Have a Heart 1

by Rachel Burns

  The others all felt sorry for her again. She didn’t admit that she was due another visit this evening.

  Chapter 8 – You Will Be Judged by the Company You Keep

  They all went to lunch and supper together. Brianna practiced German with Jennifer. Jennifer seemed too interested in German. Brianna asked her why. Jennifer confessed that her boyfriend was a Neo-Nazi. Brianna was so shocked that she and Jennifer had their first fight.

  Brianna had gotten teased as a little girl. The others had called her a Nazi. She had asked her mother what it meant. That anyone would want to be like that on purpose was something that she couldn’t understand. Brianna explained and Jennifer got mad and huffy with her. Brianna begged her to stay away from such people who only had hate in their hearts. Jennifer had left, slamming Brianna’s door.

  Scott had heard the noise. He stood in the hall and demanded to know whom it was.

  No one came forward.

  He called a hall meeting. Scott checked off who was there and who wasn’t. “Okay, I want to know what happened. Start talking now, and the punishment could be done in the privacy of your own room.”

  That Scott was mad was clear. He looked over the girls trying to figure out who it was.

  Most of the girls looked a little confused. Brianna had been crying again. Nothing new there, he thought. Jennifer just looked mad. Scott made them sit in silence while he waited for a confession. None was offered.

  “Brianna, did you slam the door?” He figured that she looked the guiltiest.

  “No, sir, I didn’t.” Her answer came fast, and she looked him in the eye. It rang true.

  He went around the circle and asked every girl. They all copied Brianna’s answer.

  “Well, that obviously means that one of you are lying. Perhaps, if I spank all of you, the real perpetrator will come forward. Brianna, I’ll start with you. Come here.” He was counting on the protecting instinct that the others had for her to kick in, and then the truth would come out.

  All the girls protested but one. They were begging him to reconsider.

  Brianna slowly got up and went to his right side. She looked heartbroken, but she didn’t say anything.

  “The only thing that could help Brianna now is either a confession or someone tells me who it was.” He waited again. The girls were nervously looking at each other. Brianna was crying so much that the tears were dripping from her eyes, but she didn’t make a noise.

  The moment of waiting stretched on and on. There was a very uncomfortable feeling in the room.

  “Does the offer still stand that if someone confesses that the spanking could be done in private?” Brianna asked.

  “Yes, it does. But only if the confession comes in the next minute.” Scott looked at all the girls.

  “I did it.” Brianna’s voice came out clearer than what she would have hoped it would.

  The girls all looked shocked. Not because she had slammed the door, but because she had lied and not owned up to it in the beginning.

  Scott stood up and grabbed her by her ear. He practically threw her in her room. “Karen, watch her door. I need to get something from my room.”

  Brianna washed her face in the seconds that he was gone. Jennifer would have let him hit her even though she knew she was innocent. She had thought that Jennifer was her friend.

  Brianna was so sad that nothing that Scott could do to her could hurt more.

  Scott came back in with a wooden paddle and his hairbrush. He closed and locked the door. He looked at her for a moment, waiting to see if she would say something. She didn’t. That made him even madder. He pulled the chair out from her desk. “Remove your skirt and panties.”

  Brianna flushed red. She didn’t realize that the paddle had other rules, but she obeyed him. She moved her hands to cover her front after she finished undressing.

  “Hands at the sides,” he barked at her.

  She obeyed and the tears automatically increased.

  “Come here,” he motioned her over behind the chair.

  She went to him without a fuss.

  He stood her where he wanted her. “Place your hands on the back of the chair without moving your feet.”

  She did. That position made her bottom stick out. Normally, she would have been ashamed, but she still hoped the Jennifer would step forward. She was waiting for a knock.

  Brianna was even looking at the door, staring at it, willing it to be knocked on.

  “Leave your hands on the chair, or so help you God,” he warned her. He lifted the paddle and brought it down hard on her backside.

  Her knees buckled as the blow landed, but she managed to stay on her feet. The next one came just as she came back to standing up proper. This one knocked the air out of her. She decided to just let herself cry. Jennifer wasn’t coming.

  Scott gave her a couple more blows.

  “That was your first five. You will be getting more.” He was still so mad that she had lied to him. “I can’t believe you wasted everyone’s time like that. You looked me into the eyes and lied to me. I will never be able to believe you again. Neither will the others. What you did was just cruel. I truly hope that you will learn something out of this.” He raised the paddle and brought it down in a high arch that made the paddle land low on her bottom just where her thighs began.

  Her right knee gave in, but her left leg remained steady. He let the next land on the same spot.

  She screamed out then.

  He didn’t even think of stopping. He gave her three more, and then he decided that ten was just too little for what she had pulled. Scott gave her five more. He put his power into them.

  When he had finished, Brianna realized that she had laid her head on her hands. She was sobbing so bitterly. That had been so terrible. The disappointment that Jennifer had let her go through that, when she didn’t deserve it, broke her heart.

  Brianna was slowly calming down. She was sniffling so much that it hurt her chest. She would take a pill for that once he left. Brianna didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing that. But wait, she thought, he wasn’t her enemy.

