Besides, she would never hurt these children. She cared deeply for these children and every single child that had come through this classroom in the past five years. The children had been nurtured with the love and care their parents likely withheld from them by working too hard or not taking the time to speak to them.

But while she loved the children, they were also like a cancera cancer that ate at her from the inside out. Shed learned nearly a decade ago that she could not have children. Even if there was a suitable lover (which there had not been for a few years now), there was no hope for children in her future. It was the only reason teaching had made sense; it was a way to be around kids, to enjoy their smiles and stories and their wide-spanning dreams of a future they naïvely believed was going to be bright and shining.

After coding, there would be some nonsense that the school liked to refer to as Independent Thinking. What it was, essentially, was time to goof off…which was perfectly fine. Half the fun of being a child was goofing off a bit. At this age, they should not be consumed with excelling at miserable tests the state used to measure their intellect. It seemed especially stupid for these children, who had already proven they were leaps and bounds above the other kids in their grade.

She loved the kids, but hated the school system. It was just a place for kids to be stored while their mothers and fathers were out milling away to pay outrageous bills and mortgages so they could fit in and catch up with those slightly above their social class. These children would all grow up with the scars of that system on them, affecting the way they viewed politics and justice, love and sex, respect and hatred. She saw this every single day and it was why she had initially convinced herself that she did not even want to have children. They were born into this world destined to already be screwed up in a million ways. So if she could not have any of her own, maybe it was for the best.

But these kids were different. These were the sort of kids she would have surely enjoyed raising. Special. Independent. Not just carbon copies of their messed up parents. The thought of it was both inspiring and depressing all at once.

She sat behind the small oak desk and watched the kids at work. Sometimes, one would look up, as if for recognition or encouragement. She would smile brightly even though her thoughts were elsewhere. Her thoughts were on plans for the night. There was already another woman out there, another that she would visit.

Thinking of how the night would play out, her smile widened even when there was no child looking back.