Emily was seven years old when she first talked to Lydia Martin.
The bright yellow classroom had been ripe with giggling and chattering when the nine-year-old kids were doing their work. Scott and Stiles, the two boys sitting at her table, were talking about police cars or chases or something boyish that Emily wasn't listening to. Stiles did an awful lot of talking. She stared down at the piece of paper on her desk and tried to concentrate, but the hyperactive boy next to her couldn't control his hands. He would touch anything he could reach, and would sometimes grab her pink pencil pouch until Scott gave it back to her.
Their teacher, Miss White, got annoyed with Stiles a lot. The brown haired boy was smart, smarter than Emily at least (but who wasn't), and she had seen him fill out his numeracy worksheets in a minute flat. He found the work too easy, she had realized. Her parents complained to her teacher that the reason that Emily couldn't focus on her reading and writing was because of the Sherriff's son, that she was a very bright little girl when she wasn't distracted and that she really had ought to be moved up a level or two in order to challenge her more.
Emily knew that it wasn't Stiles fault at all, it was /her/ fault. Her brain's fault. As she stared down at the blank paper and up to the blackboard, the numbers became a jumble of lines and curves that she couldn't recognize and Emily shut her eyes tight, trying to fix the mess of chalk. She opened her eyes again and standing in front of her, obstructing her view of the board, was the new girl. Lydia Martin. The entire class was in awe of her since she was first introduced to them a week ago.
Lydia Martin was shorter than Emily, Her clothes were neat and crisp, her hair braided, and a Tiffany charm bracelet was hanging from her small wrist. Her hair was the hair the colour of cheese puffs. "No, no, no." Stiles had shaken his head when Emily had observed her ginger hair. "Strawberry blonde." The fidgety boy had a crush on the new girl, but Emily wasn't the type of little girl to gossip. Besides, she didn't really want to talk to the pretty girl.
Emily had tried not to be angry when Miss White put Lydia in the green group with Stiles. That was the group where that the smart kids were in. She was in the red group.
Lydia stood in front of her now, arms crossed over her chest and Emily saw Stiles smiling dreamily from the corner of her eye, whilst Scott laughed at his friend. But Lydia was looking at her, with large grey eyes filled with curiosity.
"What are you doing?" The girl asked. Emily tried to think of a response that wouldn't sound weird.
"The numbers are jumbling up." She explained. "I'm trying to fix them in my head."
Lydia cocked her head to one side, and for a brief, scary moment Emily thought she was going to laugh or call her stupid. Everyone thought she was stupid, even if they didn't say it out loud. Lydia simply said, "That's pretty clever." and flipped her braid to one side.
Emily wasn't scared to speak to her anymore. She let go of the pencil on her desk with sweaty palms and smiled. "We have the same bag." Emily had noticed when she had seen Lydia walking into the playground. Her bag pack was pink and she loved it.
Lydia nodded. "We do." She agreed. And with that, the girl turned on her heels and walked from their table, settling back down at her seat beside Heather. Emily looked at Stiles' dreamy expression and smiled.
She thought for a moment that she might like Lydia Martin more than him, but simply shook of the feeling and fixed the bow in her hair.
Emily was thirteen when she started her period.
Lydia's had started already. Her mother had called her an 'early bloomer', whatever that was supposed to mean. Her best friend was first to do everything. Get boobs, have a boyfriend, finish tests. The world was an infinite amount of firsts for Lydia Martin, and Emily always lagged behind, watching her victories.
Emily glared down at her underwear, ripping out a pad from it covers grumpily. Lydia stood outside the door, no doubt fixing her hair or texting Danny on her Nokia. Emily frowned when the voice from the other side of the door was understanding, and a little sympathetic.
"Are you okay, Em?" Lydia asked.
"I'm fine!" Emily shouted back, a little too firmly. She was angry with her best friend for…well, nothing really. Emily couldn't explain it, not whilst she was sticking the underside of a pad to her panties.
