Sup, readers? This is my first OUAT fanfic. Hope it's everything you dreamed it would be when you clicked.

AU: After growing up without a father, 17-year-old Emma finds out he isn't a deadbeat, but the sheriff of a small town in Maine. And he never knew she existed. What happens when David adopts Emma, whose had a hell of a rough start? Also, Regina is the class president from hell.

NOTE: MARY MARGARET IS NOT EMMA'S MOTHER IN THIS FIC. KAY?

Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon A Time and am not in any way profiting from this fic, unless you count the creepy pleasure it gives me to write it.

Chapter 1

Making it through the first day of school. It was bad enough for normal kids.

For Emma Swan, there were about a million things she'd rather do, and most of them involved being impaled by sharp objects.

"Emma! You're going to miss the bus!" her father called.

"I'm not taking the bus," Emma mumbled.

She was still in bed. Her hair: possibly harboring live creatures. She had no idea what to wear, and frankly didn't really care.

"Emma." Her father's head popped through her door. "What are you doing? School starts in twenty minutes."

"I'm sick."

He looked at her with concern. It was weird, having a father. Emma was still getting used to it.

"Okay, I'm not sick," she said.

He came into the room, brow crumbling. He was so…genuine. Emma wasn't used to that, either.

He wore his brown and tan sheriff's uniform, the gold star glistening on his chest.

"Look, I get it," he said, lowering himself onto Emma's beanbag. (It was one of the few items Emma had taken with her from her mother's house.) "Who wants to start at a new school?"

"Masochists. Psychos."

David's eyes widened. She and David did have the same eyes: round and blue as Caribbean beach water. They'd been what convinced Emma the social worker wasn't lying about her being his daughter.

"I know it's hard," he said.

"I don't want to go."

He stood, knees crackling. He wasn't that old: 36, with a full head of blond hair (also like Emma's). He and Emma's mother had apparently sparked her into existence when they were fresh out high school, shortly before Emma's pregnant mother took off.

The fact that he had a daughter had been as much of a shock to him as he was to her: a father who wanted her.

They were still getting used to each other.

"Look," he said, "I'm not going to make you go. I don't even know what that would look like."

Emma pulled herself up onto her elbows. "So what are you going to do?"

"Leave," he said, "and trust that you'll go on your own."

He walked out of the room. Moments later, Emma heard the garage door shut behind his cruiser.

That was, Emma realized, the exact same thing her mother would have done, but for entirely different reasons.

In the end, there was no avoiding it. She had to go to school.

Though she had looked up the truancy laws for the state of Maine, and technically a seventeen-year-old wasn't legally required. But what else would she do with herself? Become a waitress?

So, school.

She stood in front of her closet, trying to decide on an outfit that would best advertise her unfriendliness. There was her black tank top with the metal spikes on the shoulders—but maybe that kind of thing wasn't allowed here. Storybrooke, Maine, wasn't like Philadelphia, where Emma had come from. Storybrooke was tiny—like, "twenty seniors in the graduating class" tiny. A place like that might micromanage the school dress code.

Why was she thinking so hard about this, anyway?

She wound up in a pair of baggy jean shorts and a plain black T-shirt. She was going for, "I don't give a shit." She complemented this look with her hair, which she left scraggly and unkempt.

She wasn't looking to make a life here in Storybrooke, just to survive until she turned eighteen, when she could leave.

She liked David and all, but… scratch that. She didn't like him. No amount of apologizing or good parenting could make up for seventeen years of abandonment.

Not that he'd even known she existed.

But it was the principal of the thing. Emma had spent too many birthdays and Christmases wondering what was so wrong with her that her father didn't want her.

"I would have wanted you," he'd told her with tears in his eyes when they met, his hands clutching both her shoulders. "If I'd known about you, I would have wanted you."

But it was the principal of the thing.

Whatever, Emma was late, and there wasn't time for this kind of angst this morning.

She grabbed her ratty backpack—another thing that had made it through the detention center, the group home, and the move to Storybrooke—and flew down the steps, swallowing a Pop Tart on her way out the door.

