(I have nothing to say, but I feel like I can't actually leave this part empty.)
Emma's thoughts were a-whirling and spiraling through her head like outraged cartwheels. The effect was massively overwhelming. So overwhelming, that Emma had to lean on the side of the lodging house for a moment before her equilibrium returned, a bit breathless from its brief vacation. Emma found the sensation not entirely unpleasant, but wondered, baffled, how something as small as a kiss could shake her entire inner world so thoroughly.
The moon winked, brazenly, at the newsie as she turned to enter the building. The warm bubbly feeling working its way to the tip of her tongue, Emma was surprised to discover and quick to repress, was a very girlish giggle. Such a blunder would have been the end of any credibility she had worked so hard to earn from the newsies. An irrepressible twitch at the corners of her mouth, however, stoically refused to be vanquished, and it dawned on Emma that she'd uncovered the trick to that secret smile many of the other girls had worn; the one that she'd so puzzled over.
Vetoing her first instinct, the impractical impulse to rush up the stairs and wrap her arms around Blink for another kiss, Emma turned her feet toward her own bunk. She had the distinct, and perturbing, feeling that giving into her impulses would lead to endless ridicule, and besides, she needed to take some time to sort out her own thoughts. Her usually orderly flow and mesh of synapse firings had just become a tangled forest of vines which had so suddenly bloomed and twined and platted themselves into a horribly incomparable mess.
Emma realize that it was statistically, humanly, and physically impossible to sneak into the girls dorm. The trials and hard-learned experience of living on the streets had rendered them inhumanly observant, but Emma, ever the optimist, attempted the impossible. The moment Emma entered the room, the card game on the floor stopped, as well as the other, rather limited activity in the dorm, as all four sets of eyes zeroed in on her.
Ember, Swan, and Page were sprawled in various positions across the floor, playing an interesting mixture of canasta, poker and go fish which Ace had invented to utterly confuse Racetrack. It had rather worked. Half-bit, the girls called her Bitsy, was tucked in to her bunk, probably by Swan, who took on the limited mothering requirements for the mostly capable Newsgirls. The young newsie managed to send Emma a bleary, sleepy-eyed wave, before snuggling back under her skimpy covers and attempting to attain some shut-eye.
"You in, Em?" Ember queried, lazily, from her precarious, upside-down position half on, half off the extra bottom bunk.
"I'm tired." Emma declined; in what she hopped was a casual tone, as she shook her head, attempting to sublimate the blush spreading across her face.
"Not so." Page corrected, her perfect accent striking a discordant note amid the New York brogue "You're blushing, but we'll converse tomorrow." Page liked to read, that was the accepted explanation, anyhow.
The reprieve, however brief, was a welcome one, though not entirely unexpected. The boys may have been obnoxiously inept at providing one another with any emotional, physical, or even spiritual privacy, but the Newsgirls had a much more efficient system. They all knew that Emma would cave in all the sooner if she'd had the time to sort every thing out to for herself before explaining it to the girls. The threat of tomorrow, none the less, was not an empty one and Emma knew that she would eventually be hunted down and given the Manhattan equivalent of the Spanish inquisition. Or Candide would tell them. Whichever one happened first. (Emma had her money on Candide.) The girl gave her friends a weary, grateful smile before stripping off her outer clothes and retreating to the cover of her corner bed.
Shutting her eyes, and unlocking the padlocked gaits of her mind, Emma prepared herself for the taxing adventure ahead; bushwhacking, machete style, through her hopelessly snarled web of thoughts.
"Go fish" Swan crowed triumphantly, but Emma had long, long ago how to completely tune her, quite vocal, friends out when any kind of thinking needed to be done.
