Disclaimer: Original characters are SM's, of course.
A/N: With all the references into their childhood, I thought perhaps a little blast into the past was in order.
Summary: Edward, Emmett and Jasper open their treasure chest and tell the girls some stories.
Chapter 25: Bombs, Bikes, Babes
JPOV
"Tell me more about your childhood," Alice urged me one afternoon while we were taking a break from playing another round of Halo.
Emmett snickered loudly on the floor as he mused at Alice's request.
I had told Alice snippets of our growing up years on our first date night the other week. Dad and I had spent an entire afternoon preparing the house and the food while mom whisked her off for an afternoon of shopping at her favorite DIY warehouse in Port Angeles, so I could surprise her that evening.
"What would you like to know sunshine?" I asked amused, running my hand down her silky hair. She twirled strands of her hair with one finger absently.
"Ohh I don't know, anything I guess.. it must be fun growing up with two brothers, you guys must have many stories you can share?" she posed the question to us.
"Geez..I don't know Alice… that's like opening Pandora's box there," Edward said and he too let out little snicker. I grinned. He was partly right about that.
"Oh come on, tell us.." Rosie joined in this time, looking at Emmett, maybe more impressing on him than just looking. The big man gave Edward and me a questioning look before breaking into a wide grin.
Mom, who had been listening to our conversation from across the room chimed in as well, rallying after the girls, laughing at us. The incident a few days ago seemed to have been a blessing for her. She seemed a lot less burdened now that she had told us her story. For that I was grateful, even if it did make me feel a little sad inside that I had opened up old wounds for her. Before I had a chance to immerse into the thought again, Emmett's voice saved me.
"Awww… well, if we have to.." he broke out.
"We have to go up to my room though, we need the chest for this!" he said excitedly and jumped to his feet, pulling Rosie up.
Alice pulled me up as well, latched her tiny arm around my waist while mine rested on her shoulder; and we trundled side by side after the rest of them.
We made ourselves comfortable on Emmett's floor while he pushed a large dark wooden lidded crate to the middle of our circle. I couldn't help the grin from appearing on my face as the three of us opened the lid of the chest again. Neither could Emmett and Edward apparently. It had been a long while since we looked into the contents of our treasure chest. It felt as if we were opening a can of candies – multicolored candies that melted in your mouth when you ate it, left psychedelic colors your tongue and gave you a sugar high for hours on end. Pure excitement.
Emmett rubbed his hands with glee when he pulled out a piece of foolscap paper with a recipe written in his loopy handwriting.
Edward and I knew what it was instantly. I felt my eyes rolling.
The bomb.
************
"Oohhh Jas! I've got the perfect weapon for our next fort game with Jake and the gang.." Emmett exclaimed excitedly to Edward and I as we sat on the kerb waiting for mom to pick us up. I kicked at a loose pebble absently.
"What now? The last time you said this, we ended up having to give my lunch money to Jacob." I said doubtfully. We had upped the games recently and winner would take some sort of prize home. Last week's was lunch money and because Emmett had used up all of his and Edward we couldn't use because he was saving it up, I had to give mine and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwich for an entire week. Gross.
"Bombs." He said smugly. Edward's face lit up and then he sighed resignedly. He shared my optimism. Nil.
I rolled my eyes. Emmett might be 12 but he was not a very bright 12 years old. How could we possibly make bombs? We were kids for goodness sake.
Emmett looked dejected at our lack of positive response.
"Where's your confidence dudes??? This is Emmett!" he said loudly, thumping his chest like a gorilla then. I sighed even more and picked up a pebble and threw it across the tarred ground.
"Come on man..you don't believe I can do it huh?" he asked thumping my back hard next. I scoffed at him mildly. Emmett was huge and I was only the size of Edward, and that was puny. His thumping nearly made me choke my lungs out.
"Whoops sorry.." he said to me as I regained my breath again.
Edward gave him a thoughtful look. He might've been only 10, but he was as clever as any 11 or 12 year old out there.
"Okay, say we believe that you can make this bomb," he started, rolling his tongue on the word bomb for added effect,
"What makes you think we can get the stuff to make it anyway? I'm pretty sure it's gonna cost a lot of money and there's no way in hell I'm going to volunteer to ask dad or mom for it either,"
"Me neither," I said quickly.
The look on Emmett's face now kind of worried me. Like he was about to tell us something we were better off not knowing. The light in my head went on instantly.
"Hang on..where.. did you get this recipe from??" I asked warily. I sincerely hoped it wasn't from that scary friend of his – Saul Danvers. He was a troublemaker that one. Bad news all the way from here to Texas.
