head at her and walked off with his tools.

Alice shrugged and went into her locker, dropping off the books she wouldn't need and tossing in her dance uniform for later. She closed the door and felt someone standing a little too close behind her. She spun quickly, about to shove the person back when she realized it was Kim and friends. "Oh, hey guys! Good morning." she greeted cheerfully, tucking her hand away so that it didn't look like she was ready to fight.

"Morning." "Hey." "N'ngh." "Ready for class?" And a head nod greeted her. Alice tilted her head to the side a little amused at the varied responses. These guys really did like to talk all over each other. It worked because they all probably knew what each one was gonig to say anyways but it left an outsider like Ace a little confused.

"I'm all set for class. Let's go before the nasty witch of the north finds me." Alice joked, and thankfully they got the reference. Alice wanted to avoid as many encounters with Lexi as possible, and hiding out in class seemed like a good idea. She tried to ignore the little voice in her head that pointed out that being early to class also gave her some time alone with Malco- Mr. Vega.

She was the first one into class, even he wasn't in yet. She sighed in relief and slumped into her chair, taking a second to relax while no one could attack her. She grabbed her cheap mp3 player and plugged it in, letting the music skitter through her brain. It was both a nice toy, and a work expense, her mp3player, as most of the music on it was her own, as DJ Mask. These were the new tracks she'd worked on before being dragged back to the Walter house, and listening to them like this would allow her to pick out areas that needed tweaking before she released them. Youtube was a marvellous invention and allowed her to gain publicity without exposing herself. Literally and figuratively.

Alice was surprised when Mal-Mr. Vega strode into class, a phone to his ear. He hadn't noticed her yet, instead his facial expression was frustrated and annoyed looking. Alice had found it impossible to hear people while working as a DJ and had gone out of her way to learn to read lips to counter that. So now she shamlessly 'eavsedropped' without him knowing it. He turned and startled, surprise flickering across his face as he saw Alice sitting in her desk, with just under ten minutes to go before first bell rang. He saw the headphones leading to her ears and kept on with his phone call, not knowing that as long as she could see his lips, she knew what he was saying.

-Shawna, I'm serious. I'm sorry you feel that way but it's part of my job.- pause as she spoke. -I can't get out of it, I've been the designated chaperone since last year. The school board feels that I can relate to them and help them.- pause. -it's just a retreat! How bad do you think these kids can be? They're a bunch of honor roll seniors!- pause. Long pause. Malcolm grimanced at something Shawna said. -no I don't want to leave you. I love you- pause. -can't you just say it back? Please?- pause. Malcolm tried not to look too hurt but his shoulders slumped. -fine. I'll see you tonight- he hung up the phone. Alice tried not to make it obvious she'd been watching him as he rubbed his forehead and looked at her. He mimed pulling the headphones out and she turned off her music.

"Is everything ok?" he asked her. Ace nodded yes, not wanting to add to his already stressed seeming morning. "How come you came in here so early?" he asked, leaning against his desk.

"I figure it's easier and safer if I keep away from certain students at this school. My presence just seems to... provoke their ire." Alice replied with a quirk of her lips.

Malcolm-- Mr. Vega nodded to her reasoning and rubbed his face again.

"How about you, you ok?" Alice asked, honestly concerned.

Mal- Mr. Vega smiled at her, eyes still strained looking. "Yeah. I'll be fine. Just... there's a trip coming up that I chaperoned last year and am supposed to chaperone this year." he explained. Alice found herself wanting to know more about him, and if he'd talk about it, then she was more than willing to listen.

"You don't want to?" she asked, already knowing that wasn't the case.

"No it's not that...." he trailed off, looking away. Then he looked at her. "You're pretty good at keeping secrets. And you're rather mature for your age so many you can help me out with this." he said outloud, just coming to that conclusion now. "It's my girlfriend, Shawna. She knows I have the trip planned, it's been on my schedule for months now. And for some reason, she decided that it was the perfect time to plan a 'couple's getaway'." he did air quotations. "Now she wants me to drop the school trip so that she and I can take a weekend off and go to this couples spa thing. She could have planned it for any other weekend but..." he trailed off.

Alice tried to keep the disappointment off her face when he talked about his girlfriend. If she didn't know better, she'd think that she was developing a little crush on her teacher. But that was ridiculous, she wasn't one of those girls. So instead she thought about what he said and tried to come up with some sort of conclusion. "I hate to break it to you, but I think she did that on purpose." Alice started, trying to see if her judgement of Shawna was based on the information he gave her, or her own bias. "Is it possible that she wants to see if you value her above your job?" she asked, obliquely implying.

Malcol- Mr. Vega gave a rueful grimance and nodded his head. "That's entirely possible. Shawna is..." he smiled softly, obviously in love with her despite the current issue. "Shawna is all fire. She lives fast, plays hard and leaves no prisoners." he chuckled a little. "She's also fiercely jealous and ridiculously convinced that someone is going to seduce me away from her. I think she's more worried that a weekend away from her, surrounded by 'nubile young virgins' is going to make me stray." he smiled as if that were a ridiculous concept. Stranger things have happened..... Ace shook the wistful thought from her mind. He was asking for her help, treating her like a friend and equal. And she refused to let some confused hormones detract from that.

"Surprise her with a date. Tonight. When she gets home, get her into the car and take her out. There's got to be a restaurant she's mentioned wanting to go to. Take her there, and then take her out dancing. Let her see that even in a crowd of hot sweaty people, she's the only one you have eyes for." Alice adviced. It surprised her, how romantic her mind was at times like this, and made her more than a little sad that her own fantasy would be used on another woman. Never her.

Malco- Mr. Vega smiled at her, relief flooding his face. "That's actually a really good idea. Thank you Ace." he grinned at her, stress wiped away in an instant. Alice smiled back, happy to have helped and resolutely ignoring the part of her that wailed in disappointment.

"Your relationship question was easy. Last time a guy asked for my help in that regard, he'd gotten his wife's niece pregnant." Alice admitted with a shrug. He shot her a look like he didn't believe her, but then cracked right up.

"You've got to be joking!" he demanded, laughing. Alice grinned at him.

"Not even a little. And that was fairly standard for Suede's." Alice chuckled herself, remembering a few of the limited good moments there. "One of the dancers, Candy, came in all upset one day. Turns out that she was cheating on her boyfriend. And her boyfriend was cheating on her. With the same man. Eventually they all reconciled and became a happy threesome, but it was really hard to take her seriously at the time she was describing it." Alice explained, making Malcolm crack up even more. Alice was grinning, no longer dreading her day, grateful that he wasn't treating her like a perverted student. Instead he shared his own 온라인카지노게임 about a friend dating a mute woman and a hilarious miscommunication of the sign hungry for the sign take off your clothes. They were both still laughing like old friends when the first bell rang and reminded them that this was schooltime.

Alice pulled out her books and settled into class, realizing that for all intents and purposes, he would be Mr. Vega in school and Malcolm outside of school. There was just an easy comfort in place that allowed for the fact that they were student and teacher, but also becoming friends. Ace smiled and tried to convince the lump in her stomach that friendship would be enough for her.