by Paige Dearth
Jake handed her the phone with a leisurely gesture. “Go ahead,” he challenged with winning confidence. “Call the police and see if I care. It’s not like they would believe you over me anyway. Let’s not forget that I happen to know them well. Besides, with that scene you made with them a while ago, shooting off that filthy mouth of yours, they’ll just think you’re being a troublemaker. Better yet, maybe I’ll just tell them that you left with Gracie and I’m concerned that you have her hidden somewhere. Yeah, they would believe that. You did kidnap her earlier and we didn’t press charges, remember?”
Defeated, Emma turned and went up to her bedroom. She sat on the edge of her bed and cried for a long time. She thought about Gracie and how dumb she had been to leave her sister at home with her obnoxious mother. Why had she done that? If only she had kept track of the time! The self-accusations went round and round in her mind, tormenting her endlessly. The regret that gripped her was relentless. If only she could turn back time. Just this once.
Early the next morning, not being able to resist sleep anymore, she drifted off. In her dreams Gracie was calling to her, asking Emma for help, but there was something between them, something that Emma couldn’t get through to reach her. She woke suddenly with her heart thudding in her chest. She had an unnerving sense of doom. Emma needed a plan to find Gracie. She needed it now before it was too late!
Chapter Seventeen
Emma heard the front door shut and knew that Jake had left for work. She ran into her mother’s room.
“Where’s Gracie, Mom?” she asked frantically. “What did that motherfucker do to her? What did you let him do to her?”
“Emma, do you have to be so melodramatic about every little thing?” Valerie said casually. “Calm down. I’m sure she’ll come home soon. Besides, Jake’s in a very good mood today and I don’t want you spoiling it all with your big mouth.”
Emma lunged forward, seized the neck of her mother’s nightgown, and backed her into the closet door. “Let me tell you something, you worthless piece of shit!” she hissed through gritted teeth. “Thanks to all the shit I’ve put up with in this house while you stood watching silently, I have perfected the art of hating. If anything happens to Gracie, I will make sure that you suffer more than you could ever imagine. See these bruises on my neck? This was where your boyfriend punched me last night while you sat five feet away and pretended that it wasn’t happening. These will seem like nothing compared to what I do to you. Someday I will get even with you for being such a lousy, nasty, stupid person.”
Clearly frightened by her daughter’s threats, Valerie retreated into her own little make-believe world, where nothing unpleasant ever happened to her. Speaking like the victim of a crime, she said softly, “It saddens me to see that you have become such a mean person. I am your mother, after all, Emma. Sometimes I think you’re just jealous because I always have men in my life that love me. You seem to provoke anger in men because of how you act. Maybe if you took a little more time to make yourself look nice, you could find a boyfriend too. It might be good for you.”
Realizing once again that she was wasting her time talking to a complete idiot, Emma swung around and left the room. She had real things to worry about, like finding Gracie. She quickly dressed and left for Brianna’s.
The moment her friend opened the door, she knew something was wrong. “What the hell happened, Emma?” she asked. “What’s wrong?” Then she said jokingly, “You look like someone just killed your best friend, but since I’m standing right here…”
Emma cut her short. “Gracie is gone, Bri! Jake claims he took her out for ice cream and she ran off. You know she would never willingly go anywhere with him alone. She was scared to death of him. I never should’ve left her there alone.”
As her face crumpled and she gave in to her pent-up emotions, Brianna wrapped her arms around her. “It’ll be all right, Em,” she said soothingly. “We’ll find her. Don’t you worry. We’ll find her. I’ll get dressed and we’ll take my mom’s car and go look for her.”
Within ten minutes, the two girls were in Pam’s car and on their way to find Gracie.
“Where did he take her for ice cream?” Brianna asked.
Emma’s mind was racing. “We only ever go to Joe’s Water Ice on Johnson Highway, the one with the picnic tables outside.”
The two girls drove for hours, looking for Gracie. They went to the local malls, delis, and other places where a thirteen-year-old might seek refuge. There was no sign that Gracie had been at any of those places. They talked to a couple of Gracie’s friends, who said she had been in school on Thursday, but that was apparently the last time they saw her.
