2. Emmett
CHAPTER 2
Emmett
I ’d been watching the silly, confused, and dazed-looking girl from the moment she ran around the corner of the church and up the slight hill toward the cliff.
She seemed out of it, a thoughtless, reckless little girl that has no sense.
But looking at her now, and the flood of unshed tears in her eyes, I can spot something else that makes the thing in my chest jump vigorously.
Guilt.
So much guilt.
I narrow my eyes at her.
She can’t be more than seven years old. Tiny, her hair pulled back into a puffy ponytail, that’s now filled with snow.
Why the hell isn’t she wearing a damn hat?
Actually, she isn’t wearing much at all besides that ugly frilly black dress and black tights, sans a jacket, in this snowstorm.
But then again, she doesn’t look like she has any forethought in life.
It turns out the girl who was pretending to be strong while accepting condolences by the entrance of the church twenty minutes ago is just a coward.
Not just a coward, though, at least for what she wants to do, but she also seems like a reckless idiot.
Without meaning to, I scoff out loud at her pathetic behavior.
The girl jumps in fear.
“What?” the girl shrills, still looking at me in shock. “I-I’m not a coward!”
Obviously she hadn’t noticed me here but I had seen the pathetic play of emotions on her face like a movie in 4D that Noah Montreal is always droning on and on about.
“Really?” I bite back, already bored but still looking at her for some reason.
“Yes.”
“Then you’re a liar, which is even worse.”
“I’m not!” she shouts but her shoulders start trembling as tears start streaming down her face.
Urgh.
I hate crying children. They get on my nerves.
Like, the fuck are you crying for like you’re the only one that has it hard in this damn life?
Of course the girl looks miserable, but she has the right idea as a solution.
She just needs to see it through and rid me of this crap.
I ignore her and look out at the dark sea.
At first, she looked like she was in serious pain, or maybe it was constipation.
I really thought she wanted to go number one by the way she was running. Then she stopped, started panting and crying.
In her frantic craze, I watched as she made her decision.
When she looked out at sea, I could tell she had figured out how to execute her decision.
Then she looked up at the sky and a wave of intense guilt and something else that I couldn’t catch flashed across her face when she looked back at the dark sea.
But then, even after she climbed over the railing, I saw the one thing that made it clear what type of person this girl is.
She’s massively indecisive.
I almost roll my eyes, but I don’t.
I can’t adopt Noah’s unbecoming personality traits just from proximity.
Eastons have more self-control than that.
So why am I entertaining this girl instead of minding my business and watching her do what she came to do?
“W-what do you want?” The question rips from my tongue before I can stop it.
“Huh?”
“And why d-did you s-stop?” I ask but then quickly shut my mouth and frown when I hear the mess in my voice again.
Luckily the girl doesn’t notice.
It’s likely her state of mind is in shambles right now because she suddenly looks around, still in shock, then she looks at me.
“How long have you been standing there?” she pants.
I shrug, not wanting to talk again.
“What are you even doing there?” she presses, with a touch of desperation and shame in her shaky small voice, as if she’s ashamed that I discerned her thoughts.
This time I can’t help but answer. “I’m about to w-watch a good show, f-for f-free, even.”
“Excuse me?”
I look away, my fists clenching. I still can’t string a full sentence without my disease fucking things up for me.
Silence is golden, I know that, but this girl…
I can feel her gaze on me, but I don’t want to talk anymore.
I never talk this much.
This is the longest I’ve ever engaged anyone in mindless conversation. But that doesn’t matter.
If she grows a pair, she won’t exist soon so again, who cares?
“You c-can continue,” I say just loud enough for my voice to carry to her, but I sense her moving closer.
The distance between the sharp, uneven edge of the cliff and what she’s looking for is getting shorter. Good.
“Continue what?” she squeaks.
I ignore her.
“Y-you know what I want to do?” she stutters.
When I hear the familiar stutter in her voice, I glance at her from the corner of my eye.
It’s obvious she’s freezing cold, but I doubt she’s feeling it yet with all that adrenaline and whatever is going on in her head.
