open - another day at the office.

[Emma Lacy Hanson]

Emma was sitting on the park bench nervously, her phone in her lap. She was waiting to hear from her agent at where her album was placed in the album chart. Emma had only just got back to Garvonia. She'd missed another dinner with her family, then again they were probably used to it by now. Anyway, the album chart could make or break her. She had to find out how it had done. She wasn't expecting number 1, c'mon. She was seventeen and new to the music scene, only having started professionally making CDs at sixteen. Then again she was turning seventeen next month, so she was hardly a kid either. She and her twin would be seventeen. She hadn't seen Rory in weeks. She had been too busy dealing with the promotion for her new album. At best before she'd recorded a few Christmas singles last year, now this was the big leagues.

Finally the phone rang. Emma jumped in surprise and answered the phone almost immediately, paralyzing once she could hear her agent's voice on the phone. She wanted to open her mouth and ask 'so how did it do?' but lord, she couldn't speak. Finally, he told her. Number 96. Number 96 in the charts. Emma didn't know whether to be pleased it had made it in the charts at all or cry that the CD hadn't done well enough. Apparently Michael Jackson's Number Ones were number 95, so she tried to think positively that she was only one behind Michael Jackson, whose music was so much better than hers. She arranged with her agent that they'd meet back at the studio at 3:30pm so they could regroup and talk about what came next. Emma didn't know what she'd been expecting... she just stuck to the thought that at least it had got somewhere.

It was getting to the stage where people actually recognized her n Garvonia. People wanted her to sign their albums, they had her music on Itunes. She would never say she was famous, but well known by people that enjoyed her music certainly. She wasn't going to weasel out of the music scene because of this setback, she was just going to work harder. Because she was a survivor and a million times more talented than her twin, she wanted to do better than her. She wanted her parents to finally say 'oh, we were wrong to say you should be more like Rory' but they probably never would. Her delicate self was half in tears and half staying strong. To others in the park it must seem like she was on an emotional high for an unspecified reason. She took a deep breath and looked at her watch.

12:30. She had three hours before she had to be back at the studio. She sat there, feeling the wind breathe through her hair. In a quiet voice, she started singing 'No Regrets'. She loved taking male songs and singing them in her typically high, feminine voice. It gave new meaning to them. The public were her jury, she would be guilty of a bad song only if the public weren't impressed. It was pressure, more than anyone in her family would ever understand. She felt so alone.

[nesadel]

_{THIS IS A LESSON IN PROCRASTINATION}

( I kill myself because I'm so frustrated

[/b][/size] )
e v e r y • s i n g l e • s e c o n d • t h a t • I • p u t • i t • o f f • m e a n s
^{another lonely night I've got to race the clock}[/i][/center][/font]

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Talk about pressure. To anyone not living in the Dekas household, you would see a whole different side of Daphne than if you knew what really on behind the scenes. The abuse had been going on for four years now, and Nes had just about had enough. His younger siblings couldn’t really understand, however Kiron was at the age Nestor had been when it had first started. And their mom had been trying for a couple of years now to reach past even Nes and abuse the younger ones, but over his dead body would the wretched woman lay a hand on his siblings, especially his little sisters.
Where was their father, you might ask? Well, their dad was a merchant and still in Greece. It’s kind of hard to be a merchant where there isn’t a lot of water. Nestor hadn’t seen his dad in over a year; sometimes, he only made it back to visit once a year. With school, and watching over his siblings, it also made it hard for Nes to return to Greece and visit his dad as well, so visits were pretty touch and go. On this day, he was headed to the park. He hadn’t jogged in two days, and he was starting to freak out a little. He wasn’t used to not getting to run and not doing it for two days had messed up his routine. He had gotten to sing a little with his younger sister. Her voice melted his heart when they would sing a duet; he knew when she got a little older, she would have to fight off the record producers. His dream wasn’t to sing though, despite how good of a voice he had.
He wasn’t even sure himself what exactly he wanted to do with his life yet when he got older. At the moment, Nes was too concerned with keeping his family from falling apart, but on the surface, it just seemed like his athleticism and grades were all he worked hard at. But his grades weren’t really something he had to work exceptionally hard at – he was naturally smart. He wasn’t at the top of his class for nothing. Sighing, he stretched as he got to the entrance of the park. After a few minutes, he began to jog around. Seeing a girl sitting on a bench a little ways off, he thought he recognized her from school. Coming up to where she was, he then realized it was Emma Soren. She had just had an album release not too long ago. His little sister was in love with the album, and didn’t believe that the girl with the stellar voice lived right there in their town. Smiling, he came to a stop. ”Emma!” He called out, as he came up to the bench. Standing before her, he could tell she was slightly erratic but he paid no attention.

