Chapter 7- Emmett's Story.

Out in the sunshine I slow down, and when I get to the Jeep I realise I have no keys, and climb up to perch dispiritedly on the hood. Less than ten minutes later Emmett comes jogging through the parking lot, talking on his phone.

"Yeah, it's okay. She's here at the Jeep." Emmett pauses and nods. "Sure. Okay, see you tonight then." He drops his phone into his pocket and leans against the Jeep. "You want to go home?"

Home. I wish I knew where that was. "Yes please."

Emmett doesn't take me straight home though. Instead he pulls the Jeep in beside the diner and looks at me. "Carlisle said you didn't have any lunch."

"I'm not hungry."

"But I am." Emmett looks at me pleadingly. "You should eat. Esme gave me money to treat you, and she'll be mad if I don't do it. Please…you wouldn't make me get in trouble."

Oh, those dimples! I hesitate for a moment and then acquiesce. "Okay."

The diner is busy, and there are several people around our age sitting and eating. They call out enthusiastic greetings to Emmett and he replies to them, but I'm relieved when he heads past their table and slides into a booth down at the end. I can feel the curious stares on me but I just walk straighter and don't look around as I sit opposite him and pick up a menu.

"Hi Emmett, long time no see." The waitress is our age, and she smiles flirtatiously at Emmett as she gets out her pencil and order pad. "Do you know what you want?"

"Hey Cara. I'll have a burger and fries, thanks. And a chocolate milkshake. Rosalie, what do you want? The burgers are really good here."

The waitress narrows her eyes slightly. I can tell she's not happy to see me sitting here with Emmett, and she's already looked at my blonde hair and big boobs and made up her mind about me. I give her a cool smile. "I'll try the burger then. And a diet coke, thank you."

She sashays off to the servery and I raise my eyebrows at Emmett. "Girlfriend of yours?"

Emmett grins sheepishly. "Nah, just a girl from school." He fiddles with the salt cellar. "Are you okay then? After this morning I mean. I see they took your cast off."

"Yeah." I wiggle my fingers. "It feels weird actually. But I'm glad it's gone." I laugh. "I can't wait to do something to my hair besides brush it!"

"It looks good like that," Emmett says, and I notice the faintest pink flush on his cheeks.

"Thank you." I give him a small smile. It's funny how good I suddenly feel, sitting here surrounded by strangers who know nothing about me. I think how it must look to them…just a girl in jeans, sitting here and laughing with this good looking boy who clearly thinks I'm pretty. I smile at him. "So is this like, the hang out or something?"

Emmett chuckles. "It's Forks…there's not a lot of choices. But you can walk here from school and the burgers are good."

We make small talk until the food arrives, and then Emmett's too busy eating to talk for a little while. He's right that the burgers are good, and although I can't eat it all I make a good dent in it before I push it across to Emmett. "You can finish that if you want to…" Jasper always eats whatever I can't, and looking at the size of Emmett I'm guessing he must eat a similar amount.

"Thanks, I will." He accepts it unselfconsciously and I watch him as he devours it. I realise that I like watching him eat. I like the way he concentrates on what he's doing and enjoys his food.

"What?" he asks me as he swallows the last mouthful. He wipes his mouth with a napkin and looks down at himself. "You've been staring at me for five minutes…have I spilled something? Got something in my teeth?"

"No," I shake my head and fiddle with my napkin. "I was just wondering…can I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"How come you're almost nineteen, and just about to start your last year of high school?" I feel a slight flush of embarrassment at being so nosy when so far I have barely given him the time of day, but Emmett doesn't seem too bothered.

"Oh, that. It's no big thing- you know I was seven when the Cullens adopted me, right? I didn't go to school before then, so I couldn't read or write or anything. I was really small too, so when they enrolled us in school they put Alice in kindergarten with Edward, and me in first grade. They thought I'd find it easier to fit in that way." He laughs. "Of course I was only little because I'd never had enough to eat and I grew about a foot in six months once they started feeding me, but you know…their intentions were good."

"How come they adopted you?" I ask hesitantly. The Cullens seem so privileged, and yet Emmett spoke so casually of not having enough to eat. "If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine," I add hastily.

Emmett shrugs. "I don't mind. It's not any kind of secret…it's the usual story. We lived out country in Tennessee, my momma was a part time hooker, part time junkie and my dad ran off sometimes after I was born. Alice was born when I was about three. When Momma was okay things were good, and when she wasn't I took care of Alice as best I could, and when things got bad we'd go and stay with my grandma. After Grandma died though we didn't have any place safe to go, and then momma's new man started dealing meth and momma was either high or hooking, so eventually the county got involved and took me and Alice away."

"That's not exactly a 'usual' story!" I say, a little shocked.

Emmett laughed. "No, maybe not," he conceded. "But it's my story…it's what I know. I find it harder to imagine being born with a silver spoon in my mouth like you and Jas and Edward were." He winks at me.