For the love of Brooklyn! This was surely the last thing that Emma had ever expected to happen. She was having trouble, even now, believing that it had happened at all. Kid Blink was her friend. He had been her friend from the first that she'd stepped, wander-weary, into Manhattan. Blink had been the first of Cowboy's newsies to greet her, and the only one who had ever believed her Candide-squirrel theory. It was such an effortless friendship. Kid's glib banter and easy nature contrasted so amicably with Emma's oppositional streak and caustic conversation.
Emma had never tried to complicate the comfortable relationship with any pretense of romance. This was not really due to any nobility on Emma's part. It had honestly never even occurred to her that romance was an option. Intuition was not the newsgirl's strong point.
She could not begin to deny how she had liked it. Everything about it made Emma smile. How he had waited for her to consent and his surprise when she hadn't the patience for a verbal answer. The genuine softness, and all the subtle promise that the kiss itself had contained.
She ran the sensitive pad of her index finger over the place where his lips had embraced hers, marveling as a phantom echo of the kiss caressed her lips. A soft, satisfied sigh whispered through her. Emma, who had long ago recognized her inability to lye to herself, had to admit just how strong her feelings for the Newsie were. She had grown fond of him, she allowed, and then, grudgingly, she shook off the last barriers that clung, unwilling to emancipate her honesty. She loved him. The revelation held less surprise then she would have expected, though a slight thrill lit through her, as the words fluttered across her heart.
Emma had known love before. She had discovered, in Spot, the love and loyalty gradually gained from a brother. She had found the companionship and sisterly affection from Candide and the Newsgirls. But Emma had never been in love before. It was an entirely new experience for her.
The discovery scared her a little. Emma was not well equipped for lover's games, or coy flirting. Such things ran against her blunt, straight-forward, grain. Emma deeply needed to know where she stood in the world, she craved control.
She looked at her life with all the frankness of a boxer. Emma was gifted with the ability to know when she was losing, and adjust her actions accordingly or to recognize when she was winning, and build upon her strategy. She held the power there; power that she needed. Emma terribly ill-adept at all of the tenderness that embodies love. In acknowledging such an unusual feeling, she was admitting weakness within herself. Placing her heart in another's hands was giving a great measure of control to someone else. It was a proverbial leap of faith. Did she trust Blink? Yes.
Did she trust him enough?
Falling in love was a lot like being drunk, Emma equated. Her senses and reasoning were over-sensitive, and for all practical purposes, useless. She immediately shuddered at the memory, which Ace had had quite a large roll in the making of.
Was it worth the buzz?
Insofar as drinking was concerned, Emma had long ago decided that it was most definitely not. The headache and massively disturbing loss of control had bothered her. However, this kind of buzz was different. It was warm and electrifying. Even more, it was subtly comforting. She remembered again the way he'd caught her on the fire escape, the way his touch had lit her cheeks and set her pulse humming melodically. She'd not thanked him for catching her. She should have, Blink had probably saved her from some nasty cuts or bruises.
The secret smile wriggled its devious way back to her mouth as Emma relived the way his grip had lingered about her. She had felt comfortable there…safe. Immediately, Emma began to backtrack, bristling internally, even in the sanctuary of her own mind, against the supposition that she might need anyone to protect her. Emma was independent. She had proved that again, and again. The fact remained, thoroughly undaunted, that she had felt protected. Emma had felt as though she was unassailable. She'd felt safe.
Emma forced herself to stop and take stock of these, increasingly unnerving, revelations. Was she losing herself to these warm, and rather fuzzy, feelings? Was it allowable to feel this strongly? Was the wanting him an intolerable weakness? Was it strength? Emma's mind was quickly becoming cluttered with questions she could not answer, fluttering in from goodness knows where!
A nagging, cynical, spiteful little corner of Emma's mystified mind reminded her of the well-known reputation Blink had. He was, always had been, an unabashed ladies' man. The horrid little bit of her mind slid her cruel pictures of the multitude of beautiful and charming girls Emma had seen Blink with. It reminded her how infinitely more desirable they were. It assailed her, cruelly, with the knowledge that she couldn't hope to compare with them.