She ran her hands under the faucet and went out into the hall, her stomach aching with cramp. Lydia stood there, leaning against the wall. "Danny says hey."
Her and Lydia really liked Danny. He was honest and funny and they both knew he was gay, even if he didn't yet. He was a friend to Jackson Whittemore, who lived a few blocks away from her. His family was super rich and he was a little bit mean sometimes, but he had really cool hair and would be nice to them sometimes. Lydia giggled when she kissed Danny, but Emily knew she really wanted to kiss Jackson. That was fine by her, so sometimes she joined in with kissing Danny too. Once she had even kissed Lydia, and Lydia said that it was only a game, really.
Emily grumbled all the way up the stairs and up to her room, where Lydia had laid out a big pile of magazines, insisting it would make her feel better. It would normally be embarrassing, having Lydia read the newest Teen Vogue to her like a baby, but Emily sat and painted Lydia's toenails blue and felt a little bit better. She couldn't read that great, and Lydia really liked the sound of her own voice.
They sat like that for a while, until it started to go dark and Lydia went downstairs to get them some ice cream. Emily stretched out on her bed, pulled the lime green scrunchie out of her hair and turned on the Kelly Clarkson album that she and Lydia had split with their allowance on. She walked to her desk, the pain in her stomach now a gentle throb. Emily looked down at the English essays that Lydia had made two, slightly different, copies of. Lydia's mother was a wedding planner, so she had a really neat printer that she used to print invites with. Emily ran her fingers over the embossed pink lettering that she could make no sense of and sighed.
Suddenly she heard a shrill scream echo through her house, high and piercing. It stung her ears as it bounced off the walls and Emily felt like she had burst an eardrum. She ran down the stairs, leaping the steps two at a time and to the kitchen. Were there burglars? Had Lydia cut herself?
Lydia was standing next to the island, the fridge door wide open. Her freshly painted feet were surrounded by a pool of smashed bowl and Ben and Jerry's, blood from a gash in her food colouring it pink. Lydia's mouth hung open, as the loud scream stopped abruptly.
She stared at Emily, wide eyes rimmed with fear. Emily ran over to her, her feet being nipped by the broken shards of china. "What's wrong?" She asked, almost frantically. She expected Lydia to shout, to scream bloody murder or point out thieves in the night.
The ginger girl shook her head, amber curls bouncing around her face. "I-I don't know…"
Lydia called her mother, saying that she wanted to go home and if she could please pick her up. Emily never said anything more to Lydia about the sharp scream than still rung in her ears, and definitely not to Mrs. Martin. Emily and Lydia never discussed it after that night, but she had a funny feeling that that would not be the last time Lydia would have an episode like that. She walked back up the stairs and to her room, her stomach now riddled with cramps, and turned off the Kelly CD.
She tried not to think of Lydia again as she crawled under her duvet.
When Emily was fourteen, she hated Chemistry.
She stood at her locker, listening to Lydia talk about the new episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's her and Lydia show, even though they aren't specifically allowed to watch it sometimes. They watched reruns on Emily's cable TV and giggled about how cute the guys are and how much they loved Buffy Summers.
Emily hated being a freshman. She scanned her locker, pulling out her dog-eared Chemistry textbook. High school was hard. Emily's dyslexia was getting worse. It was a breeze for Lydia, though. She got average grades. The juniors would stare at the ginger girl as she passed in the hallway, and Lydia loved it.
"Why don't you ever wear the pink scarf I bought you?" Lydia enquires, fishing through her own locker.
Emily shrugged. "It doesn't really match any of the skirts I have."
The shorter girl flipped her hair to one side. "I could totally lend you the cutest blue miniskirt." Lydia was fashion crazy, like Emily. They loved sharing clothes of different textures and cuts and patterns. Clothes were easy. You didn't have to read material.
