The Sin of a Smile
I didn’t want to punch anyone, I didn’t. I like to keep my head down, my mouth shut, and all my thoughts to myself. But when the tall boy that was brought to the orphanage last week came up to me and said that my parents probably gave me up because of how I don’t smile, I didn’t take time to explain that they passed away, I just swung. I let go of all my pent-up anger toward every single individual I’ve endured saying that to me before. I released it all into his jaw, letting my knuckles crack against him in a way that would put slow-motion movie sequence punches to shame, and I watched as he fell to the floor of the dining room. But when I looked over at Michael, guards came up behind me and dragged me up the spiral stairs behind the kitchen, steel cooling the bottoms of my feet as I hastily tried to keep up.
My hands rubbed together, tracing circles around the pain, and trying to distract myself from my leg shaking uncontrollably underneath me. The Directress’ office has always been seen as cold, horror stories from past kids who talk about how they are certain she keeps kids who were said to be “adopted” in her closet, but those stories didn’t even do justice to the chill the room hit me with. Her voice pierced through the office’s silence, slicing into me as my leg suddenly stopped shaking.
“Enola Casimer.” Her tone was strong enough to break glass, one of the reasons there were most likely no windows in the attic building she called a workspace. I walked toward her, letting myself only glance at the broken button that covered her left eye. Her office was more haunted than the lobby, with clocks constantly ticking and dolls staring at you from rows and rows of shelving behind her. She forced me into my seat and then sat herself across from me, sinking into her chair as though she had never left it.
“I am so sorry Ms. Neva. I don’t know why I hit him, but I shouldn’t have.” Sitting in front of her was like agony, words left my mouth before I could even decide what exactly I was going to say.
“Don’t lie, Enola, you know why you hit him. I know why you hit him. You shouldn’t have, but your reasoning is valid. You will apologize, but Michael will also be punished. However, I do have something else for you to do for me.” Unlike me, she was calm and strategized with her words.
“What is it?” I had calmed down slowly, but I knew she could still hear the shake of my voice as I spoke.
“We have a new kid, Dylan, who is coming into the orphanage tomorrow. I want you to show him around.”
“Why me? Shouldn’t one of the other boys do it?”
“No, I think it will be good for you to open yourself up and hopefully be able to have a friend. Will you do it?”
“Okay.”
***
The staff woke me up extra early on Tuesday, getting me ready to go meet Dylan before all the other kids could overwhelm him. They walked down the corridor with me, the same way I had walked up to Ms. Neva’s office the previous day. The corridor was silent, I couldn’t even hear the sounds of the birds singing outside yet, they might have still been asleep. Walking over to Dylan was scary, he was the same age as me they had said, but it was still intimidating to be expected to lead him around. He smiled at me, and I instantly cringed that I couldn’t do it back. Instead, I stuck out my hand, holding it out for him to shake.
“Hi, I’m Enola. I’m gonna show you around.” My voice was a lot calmer than it was in Ms. Neva’s office, so I doubt he was able to sense my worry.
“I’m Dylan.” He on the other hand seemed like he was going to scream, but that isn’t surprising. He’s here, and an orphanage is never the place you want to end up.
After the staff asked him a few questions, they sent us off to explore the place he would call home from now on. It was massively uneventful, except for when we finally got to the elephant in the room.
“Why didn’t you smile at me earlier?” It didn’t seem hostile, just a genuine question.
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?”
“I just can’t. Can we drop it?”
“Fine, but I’m sure I can figure out a way to make you smile eventually.”
“Good luck with that.”
***
Dylan stuck true to his word, and over the next few weeks, he sat with me at lunch every single day and struck faces at me, told me his corniest knock-knock jokes, and complimented me to the point of a blush. But never once did he make me smile. I told him it was impossible, but he didn’t listen. It was good though, to finally have a friend. He made life feel different, easier even. It was much less difficult to manage the stress of our peers with someone else as opposed to handling it by myself. I went to sleep every night wishing I could do the only thing he asked of me, but I just couldn’t, I knew better. He was too sweet, he didn’t deserve that.
***
It was Dylan’s two-month anniversary of being at the orphanage when he didn’t sit across from me at lunch anymore. I couldn’t find him anywhere. Over the two months, we had gotten attached at the hip, but he wasn’t even in the same room I was that morning. The staff seemed wary of me, but that wasn’t unusual. My day was pretty normal aside from Dylan not being there. Except for when they called me back up to Ms. Neva. It was the same as before, two guards practically dragging me up the stairs, rubbing my hands together in her waiting room, and her commanding voice forcing me into her office. However, this time, she didn’t look the slightest bit angry, she looked sympathetic.
“Enola, I’m sure you noticed Dylan’s absence today.”
“Yeah, it was weird him not being in lunch with me. What happened? Was he adopted?” I tried to stop my voice from shaking like I did before, I refused to cry over the fact that a boy I met two months ago didn’t say goodbye to me.
“No Enola, he wasn’t adopted. It happened.”
“What happened?”
“You smiled at him.”
“Wait, what? That isn’t possible, I didn’t let myself smile at him.” My heart pounded against my chest. I had prepared myself for everything, except for this.
“You had fallen asleep, and he had come into your room to see if you were still awake. We saw it on the hall cameras. We didn’t see what happened when he went into your room, but all we know is that in the morning he was gone.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.” I couldn’t wrap myself around it, I smiled at him. I was never supposed to do that again. I had broken my promise to myself and I lost someone else because I was too selfish to hold back a grin.
“I’m sorry Enola, but the good thing is we cleaned everything before other kids woke up. No one will ever know.” And with that, she dismissed me back to my room to let me cry myself back to sleep.
***
It was three days after I smiled at Dylan that I stood staring in the bathroom. I didn’t blink, I just stood there, facing the mirror, and then smiled at my reflection, baring my teeth toward the glass and taking a deep breath. Slowly, I melted. I didn’t scream, I just let it happen. I burned through my core until nothing was left but a puddle next to the bathroom sink.
The nurses ran through the halls, I could hear them, fists pounding as they broke down the door. A sigh of defeat left their lips as they reached into the cabinet next to the sink.
“Crap, we are out of Clorox in here can you go grab it from the supply room?”
“Got it, anything else?”
“Grab a Target bag, we’ll bury her in the backyard. No one has to know.”
Author
Elianna Schu is in all senses a writer. She loves to open up new worlds and create infinite possibilities with her stories as well as dive into the deep parts of herself with her creative nonfiction writing and poetry. She started writing when she was young, and has consistently been striving to improve as much as she can.
Heavenly Spirit Artist: Savannah Hansberry
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