The pure and the innocent

Jacob was careful.

He chose his target cautiously, taking time to sound out the various characters on the social networking site to establish the one he instinctively felt would be the most malleable. Jada was innocent to the point of naivety, and Jacob could sense the pulsed frustration in her off-hand remarks disparaging her parents.

Too controlling. Too patronising. Too damn parenty.

Jacob empathised quietly at first, until Jada sensed the support and sympathy, and gravitated slowly towards him online. He tingled with the anticipation. She was just thirteen, and her avatar showed a petite, under-developed girl with a thick fringe and wide eyes. She was perfect - unblemished, with peachy cream skin and deep brown hair, which served to make her unremarkable to most of the people she probably encountered each day.

Not to him, though. In just a few halting conversations, he'd become to care for her. The way she made him laugh, even when she was in the midst of a tirade of temper against a girl at school, levels of homework or her parents. The gentle innocence of her hopes, fears and aspirations.

He thought she was adorable. Perfect. The one he had imagined when he first set up his profile, using a cartoon character instead of his own photograph to ensure that younger visitors to the site would not be deterred from conversations with him.

It was more than just sexual, although Jacob admitted the allure in the black cloying atmosphere of his solitary bedroom, when images of Jada took over his usual masturbation fodder. God. The slim, smooth skin of her arms. The way he imagined she would be scented like adolescence - sweet; untainted by perspiration. Cherry lip gloss, and lemony shampoo. The giggle he imagined eliciting from her if he ran his hands down her ribs playing her like an instrument.

He wanted more than just to awaken her to that side of adulthood, however. He wanted her to love him. To think of him as indispensable; necessary; all. And why not? He had the money to lavish her with gifts, to draw her away from the parents who worked so hard to protect her from harm, they were driving her deep into the arms of a predator.

He worked carefully, over a period of months.

He undertook research with the alacrity and earnestness of a scholar, learning about modern slang, colloquialisms, what kids' television and online media was trending. He caught himself thinking in this new language and culture. No longer just a drab forty-five year-old, he was soon a hybrid. Externally aging, internally blooming with a new flush of rediscovered youth. It was invigorating and intoxicating. He became alive with the thrill of it.

Jacob was poised, and gaining courage to ask Jada to meet him, when she took him by surprise and instigated contact first.

"AM SO NARKED WIV the OLDS!!!!" she shouted out to him, a string of emoticons blazing a stream of colour across his Skype screen. "Cum n rescue me Jake an het me outta here!!!!!"

Jacob hesitated. This was it, then. His moment. The moment of make, or break. He typed cautiously, measuring out his key strokes like a skater testing out thin ice. She'd seen his picture, the whole of him. This was the last step. Ice cold, drowning, or back to safe ground.

"Jada you know I would, but I could get into trouble," he wrote.

"?!?????" she replied. He bit his lip to blood.

"I'm a lot older than you"

"So?"

"So, I could get into a load of trouble."

There. He'd said it now. Anything that happened from this point on was not his fault.

"Not bovvered. Need to get away from olds. Sick of my life"

Fine.

He arranged to pick her up after school, in the lonely hour before her mother returned. His heart pounded as he packed provisions, placing himself in the mind-set of a young teen and her peers. Alcopops. Chocolate. Cigarettes, just in case she felt like it.

Condoms. Lube. His camera. Just in case she felt like it.

Jacob couldn't determine if his tremor was down to terror or anticipation. He licked his dry lips as the time approached for him to set off. It would take him twenty minutes to get to Jada's house. He pictured her changing from her school uniform into a pretty dress, her bare feet and unbraided hair turning her into a Lolita-esque beauty. He wiped his mouth as he imagined a scabbed knee, perhaps a bruise or two from playing rough with her friends. The lemon scent of her shining hair. Bubble gum, youth and warmth playing over his cheek from her breath.

He had a raging hard-on by the time he pulled up a couple of doors down from Jada's address. He had to wait, thinking of other things for a while until it receded. He checked his reflection in the mirror, smoothing his hair which was damp and curling. He looked OK. Not too old, not too young. A rescuer, liberator of the young, a teacher. A mentor.

Bend this way, that way.

He grabbed his rucksack and left the car with trembling legs. He couldn't wait to hear her girlish voice, to see the unguarded smile as she saw Jacob in the flesh, coming to support her.

Heading up the driveway Jacob scanned left and right to check there were no vehicles denoting parental presence. He knocked on the door confidently, masking his anxiety. His pulse quickened further as the door opened, and Jada stood before him.

She was perfect - everything he had imagined she could be. Small, lithe, undeveloped, untainted and wholly perfect.

"Jada?"

She grinned, her eyes laughing as she nodded and stood back to give him space to enter the house. He exhaled his relief, gripping his rucksack as his eyes soaked up the beauty of her tanned legs padding through the hallway and into the kitchen. He reached out a hand, unable to stop himself from touching her, but she skipped out of the way deftly, her tinkling laugh making his stomach roil with longing.

"Jakey. meet PC's David and Michael," Jada said, introducing Jacob to the two uniformed officers who stood at either side of the kitchen doorway, moving to arrest him.

Jacob nodded, and his rucksack fell from his hand. He heard the rush of blood and fear flooding his head, as he turned obediently and allowed himself to be cuffed.

"Jada?" he said, staring at the girl one last time before they led him away. She stared back, her eyes suddenly cool and appraising. Not a teen, then. A petite, dangerous and ultimately betraying young woman.

"Not my name, Jacob. And not my age," she said. He nodded then, regret making his eyes water, as he was pulled out of the house and into the panda car concealed behind the house.