This girl I actually liked, by which I mean: ‘Didn’t cause impossible trouble for the Sub’, when I was teaching Substitute School (I was better than that: the place was poor, so I was in my element, and I was treated as a valuable asset to the proceedings, and was a fulltime employee), came up to me in the hallway lining up for Lunch. I really liked her name: Justice.

Justice. I like that, still. Good name. Moral.

White girl, not that it mattered. And she seemed cool; good student, studious, but not too quiet, had a real personality. Smart, but practical. I liked her.

I liked another kid, a boy, who was obsessed with Pro Wrestling; he was absolutely hilarious. He drove all his teachers- except me- NUTS. He was my favorite. I still have some of his Pro Wrestling drawings. Golden!

Anyway. 5th Grade.

Justice sidles up to me, at the drinking fountain, and pulls down her jeans to show me her ass. This is nothing exceptional, really; I’ve had sexually active 5th graders bend over and show me their junk/stuff, ask/demand of me, in class, “You wanna fuck me?!”

Justice says, “I’m wearing a thong today.” She shows me her thong, the whaletail. She is clearly uncomfortable and distressed.

I say back, “And… why are you telling me this? And where did you get a thing panty?”

Justices’ face crumples. “My mom bought it for me. She says it’s time I grew up.”

She was 11.