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Jazz knew what parentification was. She had first seen the term on a post (she didn’t know the difference between tumblr and reddit at the time) that had showed up on her Facebook. Curious, she had looked it up on a psychology dictionary website. At first she had scoffed at it a little. While she was sure that there were extreme cases where this might be true, it was normal for children to take part in managing the household and younger children. It was part of being taught how to be a functional adult. Jazz herself had learned how to cook dinner from a young age and was paid a small allowance to watch Danny while her parents worked, and she had turned out fine.
It wasn’t until Jazz was given a car that she began to think otherwise. First it was the grocery shopping, she accepted this as another part of growing up. After all, knowing how to shop for groceries is an important life skill. But then her parents had started going grocery shopping less and less till Jazz was the only one doing the shopping. Around the same time Jazz became 100% responsible for cooking their meals.
Then one day during Danny’s parent teacher conference Jazz had met up with another girl in her class whom she knew had a little brother in elementary school. Jazz had started commiserating with her about having to do conferences for her parents because they were busy, and had asked her how often she took her parents place. Not only had her classmate never had to take her parents place, but she was shocked that Jazz had done so. This incident had at least gotten her thinking.
Then Danny’s portal accident had happened and their parents had refused to let her take Danny to the hospital. Not because they didn’t think he needed it, but because they were worried about CPS being called. That had confused her. Jazz had been under the impression that CPS was only called in extreme cases of abuse and neglect. Their parents loved them, she was sure of it. They weren’t beaten and had plenty of food and clothes. They were a happy family.
Jazz wanted a second opinion. But she specifically wanted a second opinion from someone who didn’t know her parents or what they did. So she had given in and asked Danny to teach her how to use Reddit and posted a few questions. Simple things like how many hours a week was normal to babysit your siblings? Was it normal to send a sibling to do parent teacher conferences? Would CPS be called if a sibling instead of a parent took a child to the ER? The answers she received were, depressing to say the least.
Okay. So maybe she had been parentified a little, but that didn’t mean that she was abused or neglected. They were still a happy family. Right?
Jazz didn’t have some big, dramatic wakeup call that this was not true. It was a thing that she slowly realized over the months of watching Danny spiral further and further into obvious depression and delinquency. She watched as his bright smile and happy personality slowly dimmed. All the times she got called when he missed class or had failed a test. The times he vanished completely. All the mysterious bruises that he tried to hide from her. But more importantly she watched as her parents did Absolutely Nothing.
Oh for sure they lectured Danny when his grades fell, but only because it made them look bad, and they didn’t offer anything to help him get them back up. And the two times that Jazz had filed a missing persons report they had taken credit for it and been involved with the police. But other than that? Nothing. Helping Danny was all up to Jazz.
She had tried her best, she truly had. She had given emotional support, tutoring, offered to talk to the school about the bullying, arranged for him to meet with a school counselor, she had even started keeping his secret first aid kit fully stocked when their parents cut off his allowance. Nothing seemed to help.
So for the second time, she had gone to Reddit for answers. Someone had gently suggested that she might be the golden child, and that her brother was being abused without her noticing. That had sent her into a spiral for days.
And so the months went by. Danny continued to spiral deeper and deeper into depression, with Jazz being completely unable to stop it.
Until one day while struggling with her chemistry homework Jazz could hear shouting from downstairs. Now this was unusual, as their parents had largely given up on Danny and no longer bothered to come upstairs from the lab when he finally slunk home. Hurriedly she put down her pencil and rushed downstairs but before she got there she paused, because the air was filled with a sound that she hadn’t ever expected to hear.
A baby’s cry.
Moving faster now Jazz jumped the last few steps and came barreling into the living room. “What’s going on?” she asked, out of breath. Then she gasped because she saw that Danny was holding a baby. An actual crying baby.
Her mother turned to her with an expression that she had previously only seen when she talked about Phantom. “What’s going on,” she spat. “Is that not only did your brother knock up some whore, now he’s telling lies about Vlad to try and skirt responsibility.”
“Mom. I’m telling the truth. Vlad’s been abus…”
“Don’t take that tone with me young man!,” Maddie shouted. “I am done putting up with you!”
Jazz tried to speak, a lead weight in her stomach. “Danny, were you about to say…”
“You don’t know Vlad like we do son,” Jack interrupted. “He’s my best friend in the world and would never do anything to hurt you.”
Jazz saw the moment when Danny gave up. The moment when he knew he would never win and it was better to just walk away. She watched as the very last dregs of hope left his eyes. “You know what? I’m done with you too. I’m packing my bags and leaving,” he said. Then holding his crying baby to his chest he shouldered past Mom and walked up the stairs.