One goal for this year: Stay out of trouble. She'd vowed it before, but she meant it this time.

I will not wind up in handcuffs.

The irony wasn't lost on Emma that her father was the sheriff.

When the social worker had told her, she'd laughed for a good twenty minutes. She—thief, smoker, topic of countless meetings between teachers—was the daughter of a man who was basically a mascot of good behavior.

Emma concluded that she took after her mother. Which she did.

Technically, Emma had only been arrested twice. The first time, she was fifteen, caught with a can of spray paint at three in the morning. She'd gotten off with a warning.

The second time, a year ago, was worse.

Much worse.

It wasn't necessarily that Emma was caught stealing. She'd been stealing for months, and had expected to be caught at some point. You couldn't get lucky forever, right?

It was more what the arrest had led to: her mother getting a call from the police, then doing what any mother would do, getting in the car and speeding to the police station. Except Emma's mother wasn't like other mothers. Emma's mother had a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit and crashed into a fire hydrant. And she was fine, thank God, but it was the second time she'd been caught driving drunk, and what started out as just Emma being in trouble turned into her mother being in trouble, too.

And Emma didn't want to tell the man who questioned her how often her mother drank, because the truth was it was all the time, for as long as Emma could remember, sometimes a lot, sometimes less, once a whole year sober, a happy and beautiful year when Emma was eight, but her mother had slipped back into it eventually, inevitably, the way you could only outrun the Girard Avenue trolley for so long before you got tired and it caught up to you. And it always caught up to her mother. Every single time, no matter how many promises she made.

Emma's mother was sentenced to a year in prison. In the courtroom, she'd wept, while Emma sat there feeling like she was watching a movie and not her life.

Emma was let off with another warning. (All she'd been caught with was a used CD, not earrings or a necklace or any of the other expensive things she'd taken in the past.) Plus, her behavior had suddenly become "a cry for help." Emma wasn't sure if that was true, but she was glad she didn't have to go back to the detention center, where there was crying every night and the food looked like it might go creeping off your tray.

She'd been sitting in a small room with ponies on the wallpaper when the social worker told her they'd found her father. At that point, she'd been living in a group home for three months, because where else could she go? Her mother was all Emma had ever had. No father, no grandparents, no aunts or uncles. Just the two of them, for as long as Emma could remember.

"He lives in a small town in Maine," the social worker had told her, the lines in her forward pressing downwards. "He's the sheriff."

And Emma had laughed, laughed so hard she might have been crying.

Her mother had told her that her father was a nobody.

She'd been at David's a month now, and he'd pretty much left her alone.

Seventeen-year-old daughters didn't come with instruction manuals—let alone daughters you'd just found out about—so it seemed to Emma like he was just observing her, learning her ways. Maybe later, he'd try to "parent." For now, she pretended not to notice when he watched her pour her cornflakes, or walk from the living room to the fridge, or turn the page of a book. When she caught him looking, he'd clear his throat and look away quickly, but he wasn't fooling anyone.

They talked a little, but nothing too deep. He seemed scared to ask how her life had been.

"You can talk to me, you know," was the most he'd ventured, one night as they chewed their spaghetti.

Emma grunted. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to him. She was still angry at him.

And he was…good. A good man. Not just the sheriff, but the Little League coach, and the Santa in each year's Christmas pageant. He paid his bills on time, and recycled, and kept birdfeeders.

Emma didn't want him to know that when she lived with her mother, sometimes the heating would go off, and Emma would spend a few nights curled up in four or five blankets. Or that Emma had been cooking dinner since she was twelve. Or that she'd found her mother passed out on the kitchen floor more times than she could count.

Emma didn't want the good man who was her father to know how badly she'd grown up, because what if that made her not good enough for him?

And he would assume things. He would assume her childhood had been all bad, when some of it had been really, really good. Like the times she and her mother would go to the diner at eleven at night and get cherry Cokes and pie. And the way her mother saved every single one of her sloppy paintings from kindergarten, saved them in a big yellow folder no matter how many times they moved houses. Or the way Emma could talk to her mother about anything—literally anything.