The traitorous little corner revisited the mirror's reflection which, only this morning, she had approved of. Emma reassessed the memory with new eyes. What could Blink possibly see in her? A crooked-nosed, scarred, wild-haired, Newsgirl? She wasn't even sweet tempered! The simple, deceptive, logic of it all caught her. For a moment, Emma floundered in the question.
Turning over on the bed, the single earring Emma wore caught painfully on a loose thread. She gave a soft squeak, though she was more startled than hurt. Emma slid the trinket from its small hole, and rolled it slowly between her fingers. It wasn't a very fine piece of jewelry, just a copper stud. It didn't sparkle, but it had a dull, warm sheen. Though poor quality, the stud held a bit of Emma's heart tightly. She loved it more, not less, for all its imperfections.
The Newsgirl smiled slowly at the obvious metaphor that the alternately sweet and cruel voice of irony had decided to bless her with.
Though this thought calmed, and reassured her, Emma remained vaguely apprehensive. Romance was not something that came naturally to the girl. Her first and strongest instinct was to bluster and banter her way right out of an uncomfortably emotional situation. She suspected, grimly, that Spot's rough and tumble mentorship may have had a rather large something to do with her fear of commitment. Finding a take on the whole situation that did not require much soul-searching, Emma spent a good five minuets cursing Spot for this with colorful, but silent, swearwords.
The raw truth of her attachment to Blink eventually brought her back to honest self-contemplation. She couldn't deny it. It wasn't worth the effort to try. The revelation left Emma completely stripped of her emotional defenses. She was in unfamiliar territory. That scared Emma. Every facet of this experience was new to her. She didn't know what to do with it all.
Despite Emma's incomparable ability to talk as lewdly as any self-respecting Brooklyn-born newsy, and the plethora of dramatic love-lives that she had followed via the great and comprehensive Candide, Emma had absolutely no romantic experience. None. She had never been kissed before that evening, much less found herself struggling through the mire of a first young love. Although her chastity was something she would die three or four particularly nasty deaths before admitting to even the most understanding of the newsies, Emma was rather invested in maintaining it. Perhaps it was the one thing her sister, Elanore, had imparted to Emma before the girl had run off, but Emma kept her body as her temple. It may have been a rather beat-up, ramshackle, temple…but it was still to be respected.
He had, though. No matter how many arguments she put up in her faulty attempt to retain her cynicism, she couldn't deny how much he'd respected her. Blink had asked her damned permission for Pulitzer's sake!
And something about the way his gaze had smoldered without ever losing control had left her more then willing to comply. More then willing to give him her very first kiss. Such a simple thing to give, it was worth its weight in gold.
Emma couldn't decide, she kept deciding, and then suddenly changing her mind, whether she regretted pulling away from him when she had. With the millions of tiny little 'what ifs' roaming wild within her mind as it was, Emma wondered if a single moment more might have lead to a nasty case of spontaneous combustion. That wasn't to say that she didn't miss the feeling of his lips on hers. She missed it, and it hadn't been but an hour since.
A flash of memory crept upon her, of course, when she was least suspecting it. That smile Jack and Sarah had shared. What had it meant? In the light of recent events, it seemed to glimmer like a clue she had left unnoticed. Emma began to wonder if Skittery was right not to believe in coincidences. If the two things were connected, was it a good or bad thing?
Emma wasn't quite sure which was worse out of the two possibilities she saw, looming before her. Either Sarah had done some serious matchmaking, something to be feared entirely in its own capacity, or Emma had been the only person in the room, with the possible exception of Mr. and Mrs. Jaccobs, left out of a bet. This was truly not a consoling thought.
The only blessed inconsistency in this new bit of logic was Blinks supreme lack of a gambling record. If it was to be bet on, for some reason even Candide had not discovered, Blink was as far away as possible. Certainly Emma had never seen the boy lay a bet on anything. Not even a sure bet.