“Do you?” I counter. “Do you know what you want to do?”
“It’s not what you think!” she quickly defends herself.
I snort loudly this time. “That’s very presumptuous of you.”
“What?”
“How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“Well… you just said I should continue.”
This time I look at her fully. Something about her voice made her last words sound like a question, as if she’s begging for permission, a push, some encouragement…but for what? Does she want to live or die? I can only do the latter, after all, it’s what I know best.
The floodlight from the lighthouse to the left of us is shining so bright now, so much so that I can now see her face a bit clearer.
She has huge brown eyes…the kind you have to quickly look away from or else you’ll be stuck.
Stuck where or how? I don’t know and I’m not sticking around to find out.
But now, as she looks at me, wet trails turning into ice on her cheeks, I see what she’s begging for.
So, I decide to help her…
“Just jump.”
Startled, the girl’s mouth drops open. “W-wait…what?”
“You want to punish yourself, isn’t it?” I go on, looking away as the thing in my chest tightens, and then it flops like a bursting balloon.
The pain is on another level, but I stand there, making sure I don’t buckle over. Not yet anyway.
“Punish myself?” the girl gasps, as if she’s confused, but I know she’s figuring things out. “Is that what I want to do?”
This time, I do roll my eyes.
“It’s incredible how you don’t even know what you want,” I mutter, feeling impatient and annoyed. “If you’re just going to ask the world to make a decision for you then you definitely deserve to just continue and jump. You’re pathetic.”
“What?” she gasps. “Y-you’re a horrible person!”
I shrug, not at all perturbed.
“Go ahead and jump. I won’t tell anyone.” I smirk.
The girl looks at me in shock.
“How can you be so nonchalant about death?” she whispers.
I freeze in my tracks. The thing in my chest groans to a stop.
Sometimes it struggles from one beat to the next.
That’s on good days.
Then there are days like today when the thing goes an entire five seconds without moving at all.
In those seconds I wait for that one certain thing. The same thing the girl said I’m nonchalant about.
“Does life really matter?” I ask her silently, not really wanting an answer.
“Of course it does!” the girl shrieks, as if offended. “Life matters! It matters a lot! Because where there’s life, the opportunity for countless possibilities is real!”
Her words stun me so much that I turn to look at her fully, feeling annoyed.
She looks back at me and then she looks down at her feet, shuffling in place. “Well…at least that’s what my Gramps always said.”
This time, there’s a heaviness in her shaky voice. A kind of heaviness that shouldn’t be found in one so young.
“He is…I mean, he was a doctor,” she whispers and then sniffles. “He saved lives. My Grammy too. She’s a nurse in the ER… but… but…when it mattered, I completely ignored them.”
The girl suddenly drops down, hugs her knees and starts sobbing right there by the edge of the cliff.
She isn’t wearing a jacket. Her dress is sleeveless. It’s snowing heavily, the blizzard will likely pick up soon and yet, here is a little girl, crying ugly tears, unaware of any of this.
“He saved me, but I didn’t save him!”
I stand there, listening while piecing the obvious story together.
The multitude of people that packed the church when I was passing by all came for this girl’s grandfather.
It seems he was a well-respected man…who died saving this girl, apparently…which leads to her wanting to punish herself for it.
This time when I feel the pain in my chest, it’s so acute, unexpected, with a depth that goes through the rest of my body.
Why am I suddenly feeling uncomfortable?
“He was my first best friend. He loved me when no one else did and now he’s gone, all because of me!” The girl continues to cry. “If it wasn’t for me, he’d be safe and happy, continuing to live his lovely life with Grammy and Samuel.”
If it wasn’t for me…
For some reason, those words awaken something in me that I’d been trying to keep as stagnant as possible, but now at the girl’s words, I know I’m about to lose the war.
I don’t even have a prayer at sealing the guilt out of my system now.
Her sin of merely existing took away the one person that loved her.
Just like my existence took away the one person that sacrificed everything for me.
Anger, like a flood, suddenly fills my veins, my nerves, and my bones.
Who is this girl?
Why is her voice so loud?
