"How'd you get in here?" Mr. Pierce angrily demanded. "My office is always locked. This is an invasion of privacy."
Holding up a skeleton key she'd recently bought, Candice retorted, "So is filming girls showering."
"I see," he said as he sat on his chair, with overwhelming shame smeared all over his face. He just sat there, speechless.
"I personally don't mind that you filmed me, sir," Camilla said. "I'm just like that: an exhibitionist."
"I'm not too upset about myself being filmed, either," Candice said. "If you'd stopped with us, we'd have probably arranged a threesome with you, since frankly, we think you're kinda hot-looking."
"We don't mind 'cause we're both eighteen," Camilla added. "But you filmed naked 17-, 16-, 15-, and even 14-year-old girls in the shower room. How could you violate their trust like that? You're our gym teacher." Pierce was visibly shaking from these words.
"A lot of teenage girls are sexually mature for their age these days, like us," Candice said. "But a lot of the girls in our school, especially the freshmen, are sweet, fragile, and innocent. How could you?"
"And why would you keep all the incriminating evidence here, where people could find it?" Camilla asked.
"Because part of me
wanted
to be caught!" he finally said, breaking out in sobs. "You don't know how conflicted...how ashamed...I am about this."
"You should be ashamed," Candice scolded. "It's pedophilia."
"It's
ephebophilia
, and there's a difference!" he shouted in angry sobs. "I'm not into children at all; my weakness is for older teenage girls."
"It's still wrong," Camilla said.
"It's still sick," Candice added.
"Yes, you're right," he wept. "Thank you for stopping me. I've sinned. I try to be a good Christian, and I keep failing. It's an addiction that I can't stop...I try and I try. If you want to involve the police, I won't stop you. I deserve to be punished, and only punishment will stop me. God help me...I'm so ashamed of myself." He buried his face in his hands and kept crying loudly.
Camilla and Candice began to be touched by what must have been sincere remorse. If this repentance was fake, Mr. Pierce deserved an Oscar for so convincing a performance. Indeed, he knew there was no way even the best acting could get him out of this: he saw no escape from prison time and a ruined career as a teacher. The girls also remembered confirmed stories they'd heard of him regularly attending Mass and tearfully praying while kneeling on his pew. He clearly wanted to be redeemed and purged of his forbidden desires.
"So, you're only hot for older teenagers, right?" Candice asked in a more subdued tone. "No younger than 14?"
"I don't even like them
that