Angel was sitting at her desk, cutting strips of magnesium for the afternoon lesson of year 10 exothermic reactions – thermite being the coolest. She looked up from her desk as a gang of teen boys – probably year tens as they loitered by her door, snickering and whispering under their breaths. “Did you not dress up today, miss?” they asked. “Should I have?” I asked, wondering if she missed a memo on world book day. “You were pretty dressed up last night,” one of them said. “Oh,” Angel felt heat rise in her cheeks and her heart in her throat. They had seen. The night before, she had stripped to her underwear and walked into the carpark, and one of these kids just happened to live directly below her. ‘God damn it,’ she thought, closing the heavy prep room door in their faces. ‘They are probably wondering why I did that?’ “Well, I did it for love… and weed,” she muttered to herself. Lately she’d been buying weed from a guy she met on a swinger’s site. He wanted sex… a lot… and she wanted the weed. So, she paid him for it, and he ripped her off every time, using her for degrading sex in the meantime. Yes, she liked degrading sex – the dirtier, the better. The more humiliating, the better. … And now these kids knew. “Great, that’s just great.”