Minnesota, summer, 1996

"Truth or dare?"

Emma rolled her eyes. "Dare, obviously," she replied. She'd never once picked truth in her life, and she wasn't about to start now.

Stephanie, the red-haired girl sitting across from her, grinned. "Okay. I dare you to dial a random number and prank call them."

Emma rolled her eyes again. "Prank call? Seriously? That's baby stuff."

"I double dare you to make the call out of state!" another girl, Lexie, cried out.

That made Emma pause. "What if I get in trouble?" They weren't supposed to use the phone in the group home without permission, period, and she wondered what would happen if she were caught calling a stranger long distance in the middle of the night.

Lexie laughed, covering her mouth with her hand in an attempt to keep quiet, her dark curly hair bouncing with the motion. "Well, that's the point, isn't it? What good is a dare if you're not scared to do it?"

"I'm not scared of anything!" Emma insisted, as she got up to head down to the phone. The other girls in the room stifled their giggles as they got up to follow behind her, as quiet as they could.

Emma drew in a deep breath as she reached the phone in the dim light of the main floor. None of the group home workers seemed to be up or around, so she figured she was in the clear.

She picked up the receiver and began to dial.

The number wasn't entirely random. She knew the area code for Maine by heart, though she'd never dared to call there before. She often wondered what the odds were that she could call and reach her birth parents by complete accident. She knew it was a silly thought, but she punched in the area code anyway.

The numbers that followed made a sort of pattern on the keys, but she didn't really pay attention to the numbers.

Emma held her breath as the phone began to ring, wondering what time it might be in Maine. She couldn't remember if the east coast was ahead of or behind Minnesota, and she hoped she wasn't waking someone up in the middle of the night.

After four rings, she heard a voice come through the receiver: "Hello, you've reached Regina Mills. I can't come to the phone right now, so please leave your name and number and I'll get back to you."

"Answering machine," Emma mouthed to the girls watching her in anticipation.

"So leave a message!" Stephanie whispered, grinning excitedly.

Emma heard the beep, and suddenly realized she hadn't thought of anything to say, so she began rattling off the first classic prank call she could think of: "Uhmmm… hi… is your refrigerator running? 'Cause you better go out and catch it!"

Emma slammed the phone down, her heart pounding, as she looked at the other girls for their approval.

"Oh my God, Emma! You're so lame!" Lexie laughed.

"Girls! What are you doing down here?"

The girls spun around to face Tracie, one of the nicer workers at this home, all of them looking incredibly guilty.

"Nothing," Emma lied. "I just… wanted a glass of water."

"Yeah, and she was scared to come down here alone," Lexie added.

Tracie narrowed her eyes, looking at the girls skeptically. "Bed. Now. It's after midnight."

The girls all nodded and took off up the stairs, just relieved that they hadn't gotten into any real trouble from Tracie.

Upstairs, the girls tried to hold back their giggles as they got into their beds. There were more than just the three of them sharing this room, but they were the oldest, and tended to stay up late, treating the whole situation like a nightly slumber party. Emma wasn't used to having other girls her age in any of the homes she stayed in, and since she'd never really had any friends, she'd been grateful when these two girls invited her into their posse as soon as she'd been placed there.

"So, who was it? A guy? Did he sound hot?" Stephanie asked, looking excitedly at Emma. At fourteen, Stephanie was the oldest of the three girls, and though Emma would be thirteen in October, she didn't really have boys on the brain like other girls her age tended to.

"No. A woman," Emma replied.

"Oh, bummer," Stephanie sighed, rolling over onto her back, looking away from Emma.

"Even if it was a guy it's not like Emma would ever meet him!" Lexie pointed out.

"You never know," Stephanie said, with a shrug. "Coulda been fate."

Emma sighed. She had no idea how to tell these girls that though it might not have been a hot sounding guy on the phone, there was something about that voice she'd just heard, that made her want to hear it again. But she knew she couldn't tell them that, or they'd just think she was weird, and she was hoping to stay in their good graces as long as she could.

So she closed her eyes and replayed the pattern she'd dialed into the keypad in her mind, committing it to memory, though she was quite sure she wasn't going to be calling it again.

Storybooke

Regina was on her way out the door the next morning when she noticed the blinking light on her answering machine. She hadn't noticed it the night before, and she wondered if someone had called during the night, though it seemed strange that anyone would.

She clicked play and noted the timestamp on the call: 1:18am

"Uhmmm… hi…. is your refrigerator running-"

Regina rolled her eyes and hit stop before the message could finish, already well aware of where it was going. To date, she'd never received a prank phone call, but her curse gave her enough knowledge of this world to know the classic ones.

She shook her head, wondering which wayward child of Storybrooke had been bored in the middle of the night, and truly wondered who would be brave enough to call the Mayor. She'd heard of call display, but hadn't really had a reason to acquire it. She wasn't even really sure why she'd bothered with the answering machine, if she was being completely honest, since no one ever called her at home, anyway.

She grabbed her keys and headed out the door, quickly forgetting she'd even received a call at all.

