A/N: Hi! This is the first story I've published and I'm majorly nervous about it. My goal is to write 5-6 chapters in total, though to be honest it will likely be a slow process, as I'm busy with university. The story is meant to be Jade-centric, and Beck won't enter until chapter 3. Thanks for reading, and please feel free to review and make me less terrified of submitting these.
Trust wasn't something you gave to anyone who asked. It had to be earned through careful trials and observation, over a long period of time— and even then it could be rescinded at any moment.
No one told this to Jade West in so many words, but she knew. The first time she saw the consequences of trusting someone who didn't deserve it, she was six years old.
Before first grade, Jade thought she was a princess, and she loved it that way. She lived with her parents in a huge house in the Hollywood Hills, a product of her father's lucrative and ironic career as an entertainment lawyer (for someone who saw artists as a waste of space, he sure was happy to take their money). An only child with an active imagination, her favorite pastimes included playing dress-up (she was partial to princess gowns, but lately enjoyed imitating the glamour of old Hollywood starlets) and putting on one-woman shows for a captive audience. Sure, her father wasn't around much, and her mother spent much of the day lying in bed with a drink, but that just meant she was always there to watch Jade's performances. Besides, there was always a nanny to play with, or a dollset if she felt like being alone, and when her mommy was having one of her good days, they would go to the park, or the mall, or once even Disneyland— and Jade would get ice cream and her mom would call her the luckiest little girl in the world, and Jade believed her.
Jade's luck started to change on the first day of school. She and her mom had poured through her closet days before for the perfect pink dress and shiny black Mary-Janes to impress her classmates. Her mom even braided her hair for the occasion, although Jade noticed her glassy, bloodshot eyes and shaking hands made the plaits rough and uneven.
She was delighted to find her father sitting at the breakfast table that morning, drinking his coffee (black, two sugars) and reading the newspaper. She had barely seen him these last few weeks, with all the time he was spending at the office.
"Daddy!" she shrieked, running up and latching onto his leg. He looked down, startled, as if the presence of his only daughter was an utter surprise. Gingerly, he peeled her arms off and removed the intrusion from his limb.
"Good morning, Jade," he greeted stiffly.
Undeterred, the little girl continued to beam up at him. "Will you drive me to school today, daddy? It's my first day of first grade!"
"Jadey," he sighed, using his sole affectionate nickname for the girl. "You know I have to go to work. Your mother can drive you."
As if on cue, her mother padded into the breakfast room. It was not one of her good days. She didn't carry a drink in her hand, but Jade was six, she wasn't stupid. She had seen the unfocused look in her mom's eyes enough times to know what it meant.
"C'mon Jade, lesgo to school," her mother slurred. Car keys dangled limply from her fist. That was the first time Jade saw her father's face morph into the mask of unadulterated fury that would become so familiar to her over the years.
"Katherine," he spit out, the name venom on his tongue. "You're in no condition to drive."
"I'm fine," the disheveled woman protested. The man, so put together in his expensive suit, just scoffed. He grabbed the woman's arm and pulled her into the other room. Through the wall, Jade could hear bits and pieces of their hushed words. "7:30 in the morning," he hissed. "Fucking your secretary," she shrieked. "Drunk bitch," he taunted. Silence. Jade sat at the table with her new purple backpack in her lap. She didn't cry, she just waited patiently for her parents to come back in and apologize, tell her they loved her and drive her to school.
Only her father walked back in. "Jade, your mother is sick," he said curtly, his voice emotionless. "I'll call a car service to take you to school." Jade stared up at him, her wide blue eyes asking a million questions she didn't have the words for. Still, they did not fill with tears.
She sat in the back of a polished black car with tinted windows and stared out of one from the backseat. Though she still refused to cry, her chest felt like it had constricted under the weight of a two-ton boulder. She hardly spoke that day in class, despite her naturally outgoing personality. In return, almost no one spoke to her.
At recess, she sat alone on a bench outside and watched her classmates play on the jungle gym. Last year, she had led the silly lunchtime games, easily swinging from the monkey bars and capturing the other kids' attention without even trying. This year, however, Jade felt like if she opened her mouth to talk something slimy and monstrous might crawl out.
