Happy Birthday to You (Birthday Trilogy, Book 3) by Brian Rowe Page B

had never liked the majority of the students. There were always the
major troublemakers, like Reese Wilkins back in the 80’s, or prissy little
Brandon Reed in the late 90’s, or, worst of all, Cameron Martin, who thankfully
graduated a year ago, leaving her and her library in peace. But lately, most,
not some, of the students had been grating on her nerves, asking ignorant
question after ignorant question, talking above the appropriate level,
returning books super late, causing her headaches on an almost daily basis.
    No, she wouldn’t miss Caughlin Ranch High
as much as the teachers and superintendents. But she knew, on this June
afternoon, she needed to say a proper good-bye to the place she had called her
second home for the last thirty-six years.
    Mrs. Gordon took out the silver plated
key from her purse and opened up the library front doors. As she made her way
inside, she detected the wonderful smell of old, dusty books wafting through
the air. It was so deathly quiet she could hear each of her footsteps. She
looked at the various desks and computer center, but decided she wouldn’t be
taking the time to sit down. She wanted to remain standing, and take a tour of
her beloved library one last time.
    She passed through the aisles, running
her paper-thin hands along all the great works of literature in the Classics
section. Soon she found herself in the back left corner of the library, the
most hidden spot in the whole room, the area that gave Mrs. Gordon the most
problems when it came to her more sexually active students. She backed up
against the Greek mythology books and closed her eyes, remembering with a loud
chuckle all those times she had run into Cameron Martin here during his four
years at CRHS. He had been her most memorable bad student for sure, memorable
because she had gone from hating him for three and a half years to seducing him
into having sex with her at the end of his senior year.
    “He was old,” she often told herself. “He
was the most handsome sixty-four-year-old I’d ever seen!”
    Mrs. Gordon had never told anyone of the
controversial incident, and she was happy as hell that Cameron never did
either, especially after he recovered from his horrific condition and could
have easily gone straight to Principal Reeves with news that would have rocked
Reno, if not the entire United States.
    What would have been her argument? “I was
not, I repeat, not, Mary Kay Letourneau! I would have never touched him if he was physically seventeen years old! But the rules didn’t apply to me here. He looked old…
older than me. You’re not pressing charges! I forbid it!”
    Before being whisked away to jail for the
rest of her life, she would’ve kicked and screamed, knowing she now had years
and years to spend wasting away in some dump of a jail when she had a better
life waiting for her outside those cold metal bars.
    But on this day in June, Mrs. Gordon
realized she’d take that life sentence in jail any day. The woman was only
fifty-nine years old and still had a good thirty years before she’d kick the
bucket. Even when Cameron Martin had been going through that aging disease, the
thought of rapidly aging had never really entered her head.
    But now it wasn’t a hypothetical
situation anymore; it was a reality. Nobody believed it for the first few days,
but now, even though the world hadn’t erupted into total chaos yet, Mrs. Gordon
knew that it was happening… to everyone. She didn’t want to wait until the
madness began, until all the horrors of what mankind was capable of would
inevitably rise to the surface. She wanted to get out while there was still
peace. She knew what she had to do.
    As she walked over to her miniscule
office on the other side of the library, she thought about her first year as a
librarian here at CHRS, a young new mom who had a simple but fruitful future ahead
of her. She was never all that successful in love—she only married once,
keeping the last name Gordon after