"My man Saul of course," he supplied smugly.
"Oh man!" I griped. Edward looked at me worriedly. This was not a good idea.
We ended up making the bomb anyhow.
According to Emmett we could get all the ingredients from the garage and the kitchen. He told us that it wasn't really a bomb per se, more like a loud firecracker. It would scare the shit out of Jacob and his gang and we could infiltrate their fort this time and steal the flag and win the game. And possibly get Jacob's lunch money this time. Not that I wanted to take Jacob's lunch money. He probably needed it more than I did. I'd probably just take a quarter for the game's sake.
We set about preparing the stuff to make it on Friday afternoon. If mom asked, we were to say that we were helping Emmett make a science project. We weren't exactly lying. It was a science project, in a manner of speaking.
I couldn't quite believe how easy it was to make a bomb. Well - a firecracker.
We had our prototype at the end of the afternoon.
Emmett had made a long wick so we could light the bomb from a distance and we of course had to test the damn thing. The worse thing was to try it blindly and make a fool out of ourselves when it didn't work tomorrow. Edward, Emmett and I stayed behind the upturned garden table while he lit the wick with a lighter. I had to admit, I was bubbling with excitement as the wick started burning.
Nothing happened.
"Oh man.. why didn't it work?! Maybe the wick got loose," Emmett grumbled loudly. We got up to go and check the stupid thing that was half planted in the soil at the corner of the house, where mom had recently finished planting lily bulbs. I didn't know what exactly happened then but the moment Emmett picked up the firecracker/bomb he instantly threw it back down on the ground, right in front of me and Edward. The next thing I heard was this loud bang and I was thrown backwards or I had jumped backwards, I wasn't too sure. All I heard was loud ringing in my ears right before I saw black. When I woke up I was in the hospital sporting a seriously cool bandage on my head. Edward was standing to one side and was sporting a painful red bruise on his face, while Emmett looked unscathed except for his red eyes, obviously from crying.
"Yeah right, cool bandage my ass… You forgot something ninny.." Emmett said cockily. All eyes turned to him. I raised an eyebrow.
"And what's that?" I asked. Edward shook his head and tried to hide the growing grin on his face.
"He woke up, gave me this "I'm gonna kill you" look and started bawling to mom… like a girl!" Emmett chortled out loud and his whole body started shaking. I rolled my eyes as Edward chuckled not too discreetly at my expense.
"You ass.. I was concussed, I had every reason to cry," I defended myself, albeit only lightly. He was right though, I did bawl out crying like a girl. The bomb had really scared me.
"He could have been hurt bad you fool!" Rosie scowled instead and thumped his arm forcefully.
"Yes, they both could have gotten really hurt!" Bella and Alice rallied to her at once, looking at him disapprovingly. Emmett positively cowered as they stared down at him. It was my turn to snicker at him.
"Ohh…Ohh... and who could forget how you couldn't sit right for two whole days from the spanking you got from dad that night!" Edward supplied even more. He turned red as we all laughed at him now. Dad never really raised a hand at us, but he was livid with all three of us that day. He spared Edward and me obviously because we had already gotten our medicine. Emmett was the sole recipient of his punishment that night.
We rifled through the chest again.
I found my old toy soldier that I had named Jack. For some reason I had a thing for the name because I remembered naming our dog that too. He used to watch over me when I went to bed at night, man the fort so to speak. I accidentally maimed him one time when he got stuck in the grate one afternoon. "He received a badge of honor for his service." I mentioned, grinning to Alice. She smiled wistfully.
"You're such a loyal friend, Jazz. I would have loved to be Jack," she cooed. I grinned and kissed her cheek lightly. She was so adorable.
Emmett smiled brightly when he fished out a pair of socks with marker pen eyes and mouth. It was Mr Dweebs and Mr Tubs. He used to entertain us with puppet show afternoons when we were much smaller. Edward and I couldn't have been more than 4 and 5 then. The sock puppets were really the beginnings of his talent as a comedic performer and jester.
"Man oh man," Edward yelled suddenly when he pulled out a torn baseball card out from underneath a tin can full of marbles. Bella looked at him interestedly.
"What's that babe?" Bella asked. He grinned widely at me and Emmett.
"That Bella, was Edward's first card when he first learned how to ride a bike without the little cute tires at the back," Emmett supplied. At that Bella lit up and scuttled to Edward's side.
"How old were you?"
