When he finally closed the front door, he hardly noticed Deirdre and Megan standing there, both crying. He half crawled, half stumbled up the stairs, Trebuchet trailing at his heel, and practically fell to the floor in his office lair, nudging the door shut with his foot.
The part of his mind that was aware of the outside world expected Deirdre to follow him, but she didn’t. Jared and Trebuchet were alone in the dark. He could hear the dog panting, could feel his breath on his arm. This, more than anything, helped to center Jared. He reached in the direction of the dog’s warm breath, felt for his ear, and gently scratched just behind it, Trey’s favorite thing in the world, or at least Jared thought it was.
Butch tree, Jared thought, making an anagram out of his dog’s name.
Trebuchet licked his lips and put his head down with one big sigh, his panting calmed to an even measure, a metronome of the living. The two of them, Jared and his faithful companion, drifted off to sleep at almost exactly the same time.
8d 11h 39m
Jackie woke up next to Megan, the two of them snuggled together on Jackie’s twin bed, Megan snoring gently.
Everything came flooding back to Jackie: Megan’s report of what her father had told the newspeople at the door; how her father had collapsed; the fact that her father was dying of a brain tumor. She understood precious little of what was happening and wanted more than anything to talk to her dad, but she couldn’t.
For her entire life, Jared had been Jackie’s anchor. No matter how bad things got for Jackie, her dad was there to make it better, even if only a little. But now, the bad thing was her father. The realization was paralyzing.
Jackie didn’t know what else to do, so she sought solace in the one place she felt safe: the vast, anonymous ocean of the Internet. The clock on her computer said it was nine p.m., much earlier than she thought.
First she looked for her father’s eBay listing. Jackie didn’t believe this part of Megan’s story; it just couldn’t be true. Her father would never do anything like that. How could he?
But there it was. “Human Life for Sale.”
She read it once and started to well up. She quickly clicked back to Google, which helped to bring her to a state of equilibrium. Little did Jackie know that each click on the World Wide Web released a microscopic hit of dopamine, anesthetizing her brain and dulling her senses. It was as habit forming as smoking.
Next she needed to sort out the part of Megan’s story that made the least sense. What the heck is “ Youth in Asia”? Jackie wondered. She’d made her sister repeat the phrase three times. Jackie typed it into Google.
The first result was for a 1980s British band that Wikipedia called “anarcho punk,” whatever that was. They had only one record, and that was something called “a cassette album,” whatever that was.
The second result made a lot more sense. It was also a Wikipedia entry, and it was for euthanasia, which was apparently pronounced like “youth in Asia.” Jackie had heard of euthanasia. She knew it had something to do with a person deciding to end her own life, usually because she was really sick. The article said it was also sometimes called physician-assisted suicide.
The main thrust of the argument in favor of euthanasia, Jackie read, seemed to be that people had the right to make up their own minds about when they lived and died. Jackie had never given it any thought before, and her immediate reaction was that any kind of suicide was wrong. They had taught her at Sunday school that life was precious; it was God’s greatest gift. Suicide, she’d learned, was a sin.
But her gut reaction was different. In her heart, Jackie believed that people should be able to make up their own minds about anything they wanted, as long as it didn’t hurt anyone else. That should include when they lived and died, shouldn’t it?
But the most interesting part of the Wiki entry was the role Oregon, her home state, played in the history of euthanasia. She clicked a link for something called the Death with Dignity Act. She was surprised, and maybe a little proud, to learn that Oregon was the first US state to protect doctors who helped terminal patients end their lives. She was even more surprised to learn that the state legislature, her father’s legislature, was considering a major expansion to the law right now that would also protect family and friends who played a role in helping the terminally ill end their suffering. That meant that her father, who was dying of a brain tumor, was also voting to make it legal to die a little sooner. Unbelievable.
Jackie’s head started to swim; it was all too much for her to process. She was already fifteen years old and had stellar grades, but her emotional experience did nothing to prepare her for this.
Jackie’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when she saw that her father’s quote to the reporters—from just a few hours earlier on her front stoop—was already referenced in the article. The speed at which information traveled was mind-boggling to Jackie.