Work Text:
In a town as small as East Allegheny, everyone’s business is everyone’s business. It’s one of those stereotypes that happen to be true.
JJ remembers coming home from school, the first day she wore the necklace, and seeing the ambulance outside her house. The sirens weren’t blaring – in fact the whole scene was eerily quiet; even the neighbors who had gathered on the sidewalk were whispering if they had to talk at all. Even though she didn’t know what had happened, it was obvious even to an 11-year-old that it wasn’t good.
She didn’t want to walk through the crowd. She didn’t want to ask the neighbors what was going on, and she didn’t want them to ask her. Not having the answer to that question felt like the worst thing in the world right then. So JJ walked, like she normally would, across the street and down the sidewalk towards the throng - probably 15 people, but it felt like hundreds to her. No one really noticed her approach, so when she got close enough that they were blocking her way, she said “Excuse me.” The group parted, and she walked through.
Climbing the steps to her porch felt like the slowest process in the world, with everyone’s eyes on her back. She opened the door, and the first thing she saw was her mother, in an armchair, face in her hands, sobbing. JJ looked over her shoulder at the neighbors, tried and failed to wish them away, and went inside.
JJ remembers walking into school two days later as one of the hardest things she’s ever had to do. The whispering, the eyes on her back, the quick head-turns when she looked around.
It felt like it took years for people to stop.
***********************
Now JJ lives in a city where no one looks twice at her, except maybe a few people in her building who have seen her around, or the security guards at Quantico who nod ‘hello’ when she walks past. She works with people who probably know more about her life than any of her Pennsylvania neighbors could ever guess, but they never whisper behind her back. She has the answers that crowds want to know, even if she can’t always tell them.
And when she and her team pull up in front of houses with auras of grief and, sometimes, people gathered on the sidewalks, she can do more than wish the crowds away. She can’t always make things right, but she can make them better.
And she can think of her sister and smile.