"I must have been six maybe seven," He answered, grinning widely. I remembered the day like it was yesterday, I could tell from Emmett's face that he was also thinking about the day that dad gifted Edward his first baseball card. We had been really proud of Edward that day; he had been extra diligent about practicing his balance on the bike with us for an entire week. He had every reason to be worried about falling, especially since he had had an accident a couple of months back and scrapped his arms and legs pretty badly. He'd been trying to ride on two then and well, ended up kissing the ground, bleeding everywhere.
************
"Okay Edward, you ready?" Emmett asked as he and I balanced Edward on his bike between us. On the ground behind us, his little wheels lay uselessly.
"Yep,"
"You sure?" I asked again.
"Push me and let go," he urged, sounding very excited.
"You remember what I told you?" Emmett said again. We wanted to be really sure that our little brother was ready to take this challenge.
"Keep the wheel straight and keep pedaling," he responded in his squeaky voice, repeating what Emmett had droned into his head earlier while we were practicing.
Emmett and I nudged the bike forward gently and let him go. Edward started pedaling furiously and for a few seconds his bike wobbled and looked like it was going to topple to one side but somehow Edward managed to find his balance and soon enough he was riding quite freely on two wheels.
"Whoo Eddie you did it!" we screamed at him. His face was beaming with excitement and pride. He did a few circles around the front yard before coming our way, letting us hold the bike steady as he braked to a halt and jumped down.
"You know what this means hey? You get to race with us in the park!" I exclaimed to him. He'd been wanting to race me and Emmett forever.
"Really?" he asked, large green eyes looking at Emmett and me expectantly.
"Yup kiddo." Emmett chimed.
"You wanna go a few more rounds before you learn how to start on your own?" He asked Edward again. Bronze mop of a head nodded back at Emmett excitedly. We got back to our positions and he started the whole exercise again.
He was riding fine for a while but suddenly he must have been distracted or something because he was riding out of the front yard and into the slopping tarred road suddenly. Panic rang in his voice immediately as he grabbed our attention.
"Emm?Jas?" he screamed frantically as the bike started going down the road.
"Turn!" I yelled as we went after him.
"I can't, I'm scared!"
Just as he said it, he picked up speed and was flying down our private road like there was no tomorrow. We raced after him.
"Emm!! Jas!!! Help me!!"
I didn't know how Emmett could have run so fast but he took off and left me panting after him. He was just a hand's reach away from reaching Edward's end of the bike and I could already see the big main road ahead. If he went through the main road, a passing car could hit him. I panicked.
"Eddie, turn left! Turn the handlebars left now!" I screamed to him. He did as he was told and he and his bike skittered along a hedged bush slightly. It was all the delay Emmett needed and he latched onto the end of the bike quickly and attempted to stop it. It was a big mistake. We were too young then to have known about the laws of physics regarding momentum and inertia. The bike came to a halt in Emmett's hold but Eddie flew ahead – screaming our name as he did so. He fell onto the soft ground in a tumbled heap and skidded a few inches on the ground before finally stopping.
"Edward!!!"
We skidded to a stop in front of his tumbled form and for a second I worried that he might've broken something. He turned around just then, crying horribly at us. He looked pretty messed up. His forehead was scrapped, his elbows and knees and shins were all bloody.
"We're sorry Eddie, we tried to catch you but you were flying!" I wailed, almost ready to cry myself.
"Mom's gonna make you all better okay?" Emmett appeased him then. I saw Edward calming down instantly. He nodded, stopped crying and got behind Emmett's back so he could carry him back up to the house while I pushed his bike.
It took him another whole month before he was brave enough to try. And this time we were very careful to watch him.
When dad put the card on the spoke of his wheels as he did ours when we first earned our wings, he was beaming proudly.
"You couldn't stop riding your bike for an entire month hey kiddo?" Emmett muttered softly at him, a content smile painted on his face.
"Yeah..those were awesome times…I thought I was the bird or something," he mused contentedly at the memory now.
"I still can't figure out how you managed to catch up with Edward that day..he must have been going like 20 mph downhill," I said to Emmett then. He chuckled.
"Dude, I was the bullet," he guffawed the same instant that he pulled out a VHS copy of the Nightmare on Elm street – one of our all time favorite horror movies back in the days.
"I'm a bullet, I'm a missile, I'm a rocket to the moon!" We intoned together and laughed again.
"That's so cute..ohh..you have to put this in our album," Bella cooed happily and took the card away from his hand. Edward looked at her funnily for a second before the three of us chuckled at a shared memory again.
"What's so funny?" she asked curiously.
"How you girls always seem to want to catalog every freaking memento into an album for your children to see," Emmett supplied, shaking his head lightly.