  “Straighten up, Brianna.” He fought his need to praise her for not letting go of the chair.

  She slowly did. She kept her head hung as she sobbed.

  He picked up the hairbrush and sat down on the chair. “Come here, Brianna, so we can continue.”

  She swallowed hard and sniffled again, but she moved to his side.

  He looked up at her face. She was still shaking, and her face was stuck in a sad frown. He could almost feel sorry for her. “Over my knees.”

  She leaned down over them, and he helped her so she wouldn’t fall. She leaned forward letting her hands fall to the floor.

  “I think five minutes ought to teach you about integrity.” He started right in spanking hard again. She had been a little beast, and she should feel the pain of that.

  After a minute, her elbow came up, and her hand moved along her back just under her shoulder blades. She grabbed onto her sweater and held on to it tightly.

  “Miss Banks, please remove your hand.”

  “Please sir, I’ll leave it where it is, I promise. It just hurts so much to have it down.”

  Okay, she had thrown him a line. He would bite. “What do you mean it hurts?”

  “It falls asleep, painfully.”

  “And your other hand doesn’t?”

  “I – umm – I have it up. It is holding on to the chair behind you.”

  He held her tightly around her waist so she wouldn’t fall. He turned and looked. Sure enough there was her other hand.

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this and after the terrible way you behaved. Give me your hand Brianna.”

  Her hand slipped into his and relaxed. Usually, he had to fight to keep hold of the girls’ hand, the ones that were wild in their pain.

  “But your hands stayed put for the paddling?”

  “Elevation,” she answered while sniffling.

  Sc
ott continued with her spanking he still had four minutes to go. He watched her clock, and he dished it out to her. He thought about all the other girls helping her in the garden. She was a taker, he figured, someone who always thought about herself first.

  He felt what she had done was so bad that he would write to her father about it. The other fathers wouldn’t care, but he’d bet hers would.

  She started kicking a little. He smacked her on her thighs with the hairbrush. “If you can’t keep your hands down, then you will keep your legs down.” He used her thighs as a target for a minute.

  When he was finished, she laid limp and sniffling over his lap. She still had three minutes to go, and he wanted to make sure that this punishment would be a memorable one. He could feel the heat coming off her backside. He was surprised that she wasn’t apologizing and begging for forgiveness.

  Brianna couldn’t believe how much this hurt. It was so bad. Scott could be just as bad or even worse than her father.

  Her head was spinning, and she couldn’t talk, she could only cry. She wanted to quit school and go home. This just hadn’t worked out. She just didn’t have enough knowledge about people to know who was nice and who wasn’t. She was probably too old to learn that anymore.

  Scott was lifting her up and setting her on her feet. She stood next to the chair close to him. She was still crying when she started in with her confession. “I lied, it wasn’t me.” The whole story poured out of her. She told him everything that was weighing on her soul in whispers. What her mother had said, what Jennifer had said, how she felt that she would never know how people truly were. She had been nice to Jennifer. They had even formed a little band, but Brianna meant nothing to her.

  Scott pulled her back to his lap and took her in his arms and held her until she had cried herself out. Scott even had tears in his own eyes.

  Once she had settled down, he asked her why she didn’t tell him the truth beforehand.

  “But I deserved it for lying. I lied when I said I did it.” Her tear-filled eyes looked into his, and she even looked guilty.

  “I have a mind to lay you over my knees and spank you again for your foolishness.”

  Brianna burst into tears again and hid her face in his shirt.

  “I’m not going to hurt you anymore. I’m finished, and I won’t come back tomorrow. It’s really over with now.” He held her closely like she was a little girl.

  “Please, don’t tell Jennifer that I told the truth. She will hate me even more than she already does.” She looked into his eyes again. Her hand was on his chest. His heart was beating strong and fast.

  “You want her to get away with this? Not likely. I make the decisions for our floor.” He looked off in the distance trying to figure out what he should do.

  He felt guilty about what he had done to Brianna. She had been willing to take punishment for the other girl just so she might maybe like her. She was just too naïve.

  It took him a couple of minutes to realize that he was holding onto Brianna, who was half naked, a lot longer than what could be considered appropriate.

  “Okay Brianna, I think you should go to bed early tonight. I have to think about how to proceed with this. Neo-Nazis, that’s a new one for me too. I’ll have to talk to the Dean. You may have to too. If you do, be very truthful and don’t leave anything out. You can’t help her otherwise.” He stood Brianna up and lifted up her blankets.

  She crawled into bed still crying.

  Scott covered her up. He would make Jennifer pay for hurting little Brianna as she had.

  He left her room, and Brianna’s got back up again.

  She got out the right pill and her water. Her hands were already shaking. She managed to swallow her pill on the first try.

  That surprised her. In this condition, she had worried. She really did need to lie back down. She took off the rest of her clothes.

  Brianna used the last of her strength to throw them in the laundry and get her pajamas out. She slipped into them and lay down in bed. She started to cry again. Gut wrenching tears came out.