As long as her mother wasn't drinking. Or even when she was drinking, but was keeping it under control.

Emma wouldn't talk to David. Couldn't. It was too late, and too complicated, and she just wanted to start over. Move across the country and start a brand new life, free of all of it.

She had to run to get to Storybrooke High on time, which was her own fault for lying in bed so late.

It wasn't just starting at a new school she was dreading. It was…school in general. Emma and school didn't really mix.

It wasn't that she was stupid. At least, she didn't think she was stupid.

It was more the setup of the whole thing: sitting in a classroom while someone talks at you and being expected to remember what they said. Emma had always done better with hands-on stuff: fixing things, navigating places, or figuring out the best way to string a model airplane from the ceiling. School wasn't made for people with brains like hers, so it was a kind of torture, something she got through and didn't care much about.

Or a place to get in trouble.

To say that Emma had a big mouth was like calling flesh-eating bacteria kind of unpleasant. Emma had a huge mouth, her ability to provoke people—teachers, other students, hall monitors, guidance counselors—practically historic. She just…said what was on her mind, and what was on her mind usually didn't please people.

She couldn't help it if no one liked to hear the truth.

Sometimes Emma thought about why she had "no filter"—the phrase her social worker had used in her file, which Emma had snatched and read when no one was looking—and Emma had concluded she'd had to lie and make excuses for her mother so many times, she just couldn't handle any other fakeness.

So she spent a lot of time in detention. And wasn't the best at getting along with other girls. And spent a lot of time in detention.

The school wasn't more than a half a mile away from David's house, but Emma still got there huffing and puffing. Her month of sitting around in David's house hadn't done much for her fitness, and she resolved to make a point of exercising more.

Storybrooke High was a brick building about the size of a box of crayons, with a bronze bell actually donging to call everyone inside. Emma caught her breath on the sidewalk, marveling at how quaint it all was: the trimmed green lawns, the big windows, the brick pathway leading to the door.

It all made her kind of sick.

Wiping her forehead with the back of her hand, she headed inside. She'd come here the week before to get all the forms signed, so she knew her way around, or at least knew how to get to her classroom. There was only one class per grade, and they would stay in the same room all day long while the teachers moved around. Emma couldn't think of a better way to go completely insane.

Outside the classroom, in a hallway with cheery yellow walls, Emma smoothed her hair and rubbed at the circles under her eyes. It wasn't that she cared what these people thought. It was just…she could suddenly hear her mother's voice in her head, telling her how important first impressions were.

"You going in?" came a voice.

Emma jumped. A guy had appeared behind her. A hot guy. He had brown hair that fell in waves across his forehead and eyes green as spring grass.

"You scared the shit out of me," Emma said, walking into the room.

Naturally, everyone looked up and stared at her. Emma felt color rise to her cheeks before she shuffled to the back of the room and dropped into a chair. There was some whispering, which Emma tried to ignore. At least she hadn't been late. Their homeroom teacher hadn't even arrived yet.

"You must be Emma."

Emma looked up. The girl standing in front of her looked like she was running for president—of the country. She wore a sleek black dress and pearls around her neck, and her black hair was pulled into what looked like a painfully tight bun.

"Yeah," Emma said, trying to convey, in one sound, how much she wanted to be left alone.

"I'm Regina," said the girl, holding out her hand.

Emma sneezed into her own palms.

"Well," Regina said, pulling her hand back.

"Is there something you want?" Emma said.

The girl looked a little indignant. "Just to introduce myself. I'm Regina—

"You said that."

"I'm the senior class president."

"You want a prize?"

Regina stared at Emma for a few seconds. "Is there a reason you're being so rude to me?"

Emma sighed. Because I want you to go away.

Still, the girl was just trying to be nice.

"Sorry," Emma said. "Not a morning person. Thanks for the…introduction."