Emily looked over Lydia's shoulder to see a tall boy with blonde hair standing behind her awkwardly. He cleared his throat to get them to notice him, and Lydia raised an eyebrow. Emily grimaced. She had seen this boy before. His name was Isaac Lahey, and he was in her and Lydia's Chemistry class. He was quiet and painfully shy and the seat beside him was always empty.
Emily looked at him standing at their lockers, looking terrified. He was cute, she had thought.
"Yes?" Lydia asked, a little rudely.
Isaac rubbed the back of his neck. His clothes were a little bit dirty, too big, Emily noticed. He had an ugly bruise on his cheek.
"Um, hi." He mumbled. He looked between Lydia and Emily, and Emily smiled sympathetically. Lydia was a huge brat when she wanted to be.
"Do I know you?" Lydia countered.
"I-I'm in your Chemistry class…" Emily saw Isaac ear's turn read and she turned back to her locker. "Isaac Lahey?"
Lydia shook her head slowly, curls bouncing, as if to say she had no clue who he was. She didn't of course. Lydia wasn't very observant. There was an awkward pause and Emily pretend to look for something in her bag.
"Well, I was, uh, wondering if you would like to go out…" Another pause. "With… with me?"
Emily groaned internally. Poor unsuspecting Isaac. She didn't blame him, of course. Lydia was gorgeous. And, well, Emily was definitely /not/ gay, but she would've said that Lydia had nice curves. She bit her lip; waiting for whatever blunt refusal that Lydia would throw at him.
"Sweetie," She started patronizingly, humour filling her voice. "Come back when the bike you ride to school has an engine, not a chain."
Emily glanced back at Isaac when he walked off, red faced and probably suicidal. "That was harsh, Lyd."
Lydia turned back to her locker and shrugged. "He'll get over it." She said simply, and continued reapplying her lip-gloss.
Emily pulled out her own lipstick and looked at herself in the mirror. Her and Lydia carried their lipsticks like weapons. "I thought he was pretty cute." She tried to rectify the situation, but when Lydia said no, she meant no.
"Ugh, please." Lydia smacked her pink lips together. "He was like a desperate puppy."
Emily dropped the subject, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
The next time that she saw Isaac Lahey was in Tuesday fifth hour Chemistry, the class that the three of them shared. He had another bruise on his face. This one looked a little sorer, purple blossoming on his cheekbone. He looked at her and Lydia and immediately hung his head down, much too embarrassed to look at them. He was lucky that Lydia hadn't told Jackson about the date proposal. The poor kid would probably have had broken a finger or two.
Emily slid into her seat and shot a smile at Isaac. He didn't notice, of course. She slid the large textbook out of her bag and fell into the sleepy trance that always took over in fifth period Chemistry. Emily tried to pay attention to the boring teacher, but she just could not bring herself to. She was rambling on about some sort of project. Emily would pair up with Lydia, anyway. She always did the work whilst Emily cut out pictures from books. It was a good arrangement. Their teacher, Mrs. Madden was old with /horrifically/ laddered tights and cheap drugstore lipstick on her teeth. Yikes. That reminded her to reapply her gloss.
Just as the shimmering Covergirl gloss slid over her lips, a firm voice broke her lip product induced daydream. "Emily. Maybe if you stopped worrying about your lipstick and more about this class, you wouldn't be failing." Emily felt her cheeks turn hot. "Beside Lahey."
Shit.
"Actually, miss, it's gloss." She said loudly, which caused a few giggles in the class. Emily grabbed her bag moodily and her heels clicked against the floor as she slammed it down beside Isaac Lahey.
Their teacher only turned back to the whiteboard and continued teaching. After a few moments, Emily turned to look at the boy sitting next to her. He was looking at her too, and his head quickly snapped back to the front of the class. That gave Emily a view of the green tinted bruise on his cheek.
"What happened?" She whispered. "To your cheek?"
Isaac frowned and looked confused, as if nobody had asked him that before. Maybe they hadn't, Emily thought sadly.
He tugged at his grey sweater. "Lacrosse." He mumbled.
It was a lie.