"Hi!" a tiny voice squealed, interrupting Jade from her solitude. Whipping her braids as she turned her head, she saw the smallest yet loudest girl in the first grade class watching her with ecstatic innocence. "Can I sit with you?"
"Um, ok," replied Jade softly.
"I'm Catarina," the girl grinned. Like Jade, she had brown hair, but where the taller girl's hung straight, Catarina's curled in luxurious ringlets. She was tan, with the biggest brown eyes Jade had ever seen. She couldn't help but warm to her companion's bright smile.
"Jade," she replied, offering a small one of her own in return.
"Ohmigod, that's such a pretty name! My brother's name is Jay, so even though it's different it sounds like Jade! He's really weird and stinky, haha. He's in fourth grade here, maybe you'll meet him! Ohmigosh, I'm having a birthday party next month! You should totally come and meet him and my parents!" Catarina spoke in such a rushed, high pitched tone Jade could hardly understand what was said, but she nodded nonetheless.
"Ok," she giggled. Suddenly the two girls were laughing together, doubled over on the bench in hysterics. Maybe first grade wouldn't be so bad, she thought.
Jade and Catarina sat together for the rest of the day, with the latter doing most of the talking. Jade didn't mind, since she still didn't trust herself to speak much without crying, and it was nice to have a giggly distraction from the pain in her chest. At the end of the day, the two girls walked outside together to wait for their parents to pick them up. Though the weather had been predictably sunny that morning, the sky was beginning to look a bit overcast, so they sat underneath an awning.
"Oh, Jade, that's my parents' car!" Catarina pointed excitedly at a bright red minivan. "I better go. Do you need a ride home?" She asked sweetly.
"No, my mom promised we'd get ice cream to celebrate the first day of school. Thank you anyway," Jade told her.
"Ooh, lucky!" Cat shouted as she ran to meet her family. The girls waved goodbye one last time before the minivan sped away.
With her new friend gone, the pressure in Jade's chest was harder to ignore. Alone she sat as child after child was picked up, until only she and her teacher remained.
Gently, she felt the woman approach. "Sweetie, do you want me to take you to the office to call your mommy or daddy? It's getting a little late."
Jade nodded mutely. There, she dialed her home number, which she had memorized weeks before in case of an emergency. She felt her chest get tighter with every unanswered ring. Eventually she heard: "You've reached the West residence. Sorry we missed your call! Please leave your name and number and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks!" Beeeeep. Jade hung up the phone quickly, her heart pounding. Looking around to make sure no one had seen, she dialed the number again. Ring, ring, ring…"You've reached the West residence. Sorry-" Jade hung up the phone again. Although she knew her parents had cell phones, she had not yet bothered to memorize those numbers.
Jade didn't know what to do. The only thing she knew was that she wanted to go home. Forcing herself to choke out the words, she mumbled, "My mommy wants me to meet her down the street. Thank you for letting me use the phone."
"Of course, sweetheart. Do you want me to walk you out?"
She shook her head insistently and sprinted out the gate into the sprawling parking lot. Looking around, she tried to recall everything she could remember about how to get home from school. The ride hadn't seemed very long that morning, and last year she had a nanny who liked to walk on days with nice weather. This was her first time making the walk alone, but by age six Jade West knew a lot about independence. Besides, the alternative— admitting there was no one to drive her home— was too much to bear.
On and on she walked, her little legs carrying her over hills and onto streets with cars that seemed much bigger and louder than she remembered. 'I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry,' she thought, over and over until the words lost their meaning. Despite her protestations, Jade could feel her face growing wet. Wait, it wasn't just her face, but her head, and arms, and— the little girl looked up to see the sky had broken open and rain was pouring down. Unable to separate the rain from her tears, Jade finally let herself cry.
Jade didn't know how long she had been walking when she finally spotted her familiar doorstep. She thought she would run to her destination, but found herself taking even smaller steps as she approached. What had seemed a safe haven an hour earlier now felt like it held certain doom. Self-consciously, she rung out her braids and scrubbed her face to dry the damp skin. The rain had only lasted a few minutes, as had her tears, and she didn't want to upset her parents by tracking water into the house. She knew they must have a good reason for leaving her at school that afternoon.
