Chapter 1 Rebel Child by. Dylan
Jackie
Truth is relative to each individual person.
What rings true to one can ring false to another.
At least that’s what a professor had told me when I was a freshman in college.
My classmates looked up to the man who taught the introduction to marketing course.
Many adjusted their schedules around his courses, even if they didn’t need the class to graduate.
I personally thought he was so full of shit it might start falling out of his ass.
But to each their own.
In my mind there can only be one truth when it comes to matters of fact versus fiction.
Such as it will always be true that the earth is round or that the moon landing was real.
Those are facts and are therefore true. It was this way of thinking that ultimately led to me sitting at the table with those I referred to as my family.
“Earth to Jackie?” Fai laughed as he held the bowl of mashed potatoes out to me. “I swear this girl spends most of her time a million miles away in her own mind.”
“Hmm… I wonder, who does that remind me of? Oh yeah, you, Faizal,” laughed Sarah as she intercepted the bowl in her husband's hands.
“Ha ha,” Fai retorted. “Jackie, Jack, Jacqeline…. Ophelia!”
My eyes snapped up to my friend.
“What? Yeah sorry, just distracted, what were you asking?” I rambled.
“I wasn’t asking anything. You wanted the potatoes and I was trying to get them for you,” explained Fai.
“Wait, then why don’t I have any potatoes Fai?” I said as I dramatically looked at the plate in front of myself. “It seems as though you may have forgotten a vital step in giving me the potatoes, called actually giving them to me.”
“Hey, I tried!” Fai stated as he held his hands up in surrender. “You were the one too distracted to notice Sarah’s thieving. Where were you anyways?”
“Thinking about college. Well, the first round of college I tried.” I shrugged. “Sarah, can I have the potatoes now?”
“I would never deprive you of your sacred mashed potatoes, Ophelia,” Sarah joked as she passed the potatoes over.
Sarah and Fai were the only two people in my life that were allowed to call me by my first name, Ophelia. I always introduced myself as Jackie, a nickname derived from my middle name Jacqueline. Those who did know my full name quickly learned that Jackie was the only one I would respond to.
Fai only called me Ophelia when he was upset with me or when he needed my attention.
Which was more often than I cared to admit.
Sarah, on the other hand, only called me by my first name.
Sarah only called anyone by their first name, hence why the world knew her husband as Fai, but she called him Faizal.
“Are you coming in tomorrow, Fai?” I asked as I dished the potatoes on my plate and poured gravy over them as well as every other item that adorned said plate.
I managed to catch Sarah’s grimace at my actions and chuckled to myself.
“Goldie said she had some new cases she wanted me to review so I was planning on heading in earlier than usual and kind of need a ride.”
“By kind of… do you mean you need a ride?” Fai asked, rolling his eyes, already knowing the answer.
“My jeep broke down and it would cost more money to fix than it’s worth at this point,” I explained. “So… at the moment I don’t have a car.” I shrugged. I knew what question would come next. They had been asking me about it for months now.
“Why don’t you buy a car then?” Sarah asked. “You have been meaning to for, what? Almost a year now.”
“Maybe a little bit… and that reminds me,” I exclaimed, pointing to Sarah as I turned to Fai. “Are you busy tomorrow afternoon because I have an appointment at a dealership to check out a new car and I kind of need a ride.”
“God Jackie, I love you, you know I do,” he started, “But I swear you would die without me.”
“I have no arguments there, Fai. I know I would die without you. That’s why I made sure both you and Sarah were unhealthily attached to me.
Now you have to take care of me… for the rest of your lives.
” I ended with a dramatic bum bum bum. It only emphasized the fear that should come with having to deal with me for a lifetime.
At least that’s what Mom and Dad would say.
“She’s not wrong, Faizal, she’s basically your daughter,” Sarah said as she turned to her husband.
“She can’t be my daughter. That would mean I would have had her when I was what…thirty-four minus twenty-seven… seven. I would have been seven if she were my daughter. That feels not possible, or illegal, or both,” said Fai as he dug into the food that laid across his plate.
Despite his disagreement, Fai looked at me like his own daughter.
While he never had children or a traditional family due to growing up in foster care, I knew that he loved me like family.
