CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: EMMA
(In which an actual roadtrip and weird family bonding begins.)
"I'm really sorry," Emma apologized as Henry finished using a cigarette lighter to get the last leech off of his father's chest, a particularly large and uncooperative one that had fastened itself to the tattoo over Neal's heart. Which she tried not to stare at - in curiosity! - while cinching Henry's belt super tight on a borrowed pair of pants, which looked kind of ridiculous along with his plaid shirt hanging off her like a nightshirt. Neal had found a pair of galoshes in the trunk that fit, though, so at least she didn't have to worry about stepping on leeches in her bare feet.
"I said it's fine," Neal reassured, wincing.
"I just... I really don't remember how I got out here. I don't remember being in a hospital," Emma explained while picking at the plastic bracelet on her wrist.
The last thing she remembered was walking off after her fight with Lily, annoyed that her plan to take the bus was derailed and trying to decide if she should pay the extra money to take the train or risk hitchhiking but save her money. Neither one really explained, though, her having been in a hospital and then ending up out here. Henry, the boy about her age, had said his grandfather got stabbed hitchhiking as a young man, fell into a coma, and then woke up in a "fugue state" and wandered off from the hospital into the woods, trying to find a place he remembered, and nearly drown in a stream before his grandmother found him, so maybe in her case she'd gotten in a car accident or something and then wandered out of the hospital and hitchhiked and was kidnapped or something? Of course, this pair could also be her kidnappers, though driving into the middle of a swamp in an old Volkswagen to try and feed her to gators seemed pretty far fetched, particularly when they had a gun so they could have just shot her already and been done with it, unless they were having second thoughts because she didn't remember now? Every scenario sounded like an episode of Dateline!
"So... this is supposed to be The Fountain of Youth?" asked Emma. "It looks like a dirty pool of tetanus... and leeches. Why would you guys come out here?"
"The thrill of local lore?" Neal responded, then expanded, "My stepmother's an amateur historian with an interest in occult type stuff. She wanted us to get a sample of the water."
"So... she's nuts then," Emma scoffed.
"Well, her nuts saved your life," said Henry.
"So... your step-grandmother's really your step-grandfather?" she couldn't help but quip, which got a momentarily confused look from the boy and a snort from Neal.
"Not in the indecently short skirts she wears," he muttered while closing the first aid kit, then told her, "We're driving up to Tallahassee tonight. Why don't you come with us?"
Emma was tempted to agree just on principal of being in a swamp full of man-eating animals, but her experience with people who seemed nice had gotten her here, and there were worse things than being in a swamp with man-eating animals... though this did rank as the worst situation she'd gotten herself into.
"You can't stay here on your own, Emma," Neal continued off her conflicted silence. "There's alligators, jaguars, bears, poisonous snakes. This forest was named for being a hellish place to get lost in," he explained, amending, "And the closest town is a one street place of about a thousand people, so they'll figure out pretty quick that you're a runaway."
"How do you know that?" Emma asked, defensive. "I mean, what makes you think I'm a runaway? Just because I whacked my head and ended up in Florida..."
"I ran away when I was fourteen," Neal told her. "You run away young enough, you get a certain vibe - and you know how to recognize it in others."
"Oh." Emma grimaced. "I was... I was in foster care, but... it didn't really work out... and... I thought I'd try things out on my own again. Not that it worked out great the last time..."
"You don't have to explain, Emma," Neal said with an easy smile. "I get it. But considering your head injury, you shouldn't be on your own, at least not for awhile. We can drop you back at the hospital, or you can come with us to Tallahassee, then decide in the morning if you want us to take you somewhere on our way back north."
Emma couldn't really argue against that logic. As long as they didn't Patty Hearst her into robbing banks or something, she figured she didn't have much choice, so she nodded while Neal concluded, "Let me just, ah, take a leak and then we'll get out of this swampy hell."
Emma watched him head to The Bug's open hood and then glanced uncomfortably at Henry who was, she had to admit, kind of cute in a dorky sort of way. He looked like he hadn't quite yet grown into his ears and nose, neither of which seemed to be inherited from his father. Being an orphan, she'd always found herself fascinated by the resemblance of family members and wondered where she got her own.
"So... you and your dad are on roadtrip vacation, huh?" she asked.
"Yeah, we're from Maine."
"Really?" Emma asked, a bit startled. Maine was not a state she wanted to visit, yet at the same time she wished she'd had the nerve to go there instead of taking the first bus to Minnesota.
"Well, I was born in Phoenix and my dad's actually not from here at all. He lived with a foster family in London for a bit when he was fifteen after leaving home, but that didn't work out and he eventually ended up in New Jersey."
"What about your mom?" Emma asked, curious. "I mean, are your parents together? You dad doesn't wear a ring..."
"They're... complicated," Henry answered with a frown and a sigh. "It's a crazy story, really, that you wouldn't believe."
