AN: what if Emma had been the one from the wrong side of the tracks?

What if she had been the badass with the troubled past and Sean had been the "golden child" who was well thought of and never really took a step out of line? Would their romance have been as epic? Well, buckle up, because we are about to find out. I am going to put the first several chapters all at once to see what kind of response it gets, and if there is even one person who seems to be interested I will continue on with this journey. This is definitely going to be a Semma fic through and through, so if they aren't your cup of tea I would suggest finding another story to read. Also, I am going to stray from cannon quite a bit, but there will still be some situations that will remain the same, other than the gender swap. I hope you all enjoy this as much as i enjoyed writing it. Without further ado...

Chapter 1

Looking Back

My life has never been a fairy tale. My life has been more like a series of events, that seemed to get worse over time. My one ambition was to get by, unseen by others. I just wanted to stay alive long enough to turn 18 and get away from this town and all of the people in it. The only problem was, it is kind hard not to be known, when your dad was in and out of jail for selling drugs, and your mom was the town drunk. People seemed to think that because my parents were these hard and irresponsible people,that I was to. My brother and I always had to deal with peoples eyes following us no matter where we went. It seems that if you come from a certain type of parents, that everyone assumes that you are going to be just like them. It only got worse after Jay left home.I began to get a reputation around town for being a bad girl. What's funny is, for the most part, that couldn't have been farther from the truth. I just had a hard time getting close to people. It didn't help that i walked around with a constant look of anger on my face. And, although I really was angry, it was more of me being angry at life. It's not like I was running around fighting everybody who looked at me side ways. Well, that is until my seventh grade year.

It all started when my father got sent to jail for the last time. My mom, who was already quite the alcoholic, couldn't seem to take the strain of it. Usually when my dad went to jail, it was only on minor charges, and was out within six months. This time, however, he was in for the foreseeable future. It turns out that one of the guys he was selling for at the time, had given him a bad batch. Several people overdosed from it. And though, he was only the dealer, someone made it know that he had been the one who sold it, and he was arrested and charged with 5 counts of manslaughter. They told him that they would reduce his sentence if he told them who his supplier was. He wouldn't do it. My mother couldn't seem to understand it. She thought that his loyalties should have been with us and not the scumbag who made this whole mess. I tried explaining to her, that he had done that for us. If her had ratted out the supplier, and word got around that it had been him, none of us would have been safe. But my mother just couldn't see it that way. And her drinking got ten times worse. And I had to pick up the slack that my father had left. Thankfully, he had taken the time to teach me how to work on cars when I was younger. Once upon a time, before he had gotten so far down the drug hole, he was actually known for being one of the best mechanics in T.O. So anyways, I was trying to pick up whatever work I could get thrown my way, and went to school and took care of my drunken mother. It was a hard time. Just when it seemed like nothing could get any worse, it did.

I don't remember exactly what day it happened on, but I do remember that when that day began, I had no clue that it would be the beginning of a long hard road. It was the weekend, and I was down at my brother Jay's house, working on a bike that he was needing fixed up. I knew that he could do it himself, but he knew that I wouldn't take his money without feeling like I had done something to earn it. After a while, I realized that I was going to have to run into town and get a part that seemed seemed to be acting up. As I was walking down a back road, heading into town, I came across a group of kids that I had seen around school from time to time. They were all gathered around something in a circle. As I got closer , something inside me, told me to walk away, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Once I got close enough to see what they were all looking at, I went blind with anger. There, surrounded by at least four kids who were much older and larger than him, lay a kid in the grade under me, covered in blood. It looked like they had taken turns jumping on him, and he was lying there unconscious. Once they realized that someone had stumbled onto their jump session, the began to surround me, threatening me that if I told anyone what they saw, I would be next. I honestly don't remember most of what happened next. One second I. was swinging at the smug blonde kid who was suggesting what they could do with me once they had me knocked out, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on my brothers port he covered in blood, screaming at the top of my lungs. Jay sat there, shaking me by my shoulders, trying to get me to tell him what had happened, but I couldn't get myself to stop crying. We were sitting there like that when the cops showed up. I guess one of the guys that I had fought had been pretty badly injured, and they told the cops that they had walked up on me fighting the kid I found lying on the ground, and when they tried to step in and stop me, I began attacking them. Now, I would like to think that normally the police wouldn't be so quick to believe that one girl has caused that kind of damage, but with my situation with my parents, the cops knew me all to well, and wouldn't put that kind of thing past the kid of a drug dealer and an alcoholic. It didn't help that they boy that they had beaten, apparently sided with them and was backing their story.

So, I was sent to a juvenile detention center for four months and ended up missing too much School to get credit for my year. When I got out, my mom had drank herself into a grave, and my brother Jay, who was barely 18 himself, became my guardian. We ended up moving a few towns over, so that I would have a chance to try and get a fresh start. Unfortunately, we were only able to be there for a couple of years, before we had to move back to T.O. The money was better, and we were barely making ends meet. And that is how i found myself starting my 9th grade year back at Degrassi.