Emma expected her to leave, but the girl continued to stand there, running her eyes over Emma's outfit and frowning like she wasn't a fan.

"You want to take a picture or something?" Emma said.

Regina pursed her lips. "No, thank you."

"You, uh, have someplace to be, then?"

"I'm allowed to stand wherever I want to stand."

"There a reason that special place is in right front of my desk?"

Regina scowled again. "You have a bad attitude."

"Yeah, well, you're dressed like Career Barbie."

There was some giggling from the class, but Regina shot looks all around, and the room went silent.

"It was nice meeting you, Emma."

She gave Emma the most mirthless smile the world had ever seen before finally walking away and sitting down on the far side of the room.

"Wish I could say the same," Emma mumbled.

How was it she'd managed to get on someone's bad side in five minutes flat?

"Hey, new girl," came a hiss.

Emma ignored whoever it was.

"New girl. Hey."

Emma turned, temper flaring. It was a girl with long, chestnut hair and lots of eye makeup. Her skirt looked like the kind of thing you wear straight to detention.

"What?" Emma said, keeping her voice low. She had a feeling most of the class was listening.

"I'm Ruby."

Emma just stared at her.

"Rumor has it you're kind of a badass. Did time in juvie. Is it true?"

"There's a fair chance that's none of your business," Emma said through her teeth.

The girl looked more excited than put off. "Listen, you're going to need a friend here. What do you say?"

"Are you proposing to me or something?"

"Just that we be friends. Unless, wait, are you gay?"

"No," Emma said.

"Couldn't tell. You're kind of butch. Too bad." She threw a lock of hair over her shoulder. "Still. Friendship. You're thinking yes?"

"No," Emma said again.

"Why not?"

Emma sighed. "Look, you seem nice. But I'm not looking to make friends here."

"All right," Ruby said, facing forward again. "Your loss."

"Thank you," Emma breathed.

Before long, the teacher came in and started taking attendance. Emma sunk down into her chair and shut her eyes.

The day passed painfully. School was school, which in other words meant boring. Not only would the class stay in the same room all day, they would have same schedule every day, too. Math first (because who didn't want to recite the quadratic equation 20 minutes after you'd rolled out of bed?) followed by social studies, Spanish, lunch, biology, gym, and English. Everyone took a few minutes to stand and stretch in between each class, but other than that, there was nothing to break up the monotony.

The best part (read: the worst part) was that every teacher insisted on commenting that Emma was new and "welcoming her" by making her say a little something about herself. A "fun fact," the social studies teacher called it. (This was the man who made her stand up in front of the class.)

"My dad's the sheriff," Emma told everyone for the third time, before walking back to her seat.

By lunchtime, Emma was about ready to blow, so instead of going to the cafeteria to sample what would undoubtedly turn out to be scary school food, she wandered around looking for an unmonitored exit and snuck out the first one she found.

The door shut with a thud behind her, and Emma exhaled. The cigarette was lit and between her lips in half a second.

"My dad calls them Idiot Sticks."

Emma about jumped out of her skin. Next to her, one foot kicked back against the brick wall, was the guy who'd scared her before homeroom. He wore a green T-shirt and leather hiking shoes, as if he wasn't spending the whole day trapped in a single room.

"What's a person got to do around here for some solitude?" Emma said.

"Sorry, didn't mean to barge in on your alone time," he said. "Oh wait, you barged in on mine."

Emma almost laughed. Almost. "Whatever. Can we just…share this moment in silence?"

The guy shrugged. "Whatever."

Emma drew in a long breath, liking the way the cigarette smoke felt hot in her chest. Yes, it was deadly. She knew that. But some part of her also knew she was drawn to self-destruction.

"Seriously though," said the guy. "Those'll kill you."

"What happened to silence?"

"I just…wouldn't be able to live with myself. Ten years down the road, you get lung cancer. I'd think back to this moment and hate myself for not telling you to stop."

"Well, now you've told me." Emma drew another inhale. "Let your conscience be clear."

"Shame," the guy said.

