All characters are over 18. If you would like to discuss the story, please use the forums.
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I guess I'm what most people would call a child prodigy. I say I guess because from my point of view all that really meant was that they let me go at my own speed instead of holding me back. I finished high school when I was eleven. I finished my undergrad degree when I was sixteen. Yeah, I know, it took me five years to finish college. So sue me.
If I had been living in a normal family, my education would likely have stopped there. But I didn't live in a normal family. In fact, I didn't live in a family at all. I was a ward of the state. Insert joke about unicorn here. (That's what they call foster kids who go to college in case you didn't know.) I don't know the details of how I ended up that way or why no one ever bother to adopt me but that's how it was. The state has a rule, you have to be in school. My social worker had no wiggle room on it either. If you're under 18 and you belong to the state, then you go to school, period. So when I was still 16 I had to start a master's program. When I was 17 I wrote my dissertation and guess what? I failed. I actually failed. I was awarded some other dopey post-graduate diploma thing that I didn't care about. But if I passed or failed was not the important thing.
The really important thing that happened was that I was finally turning 18. Yes. I was officially and legally an adult. No more foster parents. No more dorms. No more social workers. I was free. I was finally going to be free.
There would be no more asking for permission for every little thing. I was going to be able to cross the state boarder whenever I wanted. I was going to be able to take a girl out on a date without my social worker doing a background check on her. Ok, it wasn't really as if a lot of girls were going to actually let me take them out. My love life up to this point had pretty much been one long chain of asking girls out and getting rejected time and again. I was almost to the point where I would just stop asking. But I was going to get a girl. Yes, I was going to get a girl when I finally had a job and my own place.
But from the looks of things I guess I was going to be homeless since I had no money and no family to support me. Luckily or maybe unluckily, the state was not about to just put me out in the wild. They would continue to support me so long as I was enrolled in school in some way. There were some other benefits to being enrolled in school as well, massive amounts of scholarship money and grant money. Some of it was for tuition and some of it was for doing research. And if the scholarships or grants were more than what was needed to cover the cost of school then I could keep the rest.
It turns out I was really good at getting grant money too. I used a new law that would force the government to release documents and I got my hands on a boatload of grant applications from various agencies. I did a statistical analysis to discover what made one application more likely to get a grant than the others. From the very beginning it was clear that using certain words or groups of words would made an application much more likely to be successful. There seemed to be three different grant profiles that would be successful depending on the preferences of the people giving the money so I created templates based on those. I would use one to apply for a grant under my own name. Another to apply for the grant for the university. And I used the third to apply for the grant in the name of our department or department head.
And the money came rolling in.
So I made a deal with the university. They would let me take a class on how to conduct a proper research study. I would also have a job at the university helping one of the professors conduct research. After a year of doing that, I would have two years to do my own study and do all the research all over again and then I could re-write my dissertation and maybe get a master's after all that.
I wouldn't exactly call that going at my own pace but it meant that I'd have an income; from the university, from grants, and from the state as well. My social worker would pay me $216 a month until I was 21 so long as I was in school and didn't do anything stupid like get arrested.
By this time in my life I was sick of living in the dorm. I had lived in a dorm for most of high school. Yeah, it was a boarding school and before you react with horror I will point out that my other options were living either with foster parents or in an orphanage. I'd choose boarding school any day, hands down.
Anyway, so I'd been living in a dorm since I was 9. I was kind of sick of it. It was about time I got my own place. I found a nice little one bedroom house to rent by one of the university lakes. I rode a bicycle to and from the university and life was easy for a bit. The only real stress I had in my life came when I tried to ask a girl out and she would point out just how unappealing I was to her. But at least then she would be talking to me. There were times when I would ask a girl out and she would just laugh or completely ignore me and continue on as if I hadn't said anything.
About a month before I turned 19 I got a summons in the mail. I'd never seen one of these things before and I had no idea what it was or what this was all about. My social worker didn't know what it was about either but if a judge wanted you in court you had best show up. So on the day of my court appearance my social worker drove me downtown.
I remembered that the court was a lot different than what you see in movies. I didn't see big grand marble floors and the judge's podium wasn't so high up. It also wasn't made out of wood. It looked like something you bought at a discount store and put together yourself with a hex key. The place had cheap carpet and dim lights. The only thing that really made this look like a courtroom at all was the guard carrying a gun.
I waited to be called. While the court was dealing with other matters there was this mic that was set up that people would walk up to and say their name into. When the judge finally got around to whatever it was he wanted me there for, instead of calling me up to the mic, he asked me and my social worker to go to another room that I guess was the judge's private office.
The judge was polite and asked me to sit down.
"Alright." the judge said. "Mr. Chatelain. Did anyone tell you why you're here?"
"No." my social worker answered for me. I just shook my head.
The judge looked over some records in a file and then addressed me again.
"Your sister will be turning 18 soon. The court needs to know ..."
"Excuse me, your honor." My social worker said. "I was not aware that Emile had any siblings."
The judge looked surprised. She took a document from the file and handed it to my social worker. "Ophelia Chatelain. He's her twin brother, right?"
"I'm already 18." I said.
My social worker handed the document back to the judge. "What did she do?"
"She stole $300 and tried to run away. When she ran out of money she stole a car. Then she pretended to have a gun and held up a convenience store."
"Are you sure she's my sister?" I asked. "Does that say who my parents are?"
"That's sealed." my social worker said.
"I don't understand." I said.
"Mr. Chatelain, your sister is currently being held in juvenile detention. You are listed as her only next of kin."
"What about my parents? Do you know who they are?"
"The court is not at liberty to disclose that information but this girl is your sister."
"My twin?"
My social worker shook her head no. "She has your same birthday but she isn't your twin. She's a year younger than you."
"How is that even possible? I thought I was given up days after I was born. What's going on?"
"Ok young man, calm down." the judge said. "We can't tell you about your parents but I can assure you that this is your sister. You have the ability to decide her fate."
"Me?" I looked over to my social worker. She nodded but didn't say anything. I looked back to the judge and asked her "Why me?"
"Once she turns 18 I can release her into the custody of a family member. If you don't want to take her then she stays in detention until she's 21."
"What do you mean by take her?"
"You would become her legal guardian until her 21st birthday."
"But she'd be an adult already?"
"Even though she'd be legally of age, because of the ruling against her I can not release her on her own. I can only release her into the care of a family member who agrees to be responsible for her until she turns 21. If I release her to you and she runs, then when we catch her she goes back to detention until she's 21 plus the time she was out. If you put her out of your house for any reason, she goes back to detention. If she does anything wrong, ANYTHING, even so mush as spit on the sidewalk, she goes back to detention."
"So, this is really probation."
"You can think of it that way."
"This is a lot to think about." I said. "If she does something, will I have to pay for it?"
"No. But you will have to provide her with the basic essentials."
I sat there thinking. I didn't know what to do. The judge and my social worker talked for a bit and then they told me I didn't have to decide that day. I had until my birthday to figure out if I wanted to do this.
A part of me didn't really believe that this girl was my sister. That just didn't make sense. What probably happened was that when she was given up at birth some lazy person just gave her my same name and just put my same birthday on her records. That seemed a lot more likely than the 1 in 365 chance that my biological sibling would share my same birthday.
The next week my social worker drove me down to the detention center. It was way out in the country side surrounded by farm land as far as you could see. It was basically a jail. It kind of reminded me of the orphanage I stayed it for a bit.
I sat in a room with a few various chairs in it. The girl was brought in and she was accompanied by her own social worker. She sat down opposite me.