I was only twenty-three when we had first met and almost immediately I managed to weasel my way into his heart.
I can also admit, I was completely broken, scared and alone when I met him.
He brought me to his and Sarah’s home that night to be sure I had a safe place to sleep.
Sarah joked that he loved bringing in strays to take care of, which was true, but when it came to me, it seemed different.
Since that first night four years ago, I had grown to be a much more functioning adult member of society.
However, there were times when he would stare into my brown eyes and I swear he could almost see the still broken parts of my soul that may never be fixed. Maybe that’s all he saw when he looked at me.
“If you were my dad, you would have some explaining to do to your wife over there,” I began as I stuck my fork out towards Sarah, my mouth full of food. “Because either the printer ran out of ink when she had me or you got a white lady pregnant.” Both Sarah and Fai immediately began laughing.
Sarah’s beauty rivaled most with black hair and brown eyes, but her dark complexion was the opposite of mine.
“Jackie, that logic provides further proof I can’t be your dad. Unless you are secretly Indian or Colombian. There are what? Seven hundred million people who live in India? But you seem a bit too white in my opinion.” Fai laughed as he saw my eyes widen at the joke.
“It’s not my fault my parents are whiter than ghosts,” I retorted in a joking manner. “Although sometimes I wish they were ghosts.” I mumbled under my breath as I pushed the food around my plate.
Talking about my parents always made me lose my appetite.
“Ophelia.”
I sighed and looked up.“Sarah?”
She sighed in return. “I know you don’t get along with them. Hell, I know if it were up to you, you would never have to even think about them anymore, but they are your family. Don’t wish them to be dead.”
I would never wish for my true family to be dead. I knew the pain of losing a family member. My parents never earned the right to be considered my family.
“The most I can manage is to not outwardly wish for it. Is that okay?” I asked looking down at my plate, feeling the tears begin to creep into my eyes at just the thought of my parents, my family… my brother.
My family was and always will be a touchy subject. When you were raised the way I was, it was easier to pretend like it never happened.
“Well Jackie, I can never literally be your dad because, like I said, that would be impossible for a lot of reasons,” Fai began. “But I can be one tonight.”
“Should I be concerned by what that means?” I asked, thankful to him for changing the subject.
“Nope.” He clasped his hands together in front of him. “It just means that as your newly appointed part-time father, you are in charge of dishes tonight because I don’t want to do them and Sarah cooked. Deal?”
“Deal,” I laughed. “But I am so calling you Dad in our next meeting.”
I started the next day as I usually do, searching for my missing shoe that my cat, Jedi, hid during his midnight escapades.
Fai had called me ten minutes ago saying that he was fifteen minutes away from picking me up for work. I loved my job and I loved it even more knowing that Fai was my boss.
Fai had started the independent journal, Fibonacci Files, when he graduated college.
He had studied mathematics, but also held minors in journalism and communications.
It was in one of his communications classes that he had learned about The War of the Worlds broadcast. I had always loved hearing him tell the story of how a radio show put on a Halloween special that depicted an alien invasion.
People who had tuned in later and missed the intro began to panic that Earth was truly being invaded by aliens.
There was panic among the listeners, many prepping for what they thought was the end of the world.
Fai had always found the moment to be enlightening.
The truth of the matter was that there was no alien invasion, but those without the full story spiraled into chaos.
Fai believed that truth was often the best thing we have.
Hence, the creation of the Fibonacci Files, a journal that focuses on researching, studying, and understanding the macabre that was often distorted in the hopes of creating a sensation.
The journal covered any topic from serial killers to the suspected supernatural.
“Got it!” I exclaimed as I held my shoe up in triumph whilst lying in the middle of the living room, just as the horn of Fai’s car could be heard.
Was he early or did that seriously take me five minutes?
Finally putting on my converse, I ran out of my apartment door and down the stairs to the nearly empty street. I lived on the very outskirts of Eugene, Oregon, not liking the city scene, which often meant my street was more quiet than one would expect.
“Sup, Buttercup,” Fai joked as I slid into the passenger seat and fastened my seatbelt.
I stared at him for a moment, frozen. “What you did just there, was that supposed to be a joke?” I asked as I wiggled my finger at Fai.