Emma shrugged. "I just woke up two thousand miles from the last place I remember wearing a buttless gown in a swamp. Try me."
"Yeah, I'm really trying to burn the image of your butt out of my mind," retorted Henry, drawing a blush and scowl. Shrugging, he relented, "Okay, fine, I was born in prison and then adopted and raised until I was ten by my grandmother's step mother."
"That's not so weird. I've known lots of kids in the System who've got parents in prison. So... did the old lady croak then and you went to live with your dad?"
Henry snorted at Emma's rather unsympathetic inquiry. "No, she wasn't that old. My family's not from here. She was only a few years older than my grandmother, who was still a kid, when my great grandfather married her. He was old and kinda pervy, I guess. He'd been engaged to her mother when he was younger, but she was framed for jewel theft by the woman he ended up marrying, my actual great-grandmother, so after he found out about that, and his wife died - she was actually poisoned by his would-have-been wife, my step great-great grandmother, but I don't think he knew that or he wouldn't have decided that the best way to make up for not marrying Cora was to marry her barely legal daughter... who later ended up getting her father and secret lover to kill him with poisoned snakes."
Emma's eyes had widened. "No way!"
Nodding, Henry continued, "Yep. She also tried to have my grandmother killed, took out a hit on her right after the funeral, but she escaped. After marrying my grandfather, my grandmother then made a deal with my paternal grandfather, who was kind of a crime boss in that country, and he made sure that her stepmother couldn't hurt her anymore. She still tried, though, and my grandparents ended up having to give up my mom, so she ended up in this country with the son of a family friend who was supposed to look after her and keep her safe, only he was a total creep and left her foster care instead. Then, when she was a bit older than you, she met my dad and got pregnant with me, which was when the creep showed up again. My parents were criminals at the time, so he blackmailed my dad into leaving my mom, saying he'd take care of her, 'cause of the whole family issues stuff and his dad that he'd run away from, what with being a crime lord and all. Only instead of looking after my mom again he sold her out, called the cops, and took all of the money my dad had tried to give her to finance a sex vacation to Thailand."
"What a jerk!"
"I know!"
"How'd you end up with your crazy step-great-grandmother, though?"
"I still don't exactly know," said Henry with a shrug. "I was supposed to be adopted in Arizona, but somehow I ended up in Boston. I think it was probably something to do with my paternal great-grandfather, who was some kind of child trafficker and abuser while my grandfather just did regular black market adoptions. My great grandfather's goons tried to adopt me to take me out of the country, but my grandfather got my step great grandmother to adopt me first. So, I guess it was a lesser of two evils situation. She wasn't a horrible person after moving here, I guess, not like in the 'Old Country' where she'd had people killed. But she still tried to kill my birth mom after I found her and got her to come to our town. Only I ended up poisoned instead, so after that she tried to be nicer. It's a work in progress," he admitted.
"Anyway, my mom and grandfather found my dad, and then things got complicated again," Henry explained. "We thought his fiancée had killed him after he got deported. Only she hadn't. Then we thought my adoptive mother's half sister had killed him, because she's really crazy and after my grandfather fired her years ago had been working up some scheme to get over here and get revenge on him. Kind of like her mom who did try, but my grandmother killed her in self-defense," he said, frowning a bit. "Where was I?"
"Your half-aunt-slash-step-great-grand-aunt tried to kill your dad?" Emma reasoned.
"Oh, right. But he was just being held captive by former associates of my grandfather for a few years. Only, before he got back, my mom had married his step-dad that she didn't know was his step-dad, because neither of them had mentioned it, I guess. My step-grandfather slash step-dad had only turned up about a week before my dad's presumed death. He was a total creep, but he fooled my mom and gave her syphilis that he got from my grandmother who was basically the village slut after she stepped out on my grandfather because he injured himself to get out of military service - that was before he became a crime lord, tracked her down, and killed her when she said she didn't regret abandoning my dad in a war-torn country with child soldiers and ethnic cleansing and shit. She was pretty horrible, so Killian had to be. And being with him messed up my mom. She became a totally different person, obsessed with her 'love' for him. She started drinking too, on account of him being a functional alcoholic. So, when my dad got back and she still wanted to be with that jerk and treated him like crap, he left. But then Killian got killed by a narcoleptic dwarf who fell asleep behind the wheel and my mom got injured and diagnosed with neurosyphilis that was making her act that way and got treatment and she's been trying to repair things with my dad since. It was going pretty good until about a month ago when they had a fight. I thought a family vacation would fix things, but then my mom failed her driver's test and they had a big fight..."
"And you and your dad decided to take slime samples for your crazy step grandmother who married your ex-crime lord grandfather?"
"Well, were going to go to Disney World, but part of it fell into a sink hole and the park got closed."
Emma started at the older boy, trying to figure out if he was crazy, the best liar she'd ever met, or had one really really fucked up family! In the end, she burst out laughing and decided it really didn't matter, because he'd made her laugh, and it had been awhile she'd really laughed... although it made her chest hurt not so good. "A sinkhole? Really? That's great!"
