Las Vegas, Nevada.
1990 - Age Six.
I sat at a chessboard in the park, swinging my legs back and forth, waiting for my parents to come back. They told me they were getting food, but they failed to mention how long that would take, or when they'd be back to collect me. I saw a boy a couple of years older than me staring at me from a couple tables away. I waved at him and he waved back. He came over and sat across from me at the chessboard, not really meeting my gaze as he fidgeted with his glasses. For a moment, neither of us said anything. "Hi." I started.
"Hi." He returned. "My name's Spencer, what's your name?" He introduced himself almost shyly.
"Jaidyn. With an A-I and a Y." I answered. "I'm six." I stated matter-of-factly.
"It's nice to meet you." Spencer continued. "Do you play chess?" He asked.
I shrugged. "I'm in my school's chess club, but I'm not that good."
"If you want, you can practice with me." He suggested. I blinked, surprised. "But only if you want to!" He backtracked.
"Sounds fun." I replied. Spencer's face lit up and he started putting the pieces in place.
"You don't sound like you're from here." He noted as he was arranging the pieces. "Am I allowed to ask where you're from?" He wondered. I shrugged again.
"Connecticut. Mom and Dad wanted a vacation." I answered him. "I wanted to stay at home. It's too hot here."
"I think the weather is nice." Spencer commented.
"I'd like it better if I didn't have a thing," I mumbled, saddened. "It's too hot and being hot makes me really sick. I don't like it."
"I'm sorry." Spencer replied.
I gave him a quizzical look. "Why are you sorry? You didn't make me like this." I asked.
He returned my quizzical look. "Because you said you're sick. I was just sympathizing with you." He answered, furrowing his eyebrows slightly. "Sympathizing means-" He started, but I cut him off.
"I know what sympathizing means, but thanks for offering to define it. Most kids my age don't know what it means. You get that, right?" I wondered. Spencer nodded. "You skipped a bunch of grades, 'cause you're wicked smart, I bet. My mom and dad are thinking of putting me in classes with the older kids too, 'cause I'm smarter than my classmates, and way better at reading. The other kids in my class are still having a hard time with Dr. Seuss, and I'm reading chapter books all by myself." I mused, rambling a little bit.
"Yeah, I skipped a lot of grades, actually." Spencer confirmed. "So... do you want to play chess?" He asked, glancing down at the chess board in front of us.
I nodded, prompting him to set up the board on his side. I set up the pieces on my side of the board. "You can go first if you want." I offered.
"Okay, thank you." He moved one of his pawns, and so the game began.
After what felt like an hour of getting my rear end getting handed to me on a silver platter in chess, my parents showed up.
"Jaidyn, there you are! You know you're not supposed to be out in this weather!" My mom scolded, bringing over a parasol and tucking it into the space between my shoulder and the table, trying to shade me from the Nevada sun. "Here, your dad and I got you some food. It's a chicken quesadilla, you like those." My mom handed me a takeout container. "Who's your little friend here?" My mom asked, looking Spencer up and down.
"Mom, Spencer. Spencer, this is my mom and dad." I introduced them curtly, opening the takeout container. "And Mom, I know I like chicken quesadillas. I know what I like. I'm not a baby; you don't need to treat me like one." I rolled my eyes the best I could; as I hadn't had a lot of practice, considering I was six years old. I gave Spencer a look that said 'parents, am I right'. He didn't return the look.
"It's nice to meet you both." He greeted my parents politely, apparently not very comfortable with me requesting that I didn't want my mom to treat me like a baby. "Jaidyn is very fun to play chess with." He complimented me, as though that would help my parents see me as not quite so young.
"Yes, she's always been interested in things that are a bit too old for her, hasn't she?" My mom replied, directing the question to my dad.
"She's always been... driven." He agreed, not sounding too enthused about the conversation.
"Well, we should get going. Nice to meet you, Spencer. Come on, Jaidyn." My mom prompted and I got up from the seat at the chess table, closing the takeout box.
"Bye, Spencer. Thanks for playing chess with me." I gave him a casual wave.
"Bye, Jaidyn. It was nice meeting you." He returned, a somewhat sad look on his face. I knew exactly what the root of that look was: this kid was in no way connected to his peers, neither in age nor in intellect, and it was isolating, especially for a nine year old. I was the closest thing he had to a friend, and he only had me for part of an afternoon before I was whisked away by my parents.
My parents walked me back to the rental car. "So, Jaidyn, what do you want to do today? It's the last day of vacation before we go back home. You start school next week, and we still have to go back-to-school shopping." My mom piped up, glancing up at me as she dug through her purse for the rental car's keys.
"Can I go to the library?" I asked, and my mom sighed. She was all too familiar with the request; the library was my favorite place to go, other than bookstores. I could get lost in a good book for hours, inhaling as much information as I could with the allotted time I was given.
My mom stopped digging through her purse for a moment, looking me in the eyes. "Jaidyn, are you sure you want to go to the library? How about sight seeing? Or we could go see a play?" She questioned, offering suggestions that I knew she would enjoy more than I would.
"I want to go to the library." I repeated, doing my best to cross my arms without dropping my takeout box.
