Chapter Text
Jackie was unsure what she was still doing in Wiskayok. Her plan after graduation had been to go to Rutgers with Jeff, have an amazing college life, then come back home, marry Jeff, and have a reasonable amount of kids. Every girl's dream, right?
Well, for Jackie, it had seemed closer to a nightmare.
For some reason, some odd, mysterious reason, Jackie had gotten the sudden feeling that she had made a mistake. Ten mistakes. A hundred. A thousand. A million mistakes, and it all started with her decision to leave.
She couldn't just run off to college. Not when she hadn't even helped anyone. She had been the captain of the soccer team, a nice-ish person, and she hadn't ever caused any problems with anyone. No substantial ones. But, one day, a few weeks before graduation, Jackie had laid awake with a certain thought.
If I died, what would people say at my funeral?
It had been a pest in her mind for weeks. What was there to say? She was pretty, the captain of the soccer team, and was nice-ish?
Nobody would ramble through tears about how much Jackie helped them. Nobody would say how nice she was, or how kind she was. And even if they did, nobody would really mean it.
So, Jackie told her parents she was going to have a leap year. She applied for a job as a caregiver for a local business, did her training, and was given a responsibility.
Shauna Marie Shipman. Paralyzed from the neck down since age sixteen, eighteen-years-old, and, most importantly, was shy. It had caused the past sixteen caregivers to quit, as they could wade their way through bathroom trips, injections, IV drips, but some actual social skills being needed? That was too much for them.
Jackie stood on the doorstep, the handle for a plastic bag clenched in her fist. 21 Elm Street. The home where she would probably be spending half of her days during the summer. The summer, the spring, the winter, and the fall. The pleasures of a gap year that she was beginning to think was a mistake.
She pressed down on the doorbell, barely touching it before the sound of a sweet jingle filled her ears. How charming.
The woman that opened the door looked tired. Wearing a nurse’s scrubs, and wearing bags under her eyes deeper than the Mariana Trench. Context clues told Jackie that it was the mom of the person she was there to look after, Deb Shipman.
“Miss Shipman? Hi, my name is Jackie. I’m the new caregiver for your daughter,” Jackie recited, copying the speech her instructor had taught her to say upon first contact with a parent. Deb had probably heard it so much that it was just a ringing in her ears.
“Aren’t you a bit young?” Deb asked, arching a brow suspiciously. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Shauna’s almost fully paralyzed, she needs a lot of support.”
“I’m fully certified, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Jackie said, maintaining eye contact. Her instructor said it was a sign of respect. It didn’t feel very respectful, since Deb wasn’t even pausing from glaring a hole through her head.
“You better be telling the truth, because I’ll be checking with Shauna for how you behaved during the day. If you make it through the whole day. I won’t just be blindly trusting your report,” Deb warned, her arms finally dropping to the side. She walked away from the door, back inside, and came back a few moments later, purse hanging from her shoulder. “I need to get to work. If you head inside, go to the living room, then take a right. Shauna’s room is in there.”
Deb walked past Jackie, walking to her sedan in the driveway. Jackie watched as she drove down the road.
Jackie stepped into the house, gently shutting the door behind her and locking it.
Now, she just had to actually go and meet the girl.
She padded past the staircase that led upstairs, past the kitchen, and into the living room. Past the small dining table, was the door that Deb had talked about. The door to Jackie’s new responsibility.
She wrapped her fingers around the door handle, and the sight was sadder than any display bedroom she had ever seen.
A whole wall, lined with books. Some of them were more worn, some pristine. Chances were, the pristine ones weren’t ever read, and never would be. Her bed—a bed with railing on the side, wheels on the bottom, and angled upwards so she was sitting up—was positioned next to a desk as her head laid still, looking at a screen as she used a mouth controlled joystick to type.
The last message read: brb new zoo keeper arrived.
For some reason, the title Shauna had already given her made her feel guilty.
