Chapter One
-1995-
Emma Stevens was just fourteen years old, but she was wise beyond her years. Not by choice, of course, but because she had to deal with a lot more things than most people should even have to deal with in their lives. She was an only child living with her mother, who had never learned to forgive her husband for leaving them when Emma was just three years old. Her mother spent almost every night drinking or running around with other guys and every night ended in the same way; her mother lying on the ground to drunk or bruised to get up, crying her eyes out and cursing the man that she still desperately loved and tonight was no different.
It was almost two in the morning, which was earlier than usual, when her mother started to cry. Tonight she had had a man over, but he had been gone for several hours. He didn’t hurt her like the rest, but he still had his way with her and moved on. She was more drunk than usual and calling for Emma.
Emma laid in bed and tried to cover her head with a pillow to drown out the noise, but it was no use. The entire neighborhood could probably hear her whaling. Emma made her way out of bed and then out of her bedroom. Her mother was across the house so she slowed padded down to her. When Emma reached her mother she was laying on her bed with her arms held out for her little girl to come closer. Emma did just that, but very cautiously.
“Don’t be afraid, Emma. I wont hurt you. I am just sad tonight and I want a hug,” he mother explained.
“Mom, I have to get up early for school tomorrow.”
“Can’t you even give your mother a god-damn hug, for christ sake?”
Emma walked over into her mother’s open arms and leaned forward, nearly falling over from the stench of alcohol that she wreaked of and embraced her in a loving way. When the hug had subsided, Emma backed up as her mother spoke again. “See that wasn’t so bad.”
“Good night, Mom,” Emma stated.
Her mother began to grow angry that her child couldn’t even stand to be around her for longer than two minuets and lashed out. “All of this is your fault!” She spat, “If I never would have had you, your father would have stayed and we would be happy again. I should have gotten rid of you when I had the chance!”
Emma felt like crying, but she would never let her mother have that satisfaction. That was her sole intention: to hurt her and Emma would never let her mother see that day. She simply spun on her heal and walked out of the room. She could hear her mother start screaming profanities at her as she walked away. She knew that it wasn’t going to stop so she had to go somewhere else.
She walked across the lawn to the house that she had always pictured to be the perfect place. It was the perfect family, everyone always happy, a white picket fence and no evil lurking around the corner. It was amazing to think that just by changing the last number by two of their addresses you could go from the best side of the spectrum to the worst. Emma got to the window that she was almost too familiar with and knocked quietly then waited for an answer.
Justin heard the knocking at his window and looked over to it, only to see exactly what he had expected. It was his brown haired best friend, in her pajamas waiting for him to go let her in so that she could escape from her nightmare of a life. He looked at the clock and shook his head in disbelief then clunked out of bed and made his way over to the window in a very wobbly manner to open it for her. She climbed in and gave him a huge hug as her beautiful hazel eyes welled up with the tears that she so adamantly would not let her mother have the joy of observing.
Justin hugged her back and tried to sooth her anguish, “Shhhh, it’s going to be okay, Em.”
She cried for a while and let everything out. Justin was always good at comforting her, probably because he had so much practice at it. When she finally stopped crying all she could do was lean against him because she had no strength left in her body. She had cried so hard that when she tried to breathe in she shuddered from lack of oxygen.
“Come on,” Justin stated and guided her over to his bed. He carefully tucked her in, making sure that he tucked the blanket under every part of her body frame, just as his parents did to him. He found that heartening when he was younger so he assumed that she would find that as well. Next, he kissed her softly on the forehead to comfort her some more then grabbed a pillow and a blanket and curled up on the ground beside the bed.
There was total silence in the room for a while. Emma had always found that so calming whenever she came over here because there was never silence at her house, even though there were fewer people in her household. When Emma finally got her voice back she whispered, “Justin?”
He opened his eyes and had to wake himself back up once more then mumbled, “Yeah?”
“You’re my knight in shinning armor.”
Justin wasn’t really sure how to respond to this so he thought about it for a while and still came up with nothing. Emma was his best friend and she had problems at home, but a lot of people did. Maybe not to the extent that she did, but still some problems. He was just fourteen, as well, and time had not yet allowed for him to understand exactly what he meant to her. “It’s nothing.”
She sort of chuckled and rolled over onto her side, destroying all of his hard work, so that she could see him laying on the ground, “All I am saying,” she tried to explain, “is that I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have you. You are my best friend.”
Justin smiled, “You’re my best friend, too and what are best friends for if not to comfort one another when they are in need?”
Emma shrugged, “You comfort me a lot more than I comfort you.”
“Sometimes that is how things work out I guess, but don’t mention it again because we need to go to bed. My mom will make us breakfast in the morning as always.”
Emma rolled back onto her back and closed her eyes so that she could fall asleep, but she was still shaken from her explosion of tears that she had before. It was hard to rest when your mind is still operating at full speed. No matter how much she tried, her thoughts kept returning to the events before she came over to Justin’s and she couldn’t help wondering if what her mother said was true. Would her father have stayed if she weren’t born or if her mother had given her up? She wished that her mother had put her up for adoption because then maybe both of them could have had a chance to be happier. If that would have happened, however, she would not have met Justin.
That thought nearly blew her away. A life without Justin would be horrible. It would be like trying to live without eating or drinking. She couldn’t survive. He was the only person who understood her and all the problems that she was going through, mostly because she choose not to tell anyone, but him. Emma didn’t want to think about it any longer and closed it off from her mind and about twenty minuets later fell fast asleep.
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