Emma tried let the word sit there, but curiosity got the best of her. "What's a shame?"

"That a girl so hot would be so antisocial."

"Don't try to flatter me."

"That was flattery to you? What kind of guys have you been hanging around?"

"None," Emma said.

"Oh," he said. "You're gay."

"For Pete's sake, no."

"Then you wouldn't be opposed to, say, hanging out with me this weekend?"

Emma threw down her cigarette and ground it under her foot. "Can't you just leave me alone?"

He seemed not to hear her. "A smoker and a litterer. Your karma must be pretty devastating."

"Yeah, it bites me in the ass by sending me people like you."

"I'm Graham," he said.

"Emma."

And then they were kissing.

It wasn't something Emma exactly decided. It just kind of happened, because she liked a guy she could spar with, and he was hot, and she'd spent the last three weeks lonely as hell.

He'd backed her into the wall when the door opened.

"Graham?"

He pulled away from Emma all at once. "Regina."

So within about three seconds, it was clear to Emma that Regina and Graham had history, and what unfriendliness Emma had stoked between herself and the class president this morning had just gone from smoldering embers to wildfire.

The girl gave Emma a look that might actually kill a lower life form before she went barreling back inside.

"Regina, wait!" Graham said, going after her.

And just like that, Emma was alone, her cigarette smoking in the grass and her shoulder still tingling from when Graham had gripped it.

"Not good," Emma said, shaking her head. "Not good, not good."

She didn't like Graham. After all, they barely knew each other. So she didn't really care that he'd abandoned her and gone running after Regina.

It was more like, "I've managed to lodge myself in boy drama and it hasn't even been a full day."

Why couldn't she exist peacefully anywhere she went?

She smoked another cigarette, wondering what to do now. There were still 25 minutes left in the lunch period. Her stomach let out a growl. That Pop Tart she'd eaten was long digested.

Maybe she'd go get something to eat, after all.

When she entered the cafeteria, every eye in the room turned to her. She felt her face burn red. As fast as she could, she walked to the counter, grabbed a Rice Krispy Treat, and paid for it with the crumbled bills David had left out for her.

"Emma!" came a voice over the noise of the crowd.

It was that girl again, Ruby, motioning for Emma to come sit at her table. Emma looked around. There didn't seem to be any other seats.

Not knowing what else to do, Emma walked over and lowered herself into the seat opposite Ruby.

The girl was giving Emma an amazed look.

"We heard," Ruby said.

The girl next to her nodded enthusiastically. Unlike Ruby, with her short skirt and deep-diving collar, the girl beside her wore a plaid shirt buttoned almost to her chin, and her brown hair was tucked neatly behind her ears.

The two were dating. It was immediately clear, for reasons Emma couldn't exactly quantify. She wondered how they managed that, given their clearly divergent personalities.

"Heard…what?" Emma said, unwrapping her Rice Krispy.

"You and Graham," Ruby said.

Emma almost dropped her food. "That literally just happened."

Ruby grinned. "Welcome to Storybrooke, turning secrets to gossip since 1856." She motioned to the other girl. "This is Belle."

"Hey," Belle said, turning slightly pink.

"Hey," Emma didn't have time for introductions. "How did you know about…what happened?"

"They came in here screaming at each other," Belle said. "He said, 'It didn't mean anything.' We connected the dots from there."

"Wait," Emma said. "You got that something happened between meand Graham from, 'It didn't mean anything'?"

"Well, no one else would dare to do anything with Graham," Ruby said.

"People don't mess with Regina," Belle said. "So it had to be you."

"Everyone else would know better," Ruby said.

"Know better?" Emma chewed on the idea as she chewed her food. "The hell do you mean by that?"

Both lowered their eyes and said nothing.

"Is there something about Regina you need to share with me?" Emma said.

"It's not something we can really…talk about," Ruby said.

"I don't get it," Emma said.

"She's dangerous," Belle burst, turning a deep shade of pink.

Some of the people from neighboring tables looked over.

"Like…she's a bitch?" Emma said.

