Lydia had sworn to herself from the very beginning that no matter where her career took her, she was never going to become one of those women she read about in scandalous articles while she waited for her coffee order in Starbucks. She was never going to be the teacher that fell for her student, no matter how attractive or charming he was – she’d had her fair share of teenage boys, thank you very much. It seemed impossible, far-fetched, deplorable, and for quite some time, Lydia had entirely believed her own lie; that is, until she met Stiles Stilinski. The boy was a walking contradiction – clumsy and awkward but lithe and filled with energy at once, polite and bitingly sarcastic in one breath, astoundingly bright and dim-witted simultaneously. He was handsome, funny, sharp-humored; from the day he walked into her class and seated himself with a crooked grin, knees apart and shoulders slouched back in his chair as the very picture of teenage nonchalance, Lydia had sensed in her gut that her mettle was about to be tested.
“Not your best. See me after class.” murmured Lydia, dropping a marked quiz with a circled “D” scribed in the right-hand corner some months after that fateful first lesson. It was baffling and disappointing, Stiles’ sudden academic slump. For Lydia, the real frustration was in the fact that his /answers/ were all correct, but the work he did (or seemed to do) to get to them was utter nonsense. It appeared as if he was deliberately trying to flunk, and she was determined to get to the bottom of it. Lydia sashayed back up the aisle, continuing with her lesson until the bell signalled the end of class. As students began to mill lazily out of her classroom, she took her place at her desk and organized a stack of papers, waiting for him to clear his books and approach.