CHAPTER TWO: Emily

Emily came for graduation. We're cousins. Second cousins, but we loved each other like sisters. Our families always spent the holidays together. It wasn't all that far to the Makah reservation, so they were always driving down or we'd drive up. Emily's graduation was the week before ours. It was right in the middle of final exams week so I couldn't be at hers, but our families were happy to let her come to my graduation and spend the summer with us.

Emily had never met Sam before. My parents were understanding, and I think they might have guessed that Sam and I were doing more than just kissing on our dates, but they were still old fashioned enough to not invite Sam along on family vacations to the Makah reservation. The times Emily's family were down visiting us, Sam's mom had taken him to spend the holiday with her folks.

I so wanted them to like each other. Looking back now, I can't believe how stupid I was. Emily was beautiful, inside as well as out. How could Sam resist?

Emily came the day before graduation. We'd been baking. Emily loved to cook. It's one of the things I admired about her. We always joked that she'd have to marry someone skinny to fatten up. Mom and dad were out, and Seth was watching TV in the front room when Sam came through to the kitchen. Like I said, my parents were understanding people, and Sam was allowed to come and go as he pleased. I think they knew that one day soon, if I had my way, he'd literally be one of the family.

We were laughing and joking around at the sink. I was washing and Emily was drying. I heard Sam's voice and turned to greet him, still holding the glass pyrex brownie pan in my hand.

"Hey, Sam," I said, still laughing at some outrageous remark Emily had made. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen, his brown eyes warm, eyebrows raised as if asking what the joke was.

I nudged Emily with my elbow so she'd turn around too.

"This is Emily, my cousin. Remember I told you she was coming to visit?" I asked rhetorically.

Emily turned around and the world stopped.

At least that's what it must have been like for Sam. I was looking at her as she turned and watched her put a polite smile on her face. Most people think Emily is demure and quiet when they first meet her. They don't know how giggly and silly she can be when you put enough sugar in her, and when she feels comfortable with you.

"She's going to be able to stay the whole summer, isn't that great?" I prattled on, heedlessly dripping water from the pan onto the kitchen floor. "Her parents are going to visit her grandpa in Florida so we've got her for three months and…"

I stopped talking when I noticed the polite smile fading from Emily's face.

Sam was staring at her. I don't think 'staring' is really the right word. It was like he was drinking her in with his eyes. His mouth was slightly open. He was mesmerized by her.

Emily looked at me for help.

I shrugged helplessly. "Sam? You OK?"

Even while I was right there in the room, watching it, I still didn't recognize love at first sight.

"Emily?" Sam breathed out my cousin's name, tasting it like candy on his tongue. "You're Emily?"

Emily nodded uncertainly. I couldn't blame her for being freaked out. I was starting to freak out a little too.

"I love you."

I looked back at Sam, expecting to see him looking back at me, but he wasn't. His eyes were on Emily. He was speaking to her.

The baking dish shattered into a thousand pieces as I dropped it on the floor.

0-0-0

Graduation was a blur. I suppose I must have stood up with everyone else, received my diploma, marched out of the gym during the recessional. There are pictures proving I was there in my cap and gown, but my mind was some place else.

Emily was a trooper. After Sam dropped his little bombshell in the kitchen she told him to leave. He'd had the grace to look ashamed, then went. I apologized all over the place for Sam. I told her it must've been a joke. She nodded. Then I broke down. She knew about Sam's missing two weeks. When I wasn't with Mrs. Uley, I'd been crying on my parents' shoulders or on the phone with Emily. We decided it must be alcohol. Sam had to have a drinking problem. It's so easy to come up with answers you think are right when you're with friends, and Emily was my best friend. That's what I thought.

Sam still came to the house to visit. We all tried to pretend that nothing had changed, but everything had. My parents felt the tension when Sam and Emily were in the same room. She kept excusing herself to go upstairs when Sam came over, but even then it was like most of his attention was on her. He tried to hide it, those first days of summer. He took me out on dates, kissed me goodnight, but gave me nothing more than kisses.

I missed it. I missed him.

When he was with me, he wasn't really with me. His eyes followed Emily every time he saw her. When she was in the room it was like I didn't exist. It hurt. Emily held me when I cried. She was angry for me. It kept me from hating her, from blaming her.

Then it happened. We were coming back from that cheesy lodge style diner in Forks. Sam pulled over to the side of the road and stopped.

"I can't do this anymore, Leah," he said dully.

I think I knew what was coming. The burger and fries I'd forced myself to eat lay like lead in my stomach.

"Do what?"

"Be with you," Sam said softly to the dashboard. "I can't be with you anymore."

I was silent. Until then I didn't know it was possible to hurt so much that you literally couldn't talk.

"I'm sorry, it's just that I love Emily."

Her name galvanized me. I welcomed the flush of red hot anger coursing through me. It was better than feeling like I'd died.

"Well she doesn't love you!" I told him spitefully. "She never will love you. She wouldn't betray me like that. She's not like you."