"No," Ruby said in a low voice. "I mean, that's true. But that's not why she's—

"Can I speak with you?" came a voice from behind Ruby, who turned white. "Emma?"

Regina had come out of nowhere.

She looked completely calm, not a hair out of place.

"Kay," Emma said.

"Alone," Regina said.

Emma rose and followed her out of the cafeteria. If Emma had a nickel for every person staring and whispering, she could have afforded several bus tickets back to Philly.

"We haven't gotten off to a very good start, have we?" Regina said once they were outside the doors.

Standing face to face, Emma was able to size Regina up better than she had in class. There was the sleek black dress, which looked like something you wore if you were being featured in Professional Women Under 40, not having a plain old day in high school. She was hot, Emma noted, but there was something severe about her (maybe her aggressively plucked eyebrows). And her teeth were the kind of white you saw when you died.

Emma thought about how Belle had blurted, "She's dangerous."

Emma could imagine Regina being bitchy, or controlling, or overachieving, but dangerous? Really?

"I guess we haven't," Emma said, trying to match Regina's smile with one that was as sickeningly sweet.

"Why don't we start over?" Regina held out her hand.

Emma wiped hers on her shorts. "Sorry. Rice Krispy treat."

Regina cleared her throat and pulled her hand away.

"About…me and Graham," Regina said. "Things are a little complicated between us."

"Um," Emma said. "I don't mean to…overstep my bounds, but things didn't seem that complicated."

"What are you implying?"

"He's the one that started kissing me. Guys in relationships tend not to do that."

Emma had only ever read the word "snarl" in books, but in that moment, it applied to Regina.

"Listen, Emma," Regina said. "If I tell you things are complicated between Graham and me, then they are complicated."

Emma almost laughed. "Ooooo-kay."

"You know, I don't like you."

"That would be mutual."

"Stay away from Graham."

Now Emma did laugh. "Or what? What exactly are you going to do to me?"

Regina closed her mouth into a tight line. "Destroy you."

With that, she walked away, shoes clicking down the silent hallway.

Emma wondered what the hell she'd meant by that.

And how, oh how, she'd gotten herself ensnared in drama on literally the first day.

And, again, destroy?

Emma didn't think you could destroy something that was already broken.

The second half of the day passed uneventfully, thank goodness, since the first half had contained enough drama to last a month.

Biology was your usual microscope fiasco, with everyone swabbing cells from their cheeks and taking notes on what they saw. Gym was terrible—of course—but Emma was able to claim a position in the outfield and just stand there in a daze, trying not to get too sunburned. English, well, there was bound to be the proverbial cherry on top of the miserable day. The teacher, a young woman who looked like she'd maybe been Mary Poppins in a past life, told them they'd be reading ten novels that year.

"Ten?" Emma couldn't help crying.

Everyone turned to look at her. Everyone except Regina, of course, who kept her frown forward. And Graham, who hadn't glanced at Emma since lunch.

The teacher, whose name was Miss Blanchard, and who was wearing a red cardigan made to look like a ladybug, said, "Do you have a problem with that, Miss…?"

"Swan," Emma said, pulling her arms over her chest. "Emma Swan. And yes, I do."

The words came out before Emma could stop them. Here it comes, Emma thought. The detention. I'm going to get detention on the first day.

Instead of looking angry, Miss Blanchard raised her eyebrows and said, "Well, what is it?"

"What is what?" Emma said.

"Your problem."

The classroom was absolutely silent. For once, words didn't come rushing out of Emma's mouth. She'd never been asked to be honest before, especially not by a teacher.

"Ten seems like an awful lot of books to me," she said finally.

"Does anyone agree with Emma?" Miss Blanchard said.

Everyone stared at the teacher, probably wondering if this was some kind of trick. She didn't seem the type to lure students into trouble, though. She looked…completely harmless. She couldn't have been more than 28 or 29, with skin pale as chalk dust and hair so black it seemed soaked in ink. It was cut in the pageboy style, which gave the woman an artsy, gentle look.