Emily was good at telling lies. Probably because she lied so much herself.
And when the bell rang for lunch, and Lydia grabbed Emily and linked their arms, Emily almost forgot about Isaac Lahey and his bruise. She didn't though, not really. It lingered in the back of her mind. She wondered if she should have said anything.
Isaac Lahey and his bruise lingered, untouched, in the back of her mind for two years.
Emily had just turned sixteen when she started counting calories.
Not because she was fat or anything, because she wasn't. She just wanted to eat healthier, because Beacon Hill's High cafeteria food was, quite frankly, artificial shit.
She sat at their lunch table, with Allison and Lydia and Danny, reading the back of her juice bottle. Some guys called Stiles and Scott were sitting with them, which was new. Jackson hated them.
Jackson turned up wearing his usual smirk. He turned to the guy sitting at the head of their table (was it Dave?), and ordered him to move. Typical Jackson.
"Why don't you ever ask Danny to move?" The kid demanded, in an apparent burst of bravery.
"Because I don't look at his girlfriend's coin slot." Danny responded ass the boy moved and Jackson sat down.
A few minutes later, and Danny and Jackson were chatting about lacrosse. Allison was poking at her food. She was adjusting to Beacon Hills pretty well, Emily thought. She liked that Scott kid. Emily had a certain knack for figuring out who was crushing on who.
"Lyd, how many calories are in cranberry juice?" She asked, still squinting down at the red label.
"Uh, one twenty?" Lydia guessed, taking a sip of her own water. "It's loaded with sugar."
Emily grimaced, setting the bottle back down on the table. Okay, so no more cranberry juice.
"You're sweet enough, Em." Danny joked sarcastically.
She grinned and elbowed him playfully. "Shut up."
They started talking about bus driver that had been found dead. The police thought that he had been killed. It made a change to the boring news that usually happened, but it still made Emily a little bit uneasy. She remembered that Stile's dad was the sheriff. He probably knew something about them.
"I heard it was a cougar." Danny said, taking a bite of his sandwich.
Jackson twirled his fork in his spaghetti, "I heard it was a mountain lion."
Lydia rolled her eyes beside her. "A cougar is a mountain lion."
The entire table turned to look at her, and Emily raised an eyebrow. Lydia knew that?
"….Right?" Lydia looked at them.
Then Stiles started talking about who the bus driver was, and where he was found. Emily just wondered who would have killed him. Beacon Hills was a pretty average town in Cali, nothing extraordinary ever happened there.
Lydia obviously didn't want to talk about it anymore, and said. "Can we talk about something slightly more fun, please? Like, go, where are we going tomorrow night?" She turned to Allison. "You said you and Scott were hanging out tomorrow, right? Me and Jacks were wanting to do something."
Hah! Emily had been right. Allison didn't have any time to reply.
"Well, I am not sitting home again watching lacrosse videos, so if the four of us are hanging out, we are doing something fun."
The four of them. Emily tried not to be bitter. It was a double date, and she wasn't seeing anyone. Emily knew that it was Lydia's way of trying to get Allison and Scott together, so she didn't mind as much. Her and Lydia would go shopping later or whatever. Maybe she'd asked Danny if he wanted to do something.
The conversation switches to bowling and Emily zoned out, wondering how many calories are in her turkey sandwich.
Emily is still sixteen when she arrives to the winter formal with Danny.
It's pretty embarrassing, that she had to go to the formal with her gay best friend. Danny had an abundance of male and female callers who were dying to attend the Beacon Hills High dance with him, but he felt guilty that Em was going alone and asked if she had wanted to go stag with him.
It wouldn't ruin her night though. If there was one thing that Emily was, it was a party girl. This was proved at Lydia's annual birthday last year, when she had far too many shots fed to her by a certain Jackson Whittemore.
Sometimes when she looks at Lydia's kitchen sink she can still taste vomit. Gross.
