The Book of Emma Brown

Chapter 6

Emma was giddy as they continued down the street toward her house. She was humming a Beethoven sonata as the two walked along. The air was warm with the hint of summer, and Emma couldn't help but repeat the conversation with David in her head. Alex was quiet, but content as they approached Emma's house, four blocks from the diner. 

The home stood firmly on the street. An old coat of dull white paint was slathered on nicely to the house and a dark blue roof and trim seemed to top it all off. The door was furnished with glass and had metallic handles. A dark cherry red Chevy was parked silently in the driveway. Emma looked at her home as she walked towards it. She had lived here all her life. It was her solitude, her fortress, her childhood. She had so many memories in this house, and she always felt so relieved when she entered.

She stopped in the driveway and turned to Alex. It was almost dark now and the sun was waving goodbye.

"Hey, um, so like, where are you staying?" She asked him.

"Oh. Oh God I haven't really thought about that." Alex ran his hand through along his face and then into his floppy black hair.

"Ok, well, maybe you can stay with me? We have a sleeping bag I can pull out of the closet and put on the ground."

Alex pondered this idea. "Well, does your mom approve of a guy sleeping over? I remember she's not the most fun of parents."

Emma gave him a frown and said, "True. I guess we'll just have to sneak you in then."

"What?"

"Can you climb pipes? Or bricks maybe?" Emma looked around her house as she said this and thought hard. There would be no way to sneak him through the house since her mother was always on alert and her father at home in his office. "Ok, meet me in exactly two minutes on that side of the house. There's a window there that leads to my room." Emma pointed to the right at her room upstairs.

"Uh, ok." Alex looked up at the window across the yard. "This is crazy." He whispered to himself as he trotted to the right side of the house. Emma went up to the door and opened it slowly.

The door gave way to light peering into the grand hallway entrance. Well, 'grand' is an overstatement. It was a tiny hallway with a set of carpet stairs to the left and an open dining room and living room connected together to a little ways left of the steps. To the right of the stairs was a restroom, and the hallway leads to a workroom at the end and a marble kitchen turning left past the hallway arch. A garage hid directly to the right of the entrance. Dark bamboo wood flooring met Emma's feet as she walked in. 

"Hey, mom I'm home!" She shouted. Her mother peered around the archway to the right and looked somewhat angrily at her. Her eyebrows furrowed and the brown bun tied as tight as latex on top of her head was unmoving as she leaned through the arch. She had half-moon glasses at the tip of her nose with businesswoman attire to match. Her heels made her a couple inches taller than her long body already was. If Emma described her mother in one word, it would be 'stick'. 

"I thought you'd never come home. How long does it take to drink a milkshake!" Her mother raised her eyebrows at Emma. She shrugged in response and apologized.

"I should have texted you again that I was on my way home from the diner. Sorry about that."

Her mother sighed. "It's fine, now get upstairs and get your school work done."

Emma retreated upstairs and whispered to herself, "who says schoolwork anymore? What is this, the Victorian days?"

She passed by her father's office door. It was closed shut, and the white wood looked like it had sat like that for years. And in a way, it had. Her father was almost never present, but when he was, he was Emma's best friend. She definitely got most of her father's genetics as he was a dreamer like Emma. But he always worked, so she guessed he would come out sooner or later after he finished. (What job does he have)

Emma made her way down the upstairs hallway to her room at the end. She creaked open the door, set her bag down on the hardwood finish, and went over the window. After undoing the latches, she raised it up and peered outside. Looking down, she saw Alex at the ground. He waved and looked around the yard.

"How am I supposed to get up there?" He shouted.

Emma placed a worried finger to her lips. "Shhhh! If my mom hears you I'm dead meat." She thought for a moment. "There's some rope in the garage. I'll go grab it."

Emma raced back down the stairs and found the garage. She scanned the junk mess and found some old blue and white rope lying in a heap behind some boxes. She reached down and picked it up. A tiny spider crawled along towards her finger. "EEP!" She screamed and dropped the rope onto the concrete floor. The rope sprawled out and unraveled like a snake. She hesitated, then gathered up the rope again.

Her scream had caused her mother to come investigate. Her mother eyed her, then confusedly said, "what are you doing with that rope?"

Emma, whose hands were full of the dirty thing, began to panic. Her mother must never find out about Alex.

"Uh, science project!" Emma replied, and bolted past her mother and back up the stairs.

When she reached the window, she looked out to see Alex sitting in the grass. His head glanced up and smiled at the rope Emma was extending down. A light breeze swayed the heavy rope back and forth like a tail along the side of the house and swirled Alex's hair around.

"Come on up!" Emma said and smiled back down to him. She held onto the rope and walked back a few feet. After a second, she felt the rope tug tight with weight, and she almost collapsed onto the floor.

Emma tried to hold on as best she could while Alex heaved himself up. She could hear his grunts getting louder and louder as he got higher to the window. The early summer wind began blowing into her room, making her hair and stray papers from her room fly up around her.

Fingers glowing red with pain, Emma's grip began to slip on the rope. Her fingers burned and she could almost see sparks coming off her fingertips as the rope gradually ran through her hands. She attempted to reposition her hold on the rope, but this only made the rope slide even more. She felt Alex almost loose his balance on the side of the wall with her grip change, and Emma realized she needed a new plan.

Her fingers would give out at any moment with his weight, and if she let go now with Alex so close, he would fall a long way down. Emma decided to work her way up the rope towards the window ledge. She let go of the rope with one hand for a split second and extended it further along the rope. She did this until she reached the window, where Alex's curly dark hair was peeping just above the window sill.

"Come on!" Emma hurried him, and he began to reach for the edge of the window.

At this moment, her hand officially slipped and the rope dropped to the ground. Emma reached for Alex through the window and managed to grab onto his hand just before he missed his chance at grabbing the window.

They hung there for a moment, with Emma reaching for his other hand, and Alex dangling from the window as his feet scrabbled at the side of the wall for a grip. Emma made contact with Alex's hands and she heaved him in with all of the strength she had left.

She ended up toppling to the floor back first and laying there for a moment. Alex tumbled through the open window and landed right on her stomach, his feet in different angles.

"You almost killed me!" Alex exclaimed. And laid there on her stomach, before realizing where he was and scurrying to stand up.

"Sorry," Emma said, and brushed herself off. Alex fixed his hair and sighed.

"It's fine. What are we going to do now?"

Emma flopped onto her desk chair. "I'll go grab a sleeping bag. Wait here."

She rose slowly and marched out her door.