CHAPTER SIX: NOOSES

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
-Helen Keller

Emma's mother once told her she was the type of girl only a monster could love.

She meant that as an insult. And Emma understands, she does, and when Grace Carter first told her that it knocked the air out of her lungs. Any defense lay awkwardly on her tongue and eventually, it died away so silence could take it's place.

Stephen Carter must have been a monster then.

Him with the gentle smile and made up songs he'd sing when she couldn't get to sleep when she was little. With the soft, caring words and mischievous grey eyes as loud, annoying laughter after messing up his only daughter's hair right before a picture.

A monster maybe, because he fell in love with one.

Jessamine and her cousin, Cameron, must be monsters. Actions of monsters, when they loved someone, Emma found comforting. It looks like weekend check ins that flooded her phone with voicemails that said, "I love you." and "Are you all right?"

I'm here, is a text regularly sent by monsters.

Proof of empathy, human connection, love and friendship shared between such monstrous beings must have been unimaginable to her mother. Emma Carter wasn't afraid of monsters.

She was however, terrified of the perfectly human woman in front of her.

Grace's hands shook as she lit a cigarette in the middle of the living room, and Emma didn't know if her mom knew how disgustingly fragile she looked. Either way, it was worrying. It was because her diet consisted of cocaine, Xanax tabs and vodka tonic instead of anything remotely nutritious. 

In her mom's eyes, Emma looks like how she always has.

Fake smiles, dead eyes were all normal, as was her constant wincing in pain when she lifts anything with cut wrists and her daughter being oh so sad about something she will never figure out.

Her father died two years ago.

That's more than enough time to get over it, to stop grieving. As a mother it's Grace's job to tell Emma she's beautiful and worthy. So she does. And for some reason, she thinks her daughter listens.

Grace sometimes shares a cigarette with Emma and Emma doesn't know if she's allowed to say no to it. The only time she did, she got lectured for an hour about how hard her mom works—how she just wants to spend time with her daughter.

She knew Emma smoked before.

Emma just guessed she was too fucked up to realize how wrong that was. So when she did smoke, Emma learned how to blow smoke rings all while wishing they were nooses.

Everything inside her told her she wasn't beautiful.

"Mom?" Emma asks, smoke staining her tongue. "When's my birthday?"

"Shit girl," Her mom laughs. "If you can't remember, how the fuck do you expect me to?" She shrugs, eyes pinned to the ground. Grace continues, "Sometime in February, why?"

That was wrong, but it was close enough to her birthday that was late enough in January to count so Emma stayed silent. She didn't want to have to tell her mother that.

Having been raised in a household where she's had to anticipate the emotions of her mother to protect herself, Emma can now sense even the oncoming of a bad mood just by eye contact or the slight intake of breath. 

In short, she knew her mom didn't like this. And the hand tightening on her lighter scared her. Emma has been... she's been hurt before. It was very rare, to be hit instead of lectured or yelled at but it happened.

Being around her mother was suffocating.

She wasn't allowed to exist on her own terms.

The best way Emma can describe her anxiety is like when you lean back in a chair just a bit too far and your heart jumps or you're going down the stairs and you miss a step but the feeling never stops.

Emma came to the conclusion long ago that adults are basically just children who've grown fat, watched their dreams die, and learned to shrink from confrontation.

"I want you to stop whoring about with guys, you might catch something." Grace sneers, lips twisted in a silent snarl. "If you get pregnant, you're either getting rid of it or I'm kicking you out. Ain't no way I'm helping you raise a baby this young."

"I'm on birth control, don't worry." Sighing, Emma rests her cheek on her knee. "Plus I trust the guy. He's clean."

"Right," Her mom nods sarcastically. "Because there's 'only one'."

There was only one.

But Emma didn't want to get into an argument about something as stupid as this when her mom herself definitely makes worse decisions than sleeping with Xavier Wolf. She blows another smoke ring, and watches as it spirals overhead.

It wasn't fair, how Emma felt most alive when she was dying slowly.

↞♡↠

"I'm only seventeen and I already lost all my fucking serotonin." Emma complains, making Jessamine scoff over the phone. "And you're telling me I'm supposed to live eighty years? The fuck."

Her best friend sighs, "Yes, Emma, you have to live until you're eighty."

"But I get to die first?"

"Sure, when you turn eighty, only two months before I do, you can die first." Jessie honestly sounded so done with life at this moment.

Emma just nods. "Sweet."

Muffled voices flood the other side of the phone, one being a very male voice and the other a growl coming from none other than Xavier Wolf—who Emma can now, pin point by most minute sounds he can make.

Sitting up in bed, she glances at her locked bed room door before asking, "Are the guys over?"

"Um... yeah?" Jessie, clearly hesitant to answer, makes a slight sound by sucking her teeth. "I knew your mom probably wouldn't let you out, so I didn't want to ask. But then you called me and I couldn't not answer! We're actually at Cal and Xavier's house."

"They live together?"

Emma didn't know that.

Cal is the one to answer, clearly having grabbed the phone from the blonde. "We stole him from his dad and never gave him back. We have to move every year from the threat of nuclear war, he's a powerful being that can't be tamed. I was barely able to revive Zay out of his clutches!"

"So..." Emma trails off. "He's adopted?"

The Angel pauses. "Yeah."

