Holy cow. Um. Totally stream of consciousness. Poor Jazz is falling apart and it takes a while to figure out what's going on.

Based off of the idea I started in Apricity (a collection of stories-in-a-single-sentence I should be uploading vaguely soonish) as #165 Treason.

Treason

August 7, 2013

Her birthday was yesterday.

She was eighteen now, a legal adult.

She could vote and smoke and buy a lottery ticket if she wanted. Not that those latter options would ever appeal to her. And while she was excited she would finally have a chance to vote and have a say in her country's politics (beyond the campaigning she'd already done which was all well and good but felt rather inadequate when you didn't have the power to cast a ballot yourself) that was probably the last thing on her mind at the moment.

She was an adult. The man in the navy suit and striped blue tie had stressed that point. She was an adult now.

It didn't matter that she'd been acting as the head of the family for a while now. Months. Years, maybe, even. She'd lost track of when picking up the slack in her parents' duties had translated to essentially being the one in charge as they increasingly left Danny and Jazz to their own devices while they locked themselves up in the basement, pouring over research and blueprints and rarely emerging except to eat whatever food she had managed to learn to cook and keep from floating away.

It didn't matter that she'd been the responsible one for as far back as she could remember. That hadn't counted. Not until her eighteenth birthday. But now that it had come and gone, everyone in this room considered her an adult.

Assumed she knew what to do and what decision to make.

But she bet that none of them had been where she was sitting right now. That none of them had ever had to make the choice she was faced with here. So how could they know what she was going through? How could they claim to know what must be done? How did they see everything so clearly in black and white?

In their world of suits and ties and briefcases and legal loopholes everything was black and white and technicalities and the letter of the law and no heart, no humanity, and no care for what happened to the people they were supposed to be helping as soon as their part of the job was done.

They didn't know her. They wouldn't even be able to remember her name if it hadn't been written at the beginning of every single form they handed to her across the desk. They didn't know what was going on. They didn't know her family and what the situation had really been like at home.

They couldn't possibly know what the right thing to do was. Not when she didn't know herself.

But they all assume they hold the answers in their Harvard and Stanford and Yale educated brains. At one time, before this all started, she would have wanted to attend one of them. She'd looked into it, trying to weigh the pros and cons of each university and found that she didn't yet have enough information to break the tie between the prestigious schools. She would have gone to visit them later this summer when her parents took their annual trip to the paranormal convention held on the east coast every year.

But that wasn't going to happen this year. Not now. And she wasn't sure after all this, after the hustle and bustle and crowding of these lawyers and representatives that she would want to go anywhere they were associated with. Even if she would be able to.

She was smart. She could go anywhere she wanted. If she wanted. She had already done graduate level work in high school. She was gifted and intelligent and all of her teachers said so.

But she couldn't understand a thing these people were saying to her. She tried to listen, tried to focus in on some of the words but everyone was speaking at once from all around her and it seemed like it was jumbled. Like it was coming from so far away. Maybe from underwater. The faces before her seemed to blur like waves. Maybe she was underwater and dreaming the entire thing. Because she couldn't possibly be underwater. Not without drowning. Not when she was seated at a desk in an office with high heels clacking across the tiled floors. She had always hated the sound of high heels. And they didn't sound like they were muffled by water.

She looked up again and the look on her face must have shown how lost she was because the woman in front of her sighed and ran a hand through her hair like she was tired of doing this and must have been trying for a while but she couldn't remember how long she'd been here. Too long. She'd spent an eternity in here. Locked up in a prison formed of fluorescent lights, papers being passed from hand to hand with no end, and people in suits everywhere she looked.

This was too much. She realized that she had no idea what was going on. None of the words being spoken at her made any sense. They didn't understand and she couldn't imagine how they expected her to do what they wanted.

She tried to stand, maybe to go find the bathroom, maybe to escape, but she didn't get very far. Voices protested all around her and only faded when she somehow found herself on the floor, held up by a young man in a silver tie who held out a glass of water. She took it because he was offering it to her, but didn't do anything else because she had suddenly forgotten what glasses of water were for. After a moment, the man gently pried it out of her hands and helped her to stand up, guided her out of this room, and onto a couch that she gratefully sank into. She closed her eyes for a while and blocked out everything.

When she opened them again, the man in the silver tie smiled at her and even though she didn't feel like it, she smiled back. He asked her something and she didn't understand how the words fit together. His forehead crinkled and he asked again and she nodded. People stopped looking at her like she was going to fall apart when she nodded.

He pulled up in a seat beside her and held out a sheet of paper. It was one she had seen before. She had already stared at it until her eyes crossed. She knew what it said so she nodded. He slid it onto the cushion beside her and left it there. She didn't touch it. She just stared, and pulled up her legs and slid back as far as she could on the couch. He watched her with sad eyes but she didn't care.

He could look at her all he wanted because he didn't understand, did he? He didn't realize that this was it. This was everything. This sheet of paper. It was just another piece of parchment to him, something that one of the interns printed off of their computers. Just white and black words and legal jargon.

But this was everything. This was her life. The way it would be forever once she left this office.

They wanted her to choose.

But how could she?

How could she choose one over the other? How could she be the one responsible for everything? For her parents, for Danny, for herself?

She's still so young. Just eighteen. Just yesterday and this is the worst way to celebrate a coming of age. She had thought that yesterday had been bad enough when her parents forgot and spent the entire day in the lab and Danny had hung out with his friends all day, leaving her alone in their house because she didn't have anyone who wanted to celebrate with her. No one who knew. No one who cared enough to know. Just her family. Who ignored her. Until Danny brought home a cupcake that had gotten squashed in his backpack during the ride home.