His hands tightened on the steering wheel, so hard I could've sworn I heard it start to crack under the strain, then he very deliberately took his hands from the wheel and placed them in his lap.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "It doesn't change anything. I love her."

"So what about me? What about the fact that I love you? That I stood by you? You promised me, Sam. You promised you'd always love me!" I was getting hysterical, my voice was rising, getting higher and higher in pitch as I gasped for breath. "You promised!"

Sam flinched. "I know, and I'm sorry…"

"Sorry?" I whispered incredulously. "You're sorry you're dumping me for my cousin?" I scrabbled at the door handle. "You can just go to hell, Sam Uley."

Wrenching the door open, I stumbled out and plunged into the forest. This was Washington, there was always forest nearby. We were nearly home when Sam had pulled over. It wasn't that far to walk. I wished it had been longer. Sam didn't follow me. I didn't hear his car door open. He just sat there staring out the window at me as I walked away. That more than anything else told me it was over. Sam took that 'protector of the tribe' thing seriously. He'd never let me wander home alone through the woods even a short distance if he really cared about me anymore, and wander I did. I wasn't looking forward to going home to my family. How could I tell them? How could I talk about something so painful? Then I realized I probably wouldn't have to. They'd take one look at my face and they'd know. I wanted to put it off as long as possible.

I walked in circles for some time, crisscrossing my tracks. At one point I saw the prints of a wolf in the mud near one of my footprints when I backtracked. I smiled grimly. I almost hoped a wolf would tear me to shreds. In the end I did go home. My parents were sympathetic. Seth wanted to kill Sam. Emily was furious with him for hurting me. She was determined to tell him off the next time she saw him.

He came to the house the next day, to speak with her. My dad met him at the door, told him formally that he was no longer welcome in our home. I was watching from the upstairs window. I saw Sam nod, and walk away, but I also saw the look of determination on his face. I knew that look. He'd be back. I didn't want to be there when he was.

Dad arranged for me and Emily to go on a camping trip with some friends of his on the Makah reservation. It was good to get away. Camping didn't remind me of Sam because he'd never let me go with Jared and Paul on his camping trips with them.

He found us the day after we left. I should have known. He walked out of the woods and into our campground as me, Emily, and the Twogood family sat around the fire after dinner. Mr. Twogood, Dad's friend, stood up, eyes wary. Sam didn't even look at him. He marched right across to Emily and told her they had to talk.

I'd never seen Emily that way before. She used words I didn't even know she knew. Sam just stood there and took it, as Emily made it very clear that she never wanted to see him again let alone talk to him. When she finally wound down, he hung his head.

"I deserve that, and more, but I need you, Emily," he said, then turned and left.

Mr. and Mrs. Twogood and their son Ted looked on open-mouthed in shock. Even in the firelight I could see Emily blushing as she realized she'd just cursed with the fluidity and creativity of a drunken sailor on leave in front of them.

The whole time, Sam never looked at me, not once.

I didn't sleep at all that night. At first Emily talked to me, trying to comfort me, but my eyes were dry. I was numb inside, and she fell asleep while I watched the tree branches' shadows dance against the tent in the night wind.

Mrs. Twogood saw that I was dead on my feet, so she suggested I stay in the tent and take a nap that afternoon while the others went fly fishing in the river. I must've dozed off because the next thing I knew I heard shouting.

I ran out of the tent and saw Mr. Twogood and his son carrying Emily. She was covered in blood. Her face had been mauled, and her shoulder and arm were scored with gory lacerations. Mrs. Twogood brought up the rear.

"It must've been a bear," she kept muttering. "Nothing else is big enough to do that."

They lay Emily on a sleeping bag. Her face was so white. I tried to go to her, but Mrs. Twogood pulled me back.

"Let Ted do his job, he's pre-med." Through the strain in her voice I could hear the mother's pride coming through. Ted bandaged Emily as best he could. She was semi-conscious, moaning through it all. I watched, feeling helpless and useless, and wished fiercely that it had been me.

We got her to the clinic on the Makah reservation. I stayed outside in the waiting room as they stitched Emily back together. Her facial lacerations were deep, the ones on her shoulder and arm less so, but they would all leave scars. Emily's perfect face was perfect no longer. Selfishly, I wondered what Sam would think when he saw her again, then hated myself for being so petty. The Twogoods went home to sleep, saying they'd come back in the morning. The nurse tried to get me to go too, but I wouldn't, and the Twogoods didn't know me well enough to insist.

I was by Emily's bedside when she woke, holding her uninjured hand.

"Emily?"

Her eyes opened and she looked at me. Her face was half covered by bandages, and the other side was swollen, but she was alive.

"Leah?"

"You're going to be OK," I reassured her, squeezing her hand gently.

Her eyes frowned, and she tried to lift her hand to touch her face.

"No, don't!" I exclaimed, worried that she'd pull out the stitches.

"My face?"

I swallowed. How could I tell her? "They had to stitch it, that's why it hurts."

Her eyes grew big, shocked. "I remember," she whispered. "Oh Leah, it was awful."