“Hi there, Shauna,” Jackie greeted, shutting the door to the bedroom with a soft click. She paused, her hand still touching the doorhandle. What was she supposed to do? “I… brought you a cookie. It’s… um… snickerdoodle. You like snickerdoodle?”
Shauna let go of the joystick with her mouth.
“Not really,” Shauna mumbled, her eyes looking down. Her head didn't properly move, of course. “I’m a chocolate chip kind of gal.”
“Ah… I’ll keep that in mind,” Jackie replied, padding over to the bed. She glanced around the room and noticed a chair, picking it up, setting it down beside the bed, and sitting down. “You still want one?”
“No, not… not really,” Shauna noted, giving Jackie a small side glance before going back to looking straight ahead.
An awkward silence overcumbered the room.
“You look nice,” Jackie noted, breaking the silence as she looked at Shauna’s hair. “Your hair, I mean. I like the plait. Did you do it yourself?”
“Yeah, I just got up from this bed, walked to my vanity mirror, and started doing my hair and makeup just to prepare to meet my hot caregiver, totally,” Shauna retorted, her voice dry and sarcastic. It was surprisingly funny, the way she said it. The most emotion yet.
A small laugh bubbled out of Jackie.
“Sorry. Force of habit,” Jackie apologized, her shoulders slumping as she relaxed for a split second. Not monosyllables. A win in her books. Jackie reached into the plastic bag, taking out a snickerdoodle cookie and taking a small bite out of it.
Another bout of silence, sans Jackie’s quiet chewing noises.
“I, uh… I changed my mind on the… snickerdoodle,” Shauna muttered, seemingly embarrassed about the fact she was going back on her word. “Can I have one?”
“Totally! I mean— totally, no worries,” Jackie corrected quickly, putting her own cookie down on the desk as she stood up, taking out a fresh cookie. Jackie reached her arm out, cookie in hand, gently holding it to Shauna’s mouth.
Shauna took a bite, closing her eyes as she did. Jackie remembered what her instructor said about people shutting their eyes when eating. Don’t interrupt them. If they’re able to imagine a time when they were happy when eating, that is one of their few luxuries in life.
But, Shauna didn’t look happy.
“You okay there, Shauna?” Jackie asked, her voice quiet. Quiet enough to be ignored if Shauna was really having a good time in her imagination.
Shauna’s cheeks burst with a fast, soft pink spreading on her pale face. It even spread to her ears.
“I’m fine, can you just focus on feeding me the snickerdoodle?” Shauna snapped, her voice attempting to sound angry, but she just sounded ultimately ashamed. Ashamed of the fact Jackie had to feed her, if she had to guess personally.
“Okay, okay… sorry. I won’t push it,” Jackie conceded, her voice quiet. She knew better than to try and insult Shauna’s wishes.
And then, the silence was back.
***
By the end of the day, the silence hadn’t left. Shauna hadn’t spoken another word, except for monosyllable requests.
“Bathroom.”
“Food.”
“Morphine.”
She had gone back to messaging her online friends, too. Things about books, about how much it sucked to be stuck in a bed or a wheelchair, and about Jackie. Jackie noticed them all when she had been glancing over Shauna’s shoulder. They all referred to her as some form of a zoo keeper, which Jackie didn’t blame her for. She hadn’t exactly been the best and most caring of people during the day. It wasn’t her fault, but it wasn’t Shauna’s either.
It was a faultless crime. The worst kind.
“You feelin’ okay, Shauna?” Jackie asked, breaking the silence with more than one word for the first time in hours.
“Yeah. My mom’ll be back anytime soon,” Shauna mumbled, letting out a small sigh.
“You’re close with your mom, huh?” Jackie asked, pretending to peer around the room, acting like the conversation was just casual and calm. It was a shitshow attempt at Jackie trying to learn more about Shauna. An inevitably futile attempt, if the past day was anything to go off of. “Not trying to be pushy, just wondering.”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t anyone be?” Shauna asked rhetorically, looking away from the desktop to stare at the ceiling for a moment. She let out a nearly inaudible sigh, yet again. Huffing and puffing the house down. “My mom’s all I got. I think I’d be insane not to be close with her.”
