When Smiles Fade

by Paige Dearth

  Syd turned to face her. “Yeah, little woman, we can read. I’ll read as much as you want tonight.”

  When Emma tucked Izzy into bed that night, she lingered for a few minutes.

  “I love you very much,” she said gently. “You know that. Right, Iz?”

  “Yeah, I know. And guess what? Everyone is scared of you, but I’m not, ’cause you’re my aunt and you protect me,” she said.

  But the uncertainty in her eyes told Emma that she was looking for confirmation of this assumption. Isabella was still a little worried that her aunt might be angry with her over her confrontation with Jamie. Having observed how coldly Emma had treated the boy and how scared he had been of her, Izzy wanted to be sure she had remained in her good graces.

  “That’s right, Iz,” her aunt now reassured her. “I will always protect you.”

  “Even if I did something really bad?” the child pressed and started to cry.

  “What’s wrong, Iz? What did you do that was really bad?”

  “Jamie was really mean to me tonight. Not just the usual stuff, like calling me an idiot or stupid. Last night, when I was in the kitchen, he started barking at me like a dog. I tried to get away from him, but he just kept coming at me and shouting, ‘Woof! Woof! Woof!’ Then he put his teeth together real hard and growled at me. I started crying and told him to stop, but he wouldn’t. When I tried to leave the kitchen, he just kept pushing me back into the corner, so I couldn’t get out. He pushed me really hard! See?” she said, pulling up her shirt so her aunt could examine the small bruise on her hip.

  Izzy hesitated and shrank back from her. “What is it, Iz?” Emma asked. “What else happened? I promise I won’t get mad at you,” she assured her, wanting to know what else Jamie had done to her.

  “After he barked at me he dragged me up here. And,” she looked down at her hands, instinctively knowing that what she’d done was wrong, “he pulled his pants down and told me to pull his weenie.”

  Emma’s eyes grew to the size of silver dollars. Oh fuck me,” she thought, he’s a fucking dead man. She took a deep breath and held Izzy closer. “What did you do?”

  “I told him I wouldn’t do it and he locked me in the closet. Then he said I had to stay in there until I was ready to do what he wanted. I got really scared and I was crying really hard and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. So I…I told him I would do it. He made me pull on it until mayonnaise came out and then he told me to go to bed. I started crying, and that’s when he was yelling at me when you came home,” she finished, hoping her aunt would still love her, knowing that she shouldn’t have touched a boy’s weenie.

  “Did he touch you down there?” Emma asked, pointing to Izzy’s crotch.

  Izzy shook her head and lowered her head in shame. “Listen to me, Iz. You didn’t do anything wrong. Jamie never should have done that to you. Understand?”

  Emma leaned over and kissed Isabella on the forehead. “I want you to go to sleep now. Don’t worry about Jamie. He’ll never bother you again. All right?”

  Izzy nodded vigorously, feeling safe in the arms of her protector.

  Once Izzy had fallen asleep, Emma focused her thoughts on taking care of unfinished business with Jamie. For the briefest moment Emma’s body flushed with heat as she began to regret her decision not to stay with Salvatore. At least with him, she knew that this tragic event never would have happened to Isabella. She pushed aside the thought and went downstairs to find Jamie. He was down in the living room, sprawled full-length on her sofa. Reaching down, she pulled his legs up by the knees and flung them away toward the floor.

  “Hey, what the fuck!” he protested.

  Emma resisted the urge to clobber him to death on the spot. She had a vision of him forcing Izzy to whack him off and she couldn’t forget the sight of him screaming at her niece, veins pulsing on his forehead. She knew what a deranged person he was and there was no way he would get away with it. Emma simply couldn’t allow it.

  She sat down next to Jamie, her stance rigid at first as she set out to manipulate him.

  Ignoring her, he picked up a bottle of cheap whiskey off the floor, where he had put it down earlier, and took a long swig.

  “Don’t you think you’ve had enough of that shit?” she asked. “You’re already wasted.”

