Not A Pretty Girl:Alchemy Dream

Summary: Jay's made a decision that will alter the course of his life. Is he really sure about this? How does Emma feel about it, is she relieved or less-than-thrilled about his revelation? Meanwhile, J.T. faces his greatest fear about Emma; that he's really for really real in love with her. What can he do, what part will he play in her life now that she sort of indirectly belongs to Jay?

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"Jay, why are we parking?"

Jay pulled his car into the Fun Fair arcade parking lot, and reaching down, put the car in neutral. His blue eyes focused on an indirect point in space as the drips raced down the windshield. A clap of thunder broke his trance and he looked at Emma.

"Look, I'm really sorry about all this. I..I know that this isn't the right time in either of our lives to do this. It really isn't."

"Jay, I don't have a choice. But you do. Is that fair?" Emma's voice maintained calm, though the events played out in her head.

He didn't want to have any part of this.

"Emma, look...I like you, but I don't...I don't you know."

"Love me?" she offered, eyes overcast.

"Yeah."

"Just say it Jay."

"Wha? Why?" Jay looked straight forward, confused.

"I just want to hear it."

"No you don't."

"SAY it, Jay!"

"FINE! I Don't Love You, Emma!" Jay shouted, anguish penetrating his voice. He slammed his head back onto the plush headrest as he noticed a tear run down her shaking face. "Look, Emma, I don't love you, but...", he reached over to her, but didn't know what to do. He pulled her with his right arm across the gap created by the gearshift until her head bumped against his. "..but I won't abandon you." She sniffed and looked up at him through her eyelashes. "I can't.", he whispered.

Emma was crushed by his words, but comforted by his actions. It was easy to believe that all she needed was to be touched, to feel that warm connection provided by his rough skin, but she couldn't believe it was true, the one thing that she feared. He didn't love her.

"Look, Emma...I'll get a job. I'll help finance an apartment or whatever. But, I have to graduate, and so do you. We'll never be able to provide for a child if we don't at least have a high school diploma." She was surprised at how he had thought this out. She blinked at him. He noticed her surprise, and sighed loudly.

"Look, just because I'm not in love with you doesn't mean I don't care about you."

Emma directed her eyes out of the passenger window to buy herself some time to get the tears back into her ducts. She tried opening her eyes wide to coax them to go under her lid, and then blinked over and over. Well, at least he would help, she thought, trying her damnedest to be rational. After all, what had she expected?

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In a nearby suburb 4 blocks from Fort Simpson-Nelson, J.T. Yorke pondered his will to live. His best friend, Toby lay on the bottom bunk of his bed and threw peppermints at J.T. while watching Sci-fi channel.

"Tobes...stoppit. I'm not in the mood." Toby frowned and went to his friend.

"Sorry. I can't believe they didn't suspend, no, EXPEL Jay for kicking your butt."

"Tobes..." J.T.'s pride kicked in.

"Sorry. I mean he's on probation from the shooting. Ms. H. only let him come back on the conditions that he be a perfect little angel. Well, at least you get to sleep over tonight. Like old times." Toby's innocent smile brought one to J.T.'s face.

"Yeah. Like old times. I miss things, Tobes, you know, when it was you, me, Manny and Emma...it's like the older we get, the further we drift."

"Well, we still have them, J.T., they're just kinda moving forward."

"With all the wrong people."

"What are you talking about?" Toby walked over to where his bad aim had cast the mints and ate one off the floor.

"Emma."

"Whubout'er?" His words were muffled as he chewed.

"She's...changed." He looked at J.T.'s reflection in the window.

He felt a real concern for J.T. He hadn't quite been the same since Emma contracted gonorrhea last spring. His reaction was a mix of disgust and concern for her. Toby had long suspected, since the beginning of the summer, that Emma had tunneled into J.T.'s heart somehow, and in a different way. Toby had really known J.T. the longest of anyone, and he knew that beneath the class clown, the funny timely quips was something pretty delicate. He had watched J.T. as he grew up, tried to follow in his steps, get in tight with the cool kids, but found himself forever the sidekick. That was what he admired about J.T., his versatility. But he knew that whenever a girl broke his heart, he fell to ashes, and had to build up from the ground all over again.

This is why this most obvious crush on Emma scared him. Emma was Toby's first real crush, as well, and though she radiated girl-next-door charm, she was forever elusive to all men, at least, all except...

"What does Jay have that I don't, anyways?" He turned to look in the mirror. J.T. was pretty confident of what he saw. 135 lbs, 5'6, moderate tan, shaggy naturally highlighted hair, a smile that just wouldn't quit. He had come a long way from that geeky little prankster he used to be. "Why won't she..."

"Who?" Toby smiled at a magazine, playing dumb.

"Nevermind."

"J.T., I'm not retarded. I know you like her." J.T. turned to Toby and put his hands up.

"Okay, okay. Emma."

"Duh."

"Toby, we said 'duh' in 6th grade. Let's attempt to move on now." J.T. said, trying to redirect the subject.

