✓ 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐄𝐌𝐌𝐀 𝐅𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐒 𝐈𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄, charlie conway

02 | siegfried and odette

❛ ━━･❪ ❁ ❫ ･━━ ❜
chapter two: siegfried and odette

tw(s): larson and mcgill

— ˗ˋ ୨୧ ˊ˗ —

EMMA AND HER team watch the Hawks swarm the ice rink as pre-game anxiety fills the chilly air. A shudder runs down her back. She spots her friend, Adam and gives him a small smile and a timid wave. He beams at her through the frame of his helmet. Her teammate, Charlie, curls his lip in disgust.

"Y'know, you shouldn't even be on this team, Emma. You live in the rich, snobby part of the district. You might as well be one of them," Charlie sneers, gesturing towards the rink.

"Well, I like this team, and this team likes me. So I suppose that's too damn bad," she says, staring straight forward. She resists the urge to smile wide, though. She supposes that when you like someone, even their mockery can send you into a fit of butterflies.

"Yeah, they like you. For some weird reason," Charlie mutters.

Emma bites at some loose skin her lip and pretends she didn't hear him.

It starts to bleed.

Charlie Conway is someone who simply cannot be explained to her.

Ever since they met, she's had a crush on him. First, it was noticing two or three times that his eyes were pretty. Then, it was noticing that his entire face was kind of pretty. And then, it was pure admiration.

It was when she was nine years old. In her backyard, she had, and still has, a pond. Well, the word isn't quite right to capture the enormity of this space. It is a ginormous stretch of land that they somehow own that the house doesn't cover. It's a glorious pond, lily pads and clear waters and sparkly rocks. But it is better in the winter, when it freezes over. Emma used to get out her little size three skates and stay outside until dusk. Back then, she was a figure skater instead of a hockey player. She was known by her team and the regular spectators as the Swan, so she called her frozen corner of the backyard the Swan Lake. One winter, when she stepped out onto the patio, she saw a young boy, her age, skating on her pond. She was nine, so she had never cursed until then, but she shrieked, Who are you and what the fuck are you doing in my backyard?  The boy stared, completely stunned, and said, This is your backyard? She nodded, like, duh. Sorry, he said. I was just walking around and I came across this. You should really get it fenced in if you don't want it available to the public. Emma pinched her lips. After that day, Emma asked her mom to fence the area. She attached a little metal can to the gate, with a taped sign that said: Five dollars an hour to skate on Swan Lake, creepy boy. She checked every day, but he never came back.

So it was a definite surprise when she turned ten and joined a pee-wee hockey team, and Charlie Conway was her teammate.

He started hating her soon after she joined the team, meaning it had nothing to do with what happened the year before. Sure, he harbored a bit of contempt when he first met her at the fact that her backyard was more square feet than his apartment, but it was a mystery to her why he really hated her.

His hatred confuses her to no end. The guy always has something to pick on her for, whether it's the color of her dress (Apparently pink looks "terrible" on her. What the hell, dude?) or a play she made in a game that didn't work out. And the weirdest thing is, other than a few playful rebuttals, she's always been super nice and friendly towards him.