Why do her words feel like they are sinking into my blood, my bones and every inch of me that is suffering the loss of my mother?
Where does she get the audacity to approach me like this?
Who the hell is this strange girl and where did she come from?
“So you killed him,” I grit out, fists clenched, making sure my words cut her…and myself.
I destroyed my mother…because I’m worthless.
I want to see what the girl does with that reality in her face.
She’ll probably deny it, just like everybody else.
The girl suddenly looks up, her face contorted with pain and helplessness.
“I…I didn’t mean to!”
I stare at her, feeling dumbfounded.
She doesn’t even deny it.
I’ve never met anyone like this girl who easily owns up to her screwups.
“You have to believe me! I really didn’t mean to!” The girl cries. “I saw the letter, asking about me! I saw the return address, so I took a chance to go try to find my mother. I took the bus by myself, and it dropped me off as close to the address as possible, but then I ended up getting lost.”
You can almost see her pain of regret clearly within the wells of tears in her large eyes.
“It was a very bad neighborhood, and then I ran into a group of teenagers. They took all my pocket money and my food, and they ran away. Then a dog chased me. I fell down on the rough road littered with bits of broken glass and cut myself. By the time an elderly post office worker found me, I was bleeding, hungry, and crying out for my grandparents.”
I listen silently, already knowing where this is going.
“The kind lady called Gramps…who was already at the police station after he and my brother combed the entire town looking for me. By the time he came for me, it was dark, snowing, and then on our way back…”
This time, when the sobs come crashing through, her tiny body can’t stand it.
She really huddles down onto the snow-covered ground and crouches into a small ball, her stomach caving in on itself as she cries.
“It was all my fault!”
At this point, her voice is beyond hoarse.
Her entire body is now trembling. Soon, she’ll be an icicle and there won’t be any need to jump.
Without thinking, I take off my coat and drape it around her shoulders.
She immediately looks like a dwarf, swallowed by my coat.
For my age, I’m a big boy, but by the time I realize what I just did, she’s not the only one that freezes. I do too.
Why did I do that?
“So?” I mutter gruffly.
“Huh?”
“So are you going to jump or not?” I snap. The girl raises her head to look at me, so I crouch down to meet her at eye level. “If you want to atone, then do it. Why are you here being a sobbing coward?”
The girl’s face distorts in pain and some fire ignites in her eyes.
“You don’t care at all about life, do you?” she retorts back. Then her eyes widen like saucers as if she just figured something out. “Wait, is that why you’re here too? To die?”
I almost laugh at that.
“Why are you smirking?”
I look at her. Really look at her.
We’re both already fucked up, so why not tell her?
“When you’re already dead, there’s no need to do anything else.”
“What?” she whispers. “What do you mean?”
“It means some people have a choice.”
“And you don’t?”
“I never stood a chance to have a choice.”
Somehow, the admission falls from my lips easily, with clear words, no stutter in sight.
Why am I talking too much?
The girl sits up now, getting closer to me. She watches me, as if she’s studying me.
She peruses every inch of my face and then her gaze connects with mine.
“Then tell me,” she whispers.
My breath catches.
My lungs hold.
The thing in my chest slows down even more, as if my entire being is waiting for her next words.
“Tell you what?” I mutter, unable to stop myself.
“How does it feel?”
I freeze. The way she’s looking at me…
Keep beating…
The command is for the leaky thing in my chest.
Because for some reason, the way this little girl is looking at me doesn’t feel normal.
It feels critical.
Judgmental.
Precise and deadly.
“How does what feel?” I grit out.
“Dying?”
That last word catches me by surprise so much that if it wasn’t for the core-strength training I’ve been subject to since I was four years old, I would have been knocked over onto my ass.
I stare at the girl, watching the play of emotions in her eyes.
Stuck.
I feel stuck…
But before I can answer her, I see movement behind her.
Two figures in black storm towards us.
In the snow, I vaguely recognize one of them, but why the hell are they here?
“There she is!” one of them shouts.
She?
I realize then that I’m crouching in front of the tattered wooden ledge.