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WORDS! 486
STATUS! complete
TAGS! emma
TEMPLATE CREDIT! Arro @ Caution 2.0

[/color]

[Emma Lacy Hanson]

Emma spotted a guy jogging toward her. Her brows furrowed in confusion as he called her name. She didn't recognize him, she was nearly certain she didn't know him. Wait.. did she? Emma rarely turned up to school, but a vague memory of him was imprinted in her mind. Like she could remember him from somewhere. So it had to be school, she wasn't there enough for anyone she knew to be a blatant memory. She couldn't remember half her teachers names. She knew the top gun, Adaleen Darcy, that was about it. She tried to remember his name. She could only just remember that it began with an 'n'. She smiled in response to his approach and at the last second she remembered.

"Hey Nestor. How's your Summer been going?" she asked, shuffling up on the bench in case he wanted to sit down. She didn't know how long he'd been running for. Perhaps he wanted to rest, perhaps he wanted to keep going. The option was there, regardless. Sighing, Emma was curious as to how others would see her chart number. Was it a failure or a success, she couldn't really tell. "My album made it to number 96." Emma confided, admitting it out loud was a little hard. Whatever though, she was still far more famous than her sister would ever be. That gave her some comfort, that she had something for her parents to love that Rory didn't.

"Is that.. good? I can't tell." Emma smirked, laughing at herself. She felt so stupid for asking, even stupider for electing some random guy she kinda-knew from school to help her out. "Never mind.. you go jog. I'm just.." wallowing? a mess? Emma pulled her hair back and stared at her phone. She didn't know why, maybe just so she didn't have to look the guy in the face. She was embarrassed at being like this, it sucked. She just had to work harder, when she met up with her agent things would improve. She had to be sure of it. She could do better, she needed to prove to hr family that she could achieve something. Something big.

[nesadel]

_{THIS IS A LESSON IN PROCRASTINATION}

( I kill myself because I'm so frustrated

[/b][/size] )
e v e r y • s i n g l e • s e c o n d • t h a t • I • p u t • i t • o f f • m e a n s
^{another lonely night I've got to race the clock}[/i][/center][/font]

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Thank his father for his memory, and his intelligence. The only thing he claimed from his mother was her unnaturally curly hair – everything else was handed down from his father. Just because Emma hardly ever showed up for school didn’t mean Nestor didn’t know who she was; almost everyone in town knew who Emma was, especially now that her twin sister was pregnant. Oh yes, it was all the school could talk about, although he tried not to let himself dwell on idle teenage gossip. He had worked entirely too hard since his family had moved here from Greece to maintain his perfect grades and hold his own as the top student in the junior class and nothing would take his hard work away from him.
As she slid over, he gladly took the open seat at the opposite side of the bench. He didn’t want to sit too close to her; since running, he knew he had been sweating, especially since it was summer. ”And hello to you, Emma. It’s been going uncharacteristically boring.” He said with a shrug. Nothing exciting to say the least, to him anyway. He’d been roped into playing with his little sister a lot since school had let out, not that he minded. He adored her to pieces. Marilee was at the age where she didn’t much care to hang out with her eldest brother, but she had a ton of friends she had made at Darcy, so her summer had been pretty busy. But Cora on the other hand thought that Nestor hung the moon.
Hearing Emma’s statement, following her question, he sensed a heightened sense of vulnerability, but he didn’t want to assume anything, he didn’t know the girl that well. ”I would say making number 96 and being our age is a rather phenomenal feat honestly.” He said, hoping that would smooth out her fear a little. She was really being too hard on herself, he thought. Maybe if he told her about Cora and Marilee, it would ease her mind just a little more. She kept looking at her phone, as though she were avoiding his face. ”Emma,” he started, ”if it makes any difference, my two little sisters adore your music.” There, it was done, but for some reason, he kept going. It was like something inside of him told him he had to say more, to let her really understand just how much two little girls thought of her music. ”I swear, they can sing your whole album word for word. And they don’t believe you live in the same town.” He said with a grin. He had even tried telling them she went to Darcy, but they didn’t believe him.

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WORDS! 453
STATUS! complete
TAGS! emma
TEMPLATE CREDIT! Arro @ Caution 2.0

[/color]

[Emma Lacy Hanson]

Nestor was right - hearing about his two little sisters did renew her faith in why she got into music in the first place. "Truly?" she asked looking hopefully at his face. That wasn't the face of a liar, so it had to be true. Hearing him talk about his sisters... it made her feel... it made her feel. The irony wasn't lost on her that her power was the ability to turn things to ice. She'd accepted that she was near unfeeling, or at least that was how her twin made her feel sometimes. Her music was the only oar to stop her drifting away to the sea of sadness sometimes. At other times, her music helped her get there, depending on the mood of the song. "That makes me feel, wonderful, thanks for telling me. And thank your sisters for me. It means a lot." she smiled slightly, not a lot. Her esteem had been damaged verbally for many years. Her family never laid a finger on her, but Emma sometimes felt that the verbal abuse thrown at her was far more damaging. Her twin seemed to take any excuse to shout at her for being herself, especially now she was pregnant.

