All an Illusion

Emma hugged her small, yellow cropped jacket tighter across her shoulders. It was fairly warm, but the constant windy breeze from the ferry was raising goose bumps across her light skin. She liked standing outside at the helm of the boat where you had quite a view of the endless sea and water. She wished she could stay on the ferry forever, and never have to arrive at Port Angeles where she would only have her angry mother to look forward too. Even the thought of it made her wince. She hated it when her mother yelled at her, or cried how ‘disappointed’ she was in her. It was something that happened so rarely Emma could count the number of times on one hand her mother had seriously scolded her. The rest of the times Emma had very easily and cleverly got away with it. She didn’t know what annoyed her the most; how she abused her mother’s faith and trust in her to be the perfect daughter or how she managed to keep up this secretive wild side of her hidden. One day her mother would realize her little special angel wasn’t so perfect after all, Emma could only pray she wouldn’t be there when that happened.

Her watch beeped to mark an hour, which meant that there was only fifteen minutes of the journey left. It was time to start working on her sorry speech. “Sorry mum, I got back six hours later than I was supposed to?” she tried speaking out loud to herself. It was pathetic; she definitely had to leave out the six hour part. It was all so unfair, she couldn’t help thinking. In her eyes it should be her mother apologizing. She was the one who had insisted they randomly move to North America, Port Angeles, taking everything away from Emma and dragging her into complete utter misery. It was her who had quit her job and become obsessed with hunting down some old high school friend she spoke so vaguely of, yet spent so much time searching for. When she had finally found an address she had dragged Emma too Forks a small wet rainy place that was not much fun for a weekend ‘holiday.’ And then when she had finally left the hotel and when she had finally mastered up the courage to speak to this person it was then Emma had decided she’d had enough. She had snuck out hoping to find some way of entertaining herself before her psycho mother got back home. And that was then when things had pretty much spiraled out of control.

“Hey, do you mind if I stand here?” came a soft voice behind Emma. Emma rolled her eyes and was ready to tell the stranger to ‘shove off’ when she saw it wasn’t just anybody, but a young girl around her age, with dark short hair and blood red, crimson eyes that were momentarily fixed towards her. Emma could feel a friendly smile tugging at her lips.

“Sure,” she beamed. The girl dropped a shoulder bag at her feet, and then also turned towards the sea. “So do you live in Port Angeles? I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you before,” Emma said, strangely finding she could not take her eyes off the teenager.

The girl absently shook her head but gave her, her a hand instead. “No, my name’s Rachel,” Jade lied, smiling at how easy it was, “I’m trying to get to Seattle, I have family over there that I will be visiting. You wouldn’t happen to know any open friendly places to stay in Port Angeles that take in complete strangers would you?” Jade laughed.

Emma cringed, her laugh sounded as smooth as silicone, each word she spoke rang out as clear and rhythmic as soft bells. She envied her model looks, even the intense contacts added to her alluring and mysterious demeanour. She looked like the type of girl who was used to getting what she wanted, and Emma bet she never had problems dealing with frantic mothers. She was the type of person her mother would have hated, and the type of person she loved. With those thoughts in mind, Emma still found herself nodding, “Yeah I do actually. I just moved over there with my mother, and we have quite a big house just for the two of us.”

“Really!” Jade smiled never slipping from her mask of innocence, “That would be great! You’re a total lifesaver…?”

“Emma,” she said, picking up her small luggage as the ferry stopped at its destination, “Emma Stone.”

Emma didn’t know what had come over her to invite a complete stranger to her house. Her mother would most likely kill her, but at least she had bought herself some more time, her mother couldn’t rebuke her with a guest around, right? What Emma didn’t know, was that she had not invited a complete stranger to her house, Jade was in fact her cousin and her own mother was Jade’s Aunt. What she did not know was that she would never be rebuked by her mother again. Marissa Stone was long dead.

Jade listened to Emma’s light chatter as she followed her to her house, Jade was far away already picturing the scene when they would arrive at her house. She could see Emma’s look of horror at the police cars that would possibly be already outside her house. Or maybe it would come as a phone call, to tell her the horrible news. She didn’t really care. All she needed were a couple minutes to search her house for some idea of what they had wanted with her mother. Maybe then she could even possibly find out who had attacked her, months ago in the meadow. All of that, of course depended on how well she could control herself.