"Just tell her, James Tiberius Yorke. What could go wrong?"

"You have no idea." Toby looked up and threw the magazine down.

"You're right, so tell me!"

"Toby..."

"Come on! What's the big secret? I'm her friend too."

"Look, Toby...you have to promise not to tell. Anyone."

"Cross my heart." J.T. sighed and examined Toby's face for any hint of future betrayal. Satisfied, he spoke.

"Emma's uh...pregnant."

"With Jay's?"

"Yeah! Can you belie...hey, why aren't you surprised?"

"What, you are?" Toby, suddenly disinterested, walked to the door. "You want some juice?" He began walking out of his room and down the hall.

"Yeah, I mean, WAIT! Are you really not surprised?" J.T. chased him to the top of the stairs.

"Blackberry mocktail or orange sunrise?"

"Sunrise. Answer me!" He descended the stairs after his friend, huffing incredulously. "Do you think she's some kind of slut?" He looked at the row of school photos, 3rd through 10th of Toby and Ashley. You could tell they were at different places from the backgrounds, at least until Toby's 7th year photograph.

"No, that isn't it, it's just...it's Jay, man. He just does that to girls."

"Why don't I? And what am I going to do!" J.T. shouted, depressed and infuriated.

"Just...give in, J.T." He walked up to where J.T. had collapsed on the stairs, his head propped up on his arms. He sat next to him halfway up the staircase and put his arm around J.T. "Look, it's clearly over between you and her, before it even started. She kinda indirectly belongs to him. Unless she..."

"She wouldn't. She'll keep the baby."

"Yeah. So don't even worry about it anymore. Plenty of fish in the sea, my man." Toby smiled weakly. He could relate to the troubles of falling for the wrong girl. "Just forget about her." J.T.'s mind played a slideshow of Emma and him from 2nd grade to just a few days ago, of her in pigtails with a posicle dripping in her lap on the slide at the community playground, afraid to go down, while J.T. sat in the sand at the bottom, arms outstretched, promising to catch her.

He'd always catch her.

"I can't."

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Emma laid back on her bed, lazily punching the buttons on her cordless phone.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

"Yeah, hey?" a girl answered. Toronto's top 20 music videos played loudly in the background.

"Hey, Irene. It's Em."

"Hey Emma! What's up?"

"Not much, um, when are we going to start work on the S.S. project? I mean, I haven't even really picked a subject." Irene coughed a little, her soft alto contrasting with Emma's higher voice.

"Oh, um...I think I want to do mine on the Ten Avatars of Vishnu."

"What's that about? I don't even remember talking about that." Emma said, brushing another layer of pink paint on her short nails.

"Oh, um, it's about how Vishnu came to Earth ten times to restore order and balance. See, Vishnu represents preservation in the Trinity."
"Who are the other ones?"

"Well, Brahma represents creation, and Vishnu, and then Shiva, who represents destruction. It's like, the natural course of things, or whatever. Oh my God, I love this song!" On the other line, Emma heard Irene turn the TV up when Mariah Carey came on.

Mrs. Murray was their teacher for Spiritual Studies. Yeah, that's right. Rick's mother. Emma had felt immediate guilt when she learned this. She had remembered seeing the woman outside of Degrassi when she had dropped Rick off for his first day back after the incident with Terri McGregor, but all she could concentrate on was how much she hated Rick. Now that she looked back on things, she realized she had no right to be such a creep to him, it didn't involve her in the first place. If she had stayed out of it, she wouldn't have put herself in danger. She wouldn't have had a pistol pointed directly at her face with his finger on the trigger, a sad, betrayed smile on his face. If she'd just stay in her own business, she'd be much better off. She learned this the hard way.

She wasn't at peace yet about it. She hadn't said a word to Mrs. Murray, but had learned a great deal about her in her past 9 days at Volta Redonda Academy. Rick had been an only child, and Mrs. Murray was devastated. She was a devout Lutheran who had a PhD. in Religious Theory with a concentration in Eastern Philosophy. She spoke to them on the first day of class.

"I love the sense of peace that it leaves me with, especially after reading the Tao. I'm Christian in orientation, but the Tao helps put me at ease that my son is still part of this Earth. He has returned to the Earth, to the molecules in the sky. I can feel him whenever it rains through the soles of my feet when I walk in my garden with bare feet." The class was almost in tears when she described what happened to Rick. They had of course see it in the papers and on the news, and they knew he was a killer.

"Have you spoken to the boy he put in the wheelchair? How does he feel about all this?" Mrs. Murray looked down at the marble floor when Lucy, the young Chinese girl asked this.

"I feel forever in debt to Mr. Brooks, but you see, the best way I can help is financially. I pay a sum to his father every month into his account, but I know the best thing to do is to stay away. They don't want to see me, and I can't bear to see Jimmy paralyzed by my son's hand." Emma spoke up at this, angered that Mrs. Murray wouldn't see Jimmy. She was confident because Mrs. Murray didn't know where she came from.