Emma missed it when they were kids. All the chuckles, the smiles, the laughter. The carefree ease that everything was going to be ok. There was no battling sides between work and personal life. There was no work, so your personal life never went lacking. Friends, family, they were by your side and you saw no reason for them to leave. Yet no matter how choked up she got about how things were between her and her family, she didn't cry. And because Rory cried all the time it made Emma look like the ice queen. Emma's small smile dropped sure enough, they didn't tend to stay for long. "Well I do," she laughed inwardly, "at least some of the year anyway. I travel a lot. You know, touring." Emma shrugged, it made sense that not many people would remember she was raised in Garvonia. After all, she was rarely there.

Exhibit A of this was Nestor, who was in her year at school but Emma couldn't recall saying two words to him. Yet he'd been nice enough to greet her when she was paying no notice. Her hair dropped over her eyes as she looked back at her lap. It was ironic, doing what she did, putting herself in front of crowds of people, to think that she was actually spending her life hiding from anyone that mattered to her.

[nesadel]

_{THIS IS A LESSON IN PROCRASTINATION}

( I kill myself because I'm so frustrated

[/b][/size] )
e v e r y • s i n g l e • s e c o n d • t h a t • I • p u t • i t • o f f • m e a n s
^{another lonely night I've got to race the clock}[/i][/center][/font]

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Cora and Marilee’s voices echoed in his head at that precise moment with the words to Emma’s latest single. Trying to keep his feet from moving in time with the beat was just about impossible. Looking into her eyes as she turned her face towards his, the look she gave him as she searched it for an answer broke his heart. ”Yes, truly.” Much like Emma, his siblings had the power to make or break his entire day. He loved each of them so fiercely that he could feel it throughout his entire being. It hurt him that Marilee didn’t want much to do with him at her current age, and he was afraid Cora would become the same way – but he knew it was only a phase the two would go through, it was all a part of life. ”I will tell them. You should come by the house one day, if you ever wanted your own cult following. I can tell you now, those two are your biggest fans without a doubt and they may would just die if they ever met you in person.” He said with a grin.
When they had arrived in Garvonia from Greece, it had been a huge culture shock for Nestor. His father being away had also caused the sudden change in their mother. It was to the point now where he avoided her at all costs, but he couldn’t stay away from her forever. He had to be there to protect his siblings, particularly Cora and Marilee. If she had ever laid on a hand on them, he wasn’t quite sure what he would do – all he knew was protection, for all of his siblings, no matter what the price. ”Well, I never forgot you were from around here. I quite look forward to the days you are actually in school. I love hearing about your success. Makes me glad I can look back and say ‘hey, I know that famous singer’.” He had noticed her smile, and then how quickly it had faded. ”You really should smile more often Emma. You’re a lot prettier when you smile.” He said, complimenting the girl. Everyone at Darcy Academy knew about her twin, Rory, being pregnant, and by a teacher no less, but he wasn’t one to judge anyone else’s fate in life. He certainly had no room with the troubles going on at his own home to even begin to look at anyone else’s and say a negative word.

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WORDS! 417
STATUS! complete
TAGS! emma
TEMPLATE CREDIT! Arro @ Caution 2.0

[/color]

[Emma Lacy Hanson]

A smile slipped through her features as he bid her an invite into his home. Nobody ever did that, unless they were her agent. But then that was work business. She really appreciated it. "I've only just arrived back in New Castle, but um, if your offer is extendable, I could do Friday?" normally Emma didn't make time for anyone, but it would be inefficient to turn down an offer to meet fans. Without her fans she was nothing, she wanted to show every single one of them that she cared. She would too, if she knew who all of them were. It wasn't as if they could track every Itunes download, every CD sale etc. She didn't need to track though to know that none of those sales were from her family. The thought made her angry, because Emma was doing something creative in the world. All her sister was doing was spouting out the twins of her teacher and she was still their darling daughter.

Emma frowned as Nestor confessed he looked forward to the days she was in school. "That's a shock. I didn't think anyone cared whether I was there or not." she admitted dishonestly. There were sometimes random occasions where people from school would say they missed her, but Emma never believed them. Something made her want to believe Nestor though. Her smile blossomed at his compliment. "Thanks, I think your too kind. Every household should have one of you to make everything better." she wedged her cellphone into her pocket absently, she wasn't really focused on it anymore.

"I didn't mean to interrupt your jog. I feel much better now, you don't have to hang around." she told him with a tight-lipped smile.