With all the courage and old Hollywood glamour she could muster, Emily hoped out of Danny's car, straightened her red dress and made sure her corsage was on the right way. She grasped onto Danny's arm, flicking her blonde hair over her shoulder in such an 'Emily' way that it could only make her date grin.
Emily spotted Jackson's Porsche roll up into the parking lot and smiled. Allison was going to look gorgeous tonight, which Emily knew would break Scott's heart. This made her smile falter as she thought of the couple's break up. Emily felt sorry for Allison, because, after countless conversations over the phone, it was obvious that the dark haired girl was dreading coming to the Winter Formal. As Emily had explained to her, not going to the dance would only infuriate Lydia, as her lame excuses wouldn't fly around the redhead.
Allison was, as Em had expected, looking fabulous. Her hair was sitting off to the side in a messy ponytail and her dress complimented her fair skin perfectly.
"Oh my god!" Emily practically squealed as the couple walked over. "You look great!"
Allison grinned. "Thanks Em. You look amazing." Emily looked to Danny and Jackson, who were engaging in the bro fist that they always did.
"Jackson. You look handsome." Emily complimented him, remembering to keep her tone cold. He had broken up with Lydia after all, and not on good terms.
"Obviously. It's Hugo Boss."
The blonde rolled her eyes as Allison shot her an apologetic look before dragging her date off.
"What a douche." Emily rolled her eyes.
Danny simply laughed and pulled her towards the school.
The dance was going well, Emily thought, standing alone at the drinks table. She was sipping the punch that Danny had spiked. He had left her to go and dance with his boyfriend.
"Excuse me, sorry!" A voice yelled in the crowd. "Hey Em!"
The blonde laughed when she saw Scott McCall running for his life through the crowded gym hall. No doubt away from Coach Finstock.
She was right. As soon as Scott had passed her, Coach was running along hot on his trail. "McCall! I see you, McCall!" He shouted. "It's a small gym, buddy!"
When Emily looked back at Scott he had his arms wrapped awkwardly around an unsuspecting Danny.
"McCall, you're not supposed to-" Coach stopped abruptly at the sight in front of him. "What are you… What the hell are you doing?"
Suddenly, everyone in the gym hall was silent. The band had cut off and it seemed that all the high schoolers had stopped to watch what all the yelling was about. Emily couldn't help but smile at what she knew was coming next.
"Yes, Coach?" Asked Scott, as he held Danny closer.
"Okay, hold on." Coach was aware of everyone in the gym staring at him. "I was just saying… You don't think I was… Dance! Dance everybody! It's a party!"
Emily burst out in laughter as Coach Finstock raced away, yelling. The band had begun playing a slow song.
Standing beside the drinks table for what had seemed like forever, Emily finally noticed that she hadn't seen her best friend for the entire night. Lydia had gone to the Winter Formal with Stiles Stilinski. Her stomach began to churn.
The tall blonde pushed through the crowd of slow dancing couples, desperately searching for Stiles. Something was wrong. She could feel it.
Emily eventually spotted him sitting by himself at a table. "Have you seen Lydia?" She demanded.
"Uh," Stiles' eyes wandered up her legs, and Emily rolled her eyes as the teenage boy dry swallowed. "No, why?"
"I just need to find her." She said dryly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Stiles nodded, getting up from the table. He suddenly realized how long Lydia had been gone for, also. The two teens pushed past the gym doors and into the corridor. Stiles dialed Lydia's number before they reached the doors that led outside.
Standing outside, was a thoroughly shaken Jackson.
"Hey!" Emily shouted, nudging Stiles out of the way. "Jacks, have you seen Lydia?"
He didn't answer and the already moody Emily was starting to get worried. She looked to Stiles, who looked even more confused than her and then back to Jackson.
"Jackson?" Em asked.
His shoulders started to shake. "I was… I was out behind the school. And I…"
Emily was furious. "What the hell did you do?" She shouted at him.