“Yeah. I mean, I think I’d still hate my mom as much as I already do if I was like you,” Jackie commented, her voice casual. It was a rude comment, one that went against all of her training. A mistake.
“I’d put my life savings on it and say, no, you wouldn’t,” Shauna replied, her breath hitching for a moment. Practically impossible to hear, if Jackie wasn’t already listening out for it. “When all of your cool friends leave you, and your family are the only things you have left, you’d learn to love them. You don’t really have a choice.”
“Well, you don’t know me,” Jackie retorted, standing far too hard on her point. She knew she had made a mistake by speaking in the first place.
“Jackie, I can’t do anything. I talk to strangers, and I talk to my mom, and talking to my mom is the only thing I actually enjoy,” Shauna said, her voice flat as she blinked slowly. She was speaking to Jackie. Properly. The second time in one day. “I promise, you would end up loving your mom too. Again, you wouldn’t have a choice.”
Before Jackie could retort, the sound of a car pulling into the driveway came through the doors. Deb was back.
“Back in a second, just gotta go open the door for your mom,” Jackie explained, standing up from the chair. Her back ached after sitting down for most of the day.
When Jackie opened the door, she saw how Deb looked. Like death on two feet.
“You’re still here,” Deb muttered, her voice rough as she paused at the door. “Thank you for not… abandoning my daughter in the middle of the day.”
“It’s no problem, really,” Jackie reassured, stepping out of the way for Deb to walk inside. She did exactly that. “She’s sweet. In her own way.”
“Yes, well, you seem to be mostly alone in that opinion,” Deb huffed, walking to the fridge and picking up a can of Coca Cola. “Anyway. I’ll see you tomorrow, probably. Have a good evening.”
“You too, Miss Shipman!” Jackie replied as Deb walked towards Shauna’s bedroom. She took the moment to walk out of the front door, and got to walking on her way home.
Her first day, and two whole conversations. Could’ve gone worse.
***
“So, how was your day at work, Jackie?” Mrs. Taylor asked, her voice calm as she took a bite of the lasagna on her fork. The same food as every night. Lasagna, lasagna, and more lasagna.
“It was fine. I met the girl I’m looking after,” Jackie murmured, looking down at her own meal as she took a small bite. For once, it wasn’t because the lasagna was mediocre. It was because of her day at work. “Shauna Shipman. She’s paralyzed from the neck down, her mom’s a nurse, and her dad is dead. My boss told me that last part.”
“Shauna Shipman?” Mrs. Taylor repeated with a small hum, pausing her eating. “I believe you went to preschool with her. Poor thing. She was always being bullied for being such a bookworm.”
“Yeah…” Jackie mumbled, the guilt from earlier coming back. It wasn’t her first time around this girl. It really made Jackie think.
What if they had became friends in preschool? Would Shauna still be paralyzed? Would she have ended up on the soccer team with Jackie? Would they have been best friends, and gone to Rutgers together? What would've happened, had Jackie truly shown empathy when she had been a kid?
It was a horrible idea to dwell on the thoughts, but she couldn’t help it. It was so blaring. Maybe Shauna wouldn't be stuck in a bed or a wheelchair, her only friends being strangers online that she spoke to with her mouth operated joystick. Or maybe her proximity to Jackie would’ve made a new disaster that ruined her life.
Jackie felt so lost.
“Jackie, your food is going to go cold,” Mr. Taylor pointed out, pointing his fork at Jackie’s plate of lasagna, before using it to take a bite of his own.
“I’m not hungry,” Jackie mumbled, looking down at her lap as she spoke.