"How did you come to the Cullens, then?" I ask, since he seems open to talking about it.

"Esme worked at the food pantry in town," Emmett says reflectively. "My momma used it sometimes and Alice and I would go with her. Esme would always talk to us and give us something extra in the food boxes, or something else. She gave Alice a dress once, when she needed one. When things got really bad at home and Alice got hungry I went begging there by myself. I made up all kinds of crazy stories about why we were there without our momma, and Esme pretended to believe me and made us sandwiches." He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. "Like I said, I didn't go to school and after my grandma died Alice and I pretty much never saw anyone except junkies getting their fix and momma's johns. Esme was like the only normal person I ever spoke to, and the only person who didn't treat me and Alice like we were scum just because of what Momma did."

"What happened?" I breathe. I've never heard a story like this- we don't have the money the Cullens have, but I've grown up in a world of solid upper middle class privilege. I know about booze and party drugs, not meth and prostitution.

"Esme contacted child services when I started showing up at the food pantry on my own too often. But no one came out to investigate until one day Alice got into something she shouldn't have from the kitchen," Emmett says matter-of-factly. "Keeping in mind they were cooking meth in there and no one ever did any cleaning it's a miracle neither of us had done it before. But Alice got bad sick. Momma was too out of it to do anything and I didn't know what to do…all I could think of in the end was going and asking Esme to help. Luckily she was working at the food pantry that day. She kept me with her and sent Carlisle with an ambulance and the police. That was pretty much it- we didn't go home after that. Esme and Carlisle had adopted Edward about a year and a half before that and had all their paperwork in with child services so it was pretty straightforward for them to be approved as foster parents for us. Momma could have got us back, but she didn't follow any of the conditions so the courts terminated her rights and Carlisle and Esme petitioned for adoption."

"That's horrible," I say softly.

Emmett smiles, and shrugs a little. "That's life, you know? Sometimes awful shit happens. And sometimes good things happen too…we came to Carlisle and Esme and Alice doesn't even remember anything about Tennessee. As far as she's concerned she's always been Alice Cullen and that's the way she wants it."

"She doesn't remember any of it?"

"No," Emmett shakes his head. "She knows what happened, but she was only four and whatever she took that made her so sick at the end messed her up for a little while. They think that probably even wiped out a bit of her memory. Like I said, she likes it that way. There wasn't anything good about Tennessee for her."

"But you remember?"

"Oh yeah. I was seven when I came to Carlisle and Esme, and it wasn't all bad before that. I loved my grandma, and when Momma wasn't too fucked up on drugs we had some fun." He looked at me steadily. "She wasn't a bad person. She just…made some bad choices, I guess."

"I'm sorry," I say awkwardly. I don't know if it's the right thing to say, but it's all I can think of. I am sorry that he has had to go through all that in his past. My childhood wasn't perfect, not with my mother sick on and off from the time I was six until she died when Jasper and I were eleven, but Emmett has suffered in a whole different way.

"That's okay. It is what it is, you know? I can't change it now." Emmett swallows the last of his milkshake. "And it wasn't always easy, but my life is good now. I've been lucky."

That's what they all said to me when it happened. That I was lucky. Lucky that they didn't scar my face, lucky my skull fracture didn't require surgery, lucky that they found me and got to the hospital as quickly as they did, lucky that I didn't die…

I don't feel lucky.

I push the thought away and then focus on Emmett. "What happened to her?" I ask hesitantly. "Your mother. Do you know?"

"She died. Only a few months after the adoption was finalised. It was the drugs…it was always going to happen that way. She'd been using since she was a teenager, and my grandma once told me that the longest she'd ever been able to stay clean was about a year, when I was a baby. After that she managed a few months here and there, but she always went back to it." Emmett frowns, a little tiredly. "I don't think about her much. I think it's sad, that she wasn't strong enough to beat it. And I'm really glad that Alice and I got away from that and that Carlisle and Esme took us in. They're good people Rosalie…really, they are."

I nod slowly acknowledging his point. They've been more than good to take Jasper and I in like this, and I haven't exactly made it easy for them so far. Thinking deeply, I reach for my purse and begin counting out money.

"No, I've got it." Emmett pulls out his wallet. "Seriously, Esme gave me cash for this. Put yours away…save it for next time you take me out to lunch." He reaches across and covers my hand with his, and for a moment I am aware of nothing but the feel of his skin on mine.

I pull my hand away. "You think a lot of yourself, don't you?"

Emmett laughs and stands up, taking my hand again and pulling me with him. "I just tell it like I see it," he says teasingly. "Come on, we pay up front." He's still holding my hand, towing me along, as he walks up to the counter and passes the money over to the man there with a few laughing words. He drops the change in the tip jar and takes a handful of mints from the bowl then leads me outside, and somehow his hand, big and warm, keeps holding mine and this time I don't pull away.