Easily, Jade found the spare key under the doormat and fit it into the lock, just like she'd seen her nanny do. Opening the door, she peeked her head inside, expecting to find her parents or at least some explanation for their absence. Instead, she was greeted with silence, and the eerie stillness of an empty house.
Walking in, however, she realized she was mistaken. Coming from upstairs were the faint but unmistakable sounds of people. Slipping off her shoes, she darted up the stairs in search of the noise. She traced it to the master bedroom, and hesitated outside the door. On the one hand, her parents said never to enter their room when the door was closed. On the other, Jade was wet, and confused, and being crushed under the weight of her too-tight chest. She needed a hug.
Jade opened the door. The first thing she saw was her father, his suit once so flawless now disheveled, tie discarded on the floor. He was embracing a woman, blonde, in a short blue dress. Not her mother, with her unmistakable black tendrils. This woman was younger, thinner, out of place in her mother's bed, on her father's lips. She stood in the doorway as the pressure in her chest burst open, and her heart sank.
"Daddy?" she choked out, hardly more than a whisper. At the sound of her interruption, the pair sprang apart like repelling magnets.
"Jade!" her father called out to her, but she was already running to her own room, locking herself inside for the first time (and really, what kind of parents left a lock on their six year old child's door?). Under her pink comforter her tears flowed uncontrollably and it hurt, the hysterical, hiccuping, runny-nose sobs doing nothing to ease her racing mind. She cried for what seemed like hours, ignoring the pounding on her door and pleading from her deceitful father. Jade was six, she wasn't stupid. She knew he was the bad guy, that he was the reason for her mother's pain and her own broken heart. Eventually, she heard a softer knock and the unmistakable femininity of her mother's voice— "Jade, sweetie, can you open the door? It's me." She opened the door a crack at first, making sure no one else was trying to sneak in using her mother as bait, and relented.
Jade could see the hurt in her own eyes reflected in her mother's puffy red ones. The older woman had sobered up considerably since that morning, though she carried a glass of red wine in her hand now. Sitting side by side on Jade's bed, neither knew what to say. Finally, the young girl wrapped her arms around her mother's waist and held her close.
"I'm sorry, mommy," she mumbled.
"Oh, Jade," her mother began to cry, not the heaving sobs Jade had experienced, but a quiet, lonely cry, single tears dripping down her face like raindrops. "You don't have to be sorry, baby. I'm sorry."
The two fell asleep like that, holding each other on Jade's princess bed, illusions of royalty shattered.
That year, Jade's parents divorced. Jade moved with her mom to a small apartment in nearby Hollywood, where her mom got a job as a waitress in a retro themed diner. She continued to drink. She never forgot to pick Jade up from school again, but sometimes Jade would see the look in her mother's eyes and feel a familiar tightness in her chest.
Jade hated her old pink room, and decided to keep her new walls blank white. She hung posters of weird things, opposite of princess things, things that made her skin crawl in exciting, distracting ways. She stopped playing dress up and spent her time watching old movies instead. She cut her long brown hair and stopped wearing dresses.
In second grade, she arrived to her first day in an all-black ensemble, with lace-up boots and a scowl on her pretty face, because they made her feel powerful. She decided princesses were overrated. Just like the year before, no one spoke to her, only now it was because they feared her, not because she was too quiet and too weak. She liked their fear. It made her feel powerful, too.
Again Catarina was the sole outlier. "I'm going by Cat now! Like the animal, haha. I love your boots, Jade! They're so cute, I wish my mom would get me a pair!"
Even if she did wear too much pink and have princess hair and innocent eyes, Jade decided Cat was alright.
Trust wasn't something you gave to anyone who asked. It had to be earned through careful trials and observation, over a long period of time— and even then it could be rescinded at any moment. Even if Jade was no longer the luckiest little girl in the world, she was glad to have learned this lesson early. It made her feel strong, powerful, to know something her classmates did not. She saw what trusting the wrong person did to her mother, did to herself, and she vowed never to do it again. And if that meant shutting people out, well, so be it. She knew most people weren't worth the trouble, anyway. After all, Jade was seven, she wasn't stupid.