The Magic at the End of the World (Do You Remember, Book 5)

Monday, February 5, 2001

Well, the month of February began with a whimper, which was ironic because January started off with a bang.

When February 1, 2001 began, there were no shootings or beatings. No one hurt each other, nor was there any looting or rioting. Something must have happened between January 31 and February 1 to make the city of Lochland, South Carolina be quiet. Either that, or the mayor had demanded that the curfew that began on January 2, 2001 be heavily enforced until the end of the month.

So, that's that.

Anyway, it's two days before my 14th birthday and to my surprise, I'm still at home with my parents and siblings. I'm going to admit that I'm shocked because I honestly didn't expect to still be in Lochland with my family. I was half expected to be forced to leave my family and stay with the Williams family, who lived in Washington, D.C. But what I don't know is that Joanna had found out that the Williams family had finally discovered who I was and with whom I was living with.

To say that she was displeased with the whole situation was putting it mildly.

As in, Joanna said when I first told her about the Williams family, "I don't know who you think they are, but there's no way in Harry Potter hell that I'm going to let you live with them, not after all the trouble we went through with Chelsea and the Roberts family. Plus, Michael and Jessica allowed Emily to be abused by a family friend because she wasn't Michael's daughter, which was why you were born."

I said, "So, will you tell the Chief that I'm not interested in meeting my mother's family?"

"I can do that, but it's all up to you," said Joanna. "You have the power to decide if you want to meet them or not, and we can arrange it so that the Williamses can never meet with you at all. Is that what you want, Jed?"

"Yes," I said without hesitation. "I don't want to meet a group of people who don't know how to take care of or protect a child that didn't belong to them. It's bad enough that Chelsea had to go through the same thing and Kaprice has no relationship with his biological family, so who's to say that I shouldn't allow the Williams family into my life?"

Joanna nodded in agreement as she said, "Well, I would try to persuade you to reconsider, but after what I've seen with Chelsea, I would say that you're better off where you are now. Of course, we'll have to convince a judge that you belong with the Hamilton family, but that's not so hard to do, am I right?"

I frowned, wondering if the Williams family was going to give me up without a fight or if they're willing to fight mom and dad for me. When last I checked, family isn't just bloodlines and DNA; family is being surrounded by people who are about you. Emily certainly wasn't surrounded by people who cared about her and Uncle Zach was forced to live among strangers at a young age, so he too had no concept of family. But I did, and no one with the last name of Williams was going to take that away from me!!

*-*-*-*-*

Fast forward to today, where it's been a month since the killings happened. Right now, there's still no answers in the investigation into why Lucas Harrison killed all those people, yet JoLee Griffin's case is a bit more straightforward. (JoLee Griffin was the 14-year-old Black girl who killed almost her entire family because of an illegitimate half-brother, who had died in the incident.) JoLee's sister Jeimy is currently staying with the girls' grandmother; the grandmother had claimed that someone had carelessly left out a damning piece of information regarding the half-brother out in the open where JoLee could see it, which led to the killings. (I'm sure that JoLee would be getting a possible 25 years to life in prison for that.)

Of course, at the same time, Chelsea tells me that she's been getting a crapton of death threats from some Hispanic people, which is why she's going to school surrounded by members of Joanna's security detail. If that doesn't remind you of the time the government sent troops to escort those Black kids to the all-White schools they were enrolled in, I don't know what to tell you. Plus, several middle schools and high schools all over Charleston began sending their Hispanic students to the multipurpose rooms in an effort to weed out whoever was sending Chelsea those death threats. I bet that the kids in Lochland High are probably denying it, even though many of them do NOT support the Hernandez family at all. Plus, many of the colleges in South Carolina were launching their own investigations into which of the students was sending Chelsea death threats about her blog posts that called Declan Caesar a criminal.

Speaking of which, Chelsea published several more blog posts that called for those who supported Declan Caesar to turn themselves in and explain why they would support a boy who had harmed so many innocent children. So far, over 37 people have been arrested in connect with Declan Caesar and his crimes. I'm sure that story isn't over yet, not as far as Luke MacPherson is concerned.

Back to me, my birthday is in two days, and I'm quite nervous about turning 14 years old. I do recall everything that happened to me shortly after I turned 13 years old, ranging from me gaining my powers and getting a strange new set of friends to me losing my friendships with Clayton and Milton. Plus, Milton was forcibly removed from his family and sent to live with a foster family on the edge of town. Clayton also has some new friends that he's been hanging out with recently, leaving me stuck with the weird kids.

But I'm not complaining.

Anyway, as I'm sitting in the shed looking back over my old diary entries, I found myself laughing at how naive and foolish I had been to think that I would still be the same Jed that I was on February 6, 2000. That Jed had to go, to be honest. That Jed was a fool to believe everything that he was told. That Jed wore dresses and did whatever he was told without argument.

I don't even know what I was thinking the day I ultimately turned my back on who I once was and befriended Claire Evans, but I knew that things had changed the minute I put that dull boring version of myself in the garbage can and became the Jed that I was meant to be.

And that Jed would totally kill the dull boring Jed hands down.

As I'm working on some fake diary pages, I heard a knock on the window. Chesley had showed up, saying, "I hear that you had to avoid meeting your birth mother's family."

"I had no choice," I said with a frown on my face. "I knew that I had to say no now or else my story will end up the same as Chelsea's story, with her father and grandparents dead and a crazy uncle who's in jail for killing them. I can't afford to have that on my conscious."

"You are most certainly wise, Jedidiah," said Chesley. "You have stirred up so much trouble that so many people are crying while being reminded of how ugly they truly are. They realize that they are ugly and then they end up hurting themselves or hurting other people. The Roberts family got what they deserved by refusing to get help for their disabled son, falsely claiming that he was "fine" when he was not. This pisses me off more than anything else in the world and Kenneth and Melva Roberts should have known better than to allow Craig around a bunch of 12-year-old girls."

I nodded in agreement, knowing that there was a day that was coming when I would have to destroy everything that I thought once held value in my life...