[h1][center][color=e52525][b]Emily Nutter[/b][/color][/center][/h1]


Emily spent the entire Friday afternoon reading Stephen King's [i]Pet Semetary[/i] in the living room, lying on the prehistoric green suede sofa that was covered with a blanket to obscure the rips in the fabric, surrounded by the smell of naphtalene and baby powder. She only had to raise from the sofa when Eddie’s infant son Robbie sobbed from the corner of the room: first she had to feed him and then to change his diapers - she did not like doing this dirty work, but she felt proud of herself for performing it much more graciously than Eddie ever did. 

Finally, she had to soothe the baby with a lullaby after chainsaw noises outside the house startled him out of his sleep. She was surprisingly good at this - the baby felt safe in her strong, wide arms, and her voice, although raspy, had an undercurrent of warmth that the child apparently responded to. Emily loved the baby, but was sure he would grow up to be the same kind of shithead Eddie was before he met his girlfriend Jenny. Even his surroundings were a wrong place to raise a child: above his crib from the log wall hung a trophy of a deer and it looked at Robbie with its empty eyes and its mouth half open. Children should not stay so close to dead things. Or Eddie.

When she finished, the cuckoo clock beside the trophy showed the hour of the meeting. So she ran to the door of her and Jessie's bedroom, rapped on it as softly to avoid startling the baby, and told Jessie that its his turn now to watch the baby. He was sitting by the desk, nose-deep into some astrophysics handbook. She told him to watch over the baby, and he said okay, but also reminded her that she needs to clean her side of the room before aunt Edna barges into the house in all her nosiness. After resisting the urge to smack Jessie on his head, she started cleaning her mess, which took her something like ten minutes. 

She ran out of the house, taking her walkman, a mixtape of Metallica, Slayer and Exodus songs, Radar O'Reilly headphones and a cigarette pack that had a Marlboro logo on it but contained three bootleg cigs that her brother Eddie left for her. The sun was fading, and she was already hearing the owls howling from the forest behind her house.

So she marched fast, the soles of her boots thumping to the fast rhythm of the drums, with her head down and her shoulders hunched, the headphones warming up her ears and their wires dangling by her [i]Ride the Lightning[/i] shirt. She left behind her a trail of smoke from the cigarette hanging from her mouth and she buried her hands deep into the pockets of her army pants. Her long, disheveled black hair, the headphones and the boots - all of it felt heavy on her, and she liked it that way.

Yet when she reached Debra’s house, she regretted that all this weight and her decision to wear black in the summer temperature ensured that she would make it to the meeting sweating all over. She washed in the morning, but now it was all for naught. She also regretted that she did not have the time to comb her hair, but then she was not coming there to attract boys.

Standing by the door, she spat out the cigarette and smashed it with the sole of her boot. She did however also make sure that the Marlboro pack is visible protruding from her pocket. She thrashed on the door with a closed fist and opened it.

[b][color=e52525]‘It’s me, Debra!’[/color][/b], she shouted in a coarse voice, leaning into the room.

Emily entered the room and looked around. If she ever stood with her back straight, she would be towering over most of the kids gathered here.

[b][color=e52525]“I’m sorry”[/color][/b], she mumbled. [b][color=e52525]“It’s because of that little shithead”[/color][/b]. She was not sure whether she meant Robbie or Jessie.

She sat on a stool, hunching and crossing her arms, with a scowl on her face. Yet when she finally heard Debra’s plan in its entirety, she could not help but smile with a corner of her mouth. Now she had a chance to show what badass she [i]really[/i] was. The only thing she had to do was to, of course, drag Jessie by his hair and make him watch over Robbie all day. Jessie’s physics olimpiad was not nearly as important as the baby’s safety and comfort and, of course, a young girl’s chance for adventure.