Emma thought for sure no one would dare raise their hand, but to her surprise, Ruby's hand went up.

"I'm sorry you both feel that way," said Miss Blanchard.

Now comes the detention, Emma thought.

"I don't think ten is too many," Miss Blanchard continued, "so I'm going to ask you to give it a try. However, if we're halfway through the semester and things are too overwhelming, maybe we can renegotiate."

Emma was speechless. That was the most…human…a teacher had ever been with her.

Miss Blanchard moved on to passing out the syllabus, and the class continued without drama. Emma didn't go on liking Ms. Blanchard for much longer, though. As she looked over the syllabus and saw not one, but two, Shakespeare plays, she more or less decided the woman was pure evil.

"Hey, talk to me a second," Miss Blanchard said at the end of class.

Emma was headed out the door, the last one out. She'd waited so she could leave without anyone trying to talk to her.

"Yeah?" Emma said.

The teacher sat behind her desk, hands folded. "You're new to town."

Emma stared at her blankly.

"So am I," Miss Blanchard said with a small smile.

"Really? You seemed like one of the natives."

Emma's tone had been more condescending than she intended, but Miss Blanchard just laughed.

"Pretty small town, huh?" the teacher said.

"Like, microscopic. Where are you from?"

"NYC."

"Philly," Emma said.

So they were both from the city. Emma felt momentarily understood—right before she felt incredibly weird to be chatting it up with a teacher. After school, for that matter.

"Well, I better motor," Emma said.

"Wait a minute," Miss Blanchard said. "If you ever need anything—homework help, or just to talk—I'm around. All right?"

Emma couldn't help noticing the pitiful way the woman was looking at her all of a sudden.

"What'd you read my file or something?" Emma said, feeling her face burn red.

"Excuse me?"

"You're looking at me like I'm a stray in a TV commercial. You feel bad for me."

"Emma, I don't feel bad for you."

"Look, maybe they sent out some kind of email about me, but I'm fine. You can quit the nice teacher act."

Miss Blanchard started to respond, but Emma was already gone.

If there was anything that made Emma angry, it was people feeling bad for her. She didn't want to be pitied. She wasn't some helpless little kid.

She did feel rotten for being such a jerk to Miss Blanchard, but the way the woman had been looking at her, with big puppy-dog eyes and a furrowed brow, had just made something in Emma snap.

She would not allow herself to be pitied. Not by anyone.

She was in a bad mood that night at dinner, which David, bless his soul, seemed to have picked up on, because he speared pieces of his pork chop into his mouth in silence. Emma wasn't eating much, just pushing around her Rice-A-Roni and occasionally sighing loudly. In spite of herself, she wished her mother were here. She'd have been snorting along while Emma told her all about Regina, Class President From Hell.

She let out another long sigh.

"You okay?" David said. He'd changed out of his sheriff's uniform, and wore a tattered T-shirt that said "BOB'S FISH FRY" on the front. He only wore it three or four times a week.

"Why do you ask?" Emma said.

"Well, you're breathing like a rhinoceros."

She gave her Rice-A-Roni another push with her fork. "Sorry."

"You didn't answer my question. Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Emma said. "Fine."

"You sure?"

Part of her wanted to be herself—tell him outright that today had sucked, and that there were some seriously screwed up kids in this town, and why the hell did he have to live in the middle of nowhere, anyway?

The other part—the part that managed to be angry with him and want to be good enough for him at the same time—didn't want to tell him anything. It was amazing the way she could feel like he didn't deserve to know about her life—and fear what he would think of her if he did—all at once.

"Uh huh," she said.

"All right," he said. He chewed for a few seconds before adding, "Did you…enjoy school today?"

Emma threw him a death stare.

"Dumb question?" he said.

"Yeah."

"Was today absolutely terrible?"

And there it was: that fatherly concern, that tone in his voice that told her he just wanted, more than anything, for her to be all right.

It comforted her, but it also broke her in half.

"I'll be okay," she said.

She sure hoped it was true.

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