"Don't talk about it now, you have to rest." Tears were blurring my vision. I had to get out of there. Emily had enough to worry about without seeing me cry. I hadn't been able to get through to mom and dad. Our answering machine was broken and dad hated cellphones. "I'll go get a nurse."

I turned blindly, found the nearest nurse and told her Emily was awake. Then I went outside and cried until there weren't any tears left. Why had this happened to Emily? She was a good person.

When I went back inside it was after visiting hours, but I snuck past the nurse at the front desk.

Someone had snuck in before me. Shocked immobile, I stood rooted in place as I heard Sam's voice coming from Emily's room. They'd been talking for some time.

"…ever forgive me?"

"I don't know," said Emily faintly. "I didn't realize what you were. It's partly my fault too, those things I said." I didn't have to see Emily to know she was shuddering, I could hear it in her voice. That was so like her, to take on the guilt. I know she felt bad about Sam falling in love with her. "I didn't believe you."

Was that Sam…crying? Muted sobs came from Emily's room.

"Please," he begged. "Tell me what I can do to make this right. Anything. If you want me to die, I'll do it." He broke down then, the sobs torrential, wrenching gasps of pain.

I felt my hand come up to cover my mouth. Was Sam actually offering to kill himself? Even now, even after he rejected me, the sound of his grief was enough to make me melt. I took a step towards the door, and saw into the room.

Sam had thrown his arms around Emily's middle and was crying into her belly. Emily's eyes were soft, and I saw her reach out with her unbandaged hand to touch his hair gently, running her fingers through it wonderingly. It was a shockingly intimate thing to do. I told myself she was just being Emily. My cousin could never stay mad at anyone for very long. It was a fluke, that was all. When she got better she'd go back to being angry with him.

Only she didn't.

Emily came back to live with us, and Sam would visit her. Not inside, he respected my father's insistence that he never set foot in our house again. However, Emily could come and go as she pleased. She'd go for walks and come back flushed, her eyes shining. I tried not to notice, to pretend it was just a reaction to the fresh air, but kiss swollen lips are unmistakable. A month passed this way.

Seth, being Seth, noticed nothing except that I was unhappy and that I didn't hang out with Emily as much as I used to. Mom was extra affectionate, quietly patting me on the shoulder, or giving unexpected hugs. Dad watched me with pain in his eyes, but neither of them said anything. I think they knew I had to be able to pretend everything was fine.

Then I came home early one day and couldn't pretend anymore. I was meeting Sybil and Mara, two friends from school, for lunch before they went off to college. I forgot my wallet and had to turn around and go back for it.

I walked into my room, the room I shared with Emily, and found them together on my bed. So much for Sam respecting my father's wishes. I just stood there as they flinched apart, straightening and buttoning rumpled clothing.

"Leah, I'm so sorry, I can explain…" Emily whispered, red with embarrassment.

"No, let me." Sam stood up, one shirt-tail in and one out of his jeans. They were still zipped up I noticed, my brain glomming on to stupid details like it did whenever I was stressed. I wrenched my gaze away from his pants and looked at him.

And he looked back at me. For the first time in a long time, Sam looked me in the eyes and actually saw me, acknowledged me, now that it didn't matter.

"Get out." I was surprised how calm I sounded. "Get out of my house."

Emily started crying. Sam winced, but kept his eyes on me.

"I'll go, but I'm taking Emily with me," he said evenly.

"I think her parents might have something to say about that," I told him distantly. Was this really me? Was I really talking, making sense? Inside I felt like the little control I had left was slipping away.

"She's nineteen, she can do what she likes."

"Where will you go? What will you do?" I asked practically in that so-calm voice. "Your mom's house is barely big enough for the two of you, and I've seen your room. Emily's suitcase would take up your whole closet."

"Emily's going to have the old Fisher place. I've already spoken to the Tribal Elders about it and they agreed to let her stay there."

I felt my gaze wander over to Emily. She was kneeling on the floor, hands over her ruined face, trying to stifle her tears.

"She's not Quileute, she's Makah," I told him. "The elders won't give a house to a Makah."

Emily looked up, shocked. I'd never brought up the fact that she was from a different tribe before. It hadn't mattered since we were family. I didn't even mean to make it sound like I looked down on her for being Makah, I was just pointing out facts.

"The Elders agreed because she's mine," growled Sam, demanding my attention. "Emily and I belong together. I'm sorry if it hurts you, but that's the way it is."

He didn't sound sorry, I noted. It was like I was watching everything through a sieve which filtered out all emotion. I nodded as if what Sam said made sense, as if it were a logical conclusion.

"Well if that's the way it is, then maybe you should just take her and go," I suggested politely. I even stepped back and held the door open for them.

Emily cried out in distress, and Sam, ever a sucker for a damsel in distress, went to her and drew her to her feet. They left, Sam not looking at me, Emily staring at me over her shoulder as he guided her down the stairs. Her scars were healing nicely. The stitches were out and they weren't as angry a red as they had been.

I walked into my room and shut the door.

To be continued…