Disclaimer: I am not Stephanie Meyer nor do I lay claim to any of her accomplishments, characters included.
That being said, I am Emberlyn Ealise and other than character names I do own all ideas behind Lines on Paper. Any thievery will result in the end of any and all works under my name on this site and depending on how popular I become that may be an issue for possible future fans. If you wouldn't steal babies then don't steal stories. Ask any writer, it's practically the same thing.

Lines on Paper
Emberlyn Ealise

It's day two of the Edward Masen lockdown experiment to see how long it takes me to crack. Lucky for me, I have Emmett. Unlucky for me, I have Emmett.

"If you'd just listened to me you wouldn't be stuck in here. I told that girl was bad news." I hate his 'I-told-you-so-attitude' more than I hate looking at his face which is quite a bit right now. It's not Bella's fault that Carlisle can't handle a little constructive criticism.

"Shut up, man. I don't want to hear it." Lying in the floor next to the bed may not have been the best way to avoid my brother but when I first laid here I thought he and I would be working out our differences. Now I'm either too comfortable or I now that when I get up my entire body is going to ache like a bitch.

"Fine, what would you like to talk about?" he asks rolling over onto his side and looking down at me.

I don't know what I want to talk about. My everyday life has now become absorbed by Bella who happens to be the last person I want to tell Emmett. The way I see it the only safe bet is to talk about the good old days, before I ruined everything. "Tell me about Alice again."

He rolls away from me and onto his back again. "Geez, aren't you a little old for bedtimes stories?" he huffs.

"No."

An exhausted sigh is all I need to hear to know I won. He used to love telling me all about her and the things that I was too young to remember. Sometimes when he talks about her I can't tell if he's just that great of a story teller or if I really do remember as the vision of a dark haired temper throwing girl springs to mind.

"Ali, little Mary-Alice, was the best thing that ever happened to our family…and you hated her." I can hear the smile in his voice so I close my eyes and let it take me to a place I forgot long ago, a cottage style house just out of town and just before the local reservoir. "When I first laid eyes on the little angel her hair was sorter than yours and I thought mom made a mistake and got a little boy…"

I stop him, "Because I wanted a boy and you didn't go with us to get her that day, right?"

He laughs a little chuckle as I envision me and mom in the station wagon on our way to the church. I imagine I was excited even though I said I wasn't. "Yeah, that was back when dad made me try every sport for at least a season. I want to say it was soccer season but it could have been anything.

"Dad and I got back home only like ten minutes before you guys did, enough time to stuff some pizza rolls into the microwave and settle into my beanbag chair just in time for some Dragonball Z. That show was the best. Then the door opens and Ali bear walks in with you and mom right behind her."

My mind concocts the image of her puff pink coat and Barbie rain boots as I see her from behind and also catch a glimpse of Emmett half way out of his beanbag chair with a partially chewed pizza roll hanging out of his open mouth. Mom probably would have said something about acting like a gentleman and closing his mouth. She was always correcting us that way.

"If it weren't for the fact that she looked like a slightly bigger version of a bottle of Pepto-Bismol I probably would have educated you guys on the difference in a girl and a boy. I was expecting a blond with pigtails and the home get up with the way mom went on and on about wanting a little Princess and how there was too much testosterone in the house. It took me another year to figure out what testosterone was," he jokes.

"You were never the brightest bulb in the box," I tease.

He throws a pillow at me but for all the sports he's mastered his aim is still shit. "Hey!" he shouts.

"Hey nothing. You didn't figure out until high school that mom lied to you about the phones on the Golden Gate Bridge."

"That's not fair, it was a reasonable explanation at the time and I never thought about it again until sophomore year."

We were vacationing one year and mom took us across the Golden Gate Bridge just to say that we had been there. Emmett had his face pressed up against the glass while I tried to hold my breath thinking that if the bridge collapsed and I was holding it in I wouldn't drown. Perfectly logical. Emmett was nine and I was seven at the time and he was fascinated by everything he saw. He asked enough questions that I never had to; I just sat back and listened.

Along the bridge there are payphones hanging from railings though everyone drove by them and Emmett felt the need to ask who they were for. Mom never missed a beat telling him that the phones were there so that when desperate adults went to the bridge to commit suicide they would be able to call Jesus first and he would talk them out of it. Another perfectly logical explanation for a child but it makes me wonder why mom would immediately jump to suicide and Jesus rather than any other non-death related explanation. It certainly would have been more suitable.

"She was the best," he says getting back to the memories, "She waltzed right in, scooted me with her butt, and took over half my beanbag along with most of my pizza rolls."

From what I remember, or at least heard, Alice took to Emmett liked they been together all there lives. "After that she and I were inseparable. I taught her how to play catch even though it was more like fetch because she was so bad at tossing it back that she'd just run over and hand it to me. I taught her to fish and swim that summer while you turned into the little Princess mom was looking for, always inside baking and doing laundry with her. She could never send you off to play with us because you'd get jealous and Ali would get hurt.

"There was this one time at the park…you were supposed to be pushing Ali on the swing but thought you could kill two birds with one stone by standing up behind her so that you could swing too."

"In my defense the swings at a public park should be strong enough to hold two 40lb kids," I grumble but thought about a bright day spent in winter coat where the frost was biting at my nose but none of us were ready to go back inside. Alice squealed 'wee' as loud as she could and I was right there with her having the time of my life until the chain broke right where it held the seat and we tumbled to the ground, little Alice breaking my fall.

"Boy was she made at you. I don't think she spoke to you for a week after that."

Still I cannot tell memory from my imagination. It's one of the reasons I'm stuck in this place. "She did eventually, right?"

