I smoked pot alone when I got off work and watched Family Guy reruns until Emma showed up, around two in the morning, drunk and pounding on my door. She was pissy and incoherent, which wasn't really that big a surprise. Emma was pissy and incoherent a lot these days.

She folded her frail limbs into a ball and sat on my lap on the couch. While she watched cartoons without laughing, I dabbed a wet cloth to clean away the dried blood on her swollen lips.

"I think I fell," she responded with a shrug, when I asked her how she'd fucked up her mouth. "It's not that big a deal, Spin, stop treating me like a baby."

She crawled out of my lap, the sharp angles of her bones stabbing me, and sprawled out on her stomach on the floor. Stretched across the carpet, she rested her chin on her hands and continued watching television. Watching, but not really watching. More and more often I got the feeling that Emma was never really inside her own skin. She was somewhere else, but god knows where. God knows she would never let me in.

I rolled us a fat blunt, feeling a little rejected. Sometimes the only way I knew how to win Emma's attention back when she was being bitchy was to shower her with drugs. She seemed to like me a little better the more fucked up she was. She liked everything better that way.

She took the blunt soundlessly from me each time I passed it her way, never really making eye contact. I could feel her tension ease, though, with every hit. The mood in the room got lighter. Rather than pissy, Emma became simply sullen instead. Her eyelids settled at half-mast over her dead eyes.

"Mama Onu was the first turtle in the Palmerston's Atoll to be satellite tracked," she muttered out of nowhere, interrupting my cartoons. She was staring at the carpet, pouting, blazed senseless. "They wanted to study migratory paths. She could swim 2,148 kilometers in fifty-two days. 2,148. I can't believe I remember the exact number."

I pursed my lips several times, attempting to phrase the question, "What the fuck?" in a polite way. Failing that, I just mumbled, "Mmm," and tried not to stare too much. Emma scared me sometimes. I often felt like I was fucking a zombie.

"Blow me a shotgun," she said next, sitting up to pass me the small roach left of the blunt. Obliging, I put the roach between my lips, the red-hot end pointed towards the inside of my mouth. She placed her pale mouth close to mine, and as I blew a hot stream of smoke toward her, she sucked it deep into her lungs. When I had finished, she pulled away, nodding thanks to me as she held the smoke in her lungs for as long as she could.

A cloud of gray smoke danced around her gaunt face when she exhaled at last. She curled up in a ball on the carpet, eyes glued dully to the television. A few minutes later, I heard her muttering things.

"He tried to kill me," I thought I heard her murmur, just before her eyes fluttered shut and she drifted to sleep.

…

I passed out on the couch not long after Emma. I didn't hear her when she left to go to school in the morning, but I did hear her not long after. It was just after eight o'clock when I was unpleasantly awakened by someone banging on the front door. Sleepily, I slid off the couch, still wearing yesterday's clothes, and ambled to the door.

"What's wrong?" I croaked, when I saw Emma standing in the doorway with her arms full of books.

"School was cancelled," she said with a shrug and a bewildered expression. She slipped past me and into the house, throwing her school books onto the living room floor before she flopped onto the couch. "I don't really know what's going on… There were cops everywhere, someone said there was a bomb threat or something. Weird."

Emma gave a slight shudder. I knew exactly what was going through her mind. I could clearly see the image she'd been confronted with: frantic whispers, the air thick with fear, cops with their guns and armor. The same way the school had looked the day Rick shot Jimmy. I closed my eyes and swallowed, shaking the awful memory.

I sat beside her on the couch. "Well, cool," I said awkwardly. "I mean... at least you don't have to go to school."

Emma nodded. "Yeah, I guess so. Don't have to take that stupid Bio test."

I pulled her limp body close to mine. We snuggled on the couch and fell back asleep for a few hours. When we woke, Emma was in slightly better spirits. She used the last of my weed to roll us another blunt, which we smoked, and which prompted Emma to suggest that we make pancakes.

I watched the light sprinkle through the dirty kitchen window and land on Emma's skin as she baked. I sat at the table smoking cigarettes while she did all the work, but Emma didn't seem to mind. She seemed to be having fun, which was a rare sight. We laughed together, stoned and cozy, while the smell of hot golden pancakes filled the air. It was the kind of moment I lived for. For twenty fleeting minutes, we were happy. For twenty minutes I could forget about how shitty things really were. I was naïve enough, in that moment, to think, hey, things aren't so bad. Emma's not so bad. We have each other. We have pancakes. We're going to make it.

It was always those moments, where I was lulled into a false sense of security, that happened just before something really awful came crashing down.

We sat on the couch in front of the news, shoveling pancakes down our throats.

"Spinner, look," Emma said suddenly. Her fork was frozen in mid-air as she gawked at the television. "It's Degrassi."

"Classes were cancelled today when the school received a call warning of the placement of a suitcase in the gymnasium containing an alleged explosive," said the crisp, business-like voice of the news correspondent. We watched the screen, transfixed, eager for more information. "Investigators determined that the suitcase contained nothing dangerous, and after conducting a thorough search of the school, concluded there was no threat present. The prank bomb threat was called in by a student, who police have now taken into custody. As the suspect is a minor, we cannot disclose their name, but police tell us they face three counts of felony terrorism. Classes at Degrassi Community School will resume tomorrow morning."

I heard Emma's chest, heaving heavy breaths beside me. I turned and met her gaze.

"Whoa," I said to her, softly. "Who do you think did it?"

Emma swallowed hard. Her eyes darkened. "I think I have a pretty good idea…"