The next day Emma and Brianna drove over to Elmwood Park Zoo. Many of the teenagers from Gracie’s school hung out there, and the girls hoped to gather information from them that might help them find her. They walked around talking to all the teens they came across. Some of them knew Gracie, but no one had seen her since school on Thursday. She had been missing for thirty-six hours now and Emma was on the verge of panic. All kinds of morbid thoughts took shape in her imagination: what if Jake had killed Gracie and dumped her body somewhere? What if he had her locked up somewhere and was torturing her?
Disappointed that their efforts had provided no useful information, Emma and Brianna drove home. Emma stepped out of the car and blasted her way through the front door. She found her mother slouched on the living room sofa, watching a rerun of some stupid reality TV show.
“Mom,” she said firmly, “you need to call the police. Gracie has been missing for almost two days now.”
“Emma,” Valerie said, annoyed at being disturbed and letting it show in the tinge of exasperation with which she enunciated her name, “Gracie will come home when she’s ready. I mean, really, don’t you think you’re over-the-top with all of this? I can’t call the police about her yet, because they won’t let you file a missing person report until a person is missing for forty-eight hours. That’s on TV all the time.”
Emma nearly imploded. “She’s a thirteen-year-old kid, Mom! So I’m pretty sure you don’t have to wait for forty-eight hours before informing the police. Or don’t you care? Are you really so self-absorbed that you don’t care about your daughter missing for days? What’s wrong with you? You sent her off with that asshole, Jake, and he didn’t bring her back home. Did it never occur to you to consider what the fuck he might have done to her? Or do you already know what he’s done to her?” Emma ranted hysterically.
Had Emma blinked, she might have missed the familiar expression of forced denial that crossed her mother’s face for a fleeting moment. Far more perceptive than Valerie, she knew right away that her mother held the secret, but Emma pretended not to notice. She was confident that she could yank the truth out of her mother, but held back, fearing Valerie would tell Jake and jeopardize her chances of finding Gracie. That was her mother, Emma thought, a completely self-centered cuntress.
Emma ran across the street to Brianna’s again, leaving her pathetic mother to watch her equally pathetic reality TV show. She needed a plan to find Gracie.
“Is she home yet?” Brianna asked the moment she opened the door.
“No,” Emma sighed. “My brainless mother won’t call the police either. I was about to call them myself when I freaked out on her. I asked her if she knew what Jake had done to Gracie and she said no. But I can tell she was holding back something. I’m taking that as a sign that Gracie is still alive. I need a plan that will force Jake to tell me where Gracie is.”
Brianna smiled slyly. “Oh yeah? What kind of plan?”
“Bri, I need to seduce him so that he’ll tell me about Gracie. He’s such a perv he would jump at the chance to have sex with me. The other thing is he can’t handle his alcohol. So if I can convince him that I want to have sex with him and get him drunk first, I can get him to tell me where Gracie is. After that, he’ll pass out and that will be that.”
Brianna giggled, “I’m in! When?”
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“We can’t wait any longer. It has to be tonight,” Emma stated with a sense of urgency that, for the first time, made Brianna feel scared.
Chapter Eighteen
Emma went home and showered. Then she waited tensely in her bedroom. She knew that Jake always came home right after lunch on Saturdays. It was his day to check on his young clients and their parents. Sometime later, she heard the front door open. Jake had returned. As he closed the door and started up the stairs, Emma’s stomach began to twist in anticipation of what she was about to do. She opened the door of her bedroom and stood leaning against the jamb. As Jake reached the top of the stairs, he glanced at her.
Emma smiled at him sweetly. “What’s up, Jake?” she asked in the sexiest voice she could muster.
“What’s it to you?” he said sullenly. “I’m gonna take a bath.” Then a small smile played on his lips. “Did you find Gracie?”
Emma resisted the urge to lunge at him and rip his fucking head off, but with the greatest difficulty, she kept her contempt for him from showing through.
“No,” she answered, trying to keep her tone even, “I guess she must have run off and is hiding at a friend’s house. I’m kind of pissed off that she hasn’t called me. I figure she’ll come home when she’s ready.”