He lets out a breath and I notice it sounds a little heavy and reluctantly he continues. "Yeah, you guys made up a few weeks before the end. I think you fixed her Easy Bake or something like that but she said she forgave you. Then she got a little weird. Maybe mom and dad didn't notice and maybe it was just because they were finally starting the adoption paperwork work, but I feel like she knew something was going to happen."

That part I know I remember. Even if I'm not sure about her role in it or even whether I'm remembering her face or something my mind has replaced it with, I do remember social workers coming to take to her. I remember dad yelling a lot though never at us and mom crying just as much. I think I remember Alice being different, not as happy but it wasn't like she was sad either. She just wasn't herself as Emmett said.

"I don't remember him. Did we ever meet the guy?" I don't have to explain who I'm talking about. Emmett knows netter than I do and probably holds more hatred because of that. It's easier to let go of things you don't recall feeling.

It takes him a minute to answer. He gets out of the bed and strolls over to my desk chair making himself comfortable in a seat where he can see me. I see the transition but close my eyes again preferring to see the past as it unfolds.

"I saw him once. I don't really know if you did or not but he was in the courtroom when I was brought in to be questioned. He was tall and if it weren't for the same dark coarse black hair on his head I would have thought there was no way he was Alice's dad. At the time I probably didn't believe it anyway.

"Things were ugly after that. Alice had been so accident prone that her hospital records were brought into question like they thought mom and dad beat her. Case workers agreed that Alice was clumsy and had had several accidents before but the fact of the matter was that she had never had more than when she was with us. Looking back I know now that it was because she had never been with any family for more than a few months and she was with us for a year, plus with you and I being growing boys we could get a little rough. No one thought about that."

In the time she spent with us she sprained a wrist and an ankle and had gotten stitches three times over ridiculous adventures Emmett took her on. Well, the wrist was my fault but that was from the swing set accident.

"Then they talked to me and you. They made mom and dad sound negligent because I was stung by that jellyfish on our beach vacation when she was supposed to be watching me. It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't jumped on it thinking it was a toy I was keeping from Alice. Better me than her. And when they questioned you they made it sound like you hated her and you told the truth about all the arguments and how she annoyed you because you didn't know any better. I was older than I you and I would have said the same stuff if it were true."

For a long time I carried the loss of Alice on my shoulders thinking that if I hadn't been bad they wouldn't have taken her away. "He didn't get her though, did he?"

"No, Quil didn't get her. Nobody did. After the lawyers were finished manipulating us they turned on mom and dad again making it seem like they waited so long to file for adoption because they didn't really want Alice until her dad did. To counter that our lawyers brought up that Alice had been in foster care since she was nine months old and taken from her mom. Her dad could have claimed her at any time but didn't want her until the papers were filed.

"At four years old Alice was too young for the state to allow her to choose where she would go. They made our parents out to be abusive and negligent while her biological father was supposedly only looking for a welfare check, I don't know how true that was. Maybe he really didn't have a clue she existed until then. But suddenly there was no one good enough for little Ali bear and she was tossed back into the system."

I remember missing her, mom crying and dad working all the time, Emmett getting meaner everyday – but what I recall the most is that after that day there was never another foster child in our house. "Do you ever think about what happened to her after that?" I ask.

He nods. "Every now and then mom would try to get new information of her just to see if they ever found a family for her. Secretly I think that she hoped to find whoever adopted her and arrange some sort of visitation, something we all could live with. No one would work with her but she never gave up. Every year on Ali's birthday she'd send a gift and make a call hoping they would just tell her that Ali was there or gone, happy and healthy. I plan to track her down myself when she turns eighteen. Hopefully she's not adopted or married because I doubt she'll be all that easy to find with a different last name."

"Can I help?"

"I hope so," he teases, "You've got some apologizing to do when we find her."

I always did.

There isn't much left to say on the subject. Our family moved on for the most part, only thinking of our little sister every once in a while but mostly living our lives. It's probably for the best that she left us anyway. There's no telling how I could have hurt her too.

I rack my brain for more of the good times to talk about; enjoying the break from the Bella filled aspects of my mind as much as Emmett is. I'm just about to suggest he tell me about the road trip he and dad went on when he first learned to drive but I'm interrupted by my bedroom door opening wide.

In the doorway stands the Good Doctor and his brainless henchmen. His eyes bore into mine while the Henchmen start to search my room without warning. "If you're looking for the drugs you might want to snoop through my underwear drawer. Careful though, I tend to forget to wash them," I advise them as the continue snooping and ignoring me.

Carlisle smirks menacingly, "Where is she, Edward?"

For once I don't have to play dumb but I choose to be an ass. "Who? Your wife? She slipped out half an hour ago saying something about how much less time it takes when a real man works her over. You shouldn't expect to get any for a while; she was walking kind of funny when she left."

He folds his arms over his chest still amused. "Miss Swan, where is she?"

Game over. "You lost her?" I scream jumping up from the floor to stare at him incredulously.

"Don't pretend like you don't know. You've got her stashed somewhere and I will find her. Might as well just tell me where she is before someone gets hurt."

"Are you threatening me?" It wouldn't be the first time. "You lose one of your patients and you automatically think I had something to do with it? I think you did. Where the fuck is she Carlisle? Where are you hiding my Bella?" I yell more as I stalk toward him, "I swear if you've done something to her…" I've almost reached him when the needle goes into my spine. "I won't take the fall for this," I manage to choke out before the medication takes over and his cocky grin is the last thing I see.

AN: It's late I know but I like it better than what it looked like last night. I was a little distracted be my little Turtle learning how to use his stuffed elephant as a punching bag. Why can they just stay sweet and innocent little babies all their lives?