Instrumental Emmett
Instrumental
Emmett
The stone is growing.
Emmett feels it as the hours pass, acutely aware of their body in a way they’ve never been before. The small patches on their forearm and ribs have grown, up and out, as uneven as moss spreading over—well, stone, they think, almost wryly, because it would be funny, probably, if it didn’t hurt.
And it does hurt, though not always. They’ve started to recognize when the pain will come.
The tiny crawling changes in the rough rock don’t do more than itch, fading to a dull ache.
It’s the new patches, skin splitting to stone for the first time, that take the breath from their lungs, make them grasp the nearest stable surface to steady themself.
Emmett has been lucky that it hasn’t happened while they’re driving. But it’s probably only a matter of time.
Across the campsite, Delilah makes a disgruntled sound, trying to blow her hair off her face as she attempts to juggle pen, pick, and guitar.
Emmett watches surreptitiously, wondering if they should help, but then she takes a deep breath, plucks the capo off the neck of the guitar, uses it as a makeshift hair clip, and then turns back to her notebook with a self-satisfied smile.
It’s a very pretty smile.
Emmett swallows and looks down at their notebook, where another half-finished drawing of Delilah bent over her music mocks them from the open page.
The more they stare at it, the more their arm throbs, and the heavier their chest starts to feel.
When they pull in a breath, the movement of their ribs feels like pushing against the weight of a car.
One long stroke of their pencil adds dimension to one of Delilah’s curls where it had tumbled out of its improvised clip, casting a shadow over her face. When she fell asleep in the car earlier, Emmett had given in to temptation and brushed it away. It had been as soft as it looked.
Their arm starts to ache again.
Dying, they know, is changing them. In the last few days, they’ve done things they never would have even dared to think about while Jacob was alive, for fear of what he’d say or do when he found out.
The bookstore in Philadelphia would have been transgression enough.
If he had known that Emmett spent the previous night in a lesbian bar—wearing makeup, covered in glitter, being very nearly kissed—
Pressure against their mouth startles them out of their thoughts and they realize that their fingertips have crept, unconsciously, up to touch their lips.
Nearly kissed. Nearly.
If they close their eyes, the memory unfolds in Technicolor: Delilah, flushed with alcohol and laughter, sweat and glitter sparkling on her skin.
Her body pressed close, the way she’d looked in that dress, filling Emmett’s head with a thousand inappropriate, covetous thoughts that they still can’t bring themself to regret.
Her smiling mouth, deep red lipstick slightly smudged.
The surprising softness of her touch when she curled her hands against Emmett’s jaw and started to draw them down.
And Emmett had stopped her.
It was the right thing to do, and they know it—Delilah was drunk, and even if she hadn’t been, Emmett wasn’t, isn’t, can’t be the kind of person someone might kiss, might want.
People who want Emmett only want them for what they are, Jacob used to tell them, for what they can make them do.
Staying away from that kind of thing, as Jacob would have put it, was about keeping Emmett safe.
And yet. And yet.
What might it have been like if they had let it happen?
The Delilah in the sketch hasn’t pulled her hair back.
It falls over her shoulders, messy curls tousled by the wind.
Emmett lets themself think about what they might do if things were different.
If they were a real person. They could cross the campsite and tuck a few of the dark strands back behind her ears while she’s awake and smiling, brush their knuckles over the soft skin of her cheek.
She’s not wearing lipstick today, but her lips glisten slightly with the balm she applies absently every hour, and Emmett hasn’t been able to stop looking at them, even now, from ten feet away.
It would be easier, Emmett thinks, if Delilah knew. But they’ve been keeping the secret of what they are since the moment they were brought to life.
How could they change that now?
Noah and Ruth had made it simpler. With them, Emmett could just be Emmett—their strange, obedient, protective almost-sibling who never asked them to be anything other than who they were.
If they found Emmett odd as they got older and went to school and met more normal people, they never held it against them.
Ruth, especially, seemed to see them as her confidant, and that had meant the world. It still means the world.
Thinking about Ruth makes their throat feel so tight it hurts, and they reach up to touch it, to make sure that there aren’t any new stone patches there.
Nothing. Just smooth skin and an ache that goes all the way down to their chest.
“Emmett,” Delilah calls.
Emmett startles and looks up to find her watching them, brow furrowed slightly. “Sorry. Were you calling me?”
“Just a bit,” she says. “Are you okay? You’ve been staring into space for five minutes.”
“Oh. No, I—I was just lost in thought.”
Delilah cocks her head to one side. “I’m a good listener,” she says. “If you need to talk.”
It’s tempting, so tempting, to take that need and interpret it as want.
To take the invitation for what it is, to use the loophole of it would be lying if I didn’t tell her what I was thinking, honoring, as Ruth would say, the grand Jewish tradition of taking the letter of the law and the spirit of the law into a back alley and shaking them around until you make them fit the point you’re hoping to make.
But for all that Jacob’s lingering voice in Emmett’s head has gotten quieter, it’s still there. It’s not safe to tell people. Even the kindest person might be tempted to use you. Don’t you see?
Not telling keeps you safe.
They search for something close enough to truth that they don’t feel sick to their stomach saying it and come up with a weak, “Maybe another time.”
“Sure.” There’s a smudge of blue ink just above Delilah’s top lip where she must have tapped it with her pen. “Whenever you’re ready. I’m not going anywhere.”
What a gift, Emmett thinks. To know that.
Against their ribs, the edges of the stone start to ache once more.