This only complicated the entire snarled mess to impossible new heights.
Could it possibly have been a joke or a bet? Emma found that the idea greatly angered her. Fortunately, while she could not bring herself to dismiss it completely, she found it more or less unlikely.
It just wasn't Kid Blink's way. He was a forthright person, and despite his reputation for being a flirtatious, naïve, Newsie, Emma had caught a glimpse of something solid and stable behind that eye patch. There had been several situations when it had slipped quietly through Emma's mind, from some comment, or derived from a slim implication the boy had made, That Blink knew and saw much, much more than he would ever say.
Emma winced slightly, remembering just how abruptly she had recoiled from the boy and understanding the vast difference between Blink's gentle fingers wrapped round her wrist and the vile, desperate clawing of the bastard in the ally.
She wondered vaguely what Kid Blink had thought of that. Had he considered her reaction a rejection? Had the boy thought that she hadn't liked the kiss? Because, damn, Emma had certainly enjoyed that kiss. The very fact that Blink had been able to make her blush was astonishing to Emma. It was not an easy feat. Those thoughts lead the girl to more, equally enjoyable thoughts.
The possibility of a joke or dare still hung heavily about Emma. The absolute sweetness of considering Kid Blink as something more then a friend created a bittersweet mixture in Emma's already bewildered mind.
She was left with only one option, and a very unsavory one at that. Emma decided to sleep on it.
But the lore that stories are made of, as we have repeatedly seen demonstrated, does not like Emma. In fact, it seeps particularly disenchanted with the Newsgirl. Perhaps it's her disregard for all things traditional?
Emma awoke to a hard darkness that she knew instantly was Brooklyn stone. The ally she lay in was just well enough lit for her to see a thin pattern of lace covering the stone of the buildings that shadowed it. To Emma, lace meant doilies and doilies could only mean one thing; Sarah.
Emma, awake now with this realization, didn't stop for the moment it would have take n her to wonder how she had gotten to Brooklyn, or why a dark fear had penetrated every surface of her heart.
Emma ran, sprinting with strides that stretched even her flexible skirt taut. Her breath came quick, cold and painful to her pumping lungs. She couldn't seem to get anywhere, though. That or the ally was growing. Emma couldn't decide which was more likely.
She sent a frantic glance over her shoulder to ascertain just how far she had come, and ran into a solid, warm body; Blink. Relief knit its way through Emma's terror and she wrapped tired arms around him in a tight hug before stepping back to explain her behavior from the night before. To her utter revulsion, she watched as the trusted face morphed into the loathed countenance of the boy who had tried to rape her. Emma's heart stopped for a terrible moment, before exploding into overdrive. A tortured scream was pulled from her and she hated herself for the weakness of that betrayal. She was violently trembling head to toe, and the years of fighting on the streets seemed to have been stolen from her memory.
From somewhere far away, Spot's voice, a cold, cruel, cadaver of her friend, slipped unbidden into her head;
"Newsies don't cry."
Emma's eyes burned with acid tears and she tasted the salt in her mouth. The tears soon mixed with blood as the drunken boy shoved her violently against the wall. Emma felt the doilies unravel behind her, and then twine about her, she couldn't move, she couldn't fight, but she couldn't stop the spasms racking her body—
"Emma. Emma. God, Emma!"
Emma's eyes snapped open but in the absolute darkness of predawn it took her a few age-long moments to realize that Swan had woken her from the terrifying dream. Just a dream.
The tears were still warm on her cheeks and Swans gentle face was such a relief, her mothering arms wrapped about the younger girl's trembling, shaking form. Emma felt safe there.
" That must have been some dream!" Swan's rich accent was a comfort to Emma's shocked system. Too tired to object to such soothing kindness when all she really wanted to do was curl up into Swan and cry, Emma allowed the older girl to hold her while her trembling body calmed. She fell asleep to Swans mellow lullaby.
If you don't review. You will get pregnant. And die.