"Why do I have a sneaking suspicion this is about a girl?" Rosie queried now, looking at the three of us one by one. When her eyes landed on Emmett, he coughed somewhat. I snorted a chuckle out.
"When Emmett was 15, he had his first monkey love," Edward began. The girls perked up immediately. Between the three of us, Emmett had always been the one who had the chick magnet thing going for him. Edward was a misunderstood emo boy and I was the rebel for some reason. I supposed between Emmett, Edward and myself, he fit the jock stud look perfectly and we were far off the mark, thanks mostly to our hair.
"Her name was Lauren," I supplied smiling at Emmett. Lauren was a pretty girl and so up Emmett's alley. She had long endless legs, a pert bottom, we knew because she was in the cheerleading team, and was more womanly than her peers at 15 years of age. Emmett loved tits.
"She had the biggest tits in her year then," Edward added now and Rosie gave Emmett a raised eyebrow instantly.
"Aww babe, not as good as your racks.." Emmett intoned.
"I better be," she clucked, teasingly. I mused silently. If she asked me, Lauren had nothing on Rosie. She was light years away from being in Rosie's league.
"So, what happened?" Bella prompted now.
"Emmett here at first thought she was the ONE. Even got all emotional about it." Edward spoke.
"I did not!" he huffed.
"3 weeks of romancing later, they shared an afternoon in his room, under a blanket!" I coughed.
"Can you imagine if mom had walked in on them?" Edward uttered, smirking at our brother.
"It wasn't like it was sex or anything!" Emmett canted in response.
"So what did he do?" Rosie asked again.
"Groped her, felt her up…" I supplied, grinning at Emmett.
"You dog!" Rosie called him now, although I could see from her blue eyes that matched mine a little, that she was not really mad at him.
"You know you like me that way baby," Emmett responded to her confidently. She rolled his eyes back at him even as he pulled her in for a quick cuddle.
"Okay…that's all nice and all, but what's the relevance with Bella wanting to put this in their album though?" Alice asked now, looking very lost at our to and fro conversations. I leaned in quickly to give her slightly puckered lips a peck.
"About 2 weeks after the blanket incident, Emmett comes to us looking very freaked out," I started again.
"Lauren shows him this 'album' of things she'd collected to remind them of their 4 week romance, for "their future"," Edward supplied with a grin, making air quotes at the phrase Lauren had used specifically. She was already planning their entire lives, obviously.
"Can tabs he'd opened for her, little pieces of notes they had passed on to each other, and guess this – a little bit of Emmett's blanket that she managed to cut off without him knowing,"
As I said it, I saw Emmett shudder a little.
"Ugh..what a freak!" Rosie exclaimed.
"I know.. who cuts other people's blanket?! I can't imagine what she would want to cut off after her first night," he said incredulously. At that, we all nearly gagged.
"So you broke up with her?"Bella asked now.
He nodded then shook his head. Lauren was a bitch. No she was a crazy mental bitch. After Emmett had broken up with her, she went after him like a witch scorned. Hounded him for all of two weeks demanding to be taken back. In the end it took a near physical warning from Edward and I to keep her away.
"What did you guys do?"
We snickered. We cornered her one day and told her in no specific terms what could happen to her precious little poodle if she didn't stay away from Emmett.
"We know where you live bitch!" Edward and I said in unison again, and laughed as we bumped fist in the air lightly.
"And she stayed away?"
"If you guys knew Jas and Ed while they were in school, you'd believe it if they wanted to kill your precious pet,"
"That bad hey babe?" Bella quirked an eyebrow at Edward now. He sighed.
"Sometimes being stereotyped just because of the way you look has its benefits…" Came his simple answer.
"Or not.." Emmett quipped now, looking at me. He was making a reference to Maria, I knew. I gave him a bittersweet smile. She picked me because she thought I was a bad boy. I thought she had loved me for who I was, inside. Fool.
I caught Bella's knowing look instantly. You okay? She asked me silently. I nodded subtly. If Alice saw our exchange she didn't comment. She settled for running her comforting fingers over my back instead.
"Hey..look what I found..remember this?" Edward's grin was wide as he held out a worn red and black material in the air to us. The arm band I made for us years ago.
I grinned at the memory of seeing the band again. For what it stood for then and more importantly what it symbolized still for the three of us.
Each others constants. Unwavering loyalty and love.
Brotherhood.
A/N:Okay..reviews? Reviews get a teaser for the next one...which answers the last para of "This Invisible Band That I Wear".. dun dun dun