  Emma considered talking him into drinking more so he might drink himself to death. All she had to do was sit there and encourage him to be a sloppy drunk and he would guzzle on command. She contemplated the idea for several minutes, but decided that a death in the house would be an unwelcome event. The herd didn’t need the cops coming in, poking around and scrutinizing their living conditions. Several of the tenants were just teenagers, well under the age of eighteen.

  While Jamie continued to drink from his bottle of booze, like a baby suckling its mother’s breast, Emma watched him. He was a booze-hungry beast. He’d always partied, but now he was a drunken slob from morning till night. She knew she had to get him to trust her, just as she had with Jake years before.

  “So, Jamie, how old are you anyway?” Emma now asked, fluttering her emerald greens at him in a flirtatious manner.

  “I’m twenty. I mean I’ll be twenty-one in a couple of months, I think,” Jamie told her.

  “Oh. How old were you when you left home?” Emma asked, pretending to be interested in his answer.

  “I don’t know. Around seventeen or eighteen, I guess.”

  “Yeah,” Emma said. “I left home when I was sixteen. My father was a total asshole. He used to smack me around and my mother was a selfish fucking bitch. I had to get away from them. So I split and landed in Kensington. What about you? I mean, were your parents fucked up too?”

  Jamie leaned forward on the sofa. “Nah!” he scoffed. “My parents were fucking saints! My dad is a big shot lawyer. My mom always took care of the family. They’re great parents. They would always take us on cool vacations and buy us whatever we needed. I was just so fucking bored living like that! They were always up my ass about going to college and shit. You know, like they thought they knew what was good for me. Like I didn’t have a mind of my own. Just because I drank a little, they accused me of wasting my life. Finally I got sick of hearing it and split. Eventually I met one of the people from the herd and came here,” Jamie explained righteously.

  Emma made a mental note of how lucid he was for someone who had seemed dead drunk just a minute ago. That gave her an inkling of how much alcohol it took for him to get wasted. She felt the blood rush to her head as she listened to the spoiled jerk-off rattling on about how his life at home with his parents and siblings had been so nice he couldn’t stand it anymore and had taken to the streets before joining the herd. Jamie was the first person Emma had met who didn’t have a legitimate reason for choosing his current vagabond lifestyle. This made her think even less of him, if that were possible.

  “I can’t believe you actually left home because your parents wanted you to go to college and have a normal life,” Emma said cynically, watching him squirm beside her. “That’s what the rest of us here have always longed for but were denied. Seems kind of fucked up, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t know, if you’ve never lived through it,” Jamie said defensively, pushing his whiskey toward her. “Want a swig?”

  Oh yes, Emma thought to herself, I certainly do want a swig. She took the bottle, tilted it, and threw back her head, taking a mouthful of the brown liquid that made her tongue feel as if she had just stuck a lit match on it. Having swallowed it, she let a low howling sound escape from her throat.

  Jamie bounced back on the sofa, laughing. “Good shit, ain’t it, Emma?”

  “That’s the grossest fucking stuff I’ve ever put in my mouth!” she told him. “How the hell do you drink that? If you’re gonna guzzle booze every day, you could at least find one that tastes decent. This one’s just plain nasty.”

  Over the next couple of days Emma called out sick from work, claiming to have the flu. She wasn�
�t going to leave Izzy alone for one moment. In fact, Emma made a point of spending more time with Jamie after she put Izzy to sleep. She knew exactly how to handle the situation and called upon what she had learned years before to execute her plan.

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  A few days later, Emma asked Sydney to take Izzy to the movie theater in downtown Philly to see Toy Story 3. They would ride the bus into the city, and Emma had offered them cab fare for the journey back home. Izzy was particularly excited about the ten dollars her aunt had handed her to buy a treat of her choice from the snack bar.

  “I’m getting a big bucket of popcorn!” Izzy had told her, ecstatic.

  After they left, Emma went up to her room pretending to read. She had placed the bait on the hook the day before, flirting with Jamie like a young teenage girl. Now all she had to do was wait for him to take a bite. As she had anticipated, there was a rap on the bedroom door, and a moment later Jamie stepped inside. Emma was sprawled out on the bed in a tee shirt and a pair of daisy dukes, her long legs crossed at the ankles. Jamie eyed her with sexual hunger and she allowed him to be intoxicated by her sensuality. “I saw Syd and Izzy leave. I was going to head down to a bar on Kensington Avenue,” he told her. “You wanna come?”