"But that isn't fair! Rick put one girl in a coma for months! He put another in a wheelchair! Wouldn't the right thing to do be to accept it and show humility? Visit their families?"

"You're right, Emma, you are. I guess I just haven't divorced myself far enough from the situation to do that. I still can't accept that even though my son caused these things, he ended up dead. Terri didn't deserve her fate, but she is much better now. I've heard she's moved on to another school. Jimmy didn't deserve his fate, but he hated Rick. It's selfish, I know, but sometimes all I can think about is that my only son is dead, while the other children live." She wiped a tear from her eye and leaned her heavy frame back on her desk. She glanced around at all of the young teenage faces the girls who would undoubtedly make huge mistakes at some point. "I have trouble accepting things. And so do you. Emma? Is there anything in your life that you are having trouble accepting?"

Emma looked into her grey eyes, and began to shake. She was silent on the outside, but inside there were thousands of voices screaming. Mrs. Murray smiled slightly. "I thought so." She moved on, pacing the room and pulling out her copy of the text, reading excerpts from the first chapter. The chapter entitled In The Beginning, about creation theories.

"EMMA!" Emma snapped out of her flashback and back to Irene tapping her nail on the receiver.

"Hey, sorry. I was just thinking. I think I want to do mine on the verses of the Tao."

"Ooh, nice. Which ones?" Emma pulled out her copy of the Tao Te Ching she had bought on a whim. The textbook had excerpts, but only 10 or 15.

"I don't know just yet. I guess whichever ones inspire me...or whatever."

"Cool. Hey, babe, I gotta go, Laguna Beach is on. You watching tonight?"

"No...I don't think so. I've got a ton of research to do." Apparently their group was obsessed with the show and watched it together every night, calling each other on three-way to discuss the events with giddy voices. Emma wasn't ready to fall into pop culture hell just yet.

"Ok, babe. I'll see you tomorrow!"

"Yeah, talk to you later. Bye."

"Later!"

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1:45 a.m.

Emma laid in bed, books and papers surrounding her.

I really have to shed my bookworm ways.

She had tackled Algebra II, and finally gotten through the first chapter of her Law textbook. There was way more homework here than at Degrassi. She remembered the days when she and Manny could have a mall trip after school. All this on top of the baby she had.

Snake hadn't spoken with her in several days. Their only communication had been in grunts, and the occasional "Pass the pepper." Her mom had been more supportive. They were on good terms now, and her mother understood the pain and confusion of teen pregnancy. She had gotten past anger, disappointment and fear, and had moved on to mild-disappointment, hope for the future, and the desire to meet the "I'm sure he's a pleasant enough young" man that had knocked her up. Things were looking up in that respect.

But her head was still reeling from Jay's revelation. How could he not love her? He's slept with her, that meant that he had feelings for her, right?

Don't be a fool, Em. He'll never love you. She had held together all day since he checked her out. She stifled a scream and began bawling her eyes out. All of her stupid dreams of a happy family, dreams of packing a lunch in a little Batman box, were gone. Blown away. Why had she even thought Jay worthy of those kinds of dreams? She had no idea.

Fucker, you ruined my life!

She buried her face in her pillow and slammed her fist down, sobs racking her body. She had never felt so helpless, so hopeless. She could never give this thing in her body a good life. Jay wouldn't let her. She pulled the Tao from her covers, and tried to decipher the words through her watery eyes. She turned to the first verse, Tao 1.

Tao is beyond words, and beyond understanding.

Words may be used to speak of it, but they cannot contain it.

Tao existed before words and names, before heaven and earth, before the ten thousand things.

It is the unlimited father and mother of all limited things.

Therefore, to see beyond boundaries to the subtle heart of things, dispense with names, with concepts, with expectations and ambitions and differences.

A few words stuck with her as she turned the page.

Dispense with names, concepts, expectation and ambitions. She began thinking.

Maybe the way to keep Jay as a part of this is to let go of my desire to keep him near.

What the hell am I talking about!

The thought of letting him go when she only wanted to cling more forced more sobs from her body. She looked at another verse. Tao 3.

Therefore, the wise person sets an example by emptying her mind, opening her heart, relaxing her ambitions, relinquishing her desires, cultivating her character. Having conquered her own cravings, she can't be manipulated by anyone.

As she read these words, she relaxed her body, recognizing for the first time the basic idea here.

Just.

Chill.

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Well, I hope you liked it! I know you're probably wondering why the hell Rick's mom showed up. Well, for later chapters, I need an example of someone who has survived loss. (uh oh!) This was a long-ass chapter. Thank you to all of you that have reviewed. My utter thanks and a hundred sugar cookies to you all! Mwwaa! I'm glad I can finally be true to the theme of the story, finding peace. I'm illustrating a scene from the story, and I'd like to send it to my first 5 reviewers (with emails, lol.). It'll just be a b/w sketch, but I love to make visuals for my stories. And as always, tell me what you think! XOXO