Page 1 of For Emery

CHAPTER ONE

Grady

I haven’t always been a prick…

Age 11

Darkness filled my room as I lay in bed. The tape on my football posters had peeled off and the curled bottoms flapped in the late October breeze seeping through my open window.

“I’ll kill you, you bitch,” a deep voice carried across our lawn from the home of our new neighbors. They’d arrived a week ago. And not once since the small moving van pulled up, had there been any silence coming from their home at night.

“Hello?”

The small whisper jarred me upright. I might’ve only been eleven, but hearing voices was definitely something new for me.

The quiet plea repeated. “Hello?”

I crept out from under my sheets and crawled to the window beside my bed. I could only see the top of the blonde-haired girl who stood outside.

“You okay?” I asked, pushing my window up until it was all the way open.

Her head tilted up. Her big blue eyes, puffy with tears, met mine. She shook her head. “Can I come in?” she sniffled.

My eyes shot behind me at my closed bedroom door. Would my parents be angry if I let her in? I mean, I didn’t even know her name. “Ummmm…”

Noticing my indecision, she turned away. “Never mind.”

Shoot. “Wait.”

She stopped, but didn’t turn around.

“Sure. Fine. You can come in.”

She spun around and scurried over. She couldn’t have been more than four feet. I reached for her to help her up, and she placed the tiniest hands I’d ever seen into my oversized bear claws. “How old are you?” I asked, lifting her through my window as if she weighed nothing at all.

She dropped onto her knees on my bed. “Eight.” Her eyes moved over my room. It was your average eleven-year-old boy’s room. “Wow.”

The awe in her voice embarrassed me. I knew the house she’d moved into was kind of a dump, so I understood her amazement at the size of my room. I reached for the window and closed it, not wanting her to hear her parents’ loud voices. Though I’d overheard my mom say it wasn’t her real dad. “What’s your name?”

“Emery Pruitt,” she drawled, her accent as thick as my momma’s molasses.

“Good to meet you, Emery Pruitt.”

She smiled through her teary eyes. “You, too, Jordan Grady.”

“How’d you know my name?”

She quickly wiped her damp cheeks with the back of her hand. “I have my ways.”

I laughed at this little eight-year-old who was likely tougher than my entire football team. You had to be to deal with the amount of fighting her parents did. “So, what shall we do?” I asked, suddenly feeling completely unequipped to help her.

“Sleep,” she said. “I just need to sleep.”

I scooted off the edge of my twin bed until my bare feet hit the hardwood floor and pulled back the sheet. “Here.”

Emery climbed underneath and tucked herself into a ball. She was so tiny in my bed. Such a wounded little soul who probably hadn’t gotten a lick of sleep since moving in.

“Whatcha waiting for?” she asked. “Hop in.”

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