Youth Turn
Copyright © 1996; 2018 by Peter Weiss
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Joel Kagel had crossed the Whitestone Bridge for twenty-one years and driven along the service road of the Bruckner to Castle Hill where he turned left and rode over the overpass to the high school at which he taught. His wife, his kids, his grandchildren—two beautiful little girls—were his life. Every two weeks he deposited his paycheck. The house was paid off, kids taken care of, his wife’s salary deposited for vacations, savings and emergencies. Who could ask for more? Debra drove a new Camry and he drove a two-year-old Corolla, both paid for, and he had just upgraded his computer, keeping it state of the art. They belonged to the Temple, Debra serving as president of the sisterhood.
In the course of his day at school he interacted with several hundred high school students, three-quarters of them females. Most of the girls were sexually active yet terribly vulnerable and impressionable. He was hard-pressed to understand how or why they gave themselves away so readily or had children at the young ages they did. No one from the Temple or in his family or their families and extended families ever behaved so promiscuously. Premarital sex, perhaps, but a child to a child, or in wedlock, never.
So how it was that he saw Melina’s short skirt and open blouse, and how he came to make a youth turn on the overpass, he simply did not know. One moment he was going one way, and a moment later he had turned around and was going the other. He stopped at the light, the same light he had come to from the service road, and he watched as this girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen, crossed the street. Already he pictured the swells of her breasts, and he could see her tushy sway while she crossed the street. Good God, he thought, what am I doing? But deep inside him he heard her calling. Go back, he told himself, and though he fought the urge, he found his car rolling along next to her.
“Need a lift?” he called through his opened passenger window.
“Pervert,” she said.
“I just thought,” he said, “I mean, you just look like you need a lift.”
“I have a black belt in karate,” Melina said.
“You won’t need it with me,” Kagel said.
“Well, you don’t leave me alone, I will.”
“Okay,” Kagel said. “I just thought you were lonely.” He started to roll off, but she turned full toward him.
“Wait,” she called. He stopped the car and she approached. “You look like a nice man,” she said. “You can drop me off at school. It’s just a couple of blocks.”
Melina opened the door and got in. “No funny stuff,” she said. “I really do have a black belt.”
“No funny stuff,” Kagel said.
“So, where you headed?” Melina asked.
“I work over on the boulevard,” Kagel said.
“Why’d you stop me?”
“Truth?”
“Truth.”
“You remind me of my daughter,” Kagel lied.
“I think you want some pussy,” said Melina.
Kagel stopped the car. “You’d better get out.”
