Chapter 2
AN: This chapter is a continuation of Emma's story, from where she left off the last chapter. We will finally get a little more information on who Emma sees herself as at this point, and a better understanding of her childhood prior to going to Degrassi. This chapter will have some time jumps in it, as this is her just trying to fill in the major info and gaps before her real story begins. I hope you enjoy it.
As always, I do not own any of the characters from TNG and make no money from the creation of this story.
Part One: The Beginning-Starting Anew
After that talk with my mom, I decided that I would do whatever it took to make her happy.
While she had gotten a lot better, I knew she was still struggling, and I thought, naively so, that if I was just a better daughter, and became who she needed me to be, then it would make her completely better and not so sad anymore. I started to be more social at school, focused on my grades, and tried to be the epitome of a normal preteen girl. At first, this was a bit of a struggle, as I had spent so much of my childhood being alone and quiet. It was at this point that the beginnings of Emma Nelson, studious, well-mannered, and a crusader of the environment, came to be. My mother was something of a renegade for social change and a strong feminist, so I tried to emulate her in my own way. I started to become interested in the things that I thought would make her happy and proud. It was during this time that I met 3 pivotal people in my life. As most of you know, Manny Santos and I were best friends throughout most of our time at school. What you may not know is that it was due to one Jay Hogart that we even became friends in the first place. The year I turned 10 was a crazy time in the Nelson household. Spike had been struggling at work after a new owner had taken control of the hair salon she worked in. He was cutting her hours like crazy and giving all of the best customers to her coworker Denise, as she was sleeping with him. Because of this, we had gotten a few months behind in our bills, and we were close to getting our power shut off if we didn't come up with the money to pay the electric company. We had been living off of old bread and eggs for a few weeks now, and we were about out of that as well. Things were looking like they might take a turn for the worst. One night, my mom had one of her faithful clients, who hadn't been poached from her, over to the house to give her a haircut. She explained to me that if she did it at their home, then her boss wouldn't know about it, and she could keep all the money she made from it for us instead of giving a portion of it to the salon. This client would cause a ripple effect that I would not even realize had occurred for many, many years.
While talking with Fancy, mom's client, during her haircut, she mentioned our financial troubles. Fancy had told my mom that if things got desperate enough, she could get her a job where she worked, which would go a long way in getting us out of debt. You see, Fancy worked at a Gentleman's club the next town over. She told my mother that even bartending, she would bring home double what she made a month at the salon in one week. At first, my mother was completely opposed to the idea. She was, after all, a feminist and felt that those places only encouraged men to think of women only as some kind of sex object and not as people. But, 2 days after the lights went out and didn't come back on, she found herself making the drive out to see Fancy and took the job. She still worked at the salon 3 days a week and then worked her new job Friday and Saturday nights. Sometimes my mother would leave me at home while she went to work, but after a string of break-ins in our neighborhood, she started bringing me to work with her. As I was only 10, and she was working at the bar, she would leave me in the back with the dancers, and I would hang out with them or their kids, which they would sometimes bring along with them. It was here, that I met Jay. While his mother was not one of the dancers, one of his mother's friends was, and as such, he could often be found hanging around in the back. Jay was a year older than me, and while he seemed a little scary when I first met him, we eventually became pretty good friends. He would help me to loosen up and get into a little bit of mischief and even taught me about cars, and I helped him with his homework when he needed it and listened to him when he needed to talk about his home life with someone who wouldn't judge. I was ecstatic, I had finally made a real friend other than the kids at school that I talked to in order to make my mom happy. Now, I'm sure if you were to ask Jay today if we were ever friends, he would give you a resounding, absolutely not. But regardless of what I was to him, I truly thought of him as a friend, maybe even a best friend. Unfortunately, after 6 short months, my mother decided that she no longer needed her job at the club anymore. I begged and begged her not to quit, I really didn't want to lose the only real friend that I had made at that point. On her last day there, we were arguing again about her quitting. I was almost in tears exclaiming that I would never forgive her if she made me lose my only friend due to her selfishness. It was during that argument that the course of my life made yet another fork from the path it had been on. She was tired after a long shift, and my shouting at her had been the final straw that broke her down. She exclaimed that she knew all about my "little friend". She told me that Jay's father was a frequent flyer at the club, and the reason that his son was always there was that he was a delinquent and going to end up being exactly like his father. She started ranting about how I should be smarter than that and that he was not the type of person that she wanted me to be friends with. If his father was the way he was, his son was not far behind him, and she did not give up so much for me to throw my life away by hanging out with people like them. Unbeknownst to me, Jay had been there during her outburst and heard every last word she had said. When we came home, I told my mother that I hated her, that she was the most selfish person I had ever known, and that I wished anyone else had been my mom instead. That night, I found my mother passed out in the kitchen with an empty liquor bottle in her hands.
That following Monday after school, I was trying to find Jay before I started my walk home. I had not gotten a chance to see him at the club, and I wanted to tell him that even if we wouldn't see each other at my mom's job anymore, I still wanted to be his friend. As he was in the grade above me, I didn't have a chance to see him during the school day. I found him sitting at the bus stop with a sad look on his face. He must have been deep in thought, as he didn't seem to notice when I sat down next to him. I took his hand and gently asked him if his father had been mad at him again. As soon as he heard my voice, he tensed up, and his face changed from sad to hate-filled. I will spare you the minutiae of what all he said, but the short and sweet of it was that he didn't want to be friends with some snooty little goodie two shoes and that I should just go and find a friend elsewhere, assuming I could find anyone desperate enough to be friends with a little snob like me. It was during this confrontation that one Manny Santos walked into my life. I didn't know it at the time, but that was the last time I would speak with Jay for 6 long years. My friendship with Manny stayed throughout the years, and along the way, we picked up JT, Liberty, and eventually Toby into our little group of misfits. I went back to acting like the daughter I could tell my mother wished I was, and I became the friend that Manny wanted and needed, even if we didn't actually have much in common. I would do whatever it took to be the person everyone needed, and that way, I would never lose another person from my life.
