Absinthe

The name on the screen was “Absinthe.”

But I knew her as the sultry voice blowing up my phone for late night chats about Proust and Hemingway interspersed between the filthiest little … conversations. 

 We’d never met. 

 Until the day she walked into my office, her cherry lips wrapped around a candy apple sucker and an all too familiar voice that said, “You wanted to see me, Principal Hawthorne?”