Chapter 2: Poor Girl

Flipping her pen back and forth while siting at her desk, Emily Brighton looked up with a sigh out her bedroom window out onto the suburb street of her small neighborhood. A smile formed upon her face. The young teen tucked her slightly-longer-then-shoulder-length hair behind her right ear, and glanced back down to her homework. Her shimmering blue eyes scanned the page, her nose scrunched, and her lightly freckled face gave a look. She decided to put it away for now; it was too beautiful outside to not take advantage of the day. She placed a bookmark inside her math book and closed it shut, taking a look around her room for a moment. It was decently sized, a single bed in one corner, a bookshelf, closet and such. There were pictures of bands lining the walls and teen magazines littered on her bed and desk. Giving another smile she headed out the door to the hall where she headed into the kitchen and out the front door. Emily's parents, Steve and Martha, worked decent jobs. Both worked for the city college as professors. Steve taught math, while Martha taught English literature. Even at 14 years old, it had been decided she would go there for community college, and then off to a four year University. Her parents were able to get her in at a far reduced price since they worked within the system. Emily had a different suspicion. Her parents were always criticizing her grades in school, saying they weren't good enough, and nobody wanted an ignorant nobody in college. They always pushed her in her schoolwork to the point of suffering from constant stress.

The Brighton house was fairly decent. It had two floors, a nice kitchen, dining room and living room with a flat screen, HD TV. Built in the early 2000's, the home was fairly modern, and average in design. Passing by them, Emily headed out the door in a short but modest skirt, and T-shirt with a blue and white heart design that sparkled in the morning sun. Her hair blew lightly in the wind and her eyes shone. She was a bit short for her age, slim with small pert breasts, a trim waist and her stomach was tight and gently rounded, while her hips had broadened giving her a very feminine appearance. Nothing could go wrong today! It was a Saturday afternoon, no school and the weather outside was perfect. However, the truth was far more tragic then it appeared to be. She bottled up all her emotions so that nobody would know. Not even her parents. Emily had a brother named Matthew that she never spoke about. He was 25 and worked in a local supermarket.

Since Matt was a young boy, he would torture and hurt small animals. He always kept his habits hidden from his parents though. Matthew would whip Emily, usually with thick, flexible sticks found in the yard. These left marks all across her body, though not showing except for under her clothes. They were never deep enough to leave lasting bruises, only sting a great deal. On a cold day, when no one was home, he would tie her up outside in the backyard to a tree, gag her and spray cold water on her. It was all under the guise of 'playing, ' but it brought Emily to tears every time. She'd beg him to stop, and he'd just laugh and claim to only be joking, and not to take things so seriously. He made her eat all sorts of disgusting things, holding her down and forcing them in her mouth, and then he'd shush his crying sister, calling her his good little girl. Matthew had never touched his sister sexually, but he'd managed to amass quite the collection of nude pictures and videos of her in embarrassing situations. He threatened to release them publicly if she ever ratted on him. As a result, she was too scared to tell anyone. Often she'd wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares in a cold sweat, and had to struggle to fall back asleep. The reason why she was even remotely happy was because her brother had gone on a week vacation with his friends. A week without her brother there! She was thinking ether finding her brothers collection on her, or tell her parents. She was too scared to do either, and wished someone would help her!

Emily chose one night, while her parents were out at a movie, to rip her brother's room apart. His room was dimly lit, and a bit spooky looking, filled with heavy metal posters. After half an hour, she found nothing. She tried to put things back as best she could before setting her eyes on his laptop. She'd never been very good using electronics, but she propped open the computer and sat down at his desk. A login screen came on and now she had to figure out his password. It could have been absolutely anything, Emily thought to herself. She looked around through notes, papers and books trying to find suitable passwords. She tried several that she wrote down, including his birthday. Each time she received a failed attempt. On her sixth try, the computer finally let her in, but only under a guest account. As the home page loaded, a bar showing the status of an upload, told her that a huge file of multimedia was being plastered all over the Internet: On Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, and many other popular websites. It seems that trying to log in unsuccessfully six times prompted this upload. Emily went wide-eyed with shock. Surely it couldn't be! She tried canceling the upload but nothing worked. When it finished, she went ahead and checked those various sites under her accounts. Somehow her brother had known she'd try to hack his computer, and had set it up so that in doing so, it prompted her pictures and videos to be uploaded everywhere.

This couldn't be happening, it couldn't be real! Emily felt light headed. As she scrolled through nude pictures of herself masturbating, videos of her in the bathroom or getting changed, more pictures of her from every angle. They were all over the Internet. She'd never be able to live! She wouldn't be able to get these off in time to save her reputation. Emily collapsed out of her brother's chair and scooted away, starting to cry. That was it! Her life was over! She made up her mind then and there to take off and never look back. It was the last time her family would ever see her. She ran to her room, she grabbed a small suitcase and packed anything she might need. She didn't know where she was going, or what she'd do, but she could never show her face in public again. She couldn't go to friends, or anywhere else. They'd all see her pictures and would never look at her the same again. Forget school. Everyone would see them by the next day and her life would be ruined forever. Damn her brother! How could he do such a thing to her? It was unthinkable! Once she was packed, she went to her parents' room and looked through their drawers, gathering as much cash as she could; about 600 dollars, all for emergencies. She found her fathers gold card, and placed it in her pocket. She would just withdraw as much as possible and then rip it up.

Taking her small suitcase outside, she just started walking until she found a cab. She got in, gave the driver 300 dollars if he'd drive her as far away as possible. The driver was Arab and didn't seem concerned to ask questions about where a young teenage girl was going all by herself. She was clearly running away, and most drivers would have stopped her or something. To make matters seemingly worse, after a couple hours of driving, Emily fell asleep. The driver didn't notice, instead content on simply driving to his final destination, East Brook City. It was about a two-hour drive from where Emily lived. When they arrived there, the Arab man noticed his rider was asleep and woke her up, asking if East Brook was an ok place to drop her off. Emily groggily nodded and got out on the sidewalk where the driver let her out. She grabbed her suitcase with her, and the cab sped off. Now what? Emily desperately thought. She looked around, and the world seemed to spin. He was breathing heavily and had to sit down for a few minutes. Here she was, a vulnerable teenage girl, ready to be kidnapped off the street! She needed to find shelter off the street. Thus began a life living among garbage, filth and strays for the next month. She learned how to survive on the streets quickly. Nobody ever came looking for her, or if they had, they'd given up after some time. The truth was, Emily' parents had never paid much attention to her. Never kind to her, and didn't show much love. They simply gave her food and shelter. You'd think that would be enough, but once she left, Emily found she soon didn't mind never going back. Life was hard on the streets, but all she knew was that she could never show her face to anyone she knew ever again.