As the year passed, sometimes Max got punished which meant standing in the front corner of the room with Miss Murphy to one side, behind her desk. She half-faced in his direction with her knees pointing at him while she taught, like she didn’t want to leave him out. And she twirled her feet and re-crossed her legs and rubbed them against each other with an exciting sound. Or, with her hands she smoothed her stockings or pulled out a desk drawer to rest one foot on it with her other foot on the floor.

Hidden from the class behind her desk, Max began to see more and more space between Miss Murphy’s legs like she didn’t care about him seeing inside. Her stockings stopped above her knees and there was a shadow in the middle of her white thighs. She glanced at Max now and then, but not to stop him looking because she didn’t change how she sat. Sometimes she licked her lips, or slipped her shoes and earrings off like his mother did before going to bed. Maybe she glanced over to see if he was looking.

Once, his dickie got so hard it stood straight up which he did not understand the connection to, and he had to stay facing into the corner for a long, long time until it went down. She smiled a lot and didn’t send Max back to his seat either, so she knew something happened. That was the last punishment Miss Murphy gave him. At the end of the year she even wore a mini-skirt but the old Mother Superior yelled at her and she was told to go home and change back to her usual. The Mother Superior also said things that made her cry, and Max felt sad for Miss Murphy. He wanted to kiss her like he kissed his mother to make her feel better. But he was mad, too, because he wouldn’t be able to see more of Miss Murphy’s legs.