Chapter 15

November Twenty-second

Daryl Scapelli trudged through the dirty snow and ice that covered Ford City's bike trail. Turning his collar up to guard against the biting wind that had suddenly sprung up from nowhere, he tugged on the leash to hurry his dog, Chuck, along. The elderly dog looked up at him reproachfully, but made an effort to move his painfully arthritic legs a little faster. They had barely made it another hundred feet before they began to be pelted with what weathermen euphemistically referred to as a wintery mix.

His face stinging from the impact of tiny pellets of ice, Daryl muttered disgustedly, "How about that, Chuck? And here we thought that things couldn't get any worse."

Seemingly in agreement, Chuck let out a little whimper and tucked his tail between his legs.

Things hadn't always been bad. In fact, for quite a long time, life had been great. Until recently, he had a loving wife, two adorable kids, and a tenured position as a science teacher at a relatively small high school in New Hampshire.

All of those things had come to an crashing end last spring, and he didn't have anyone to blame but himself. Over the years, there had been a number of girls who had gotten crushes on him. Although flattered by the attention, he had met their fumbling attempts at flirtation with kind indifference. Eventually, they had all moved on to boys their own age. All, that is, except Amanda.

She had pursued him relentlessly throughout the first two semesters of the school year, refusing to be put off by his failure to respond to her overtures. Over time, she grew increasingly brazen. At the end of nearly every class, she had stayed to ask him questions. Each time, she had leaned over his desk to expose the creamy inner curves of her breasts, heaving with each breath she took. Occasionally, she would bend a little lower to teasingly reveal the puffy pink tip of a nipple. As she spoke, she would draw so close that he could smell the sweet honeysuckle scent of her hair and feel her hot breath blowing across his skin, leaving goose bumps in its wake.

During class, she would often draw his attention by running her tongue lasciviously over her cherry red lips and then flash him a glimpse of her panties beneath the shockingly short skirts that she always wore. Many times, her displays left him stammering, leading the other students to laugh at his loss of composure.

Shortly before Easter vacation, she had swayed into his classroom during his free period and locked the door behind her. When he had asked her what she needed, she had pressed herself against him with a whispered, "You."

He had tried to resist as she rained kisses across his face and neck, but that resistance had melted when her lips met his. He had taken her virginity right there on his desk.

Her youth and obvious desire for him had overwhelmed his senses. He had fawned on the girl shamelessly, spending every possible moment with her. Before long he started to lie to his wife, telling her that he had to go to teacher conferences or lectures. Instead, he would take Amanda to Boston, the White Mountains, or Montreal. His common sense suppressed by her entangling limbs, he had convinced himself that they were being oh so clever.

Inevitably they had been caught. Amanda's mother had grown suspicious of her daughter's frequent, prolonged absences, and had surreptitiously lifted Amanda's mobile phone from the girl's purse. It had been full of incriminating pictures, including one of him lapping happily away between Amanda's luscious thighs.

At the time she had taken it, she had promised that she would delete it, but it had slipped her mind. Confronted with the evidence, Amanda had turned on him. She had blamed the affair entirely on him, telling everyone that he had told her that he would fail her and ruin her chances of getting into a good college if she didn't submit to his insatiable lust.

The following months had been little more than a witch hunt. Although Amanda was over sixteen, the general age of consent in New Hampshire, the fact that he was her teacher, combined with the allegation that he had used that position to coerce her, raised the age to eighteen. He had been lucky to get away with a fine and parole instead of jail time.

That had been the only bright point of the ordeal: he had been served with divorce papers on the same day that the school board had voted unanimously to dismiss him. Not that the latter really made any difference: as a registered sex offender, he would not have been allowed to continue working at the school under any circumstances.

Now he was back in the small town of his birth, living in his parents' basement; unemployed and nearly unemployable. Even here he had been vilified. People he had known since he was a child now turned their nose up at him. He couldn't go out in public without hearing the words pervert and molester being uttered in stage whispers behind him. That was why he was walking his dog, the only thing he had left from his old life, late at night in a winter storm.

Chuck's low whine pulled him from his reverie. He glanced around to get his bearings. Through the thickly falling sleet, he could make out the hulking bulk of the old PPG factory to his right. Once it had been the life blood of this town. Now it was derelict; a rust streaked eyesore, with more windows broken than not.

"It's okay, boy," he said. "We're almost home. You'll be lying in front of the radiator in no time."

He jumped in surprise when a feminine voice came from his left, "Bad time to be out for a walk."