  Scott went into his room and closed the door. He ignored the mean looks that he got on the way there from the girls out in the hall.

  He dialed the Dean and explained what had all happened.

  The Dean said he would come right over.

  The word ‘Neo-Nazi’ had them all jumping.

  Brianna felt so terribly sick. Her head hurt, and she was so dizzy even though she was lying down.

  She felt it; her pill wasn’t going to stay in. She jumped from her bed, and then she had to stand very still to be able to take the next step.

  Once she could, she hurried into the bathroom and threw up. She was sobbing again. Her hair had gotten in the way and everything. Now she had to shower too.

  She got undressed and stood under the shower. She didn’t have her shampoo with her. Brianna started to cry again. She dropped to her knees and just bawled.

  Gretchen found her that way. She turned off the water, and Brianna pulled herself into a small ball.

  “Wow, was he trying to kill you?” she asked her.

  “No,” Brianna broke into sobs again.

  Melissa, a girl in her second year, also came in then. She hadn’t been there when the whole incident happened.

  “Brianna slammed her door, and Scott wanted to know who did it. It took a long time for her to confess. Scott flipped,” Gretchen explained.

  “I didn’t do it,” Brianna admitted.

  “What? But why?” Gretchen asked her as she shook her head.

  “He said he would spank us all. He wanted to start with me anyway. This way no one else got hurt.”

  “Are you crazy? He was bluffing. It was so obvious. Brianna, no.” Gretchen moved forward to hug her, and then she stopped. “Brianna, you smell really bad.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I had to throw up, and my hair got in the way, and my shampoo is in my room.”

  “We have to tell Scott,” Gretchen protested.

  “No, I’m not really sick. I just threw up my pills. I’m fine. I just want my soap and shampoo from my room, please.”

  “I’ll go get it,” Melissa offered. Melissa had decided that she wanted to go on to be a doctor after she was finished here. She would help put Brianna right again. She went into her room. The chair was still in the fateful position. She pushed it into her desk before she got Brianna her things. She was glad that she thought to bring a couple of towels.

  When she got back, Gretchen had undressed Brianna and was helping her stand under the water. Brianna didn’t have the energy to stand anymore. She was back on the floor again.

  Melissa gave Gretchen the shampoo. She washed her as quickly as she could. Melissa slipped out to go talk to Scott.

  She knocked on his door. He opened it right up. He looked at her confused. “Yes, Melissa?”

  “Brianna has been throwing up, and she lied to you about it being her fault.”

  “Hush. Yes, I know about that. She told me after the fact.” He was already moving down the hall towards the showers.

  “Wait she isn’t finished yet. Maybe you could carry her back to bed once we have her dressed again.” Melissa slipped in the door.

  “He’s here,” she announced.

  Brianna looked down at her scars. “No, please no.”

  “There will be none of that. He will carry you back to bed after we have dressed you. I thought of everything. Brianna it will be okay now. I can sit by your bed if you want.”

  Brianna sniffled and nodded. Gretchen was drying her off, and she passed Brianna off to Melissa who worked on getting her dressed.

  Melissa was careful to make sure Brianna’s scars were covered.

  Once Brianna and Gretchen were dressed, Melissa called Scott in.

  Scott was being eaten alive with his guilt. He had even been harder on her to teach her a lesson. Even if she had been guilty, then he had gone too far. Beating the girls to the point that they had to throw up wasn’t okay,
no matter what.

  He went into the shower room to find a very pale Brianna. “Why did you shower?” He looked at her confused.

  “I threw up on my hair. I had to.” Brianna was crying again.

  He swooped her into his arms and carefully carried her into her room. Melissa pulled back her blankets. Gretchen put away her shower things. Scott carefully laid her in bed on her side. She reached out for her pillow and snuggled into it, exactly like the last time when she was sick.

  Gretchen closed the door. “Scott she lied, it wasn’t her. She just said it was so you wouldn’t spank everyone.”

  “I know, she told me. She also told me who it was.”

  “I figured she would admit it and stop you.” Brianna sobbed in her bed. She was shaking.

  “Should we turn on your blanket?” Melissa asked. After Brianna nodded, she turned it on high.

  “Do you two have this under control?” Scott asked them. “Because the Dean is on the way.”

  Melissa nodded. Her eyes were wide. The Dean had never had to come here before. What was going on?

  Gretchen wanted to know who had let Brianna get this hurt. She sat on the bed next to Brianna.

  Scott left little Brianna and went to wait for the Dean. He was a little worried about losing his job, but she was fine after the spanking. She got sick because she was sad that a friend had treated her so badly.

  Jennifer just wasn’t good company for Brianna. She had been right when she said that she was too naïve and trusting.

  He wanted to kill Jennifer in the meantime.

  “Brianna, you can’t fall asleep yet. You have to retake your medicine.” Melissa tried to get her to open her eyes.

  “I’ll go get the cream from Hannah.” Gretchen slipped out of the door.

  Scott was still in the lounge, waiting for the Dean. He watched what Gretchen was doing.

  Gretchen went to Hannah’s door and knocked. She whispered to Hannah what happened and asked for the cream.