This is my story about Marcy Samer. Samer was my fourth-grade teacher. She was a large, ungainly woman, and I was fearful of her, at least in the beginning. It was appropriate and peculiar that her name was Samer. She was a lesbian, as my father had confided to me. I had nothing against homosexual people, but as an evil, unthinking nine-year-old, this made Samer the perfect object of ridicule. I saw her as a 350-pound butch monster. I thought maybe she looked like she should have one big eye in the middle of her forehead, like a cyclops.

I don't recall much about her girlfriend, Maddie, the third-grade teacher. I do recall that she often fussed with her face and hair in a small cosmetic mirror that was almost always in her hand. She also had shiny red fingernails. About sixteen times a day she would fan out her fingers and examine them. They were always red.

I had a brilliant idea, or so I thought. I would make Samer my dog. She would be good at protecting my home, I could train her to obey my will, and I could take my frustrations out on her if need be.

Some of my classmates and I surrounded her one day, jumped all over her head, and forced her into a parent's van. We brought her to my house. I immediately stripped her, grabbed a permanent black marker and colored big spots all over her pale body. Then I put a black leather collar around her neck that had silver spikes all around it. I chained her to a heavy chair leg. Whenever the doorbell rang, or someone knocked, I'd shout, "Get 'em, Samer, get 'em!" She'd leap on the door, barking and yelping, scaring the intruders away.

Sometimes I'd throw her a biscuit for entertainment. She'd gobble them up and pant appreciatively. One day, she insisted to me, "I wanna lick twat! I ignored her the first few times. She said again, "I wanna lick twat!!" I yelled fiercely at her. "Samer, you're a vile, disgusting creature and if you keep it up I whack you silly with the newspaper!" I grabbed it and rolled it up and held it over her head. Samer whimpered and lay down.

One day, I had a miserable day. Friends were demanding to get their share of Samer, but Samer was my dog, and I refused. I went home and started kicking her. I punched her in the head, slammed her in the ribs, and beat her with the newspaper. I kicked her down the basement stairs. Samer whined from the bottom of the staircase, "Let me out! Let me out! I don't wanna be alone in the dark!" I shouted, "You're a bad dog, Samer! Stay down there and play dead!" I locked the door.

A couple months passed. Then one calm afternoon, my father said to me, "Let Samer go. She needs to run with the pack. She's fulfilled her duties well and deserves a reward." I said no. But later that night, when I was asleep, my father unchained her from the chair and opened the front door. He said that she ran like a bullet from a revolver. For many weeks I was upset about losing my pet dog. I began eyeing the sixth-grade teacher at the school, picturing her with a large eye at the center of her forehead...