Henry's lips quirked. "It is?"
Shrugging, Emma answered, "I hate those dumb fairy tale princesses and everyone gets a perfect happy ending and fairy godmothers. Disney's a load of crap."
"Yeah... it's not exactly accurate in its characterizations," Henry conceded. "I'm more of a Harry Potter fan, I guess."
Emma wrinkled her nose and shrugged. "Never read it. Magic is stupid, if you ask me."
"Hey," Neal called their attention as he returned holding a ball of white covered in pine needles and moss. "I found this by the-"
Emma leapt up. "My blanket!" she exclaimed and grabbed the woolen thing, checking it over, making sure it was fully intact and then hugging it to her chest before realizing how totally babyish that was and felt her cheeks grow bright red. At least it was dark out. "I... er... don't have a lot of stuff."
"Well, maybe you dropped the rest of it near by?"
"Where was it?"
"Over this way."
Emma bundled her blanket under arm. "If you think I'm gonna walk off into some dark hollow with you-" she trailed off as he laughed and then she glowered. "I'm not getting raped by some creep in a swamp!"
Neal handed her the gun. "Happy?"
She narrowed her eyes but checked it, not that she knew much about guns, but it had bullets.
"Just as long as you don't accidentally shoot me," said Neal. "I've been shot once. It's not fun."
"Oh.. .is that the scar on your chest?" Emma asked, realizing her voice got a little high and why the hell was she staring at his chest? Okay, it was totally just to try and figure out what that tattoo meant and, you know, the leeches! "Henry said your fiancée tried to kill you..."
"Yeah. She'd joined this cult..."
"Is that why you carry gun? In case she shows up to finish the job?"
"Ah, no, not really. The gun's actually Henry's mother's. The car too," he explained. "She's the cool one in the family. I studied accounting. She became a bounty hunter."
"Really? That's so cool. I bet no one picks on her or thinks she can't do stuff. And she gets to bring in deadbeats who hurt people, right? It's like being a cop but you get to travel and have your own hours."
Neal chuckled. "Yeah, something like-"
"My camera!" Emma cut him off, darting forward to grab the silver camcorder which began a haphazard trail of other trinkets that she stuffed into her blanket. There was no sign of her backpack and changes of clothes, but that didn't matter. Clothes and bags were just disposable stuff from the Good Will or Salvation Army that could be replaced.
Emma mentally catalogued all of her personal possessions enough to know they were all accounted for and that's what mattered. She just hoped Neal wouldn't mention her shrieking like a little girl and grabbing onto him when she nearly stepped on a giant snake that was eyeing her carnival ring... and maybe it would have been best to just let the snake have it, but nasty habits were hard to break, even when the stuff came from memories of broken homes.
Back in their yellow Bug it was a bit of tense situation getting out of the swamp and to the highway - they nearly ran over an alligator! - but they made it. Neal let her ride shotgun and pick the music, which being out of radio station range meant an assortment of cassette tapes, mostly by the same artist.
"Who's Lou Reed?" she asked.
"No, seriously?" Henry prompted from the back-seat. "You shoulda heard the lecture I got from my mom when I asked that!"
"Well, sorry I don't listen to old people music!" Emma huffed, sticking her tongue out at nerdy boy.
Two hours later, after playing Rock and Roll Heart through twice, when Emma turned it over to play the A side again, Henry sniggered in falsetto: "I don't listen to old people music!"
"Shuddup! It's just better than the other ones and late night talk radio!"
"Uh-huh."
"Yeah-huh!"
"You were totally singing along!"
"I was not!"
"Were too!"
Before Neal could intercede, Emma somehow climbed between the seats while they were held up in a DUI checkpoint line, into the back and started giving Henry a noogie. "Say uncle! Say uncle!"
"Ahhhh! Quit it, Emma!"
"Both of you quit it!" Neal growled while thinking he might be scarred for life for getting a face full of a barely teenage Emma's butt-crack, though maybe not as much as Henry getting put in a full nelson by his slip of a teenage mom. "We're moving!"
Emma clamored off, letting Henry up as the car lurched back into gear and the two buckled up, smiling innocently at the state trooper who waved them through. By the time the tape was playing "Chooser and the Chosen One" they'd reached the city limit of Tallahassee and Emma gave a casual shrug and said, "I guess I could stay with you guys for awhile. I don't really think Florida is my ideal destination anyway."
"Do I get a vote?" Henry grumbled, still rubbing at his twisted nipple.
AN: I enjoyed writing Kid Emma! From the flashbacks, she's a bit bipolar in how she's written, going from childlike enthusiasm to existential brooding... sort of like Season 4's adult Emma, actually... I'm sure I got some of hyphenates wrong for Henry's step/great/grand whatevers. Sorry about that!
Next up: The Family Swan-Cassidy-Mills arrives at the motel and stuff happens.