Jazz cast a quick look at her parents before following him to his room. “Danny? Were you about to say that Vlad’s been abusing you?” she asked, afraid of the answer but needing to know.
Rather than packing Danny sat down on his bed, pulled out some supplies from his diaper bag, and began making a bottle. “It doesn’t matter. You heard Mom and Dad, they didn’t believe me.” He started to feed his baby and the crying finally stopped as they began to drink.
It occurred to Jazz that she didn’t even know her nibling’s gender, much less their name. “So… boy or girl?” she asked.
Danny smiled softly, and it relieved her to know that he could still smile. “Girl. Her name’s Ellie.” he said quietly. He looked up at her. “You wanna hold her?”
“Of course, obviously,” she said, trying and failing to not sound too eager. She sat next to him on the bed and he handed Ellie to her. She really was a cute baby. She had thick black hair just like Danny and had his little scrunch between her eyebrows. Jazz didn’t know enough about babies to know how old she was or when she would have been conceived, but she could guess that it was about when they first met Vlad. It would unfortunately explain a lot. That was right about when Danny started going downhill.
But as much as Jazz wanted to know exactly what had happened, she knew that now was the wrong time to ask. All of that could come later.
Danny heaved a sigh next to her. “Well, I better pack.” He made his way to his closet and pulled out a backpack and a suitcase and began to empty his drawers. Jazz noticed that the backpack was already packed and she remembered a Reddit post she had read the day before. “Did you have a go bag ready? How long have you had that?”
Danny pulled a face. “A while. Guess I always knew Mom and Dad wouldn’t accept me if I told them the truth.”
A sound alerted her that Ellie had finished her bottle. She put her to her shoulder to burp her. “Do you know where you’re gonna go?” she asked.
Danny tossed his charging cords into the suitcase. “Tuckers. He’s stood by me all this time even though I’ve been a terrible friend. And if not… I dunno. Mama Jesse might take me in? Or at least she’ll help me find a place.”
Jazz had no idea who Mama Jesse was, but at least Danny had a backup plan. Danny zipped up his suitcase and they made their way downstairs. “I’ll drive you little brother,” she said as they walked through the living room. But before they got to the door her keys were snatched out of her hands.
“You will do no such thing,” Maddie declared, holding up the keys. “If Danny wants to be irresponsible then he can suffer the consequences.”
“Mom, we can’t,” Jazz started to argue before she was interrupted by Danny putting his hand on her shoulder.
“Jazz, it’s fine. Just let it go” Despite how far apart they had drifted apart over the past year she understood what he was trying to say. Don’t get kicked out too on my account. You still have a home. And so like a coward she stood still and said nothing. Silently he put Ellie in her car seat, grabbed his things, and walked out the door. Jazz had never hated herself before. That was such a self destructive mindset that she tried to avoid. But right now in this moment? She hated herself.
Mom, no, that wasn’t right anymore, Maddie scoffed once the door was closed. “Good riddance. The only good that boy has ever been is the child support his birth father sends.”
This instantly pinged a lot of red flags. Not that Danny had a birth father who wasn’t Jack, both she and Danny had been aware that they weren’t Jack’s biological children since they were old enough to understand. Jazz herself was actually Aunt Alicia’s child (something about the messy divorce plus she couldn’t financially support a child) and they had both assumed that Danny had been conceived using a donor from a sperm bank. But to learn that their parents were in contact with his birth father…
Jazz stopped herself before she said anything incriminating. The instant her parents suspected that she wanted to help Danny they would block her efforts at best, destroy evidence at worst. She had to do this carefully. “It really is a shame,” she said instead, “He had such a bright future.”
“And he squandered it,” Maddie said almost mournfully. Jazz had trouble believing she was sincere.
Jack stepped forward and gently placed his massive hands on her shoulders. “Not like you Jazzy-pants. You’ve always gone above and beyond our expectations. You’re our shining little star.” he said with a loving smile.
Jazz smiled back but on the inside she was sick to her stomach. She knew now that that love was conditional on her being a good trophy child. Oh god she really was the favorite child wasn’t she?
Somehow she managed to squirrel out of her parents embrace and made her way back upstairs. She locked her door and sat on her bed in shock. Did all of that really just happen? She looked to the clock. Only thirty five minutes had passed. A little more than half an hour. She felt selfish to say it, since Danny had it so much worse, but her entire life had just been flipped end over end. The little brother whose care and wellbeing had been such a huge part of her life was suddenly gone in a puff of smoke.
Pulling herself out of her funk, she remembered the comment about Danny's birth father. And she began to plan.