Jake was visibly amused over all the chaos he had caused. “Maybe you’ll learn to believe me from now on when I tell you something,” he quipped. “She’s a typical thirteen-year-old. I deal with this shit all the time.”
He went into Valerie’s bedroom and Emma could see him starting to undress. When he came into the hallway again on his way to take a bath, he was wearing nothing but his boxers. Emma scrutinized his revolting body. He was covered in hair from neck to navel. His bloated belly made him look as if he were six months pregnant. His arms had lost their tone, but were thick and bulging, mainly because of his excess weight. When he turned away from her to enter the bathroom, Emma almost threw up at the sight of the hair that covered his back like a furry rug. She held herself together, wondering if she could execute her plan without the small amount of food she had managed to eat that day rising up her gorge and splattering all over him.
Jake had left the bathroom door ajar, just enough for Emma to see what he was doing. She saw him drop his boxers and step into the tub. She paused at the top of the stairs, alert to every little sound. When she heard the television blaring Valerie’s mindless entertainment, she moved into action. She slipped into the bathroom and looked down at Jake.
“What the fuck!” he said, startled. “Get the fuck out!” Then his lips twisted in a clever smirk. “Unless, of course, you want to join me!”
“Shhh!” she hissed softly, putting her finger to her lips. “I don’t want my mother to hear us. I was just wondering if you needed me to wash your back.” She knelt down at the tub next to him, took the washcloth gently from his hand, and lathered it with soap. With tender movements, she rubbed the rag through the tangled nest of hair crawling over his back.
Emma was relieved that Jake wasn’t suspicious of her sudden change in behavior toward him. Being the perverted pedophile that Jake was, his lust for the beautiful teenager overcame any common sense that he was born with.
“You know, Jake, maybe I’ve been harsh,” she whispered. “I mean, maybe you’re not such a bad guy.”
Then she leaned in and kissed him on his neck, running her tongue softly over his folds of fat. She reached into the water and ran her hand over his man boobs. Quickly aroused, he reached up her shirt, his damp fingers crawling like slugs under her bra, and fondled her breast. The feel of his hand on her flesh was so revolting, Emma thought she could probably drown him right there. Her hatred for him was so intense that she had to fight it back so as not to ruin her plan.
“Jake, not here,” she protested faintly, “my mom is downstairs. How about if we meet up tonight at the George Washington Motor Lodge in Norristown? You get us a room. I’ll meet you there around nine o’clock. Meet me out back by the pool and you can take me up to the room. Okay?”
So aroused he could barely think straight, Jake readily agreed. He reached up and pulled her head down to his. Closing his eyes, he opened his mouth to kiss her. She hesitated and he quickly opened his eyes.
“I’ve been waiting to have you since the day we met,” he confessed.
Emma smiled thinly. She needed to keep her composure. She needed to find Gracie.
“It’s just that I’ve never been with a man before, Jake,” she said, pretending to be bashful.
“Oh, baby, it’s gonna be so fucking good!” he promised her. “I’ll make you feel like you’ve never felt before.”
Then he pulled her to him again and they kissed, his tongue plunging into her mouth with such raw force she thought she would suffocate and die. But she forced herself to play the game, using her so-called virginity, which Pepper had stolen years ago, as the excuse for the slight resistance on her part.
Emma pulled away from the kiss and stood. “Well then, it’s all set,” she said. “We’ll meet tonight at the pool. But Jake, please remember I’ve never done this before. I mean, I really don’t even know what to do. I just know I want you to be my first.”
She left him in the tub and went back into her bedroom, forcing down the bitter bile that seemed ready to spew out of her mouth. She could still taste his acidy stale breath on her tongue, and his smell made her nostrils shrink in repulsion.
Jake lay back in the tub, masturbating as he thought about having Emma, a virgin. He wanted to last a while so he could fuck her all night. Half an hour later, he masturbated again just thinking of her. He was getting himself ready for the event. In an effort to build his stamina for the evening with Emma that lay ahead, he needed to blow a few loads.
Chapter Nineteen
At seven thirty that evening, Emma went back over to Brianna’s.