“What?” Mrs. Taylor asked, letting out a sigh. Incoming tirade about how she had spent all night on it, and it was unfair of Jackie to just ignore all of her hard work for some mental struggle she was going through. It happened every time. It was as expectable as the sun rising every morning and setting every evening.
Jackie ignored her mom, like she so constantly did.
Maybe there was no point in it all. Maybe Jackie could wait for the winter, fly to Canada, and jump out of a plane in the freezing snow from hundreds of feet in the air. Or maybe, she could just ignore her mom again, like she always did, and like she always would.
Jackie stood up from the table, ignoring her mothers protests as she walked away, to the stairs and into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her. Instead of immediately going to her bed, to rot in her thoughts and suffer in her memories, she went to her desk instead.
Jackie opened up Facebook. She was logged in on an account she used to contact distant family that had no other way of contact than Facebook.
Jackie typed.
Shauna Shipman.
A few results. None of the Shauna Shipman that Jackie was on the lookout for. She typed again, changing the search.
Deb Shipman.
And there it was, a goldmine of everything that Jackie had been on the lookout for. Deb didn’t post much, but when she did, it was all about Shauna.
The first photo that caught Jackie’s eye was one of Shauna’s eighteenth birthday. May 16th. It was a selfie, with Shauna sitting in her wheelchair, smiling widely. As wide as one could, in her situation. Deb was beside her, the side of her cheek against Shauna’s cheek, copying her grin. It was adorable.
Happy birthday to my baby girl! 18 already! She loved the red velvet cake we got!
The next photo she found almost gave her whiplash. It was from Shauna’s sixteenth birthday, and she wasn’t lying in a bed, she wasn’t sitting in a wheelchair, she was standing. She was grinning so hard her face was splitting, with whipped cream all over and in the middle of laughing at the person behind the camera. She was wearing flannel, flannel, more flannel, and some jeans. Nothing like the clothes she had to wear now.
Sweet 16! My daughter forever, and I wouldn’t choose to change a single hair on your head!
The photos flew by. All milestone birthdays. Shauna’s thirteenth, tenth, fifth, and third. In each and every photo, it was just Shauna and her mom. Either a selfie with Shauna and Deb, or a photo taken by Deb. They always looked so happy. Especially Shauna, even though, in all reality, they only ever had each other. Before Shauna was paralyzed, it seemed to be all they needed.
***
Jackie tightened her arms around her torso, the cool breeze of an early summer morning cutting through her shirt. She had dressed for heat, but clearly, the heat wasn’t coming on this day.
“We’ve got a red velvet cupcake coming up!” The cashier of the bakery called out, his eyes glancing around the room as his voice bellowed.
“Can you not yell? I’m the only one in here,” Jackie muttered as she stumbled her way towards the front counter. She had stayed up all night, looking at Deb’s facebook and the photos she had posted. And then, looking for extended relatives, anything to find out more about Shauna. She hadn’t found much, except for the posts of Deb’s she had already seen.
“Sorry, company policy,” The cashier replied, his voice casual. He knew he was lying, she knew he was lying, everyone did. He began to bag the cupcake. “Didn’t take you for a cupcake kind of girl.”
“I’m not. It’s a gift, for a friend,” Jackie murmured absentmindedly, looking down at her feet before shooting her head back up. She couldn’t tell people that she was doing this instead of going to college. What would everyone think of her?
“Did you pay at order?” The cashier asked, holding out the small bag.
“Yeah, thanks,” Jackie replied, quickly snatching the bag and walking out. She didn’t look behind her to see the cashier’s face.
The cold breeze seemed to follow her as she walked along the sidewalk. She had walked this sidewalk thousands of times before. She had walked past Shauna’s house, thousands of times before, never knowing that a person lived inside.
She had never once thought that in Wiskayok, not everyone was the exact same person. Maybe it was a fault of her own, or maybe, it was a fault of her parents, a fault of her parent’s parents, and a fault of their parents before them.
And that was the thing about a secret. Once you find it out, you can’t go back.