She laughs. "Well, at least someone wanted him."

"Are you saying I wasn't wanted."

"Are you saying you were planned?"

"Hold on!"

The phone makes a static noise as Calum throws the phone back to Jessie, who tells Emma "He's asking him mom." sounding all too amused.

There's a few minutes of Jessie giggling occasionally to memes she flicks through on her phone as Xavier hums to him while Emma tries to silently pack a bag for her best friend's house without her mom finding out.

Finally the sound of Jessie's door closing rings out and there's an awkward silence between the three teens.

"What's going on?" Emma asks, shoving her charger in the bag.

Jessie giggles, "I don't think he was planned."

"Or wanted." Xavier pipes up, causing his best friend to make a choking sound.

Smiling a bit at the absurdity of her being right, Emma closes her bag and starts to walk to her window when the sound of a bottle being kicked across the floor.

"Emmeline?" Her mother calls out, door handle jiggling. "Are you asleep? I want you to come out here and clean up a bit before Vince gets here."

Vince being her current fuck buddy that she called boyfriend but he openly called her his third hoe or side bitch. Some men—no matter the circumstance as stuff like that shouldn't be said about the woman, especially in front of her daughter—just don't have dignity.

Or manners, for that matter.

Emma stays silent, body frozen as she waits a few minutes to make sure her mom sat down. Muting the phone as Jessie starts to ask what's happening, Emma winces as she slowly picks up her keys and clutches them tightly in one hand—hearing Grace freeze in step.

A few more minutes pass before she dares to click the lock to her window open, slowly inching the creaking glass up.

Her heart pounded as she sat on the ledge.

It wasn't because the prospect of jumping out of the window was scary, because this was the first floor and three feet from the ground, though she was scared of heights and it sometimes got hard to do so without falling on her ass or spending too much time sitting on the edge.

The fear she had was from her mom trying to break down her door again or be outside when Emma runs to the road, to find out she's not asleep but gone and punish her. Grace Carter's punishments were sometimes unbearable.

Unmuting her phone, hearing muffled arguing, Emma says, "I'm leaving my house now. Send me the address."

She hangs up and gets a thread of texts by Jessamine not even a minute later.

↞♡↠

Emma didn't know why the woman in front of her, who she only knew as Cal's mom, but she was still surprised when she was so excited to open the door only to give the teenager a once over making her expression drop completely.

The woman look concerned, to start, her green eyes swept over Emma's frame with worry before they landed on her cuts. For a brief second, Emma wondered if she was ugly enough to make someone cry.

Was this even the house?

"Uh..." She hesitated to even say anything. "Does Calum live here?"

Blinking for a moment, the woman nods. "Yes... yes! He does. I'm so sorry, I just didn't expect-" She glances at Emma's arm, then back up with a small, worried smile. "I didn't expect any more of his friends to come over."

More like she didn't expect a girl who looked as sad as Emma to come to her house when she wasn't in a authoritative spot to do anything to help. Emma lifts up her bag that's not even zipped all the way with a sweatshirt sleeve sticking out. "It was last minute."

"Well I'm boys' mom, you can call me Macy." She—Macy—opens the door wider for Emma to step through. "They're all on the back porch, I'll show you to Cal's room so you can put your stuff down. I assume you're spending the night too."

"Oh." Honestly, Emma was too busy being scared of her mother finding her that she forgot to even ask Cal. "Um, if that... he didn't get to ask... if that—is that okay with you?"

She could always stay at Jessie's, or sneak back into her window but normally when this happens, it's a few days before Emma returns home. Then again, it's not like she hasn't slept at the graveyard before.

Although that did creek some poor man out when he was just trying to leave flowers early in the morning, so Emma got smacked in the face with a bouquet of roses called a "Zombie!" as the man booked it.

Macy smiles at her, more sincere this time. "Of course it is! You can stay as long as you want."

Emma manages a weak smile in reply, following the mother around her house in a tour before dropping her stuff in a room she could clearly tell belonged to a teenage boy. Everyone, even her best friend she had been texting, was surprised to see her.

But Jessie was a little mad when she found out Emma had jumped out the window and walked all the way there when it's already dark outside so she started to snap at her how stupid it was she didn't ask for a ride.

"Woah," Emma says, hands raising. "Hoes can get off my dick, I don't care about having to walk."

After a moment of silence, Jessie looks at Xavier. "I was sure you were about to make a joke about her being on your dick."

"She's not a hoe." The Devil growls, a glare in his ultramarine blue eyes.

Not knowing why, Emma flushes and raises her hand rather sheepishly. "I don't care what I am... what are we all doing for the rest of the night."

Cal grins, pointing a flash light at each her. "Hide and seek."

Xavier shoots Emma a 'shoot me' look, making her roll her pearl-grey eyes and point her fingers in a 'hand gun' at him. And, in good sport, the Wolf boy plays dead.

"Guys," Emma snickers. "It's canine roadkill."

"That's it, I'll be it first and I'm fucking ending all of you when I find you." Xavier growls. "I'll give you all fifty seconds to hide."

Emma snorts, crossing her arms. "Isn't a little unfair -can't you sniff us out like a dog?"

All he does in reply is shoot her a wicked, fanged smile that had her gulping. Maybe taunting the Devil wasn't such a good thing.