“We’re ready to rock,” she told her friend, adrenaline pumping through her veins. “We need to get some whiskey so that I can get him drunk.”
“No problem,” Brianna said, reaching into a kitchen cabinet and coming out with a bottle. “No problem at all. I guess there’s one advantage to living with a drunk.” She giggled.
“Perfect, Bri!” Emma exclaimed. “Let’s go.”
While driving to the other side of Norristown, the girls went over their plan once more. Emma would meet Jake at the pool, get him drunk, find out where Gracie was, and coax him into drinking enough to pass out. It was pretty simple.
Brianna parked the car in front of the motel. It was a run-down, dumpy place that was dark and depressing. The motel doors were painted in dreary shades of orange, yellow, and brown. The brick front gave it an eerie appearance. The hotel was known for being used by prostitutes and their clients. As Brianna put the car in park she shot her friend a worried look.
Emma smiled. “Stay here and don’t come back to the pool,” she directed her friend. “If he sees you, he’ll know something’s up.”
While Brianna waited, Emma made her way around to the back of the building where the pool was located and leaped over the short fence. She stood for a moment looking around her. The place gave her the creeps. The metal lounge chairs, with their cushions put away for the winter, sat stark and uninviting. The surroundings were bare and isolated. A low cement wall surrounded by bushy evergreens providing a blanket of coverage and kept the pool area contained from every angle. The pool itself was empty, and Emma looked down into its depths at the stained and cracked cement. The scene sent chills up her spine. What if he came and just forced himself on her right there? Her anxiety grew by the moment.
At nine o’clock, Jake showed up as planned. He struggled to hoist his excessive body mass over the short wall and walked over to where Emma was sitting. Without uttering a word in greeting, he leaned down and kissed her hard.
She pulled away from him.
“What the fuck!” he snapped. “I thought you were into this.”
“I am, Jake,” Em
ma replied, faking an innocence she did not feel. “I told you, I’ve never done this before. I’m nervous.”
Jake was clearly pleased to be reminded of her about-to-be-violated virginity. The very thought made her seem more beautiful than ever in his eyes. “Well, let’s go,” he said. “I have a room for us.”
“Can we have a couple of drinks here first, Jake?” Emma pleaded. “I think it would help me to unwind a little. I brought a bottle of whiskey.” She pushed the bottle in his direction.
“Sure, that works for me,” he replied enthusiastically. “I want my little virgin to loosen up. But I don’t want you loosened up everywhere, if you get my drift,” he said, his tone and expression sleazy.
Emma threw him an innocent look. “I think I get your drift. God, Jake, don’t be so weird!”
She poured each of them a healthy portion of whiskey in red plastic cups. As he gulped down the contents of his cup, Emma continued to lift hers to her lips, but refrained from actually drinking the whiskey. By the third cup, it was obvious that Jake was getting good and loaded. Emma kept pouring.
“You are one fuckin’ good-looookin’ chick!” he slurred. “I can’t wait to fuck you. Your mother, she’s good-looking. But fuck me—she’s all stretched out and dry from having you kids. You, on da other hand, I fink you’ll be like fuckin’ a greased-up vise. Come on, let’s go b’fore my balls esssplode!”
The drunker he got, the more repugnant he became to Emma.
“No, not yet. Just a little more whiskey, Jake!” she cooed. “Besides, I like talking to you when you’re like this. It turns me on.”
He gave her a half-cocked smile. “Fine,” he said obligingly, moving over to her lounge chair and collapsing into it beside her. “But I need a little somethin’-somethin’…pull up that skirt and let me see your panties.”
Emma stood and pulled her skirt up just enough to show the elastic at the top of her legs. Jake immediately reached up and slid his fingers under the elastic around her ass. When she sat back down next to him, he leaned over and began kissing her neck. She arched her neck, her head rearing back, pretending to be into it. But what she was really doing was holding her breath so she didn’t have to smell his bitter odor. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her face to his, sloppily searching till he found her mouth. Licking her mouth like a dog, he finally pushed his tongue through her lips until he had her in a full open-mouthed kiss.