My mom sighed again. "Fine, we can go to the library. Darren, here are the keys. You're driving." My mom handed my dad the keys, and my dad took them from her without a word.
The three of us piled into the car and I stared out the window the entire drive to the library.
I spent the rest of my afternoon cooling down with my nose buried in several books, ranging from middle-grade fantasy to biology and psychology textbooks. The librarian working the desk of the children's section kept giving me strange looks, all of which I summarily ignored. I wasn't about to let some stranger get in the way of me inhaling and absorbing as much knowledge as I could. The chance encounter in the park was simmering on the back burner of my mind, as the forefront was being filled with information about predatory birds. "Excuse me, I don't mean to interrupt, but isn't that book a little... old for your age?" The children's librarian asked from above me, and I looked up from the page on Harris hawks to stare at her.
"Nope, I get it." I answered, looking back down at the page. "My parents and my teachers all say I'm an advanced reader, and my mom says I'll read anything I can get my hands on. I like to read." I explained casually, scanning my gaze across the words at a pace that would be impressive even for most adults. "I read really fast. I can do five hundred pages in under four hours. I know that because, one time, I counted." I added, looking back up at the librarian.
She looked at me like I was a child genius, which, from her perspective, I probably was. I was used to the reaction, as I wasn't about to go around saying that I had the mind of a college student and just happened to be reborn into the body of a child. That would get me put in an institution or heavily involuntarily medicated, and I was not about to have that happen or have that threaten my plans in any way. I just wasn't.
My mom seemed to appear out of nowhere as she approached the librarian, and by extension, me. "Jaidyn, it's time to leave, we have to catch our flight home and you still haven't packed your bag; your clothes are all over the hotel room." She chided lightly. I didn't look up from my book as I rolled my eyes. She started picking up the books I had piled on the floor and handed them to the stunned librarian.
"Mom, I was going to put them back." I couldn't help the childish whine that permeated my words, but it did help to solidify that I was, at least in physical form, still a child.
That seemed to shake the librarian out of her stunned state. "It's alright, dear, I'll make sure they get put back in their proper places. That is part of my job, after all, as a librarian." She assured me, and I begrudgingly handed her the rest of the books from the pile. "Have a safe flight." She waved with her free hand as my mom led me out of the library and to the car, where my dad was waiting with the radio on.
The rest of the trip home was relatively uneventful: I packed my suitcase in the hotel room, my parents argued about the best way to get to the airport while I stared out the window, and boarding the plane was as uneventful as usual. Once the plane was in the air, I was asleep, and when I awoke, I was in my pajamas in my own bed. My parents had already gone to bed, I realized, after a cursory glance at my clock.
That was when it hit me.
Not only had I met him, I had played an afternoon's worth of chess with Spencer. In the back of my mind, the chance encounter that had been simmering finally boiled over. Logically, given my circumstances, I knew he was real, that he was a person that had hopes and dreams, fears, and a life of his own, but it never really clicked until that moment. He was a real person, not just a character on a television screen, a real person that could be hurt and could die; a real person that would get hurt, often and badly, and one day, would die. I couldn't stop myself from sobbing, but I could muffle the sound as I buried my face in my pillow, covering myself with my blanket as if it were a shield that could save me from the monsters that I knew were out there. Not only was Spencer real, he was genuinely nice to me. I was accustomed to two lifetimes of my peers being fake-nice to me, and it was something that sucked, but at least I knew how to deal with it.
The promises I had made to myself back in that hospital room, as I was held to my mother's chest, came flooding back into my mind. I had made promises. I made promises, and I was going to keep them.
I was going to do whatever it took to keep him, and the other members of the BAU, safe.
Even if it killed me.
And if I failed there were two things that I knew would happen: two things that I swore to myself in the silence of the night, an oath held sacred by the heart-wrenching, body-wracking sobs of a child who couldn't know pain, of a student who died too young. The first thing was that if I failed in my mission, I would never forgive myself. And the second, whoever had done such a heinous deed would feel every moment of suffering they caused ten-fold, and I would make sure they would never forget what they had done for as long as they lived.
I knew it was a deeply solemn oath, especially for a six-year-old, but I had sworn myself to the duty of upholding it; and uphold it I would, to the best of my ability, and even beyond that if that was what was needed of me. I was going to keep the oath in the same spot in my heart as my secrets, the place where no unsub, no matter how vile, and no friend, no matter how trusted, could get a hold of it. Even if I hurt them by keeping these secrets from them, the unholy trinity of myself, I was still keeping them safe.
Keeping them at arm's length away from those truths was the best way I could protect them. I had to be as trustworthy as I could, seemingly an open book, but never show them the pages that had been ripped out and made into the bookmark neatly tucked into the book's spine. They would never know, not if I could help it. And if they ever found out, I knew I wouldn't be able to bear it. Having someone find out something so earth-shattering, something that you've kept secret for so long, someone who you were supposed to be able to trust with your life... I knew it wouldn't end well for anyone involved.
So I knew I had to keep quiet.
Act like everything was fine.
After all, when someone presents themself as an open book, you tend to believe they have nothing to hide.
They would never think to look under the surface.
I sobbed myself to sleep that night, my resolve firmer than ever.
Six years down.
Fifteen years to go.
