WHO: Teenage Emilia & Eddie Wolfe. WHEN: Around sophomore year for Emilia and senior year for Eddie. WHERE: The hallways of Fall City High School. SUMMARY: Eddie wants Emilia to open up and talk about her feelings about The Divorce. WARNINGS: N/A.
Emilia was used to wanting her history class to end. Her teacher was bad. He had sweaty pits. It was so gross that it was distracting and he didn’t have a very good narrator voice either. Now she wished she could push time back.
She slowly made her way from her classroom to her locker. Sometimes she and Eddie walked home but nowadays she tried to make him lose patience with waiting for her. Unfortunately, he was a little too patient for a high school boy.
Emilia recognized the tread of his footsteps in the emptying hall as she stuffed another book in her backpack.
Eddie felt that one had to be patient when they had Jacob Wolfe for a father.
“Hey,” he called ahead, zipping shut his own backpack as he walked down the hall towards his little sister. “What was it this time?”
“Hmm?” Emilia did her best to make the noise sound like a question. Then, realizing he was not close enough to really hear that, verbalized the question, “What was what?”
“What KEPT YOU SO LONG THIS TIME?” Eddie called ahead loudly as he took step after step closer to Emilia’s locker.
She turned to look at him. “Oh my God, STOP BEING DRAMATIC!” Emilia called back to him at the same volume.
He stopped at her locker. “How was that dramatic, question avoider?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because you were yelling,” she replied in a tone that implied he was an idiot for asking.
“Only so that you could hear me,” Eddie argued.
Emilia disagreed, “I think you just wanted to be the loudest person in the hallway.”
“Sure,” Eddie shook his head. It was a sound argument but now that he was closer he wasn’t going to let her avoid the issue. “So,” in a perfectly reasonable inside voice, “what kept you this time, Em?”
“I just had to ask about a grade I got.” She shrugged her shoulders. “You could have left without me if I was taking too long, you know.”
“Oh I know,” ever the smartass, “but I wanted to talk to you, about things.” He knew his sister well enough not to underestimate her. She knew exactly which things he wanted to talk about.
Of course this topic of conversation is exactly why she tried to get out of walking home with Eddie these days. His focus was razor sharp on The Divorce whereas Emilia just wanted to stay out of the way of everyone at home because of it. “Why? It’s not like we have any control over what will or won’t happen.”
“So? It still impacts us. It’s still happening to us too. I’m sure you have feelings about it.” He could have kept going, but he didn’t.
“So…” Emilia trailed off, then shut the door to her locker. She forced herself to look him in the eyes. “I don’t know, Eddie. I just feel weird, I guess. How do you feel?”
He wasn’t ready to answer that, not yet, not without a few more details. “Weird how?”
“I don’t know. Just-” Emilia stopped to motion her hand around wildly. “Weird. Different. Everything is just...unpredictable now.”
“I think it’ll be better.” Eddie replied evenly.
Emilia tilted her head to the side. “It’s possible. Why do you think it’ll be better?”
“He hasn’t been with us for a long time, so,” a carefully calculated casual shrug, “what difference will it make? It was just mom and us anyway.”
She wasn’t sure if she agreed with that. Mom was dedicated to her work too. It wasn’t like one of them was always around and the other was always gone. Or, at least, not from her point of view. “I don’t know. I think it’ll feel different.”
“Different isn’t always bad though.” Right? At least it didn’t seem like it was, at some point in his life Eddie had thought girls were gross, now he didn’t. That was different and good.
“Um, no I mean different can be lots of things.” Emilia tightened the straps of her backpack. “I mean different can be good or can be neutral. It’s not a default of bad. People just have to figure out how they feel about the different. And sometimes people just don’t know how they feel about the different.” She felt a tightening in her gut which she wished would go away.
“It’s not something you have to figure out right away, Em.” Eddie replied as he started to walk, nodding for her to follow. “I mean it’s not like school, there’s no deadline.”
She matched pace with her brother. “I know. I know.” Though the repetition sounded more like she was trying to convince herself into that truth.
“What else are you worried about?”
“What else?” Her hands went to her straps, pulling at them to tighten again. “Is there something else I should be worried about?”
“That dance is coming up.” Eddie suggested offhand.
“Yes, it is.” Emilia stated, not entirely sure where he was going with this. “So?”
“Lots of people are worried about that…” He shrugged.
Emilia shrugged. “I don’t even know if I’ll go.”
“Do you want to?” Eddie was going, of course, Eddie always went and usually ended up elected as something or other.
She just shrugged again. “I’m neutral. Why? Do you need me to clap for you when you win a crown?”
“Always,” Eddie grinned.
Emilia rolled her eyes. “I think you’ll live if I’m not there.”
“But if you’re there it’s time away from mom and dad.” Wasn’t that what she was after these days?
She shook her head back and forth. “If I’m not at the dance I could be legitimately anywhere else in Fall City. Those aren’t the only two options, you know.”
There was no verbal response, only a dramatic sigh, as though his heart was breaking.
“You wouldn’t even be thinking about me. You’d be too distracted by whichever girl you’re trying to impress in that moment,” Emilia pointed out.
This might have been true. In fact, it probably was. Eddie bit his lip. “Hey Em?”
The greeting - as if they hadn’t been talking this whole time - made her a little wary but she tried not to outwardly show that. “Yea?”
“You know that even with mom and dad being all --” he hesitated. “Caught up in the divorce and stuff, even if they aren’t here for you, I am. You know that right?”
Eddie wasn’t always your stereotypical big brother. When Emilia was scared of something when she was younger he wasn’t the type to say he’d protect her or anything. He was more likely to force her to jump off the high plank than anything else. But there were moments, like these, when he pulled it off.
But, right now, what she was going through, well, she wasn’t ready to verbalize it yet. She hadn’t even said the words aloud to herself. “Yea, I know but I don’t know why you’re so worried about me. I’m fine.” This was kind of a lie and far too simple of an answer as to how she truly felt about everything right now.
“It’s actually my job,” Eddie replied sarcastically. “They made me sign a document when you were born. You know, like one of those cabbage patch kids things.”