But this was worse. This was so much worse. This was making her decide the course of four people's lives. And she was only eighteen. She wasn't supposed to have this kind of power, but yesterday gave it to her and these people weren't going to let her leave without deciding.

She tried to listen to all of the explanations, all of the caveats, but as soon as she realized what they wanted her to do, she couldn't take in any more of the details. It was too much. It was becoming fragmented and she couldn't think about anything except the one decision that threatened to engulf her. She fixated on it even as she wanted nothing more but to escape it.

The lawyers and the representatives all explained things over and over until they were frustrated and she still didn't understand any more than she had when she first walked in. But she nodded vaguely at everything they had said because when she nodded they left her alone. They stopped pestering her. The words stopped and she could pretend for a moment that this wasn't happening.

But she has to do this. There is no getting around it. She has to decide. She has to choose. She has to do this.

And she can. She can do this. Everyone tells her so. Everyone says that it will just take a simple signature and it will all be over. But they mean that it will all be over for them. They can wipe their hands clean of this case and this girl who refuses to do what they say. They can move on with their lives.

There will be no moving on from this for Jazz. This will be when her life is over. It will truly be over for her. But it can't be because she will have to be there for Danny. She will need to take care of him. But how can she do that when she can't even bring herself to pick up a pen and sign the page before her?

But if she doesn't sign, what will happen to him then? No. This is too much. This is beyond her control. She wants it all to stop. She never wanted their lives to be like this. She never wanted things to happen this way and she didn't want to be the one left with a choice.

Why did it have to be her? Why did she have to be the one to choose? Why was there no good outcome? Why was it one or the other and why couldn't she have both and why couldn't things just go on as they were before and be fine and why did it have to be her?

Why did she have to be all grown up and still too young? Have the power and not the guts to use it to save her family? But there was no saving her family. Her family was already gone. Shattered. Broken. Beyond repair and the pieces were scattered in front of her. She had to choose which ones to save and try to put back together. But she could never make them whole again. She couldn't have all of them.

It was her parents. Or Danny.

It was the people who had given birth to her, held her, taught her, fed her, clothed her, educated her, always been there for her, supported her, answered her questions even when her teachers were rolling their eyes. The ones with their crazy quirks that she loved and their jumpsuits which were cheesy and her mother's fudge and her dad's huge hugs that grounded her and kept her warm and promised that nothing bad would ever get to her. The people who provided everything and she could never imagine living without.

Or it was her brother. Her baby brother with his blue eyes and black hair that fell over his eyes. The one who bugged her and stole Bearbert and hid him around the house until she tackled and tickled him into revealing where he'd put him. The one who had always followed in her steps and tried to grab whatever textbook she was glancing through in favor of one of the picture books he should have been trying to sound out because she was his big sister and he wanted to read the books she did. The one who stuck around her like a shadow growing up, the one who had inside jokes that would make them start cracking up again even if they didn't say a word about it. The one who relied on her for dinner and a ride out to his friends' houses and stopped to say goodnight to her every day before he headed upstairs to his room.

How could she choose between them?

They were the only things she had. She had lived to keep them all together, all fed, all functioning as a family and now they were seeping between her fingers like sand on the beach. She was going to lose on half of her family. Which would it be? Which would she sacrifice? Which would she willingly let go to drop to a fate worse than death?

Would she let her parents be prosecuted so she could save her brother? Or would she give Danny to foster care so she could stay in a home that still resembled a home?

There was no choice. She couldn't pick either, but she had to choose

But it's her parents. But it's Danny.

And it's her choice and it's all up to her and what can she do? And there is no one she can ask for advice because all of these people think they know what she should do.

The nice man in the silver tie has been replaced by a hard faced woman saying that she can't keep stalling like this and she has to testify against her parents so that they can be proven dangerous and possibly even clinically insane for attacking their own son because they thought he was a ghost (as if such things existed, the lady huffed).

If she does that, they'll be put away forever. She's technically old enough to take custody of Danny now that her birthday has come and barely gone and she's never wished so hard that she could turn back the clock and make it stop so she could stay young and a kid and never grow up and never have the chance of shouldering this kind of responsibility. And the lady says that she'll be fine and that she'll be able to do this without a problem because she's responsible and can take care of a single other person but she's just so inexperienced really. Being the one in charge of the calendar and cooking dinner is a lot different than being the legal head of a household of two teenagers and she'll have to be the one to pay the bills and buy the groceries and she doesn't have a job and nobody hires people without a college degree. At least not at a wage that could support two people when one of them has such a huge and ever growing appetite. But she can't have Danny drop out of school to work too. She can't take that from Danny as well. Not when she'll be taking away their parents. She couldn't do that to him. She couldn't do that to herself.

She just can't.

And who will they be left with except they won't be left with anyone because she's an adult now and what will they do and how will they live even if they do get to keep the house and will they be able to pull through and will Danny ever forgive her for breaking up their family like this? But will he forgive her for choosing their parents over him and backing them up and leaving him in a situation like this or a foster care that would break him? She couldn't be that selfish either.

But there isn't a good choice here. There isn't a right course of action. And she can't even find the lesser of the two evils and she hates this and she hates the office and the law and these people in their high heels and ties who think this is all so simple and that she's being silly for not wanting to sign the paper that will completely destroy any semblance of life as she knows it.

And why did it have to be her and why did it all have to come down to her signature on a page and why couldn't she just ignore everything and why couldn't she stop crying as she took the pen from the lady who held it under her nose?