  “You know, I’m at bars all the time,” Emma explained. “How about if we just have a couple of drinks downstairs?”

  “Yeah, okay, I guess,” he agreed grudgingly. “But we ain’t got that much liquor in the house.”

  “Well, if we run out,” Emma said, licking her lips suggestively and flashing him a provocative smile, “we can go out and get some more, can’t we? It’s not like there aren’t a million fucking places to buy booze around here.”

  When they went downstairs, Emma found the place empty. All of the other housemates were gone, which, being that it was a Saturday night, wasn’t unusual.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked, already knowing the answer but wanting confirmation that they were the only two in the house.

  “Ah, a lot of them had to work tonight,” Jamie told her. “The rest of ’em went over to Fairmount Park for some free concert or benefit or some shit like that.”

  They settled on the sofa and Jamie began to drink. Emma pretended to join him, but every so often she told him she was going to the bathroom or the kitchen and poured her drink down the drain. Jamie became progressively more intoxicated. He pulled out a joint, lit it, and took a long, hard drag. Then he offered it to Emma.

  “No thanks,” she said casually. “I don’t like pot.”

  He smiled. “Fine, more for me then.”

  An hour and a half later, Jamie had gone through eight beers and a pint of whiskey. When he looked at Emma, he was practically cross-eyed. “We need to go get some more shit to drink,” he slurred.

  He and Emma left the house and headed for downtown Kensington. She had chosen a route along the back streets to avoid being seen together by the hookers and drug dealers on the main drag. At the liquor store, Emma waited in the alley next to the store while Jamie went in and made his purchases with his fake ID. On the twenty-minute walk back to the house, he stopped and led Emma off the street into a grassy area that edged a park. They sat on the grass and he continued to consume more liquor. Finally he leaned over and kissed her.

  She played along, leading him on, allowing him to think that the attraction was mutual. She rose to her feet, pulling him up with her, and he drew her to him and slid his hands into the back pockets of her jeans. She almost threw up on him, so repulsed by this slithering snake groping her, this young man who thought he could get away with molesting and terrorizing her niece.

  “Come on! Let’s go back home where it’s more comfortable,” she whispered.

  On their way back they walked along the same dark, lonely street, lined with more open lots than buildings. It was a part of town that pedestrians generally avoided for fear of encountering the ruthless gangs that often hung there. Emma spotted the place that she had scoped out the day before. She stopped abruptly at a twelve-foot-high chain-link fence. Jamie staggered back, one hand in hers and the other holding his coveted bottle of brown syrup. Emma peered in and scrutinized the area the fence protected.

  She grasped Jamie by the arm. “I heard about them having a shitload of copper in there,” she whispered. “If you go in and snatch some, you can throw it over the fence to me. We can cash it in and buy enough booze to keep ourselves drunk for a month.”

  Jamie was so drunk and intent on getting into Emma’s pants he would have done anything to please her. He wanted to have sex with her more than he wanted booze, and he always craved alcohol. Girls who looked like her didn’t fuck guys who looked like him and he wanted to make that score. Jamie handed her the bottle and slowly climbed up the twelve-foot-tall fence, losing his footing every few seconds and managing to get a hold again after a struggle.

  When he reached the other side, he stood unsteadily, then leaned into the chain link fence and said, “Give me a kiss for luck.”

  Emma took a step back from the fence and looked past him. A grim smile formed on her lips that instantly haunted him. He swiveled around to see what was behind him just as a low growl reached his ears. Three pit bulls stood facing him. His instinct told him to climb back over the fence to safety, but with all the alcohol he’d consumed, his motor skills were impaired, his gait was wobbly, and sheer terror had frozen his feet in place. Before Jamie could put his fingers through the chain-link fence to get the grip he needed to begin his climb, the dogs were on top of him. They gnawed at the flesh of his calves as if they were eating chicken wings served at a Super Bowl party.

