The Heights

Part 1 (Chapter 1-8)

1, Broken Clocks

San Francisco 2002

Emerald. Jade Knight would forever remember that fateful day as simply emerald. It was supposed to be happy, it was supposed to be joyous, it was supposed to be perfect — it was not.

She remembered the morning of the incident: her mother and her step-father, holding her hand on either side, walking up to meet her Aunt Grace. She was wearing the cutest pink Sunday dress. She always hated pink but her mother said it went splendidly well with her caramel skin and curly hair.

They had come to support her Aunt on that festive day. Her mother, Charlotte, was about 3 months pregnant and beginning to show. Her step-father, August, was beaming proudly waiting to be a father. They loved her. That's all that mattered.

Jade genuinely tried to stay in town after the incident. But after what the incident stole, Jade could never. Being there for her step-father was the only reason she stayed. Losing a wife who was expecting was a pain Jade could never imagine, but losing your mother in a tragedy like that was a thought August could never bare. They tried to be happy; they tried to forget; they failed.

After the incident August quit his job as head engineer for the Development Company, Hall's Inc, and started a local car repair business. So when Jade decided to leave the Heights, August couldn't follow. His responsibility to his business and to the town forced him to grow roots. So instead of following Jade, he watched her blue beetle drive away into the bleeding sunset.

August was used to moving around. The development company he had worked for was project-based which meant after at most a year he would have flown to a different part of the world for the next project. But in Whitewater Heights he had planted roots, he had fallen in love with Charlotte, fathered Jade, started a business, and had grown too deep and too attached to the town. Now, he could never leave.

After the incident, Middle School and High School felt like unending torture for Jade. Invitations to Friday Movie-nights and Saturday Sleepovers were never extended to the weird girl in school. Jade had buried her mind into every class she had taken and every book her fingers touched. She focused closely on every diagram in her science textbooks and dove deep into whatever fictional world her librarian recommended that week. Every weekend she would accompany her step-father to the grocery store and just as they're paying Mrs. Grahams —the shop owner— would always kindly slip in a few extra sweets for her.

Two months before graduation the local mailman delivered a foreign package: a chance for freedom in the form of an acceptance letter to the University of San Francisco's English Department.

Jade had always felt as though the town wanted her gone. First, her biological father's untimely heart attack, then, the incident that took her mother, finally, her ticket out of here. Jade was 18 with no roots, no attachments, just a secondhand blue beetle and a step-father who unwaveringly supported her every endeavor. That's all that mattered. She thought as she drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and into a small shoebox apartment to, hopefully, find some roots in a new city.

She had studied at the University of San Francisco until she got a job at a local publishing firm. Then, a promotion from intern to assistant editor. Then, a transfer to a larger publishing firm. Then, a promotion from assistant editor to department editor. She continued to work, to strive, to forget about her life back home, to forget about the incident. The only whispers she allowed from home was a weekly call from her step-father, 10 minutes tops. Years of unwavering determination until Jade finally climbed her way to the corner office at the largest publishing firm in California. She was head editor and had not one, not two, but three assistant editors all just-graduated from Ivies.