Minnesota, early fall, 1996

Nearly a month had passed before Emma thought about the voice on the answering machine again. She had moved from the group home to a new foster home with five other kids and parents who worked a lot.

And that phone was just so tempting.

But she resisted the urge - for a while. A few times she dialed nearly all the digits and forced herself to hang up. A few times after that, she became more bold, and hung up after "Hello, you've reached Regina Mills." She only ever seemed to get the answering machine, and truthfully, she was okay with that, since she was sure she would just hang up if the actual Regina Mills actually answered.

Still, the more often she called and heard that outgoing message, the more intrigued she became about the elusive Regina Mills. She decided that there was no way she'd accidentally dialed her birth mother's number, because Regina Mills sounded far too classy to have ever left a baby on the side of the road, but there was something alluring about her, and try as she might, Emma found she just couldn't force herself to stop wondering about her.

Which is why one night, near the end of October, Emma waited until she heard the tone at the end of the recording. Coincidentally, it was the night of her thirteenth birthday, in a new city where she had no friends, and in a relatively new home where she'd yet to bond with anyone, and her foster parents forgot her birthday anyway. Emma was lonely.

And a little bored.

So she made the call.

And this time when she got the answering machine, she left a message. She had no idea what she should say - what could she say? I prank called you once and now I think about you more than is probably healthy or sane for a thirteen year old girl? No. Instead, she rattled on about being a reporter and hearing that Ms Mills had a juicy story and would she like to be interviewed for the eleven o'clock news? She wasn't quite sure where the inspiration came from, but she talked until the machine cut her off.

And somehow, she felt satisfied.

Storybrooke, fall 1996

Regina had come to hate that blinking light on her answering machine. Since October 23rd, the thirteenth anniversary of her Dark Curse, she'd noted, she'd been receiving multiple prank messages a week, apparently from a very bored young girl with too much free time on her hands.

And it was driving her nuts.

This girl called at random hours throughout the day, always when Regina was at work, and she'd come home to another message with a fake name and a ridiculous reason for calling, which she would always explain, in length, until the machine cut her off.

At first, it was just plain aggravating, and Regina rarely listened to the messages in their entirety, but as time went on, she noted that the girl seemed to be growing more confident, and her messages seemed more planned out and rehearsed. Some of them were even funny, Regina had to admit, and she'd find herself chuckling away until the abrupt mid-sentence end to the message, when she'd suddenly realize she was supposed to be annoyed by this and delete the message.

Well, most of them. Some she listened to a couple times first. And some she kept.

In spite of herself, Regina almost found it endearing. Almost.

Still, in late November, after nearly a month of messages, Regina had call display installed on her phone line, intent to catch the young culprit and put an end to this nonsense. What she hadn't expected was the number to show up with a Minnesota area code.

This threw her off. A child in Storybrooke could have been handled easily enough, but Regina hadn't even realized that Storybrooke was able to receive phone calls from outside of the town. It was a disturbing discovery, to say the least, that the town was not quite as secure as she'd thought it was.

As fate would have it, the very next day, for the first time since the calls had started, Regina was home when the phone rang. She glanced at the number and picked it up on the first ring.

"Hello. To whom might I be speaking today?" she asked, wondering which alias the girl had come up with for this call.

From the other end of the line, she heard a distinct "uhh…" before a click, and a dial tone. It appeared the girl was not as confident as Regina had thought. But that was no reason to back down, she reasoned. She wanted the calls to stop, and she was about to ensure that they would.

Emma's face blanched when that familiar voice answered the phone on the first ring. She'd gotten so used to the machine, that along the way she'd somehow forgotten that there was still an actual person living in that house, hearing those messages, and who, one day, would happen to be home when Emma called.

She cringed after hanging up the phone, silently berating herself for being so stupid, and wondering what the odds were that this lady had traced her number and would be calling the police. Were prank calls illegal? Emma wasn't even sure, but she guessed she could likely get in trouble either way.

Emma's stomach was already in knots when the phone rang suddenly, making her jump. The foster family didn't have call display, but she already had a sinking suspicion of who might be calling right now.

And if Regina Mills had their number, it was only a matter of time before she called and got Emma's foster parents.

Emma picked up the phone.

"Hello?"

"Oh, hello dear. Please don't hang up on me this time, at least until I'm through. I've had to listen to you enough, don't you think? It's time you paid me the same courtesy."

Emma swallowed hard. "Okay."

"First of all, how did you get this number?"

"Um, it was just random," Emma said, feeling like she might cry as the word vomit started to pour out. "We were playing truth or dare and I always pick dare and they dared me to make a call out of state so I did and left a message and then, I don't know, I started calling again and I'm sorry please don't call the police!"

There was a notable pause on the other end before Regina spoke again. "I'm not going to call the police. I should speak to your parents, however."

"I don't have parents. Just foster parents. New ones, and they already don't like me," Emma said, hoping she might win some sympathy by playing the orphan card.

"I see. Well, I should still speak to your foster parents, but I won't on one condition: you stop calling me. Understood?"

