CHAPTER FOUR: ALONE

Because God loves us, but the devil takes an interest. 
-Jennifer Donnelly

When Emma Carter woke up after her night with the Devil, she was alone.

She doesn't know why she was surprised—that was very typical for something like a one night stand, waking up alone, yet she couldn't shake the feeling that it was somehow... wrong. Chandler was actually the one that woke her up with a face pale, red eyes and wincing when he moved, typical signs of being hung over or when coming off drugs.

Emma got dressed, found her black flats that she didn't bother to put on and was told that her 'sexy best friend' was still somewhere on the third floor with the Angel boy.

It took her a while to find Jessie, as she didn't pick up the many times Emma tried to call her, but eventually when she opened a door the two naked people behind it were people she actually knew.

Didn't make it any less awkward.

Which is why, at the moment, she's thankful she's not Chandler.

"C'mon, Jessie," Emma throws her dress to her, smacking her best friend in the face which makes her snap awake. "We should get you home."

Sitting up with a small groan, Jessie tugs her dress on and shakes Cal awake who winces at the sunlight alone. "Busy night?" Jessie mumbles.

"Yeah," Emma says, pulling her up. "You?"

Glancing to the drowsy angel next to her, the blonde laughs. "You have no idea."

"See you on Monday, Cal."

Calum nods, rubbing at his eyes. "See you, bye Jess."

Jessie giggles. "Bye, Angel."

Dragging her hung-over best friend all the way to her house was more frustrating than it was rewarding by the time Julian, Jessamine's older brother, opened the door and took his sister to her room.

Julian and Emma were friends in the sense they were familiar with each other, enough not to be awkward when left alone together, but not friends enough to ever talk to each other outside the times her being around Jessie would require her being around him too.

He made her a cup of coffee and gave her a sweatshirt to wear—her shirt was large, but thin—before dropping her off at the corner of her street. All her friends know they're not allowed to go to her house, and know that if her mom saw someone dropping her off, it would lead to screamed-out questions. 

Emma's house was a small one story home that had dead flowers in front of the porch and a garage so full of useless things that her mom's car couldn't be parked inside of it. It was painted tan, but weather chipped away at it until it looked more brown than anything else.

She knew where every leak in the roof was, where the holes in her fence were and how to sneak in through her bedroom window without her mom knowing.

Often, Emma kept her room locked—she even installed an extra lock herself—to make sure her mom wouldn't shift through it looking for money. Why she thought Emma would keep her money in a place a drug addict could find was beyond her.

Jessie's parents treated her well and had an extra room in their large house where Emma would stay when necessary, they gave her money for food and necessities and made sure she never had to question where her next meal would come from.

But they couldn't do anything about the bills piling up in Emma's mail box or the fact her mom wasted both their life profits away on drugs and alcohol.

Emma hates that she flinches whenever anyone raises their voice even a bit. She hates that her heart races when someone gets passive aggressive and frowns and moves their hands out when they talk. She hates that she panics when people get angry at her so much that it makes her either want to fix it immediately or run. She hates that she smells like smoke and looks half-dead. She hates that she wants be dead. 

And she hates that her mom doesn't care about any of it.

She hates it.

Her mom's car wasn't in the driveway and Emma doubted she had been home at all the night before. The only reprieve was that she didn't have to sneak in the window.

Going through the house was a dangerous, annoying task on it's own, as remnants of drugs and empty bottles littered the floor and tables. There was shattered glass, weird stains and the entire place smelled like cheap liquor and smoke.

Pacing around her her room, reading and texting her friends got boring fast. Emma found herself doing what she always did at times like this, when she didn't know what was going on with her life and felt angsty. She visited her father.

Or his grave, to be more exact.

The graveyard was five blocks away from her house on the other side of a field and it was easy to walk through. At night the uneasy feeling of being watched never disappeared, but it did get easier to ignore.

↞♡↠

"Hey Dad," Emma says, smiling down at the headstone as her hand clutched the dragon necklace hanging down onto her collarbone. "How's it going up there?"

As always, there wasn't an answer.

Emma didn't actually know if she believed in heaven, she knew she didn't believe in God and while she had no other theories about what happened after death, she did think that wherever he was now, Stephen Carter was watching over her.

It took her a bit of questioning when he first died, if sitting in front of his grave—on top of him—was rude, if talking to his headstone was weird, but eventually she gave up. Her dad couldn't find something rude even if he wanted to.

So there Emma sat, leaning against the headstone, music blasting out of her phone as she talked about her life—even about the things she doubted her dad would want to hear.

But he was the only parent that listened to her.

"There's this boy, Xavier Wolf. He calls himself the devil, and even I don't know what to make of that." She said, laughing a bit to herself. "Sometimes he helps me Dad, but everyone says he's dangerous. Even the cops around here don't like him."

Emma frowns, bringing her knees up to her chin.

"After what happened I didn't know—I didn't know if I could enjoy... being intimate with someone, you know, but he proved me wrong. I feel safe with him even in moments like that." This wasn't a lie and Emma almost wished it could be, it would make dealing with him easier. "It's small, meaningless, I guess, but he brings me water in the mornings and he lets me take naps on his jacket. Maybe he just can see how tired I am, but still."

She pauses, realizing a slight, appreciative flush came to her face.

And she was smiling.

"Jessie likes him too. You remember her? Her mom, Faye, went to your college. You guys used to take me, her, Jules and her cousin Nolan up to Point Salt to go swimming. You liked her and called her Fairy, remember? I do too now, it makes her smile. Her husband's nice, I call him Uncle JJ, he's funny but too quiet so I don't know if you'll remember him. They take care of me when they can."

Emma tries not to let them know how bad things have gotten with her mom, but she knows they can probably guess. They've known about her mom for a long time too. You'd think drug addicts can get clean for their children.

But some don't.

"What do I do about Mom?" Emma whispers this, feeling like it's betrayal, in some way, that her dad left her alone with her. "She's sucking the life out of me—I feel so fucking empty inside! And I don't know if I want to actually kill myself, I don't know, I just know life isn't working out for me."

He used to say that when life got hard to turn to the people around you, your family, and you'd know you weren't alone. You'd know you were supported. Loved. Emma didn't feel any of that. She did know that this was only one part of her life, a phase of depression, a moment of grief. That didn't change how world altering it feels.

People say 'phase' like the fact that whatever is happening won't last forever takes away from how serious or painful it is when it doesn't.

Emma knows that people aren't born to die. 

They aren't born to suffer or cry or grieve the fact that they're breathing just like a book isn't opened just to be closed. 

She's found this fact again and again with every song she started that made goosebumps rise on her skin, every book she's opened where the emotion evokes a physical reaction or a tense scene in an all too involving show makes her cry. 

It's how every moment of every day has the potential to teach her something and let her observe new things and digest information about people and love. It's about how six words on a page can leave her heartbroken even when the character's who's heart is being torn out of their chest isn't real. 

People's bodies were made to hold one another and dance and sing and cry and smile. 

Yeah, everyone was born with the inevitable fate of dying, everyone was mortal but it's the ability to imagine worlds where they could live forever that made each life special.  She was born to love and laugh and yell and move and learn and cry and feel. 

Emma Carter was not born to die, she was born to live. 

Maybe that's why her left felt like a real tragedy, at the moment. How at this moment, she didn't even ask to be happy, to get something amazing or create something magical. All she asked for was maybe, a little less pain—or rather, a little less need to create pain.

Because all she wanted to do was die.

It was the only way she could see the person who actually loved her, and in her opinion, it was a lot better than sitting on some grave, getting her ass dirty and talking to the sky. Was her dad even listening—

Or did she just look insane?