They can only see the girl, not me, but why are my uncle’s people coming for the girl?
“W-who are they?” she suddenly stutters.
“You don’t know them?” I quickly demand, to which she shakes her head, completely confused and dumbfounded.
If she doesn’t know them, why are they here for her?
“M-maybe they are here to question me,” she rushes out.
“Question you?”
“Yes, the police have been questioning me about that night.”
“Which night?”
“Three nights ago when Gramps died saving me.”
Three nights ago…
It’s like a wrecking ball just crashed into me, shattering every bone, every thought, every feeling…
Before I can stop myself, I grab the girl’s arm and shake her. “Did you just say three nights ago was when your grandfather died?”
“Ouch, let go,” she whispers.
“Tell me!”
“Yes,” she cries. “Now let go!”
“How?”
“What?”
“How did he die?”
Fresh tears well up in her eyes. “An accident.”
An accident?
“Don’t tell me it was the one by Brooke Highway?” I mutter, feeling like I’m having an out-of-body experience.
“Yes! How did you know?”
I stare at the girl.
My mother disappeared three nights ago… last seen on Brooke Highway.
And now my uncle’s men are coming for the girl.
“Did you see her?” I quickly demand.
“What?”
“On the road? At the accident site? Hell, anywhere at all, did you see her that night?”
“T-the police asked me several times if I saw a woman,” she stutters. “B-but I…”
“But what?” I seethe with urgency.
“But I don’t remember.”
The fire in my veins instantaneously stops, as if I’ve just been doused with a bucket of ice-cold water.
“What do you mean you don’t remember?”
“I… I don’t remember,” she cries softly.
From the corner of my eye, I see the men drawing closer. In a few steps they will see that the girl is not alone.
They are obviously here to eliminate a variable.
If the girl is telling the truth, then she doesn’t remember, but it’s possible she saw my mother.
My mind is racing and as the men approach with intention, I make a decision.
I stand up, step around the girl, and get in their line of sight.
As soon as the two men recognize me, their eyes go wide and just as they start to open their mouths, likely to communicate to their lackeys, I wave my hand and four shots pierce the wind.
“What?” The girl jumps in fear. “What was that?”
When she turns to look where I’m facing, she notices the dropped bodies, their blood staining the white snow.
I’m never alone.
“Oh God! What happened? H-how did that happen?” she shrieks.
I don’t have time to entertain her because just then, their backup arrives.
I watch as dark figures by the dozens come from the direction the two men just came from.
“W-who are they?”
“Rats here to kill you.”
“K-kill me?” the girl shouts. “Why?”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
As the men after her start doubling, I realize Kai and Ty are going to have a hard time eliminating them with me in the field.
So, I grab my phone and quickly type a message.
Unexpectedly tonight, God has granted me a witness of not just the events of tonight, but also of what happened to my mother.
I have to save her .
Without thinking much, I quickly grab the girl and pull her up.
She’s in shock, her eyes wide with fear.
“How about you find out for yourself?”
“What?” she screeches.
“Don’t be afraid. Dying is not as crappy as they make it out to be…not when you have someone with you.”
“Someone?” she gasps, her large doe brown eyes looking up at me. Her body drowning in my coat is now close to mine, but still shivering. “I don’t have anyone. Not anymore.”
Suddenly, a line from one of my mother’s favorite poems comes to mind.
Within the brown, an ember’s glow.
The girl’s eyes are like that… a brown with a glow like a spark…but of what? I don’t know but, suddenly, I want to find out. Badly.
“Then for you, I’ll be that someone. Do you accept?”
I can feel the distance closing between those men and us. I know they will take a shot to take me down, but the goal is not to take my life. Not yet anyway.
So… I’ll gamble.
I’ll gamble and teach this little girl a lesson.
Isn’t that a saintly thing to do?
“Accept what?” she whispers.
Holding her gaze, pain so swift and strong grips the thing in my chest but I don’t waver. This moment is now or never.
“Fall with me,” I demand.
“Yes,” she breathes.
Feeling strangely satisfied at her obedience, I grab her hand firmly in mine… and then we jump over the cliff.