When he didn't reply, Stiles and Emily made their way further away from the school and into the cold night. Stiles didn't say anything, he had gone rather quiet. They made their way around the back of the high school and suddenly, the lights on the lacrosse field lit up with booms that rang in Emily's ears.
"Why the hell are the field lights on?" Stiles asked, shielding his eyes.
Emily squinted, scanning across the field until she came across the familiar figure of Lydia. She sighed, her worry washing away. Until…
"Who the hell is that?" Emily asked Stiles, her eyes as wide as saucers.
"No," Stiles whispered, also watching the scene unfold. Then louder again, "No."
Emily watched as Stiles ignored her, racing forward across the field. Emily has pumped hard and her only instinct was to kick off her heels and begin bolting towards the middle of the field.
"Lydia!" Stiles was screaming. "Run!"
Everything was in slow motion, Stiles running, Lydia looking back at them with a confused expression. But what happened next was the most terrifying thing that Emily had seen in her life. The man in the middle of the field's face shifted, what looked like fangs growing out of his gums. The blonde's already poor vision turned blurry, and all she saw next was Lydia's limp body hit the ground.
The man stepped closer to her and that's when Emily pushed herself faster, just as Stiles was doing.
"Stop!" She screamed, as if her life depended on it. Em had finally gotten close enough to the man to swing at him.
He beat her to it, a claw reaching out and pounding into her skull, knocking the blonde down to the grassy field beneath. Emily landed beside Lydia, dizziness overcoming her.
Darkness began to cloud her vision.
Scott and Stiles finally decided that they needed to tell Emily about everything that had happened in the events leading up to that night.
However pissed she was that no one had told her sooner, no matter how many questions she asked, and however many times she tried to insist that it was a joke, they owed her the truth.
And, it turns out; the truth is a hard pill to swallow.
"This is a bad idea," Emily murmured as her, Scott and Stiles walked through the hallways of the hospital.
"You say that about all of my ideas," Stiles muttered back.
Scott snorted. "That's because they're all bad ideas."
Stiles stopped, turning around and looking at both Emily and Scott. "Do you want to know what's going on with her or not?"
He was referring, of course, to Lydia who was still in a comatose state. A few days ago, they had moved her from the ICU, which Emily guessed was a good thing. She was connected to two machines every time they had visited.
"Lead the way." Scott sighed.
Stiles turned around and resumed walking towards Lydia's room. The door was cracked open slightly, and Emily pushed forward to peek in first.
The room was clear. The only person in it was Lydia, who was still in a coma. Emily crouched slightly slipped into the hospital room, followed by Scott and then Stiles.
The three teenagers were all on the floor, all hoping that the door would close seamlessly. However, as Stiles began to close it, it let out a loud creaking sound. He cringed and paused for a moment and Emily let out a small, frustrated sigh. The sound got louder as Stiles pushed the door further.
When the door finally closed, Stiles fumbled to lock it before falling on the floor. Both Scott and Emily glared at him.
"What?" He whispered.
Emily rolled her eyes as she got to her feet. She walked over Lydia in her hospital bed. "I can't believe we're doing this."
"Don't you want to know what's going on?" Stiles insisted.
Emily groaned while Scott said, "Who's doing it?"
It meant pulling up Lydia's gown and removing the bandage from her wound. Both of the teenage boys looked at Emily.
She was already pulling back the bed sheet (as if she'd let the boys do it). Lifting the hospital gown far enough to reach the bandage, Em slowly began peeling it back.
"What the…?" The blonde girl muttered under her breath.
"It's not completely healed?" Asked Stiles.
The bite was still marked on Lydia's stomach. "Not even close."
"But the bites not healing like it did with mine," Scott said. "Which means, she's not a werewolf…"
Stiles frowned. "But Peter said either the bite turns you or kills you. And if she's not dying and she's not a werewolf…"
"Then what the fuck is she?" Emily finished, looking down at her best friend.
The three friends looked at each other, Emily with fear, Scott with panic, and Stiles with confusion, because for once, he didn't have the answer.