  Emma flashed him a sinister smile as he screamed and begged her for help.

  “Oh, Jamie,” she said, her tone malicious, “I thought you liked dogs. At least that’s what Izzy told me. Woof! Woof! Woof! You big dick! She told me what you made her do, you fucking perverted prick!”

  Jamie’s eyes bulged out of their sockets. He realized too late that she had set him up. Terror devoured him as the dogs chomped through his flesh and began to rip him to pieces.

  Before walking away, Emma paused a moment longer to read the large sign that Jamie had missed on their way to the liquor store. It read: WARNING: ATTACK DOGS ON PREMISES. NO TRESPASSING. She glanced back once more to witness Jamie’s dying moments. He was screaming and thrashing at the dogs, but they had overpowered him and toppled him over. As she moved away, Emma heard the slushy wet sound of canine teeth penetrating human flesh. A moment later, unbeknownst to her, one of the dogs chomped into Jamie’s neck and severed his carotid artery. In less than two minutes he was dead.

  On her way back home, Emma’s adrenaline was pumping and she felt as if she had been injected with a fulfilling serum of retaliation. It was a feeling she hadn’t experienced in a long time, not since Pepper and Jake had died. She thought about Gracie and looked up at the night sky.

  “Don’t you worry, baby sister,” she whispered. “I’ll take care of your girl, Izzy. I won’t let anyone hurt her.”

  Chapter Ninety-Five

  The next morning Emma was awakened by a commotion downstairs. She opened her eyes to find Izzy standing over her.

  “What’s going on, Iz?” she asked. “Why is everyone making such a racket?”

  “I don’t know,” the child replied, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “They woke me up too.”

  “Well, let’s go see what all the noise is about,” Emma said decisively, pulling on a pair of shorts.

  Down in the living room, the girls were crying and consoling each other. The boys stood around, shaking their heads and muttering, “What the fuck!”

  Emma managed to find Sydney in all the chaos. “What happened?” she asked.

  Sydney’s eyes were red from crying. “A couple of the guys went out to buy smokes this morning,” she began. “There were a bunch of cops and an ambulance on North Lee Street. The boys heard some guy had got bitten to death by pit bulls last night. They went over to check i
t out and saw it was Jamie!” The tears welled up in Sydney’s eyes again and her voice broke. “Oh God, Em!” she whimpered. “The boys came back and told us the dogs had torn him apart. The worst part is that we can’t even claim him, ’cause then the cops will know about all of us and some of the kids here aren’t even eighteen.”

  With that, Syd collapsed, sobbing, into Emma’s arms, while Izzy clung tightly to her aunt’s leg. But Emma knew if Sydney had the knowledge of what Jamie had made Isabella do a couple of nights before she wouldn’t have shed a single tear.

  Without having to overact, Emma gave a commendable performance of being deeply concerned. Her housemates had come to depend on her as the responsible one, and her calm, serious demeanor at this moment was not out of character. She consoled Sydney for a while before taking Izzy upstairs to give her a shower while the others remained downstairs, mourning the pathetic pedophile they had all regarded as their friend. People were so sensitive about shit, she thought disapprovingly. Jamie had been a fucking asshole drunk who had staggered around and annoyed everyone most of the time. He had often fought with the other housemates and had certainly crossed the sane line when he made Izzy whack him off. Emma couldn’t understand why all of them were so upset at his death. He had been a prick.

  As Izzy showered, Emma sat on her bed, smirking, satisfied that she had taken care of one more asshole in the everlasting procession of scum that seemed to come her way. In her world, people who fucked with children were scumbags and shouldn’t be given a second chance.

  To add to her contentment that he had deserved what he’d gotten, the headline in the local paper the next day read:

  “Unidentified Man Mauled to Death by Pit Bulls in Kensington.”

  According to the report, the dead man’s alcohol level, when tested, revealed his severe state of intoxication at the time of his death. He was presumably in no condition either to heed the warning sign about the attack dogs on the premises or to realize he was trespassing on private property. Apart from a fake Pennsylvania driver’s license, no other identification was found on the dead man, leaving the police clueless about his real name and origin.