When Smiles Fade (47 page)

Meanwhile Syd had run over to help her friend kick the shit out of the other hooker. Sydney was a fighter who had lived on the streets of Kensington for a long time and had honed her combat skills after having her ass whipped several times.

Ten minutes after the fight broke out, the police arrived and nabbed all of the teens. They were questioned individually, handcuffed, and shoved into police cars, one at a time. Syd was in a panic because she had left Izzy at the house with some of the other teens.

When Emma got home at eleven thirty at night, she heard a voice yelling upstairs. Recognizing it as Jamie’s, she took the stairs two at a time.

“You’re a fucking pain in the ass!” she heard him scream. “Just shut the fuck up and go to sleep! I don’t know where Syd is and I’m sick and tired of hearing you bawl!”

Then she heard Izzy’s thin, scared voice yell back, “I want my Aunt Em! Leave me alone!”

Emma burst open the door. There stood Jamie, reeking of alcohol and unsteady on his feet. Glancing at Izzy, she noticed that her face was red and streaked with tears and her eyes bulged from crying. She stared the boy down, then strode up to him and stood facing him almost nose to nose. If she could have swallowed that motherfucker alive, she would have gladly done it at that moment.

“Who the fuck do you think you are talking to her like that?” she demanded.

“That fucking little brat over there!” he said, pointing to Izzy with a shaking finger. “That bitch, Sydney, went out to score some weed and left her here. Everyone else split and I got stuck with her. I’m nobody’s babysitter. You understand?”

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” Emma said, her calm, even voice laden with sarcasm. “Now get out! Go and crawl back into the hole you came out of. And don’t you ever mess with my kid again!”

Grumbling under his breath, Jamie slunk off. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Emma or her kid; on the contrary, he had volunteered to stay with Isabella when the others decided to go out. Jamie thought she was a beautiful little girl, so beautiful that he saw womanlike qualities in her. So he was very annoyed when she started crying for her aunt.

Alone in the room with a sniffling Izzy, Emma asked gently, “What happened, Iz? Where’s Syd?”

“I don’t know, Aunt Em,” she answered in a trembling voice between hiccups, “she went out, saying she’d be back in an hour, and left me with some of the kids. Then they left me here with Jamie. But Syd never came home. And Jamie was mean to me the whole time. He told me to sit in the living room and not say a word. When I asked him if I could read, he said I was too stupid to read. Then he grabbed me by my arm and dragged me up here and yelled at me. I didn’t do anything wrong. I swear! I was being good.”

Emma sat down on the bed next to her and put her arms around her. Her heart went out to Izzy who had been left alone and defenseless against the teenage asshole. From her own experience, Emma knew exactly how that felt. She stroked Izzy’s hair and sat with her quietly, until she felt her begin to relax.

“It’s all right, sweetie,” Emma soothed her, “I know you’re a good girl. I’m sure you didn’t do anything wrong. So stop worrying about it. Let’s go find out what happened to Sydney.”

She picked up her purse, reached into it for her cell phone, and noticed that she had missed a call from a number that was unfamiliar to her. Mystified, she dialed it.

“Kensington Police Department,” a voice at the other end announced.

“Hi, my name is Emma Murphy,” she said. “I missed a call from this number.”

She was confused as to why the police would be calling her. Then a shiver of alarm went through her as she figured it might have something to do with Sydney.

A couple of minutes later, the officer came back on the line. “We have a Sydney Cooper in custody,” he stated. “She asked if you could come and make bail.”

“Why is she there?”

“She was arrested for disorderly conduct. A few girls got into a fight. Are you coming down or not?” he snapped, his patience worn thin.

“How much is the bail?” Emma wanted to know. She was beginning to lose her own patience with him because of his lack of providing the details.

“Five hundred,” he told her and went silent.

“I’ll be there. Tell her I’m on my way.”

Hanging up the phone, Emma heaved a sigh of relief. The charges could have been far more serious and the bail so steep that she might not have been in a position to pay it. So little Syd had got herself into a brawl on Kensington Avenue, she mused. While Emma was furious with Sydney for having left Izzy with some of the kids and ultimately someone as irresponsible and intolerant as Jamie, she was also secretly proud of her for not being afraid to fight when the situation called for it. Knowing Syd, Emma assumed that she hadn’t started the fight, but had exchanged blows in an effort to defend either herself or her friends.

She took Izzy by the hand and urged, “Come on, we need to go get Sydney.”

“Where is she?” her niece asked with a child’s curiosity.

“She’s in jail,” Emma replied, then amended, “I mean she’s with the police. They’re keeping her safe until we get there.”

Izzy ran to find her shoes and slipped into them. “I’ve never been to a police station before!” she exclaimed excitedly.

Her aunt, however, was feeling quite the opposite. The last place Emma wanted to see was the inside of a police station.

As Sydney got into the car with Emma, she was apprehensive of her reaction.
How much did Emma know?
Had anyone told her they had gone out to score weed?

“Thanks for coming to get me, Em,” she said tentatively, trying to gauge her friend’s mood. “I’m sorry about all of this. We were minding our own business until this hooker came up and accused us of muscling in on her turf. She thought we were prostitutes and wanted to steal her business. Her friend pulled a knife and I flung a beer bottle at her—I nailed that chick right in the forehead!” she snickered.

Emma listened patiently until Syd had finished.

“Shit happens, Syd,” she said quietly. “The same thing happened to Bri, Gracie, and me when we were living out of our car. That’s not the problem, as far as I’m concerned. The problem is that you left Izzy at the house so that you could go out and buy pot. I came home and found Jamie screaming at her. Why would you do that, leave her there with the others?”

“It was stupid,” Sydney admitted remorsefully. “I swear it’ll never happen again. Fuck, Em, this is the best job I’ve ever had! I didn’t even think we’d be gone an hour. I’m truly sorry.”

“You’re right,” Emma responded, her voice like steel. “You won’t do it again, because if you do, I’ll kick your fucking ass. I love you, Syd, but Iz will always come first. Are we clear?” Her tone made it obvious that she wasn’t joking.

“Yeah, we’re clear. Trust me, it won’t happen again. I’ll never leave her. Are we cool?” Sydney asked, hopeful that they could put this behind them.

“Yeah, we’re cool.”

“I’m cool too,” Izzy chimed in from the backseat of the car. “Can we read when we get home?”

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.