Emma nodded, quickly, before realizing that this woman couldn't see her. "Yes, ma'am. I promise. Never again. I swear!"

"Good. Because it's annoying and very frustrating to receive these messages nearly every day. You may think you're being funny, but you're not. My time is valuable and you've insisted on wasting it."

"I'm sorry," Emma said, again, just wishing for this conversation to end.

"Alright. Goodbye, young lady. Find a new hobby."

With that, Regina Mills hung up the phone, and Emma let out the breath she didn't even know she was holding. Despite the fact that Regina had just said she wouldn't call her parents, Emma still felt sick to her stomach as she bolted up the stairs and dove on to her bed, burying her head under her pillow and wishing she could just disappear.

"Emma?"

Emma jumped up at the sound of her foster mother, Carol's voice. She spun around on her bed to face Carol, who was holding a piece of paper in her hand and looking at it confused.

"Yeah?" Emma asked, not sure what was going on.

"Did you make seventeen phone calls to a number in Maine between October 23rd and today?" Carol asked, turning the paper so that Emma could see it was a phone bill, and Regina Mills' number appeared on the page several times.

Emma felt her heart drop to her stomach. "No?" she lied. "I don't know anyone in Maine, why would I do that?"

"I don't know," Carol said. "But four out of six children in this house are too young to use the phone, and this trend seems to have started shortly after you arrived here, so what am I supposed to think?"

"I don't know. It wasn't me," Emma said, with a shrug.

"I see," Carol nodded. "Maybe I should give this number a call then, and see who it is?"

Emma shrugged again, though she could feel herself starting to panic. She kept her voice as even as possible as she replied. "Maybe you should."

Carol raised an eyebrow, and glanced at the clock. "Oh, shoot, I have to go pick up Felicity. I want you to stay put, you hear me? I'm calling this number when I get back, and if you're lying to me, you're going to be in big trouble, understand?"

Emma bit her lip and nodded, knowing she was going to be in for it now. She felt the panic kick in the moment she heard Carol's car start in the driveway, as her mind raced with ideas on how to fix this. Her first instinct was the same as always: run. But it was nearly the end of November and already snowing and she had no place to go. She needed another solution.

Somehow, through the millions of terrible ideas running through her head, Emma's brain finally landed on the most terrible one possible: she decided to call Regina.

Regina sighed when she heard her phone ring again, just two hours since her conversation with the young girl from Minnesota. She was sure her eyes must be deceiving her when she saw the number on the display, because there was certainly no way this girl was calling her again.

But sure enough, she was.

"I thought I made myself clear earlier?" Regina said, in lieu of a greeting when she answered the phone.

"I'm sorry! But this is really, really important!" Emma insisted, and Regina could hear the panic in her voice.

She let out a sigh, and then spoke. "What on earth can be so important that you need to call a stranger in another state?"

"Um… did you know that long distance phone numbers show up on the phone bill?" Emma asked.

"Yes, dear. I take it you did not?"

"No! And my foster mother got the bill and asked me and I said I didn't do it but she doesn't believe me!"

"And I wonder why not. Perhaps because you're lying?"

"I know! But here's the thing: she's really mad and I don't wanna get kicked out of another foster home. She's gonna call you when she gets back from picking up one of the other kids. Can you, like, I don't know… say you never got any calls from this number?"

Regina let out an exasperated sigh. "Why on earth would I do that?"

"I don't know! But can you? Please?"

Every ounce of logic in Regina's brain told her to hang up on this pestering child now, and tell her foster mother everything when she called, but there was an underlying tone of sheer panic in the girl's voice, and somewhere deep inside, Regina couldn't help but feel sorry for her.

"Fine."

"Really?"

"Yes. But you have to stop with the phone calls now, understood?"

"Yes! I promise!" Emma insisted. "Thank you! Bye"

"Goodbye, dear."

Emma breathed a long sigh of relief when she hung up the phone. She was pretty good at picking up on lies, and Regina Mills seemed to be telling the truth.

Confirmation of that came just under an hour later, when Carol stepped back into Emma's room.

"So, Emma, I guess I owe you an apology. I just got off the phone with the woman in Maine, and she claims she hasn't received any phone calls from Minnesota, and she doesn't know anyone here. I suppose I'll have to call the phone company and report the error. Anyway, I'm sorry I didn't believe you."

Emma gave her a half-hearted smile. "It's okay. I probably wouldn't believe the new kid, either," she said with a shrug.

Emma fell back on her bed when Carol left the room, finally able to really breathe again. This whole fiasco was over, and she vowed to herself she wouldn't be making anymore prank phone calls.

And yet, somewhere deep inside, she still wanted to hear Regina Mills' voice again. She shook her head, telling herself she was just going to have to forget about her, forget her number, and move on with her life like a normal thirteen year old. She'd promised Regina she wouldn't call again, and she intended to keep that promise.

On the other hand, Regina had just lied for her, and saved her from getting into trouble when she really didn't have to. Maybe she should just call, one last time, as a thank you?

"No, Emma," she mumbled to herself. "You're not calling her again."

And even as she said the words aloud, Emma knew she was lying to herself.