Yesterday, I worked out the main story arcs for Nakia's flashbacks juxtaposed with her budding friendships with the Beverlee Hills girls, but I didn't work out b and c storylines for those. I think that's important, but today, I was working with Chat GPT to figure out what is going to happen with Jackie. At first, I thought we'd need a, b, and c plots, for each book, maybe some of them could overlap into larger arcs through the books, but then I was like, wait a second, I don't need Jackie to be a main feature of all three books. Like, the first one, yeah, because Jackie represents a system and systems have let down and/or "killed" Nakia three times, so when newly orphaned "Sunny" needs a social worker, Nakia doesn't trust her. She sics Kim on Jacki to find dirt on her in order to blackmail Jacki into leaving Sunny alone.
All Nakia really understands about "the system" is that it takes kids away from their parents, and being taken from her parents is Nakia's core wound. She assumes that anyone working within a system like this is corrupt, so she's surprised when Kim reports back and says that Jacki not only genuinely seems to care about helping kids, but she'll even break rules to do it. Nakia becomes mildly invested in "helping" Jacki with her cases, which backfires, which is fun plot stuff.
I have so many characters in this story, I didn't want another one, so I was going to have Nakia investigate Jacki herself, but if Thai, Candy, China, and Ophelia are going to be the main focus of the books with a huge emphasis on the friendships that have let Nakia down in the past, then I can't have her be that invested in a tertiary character time or emotion-wise. So, I thought that she could hire a private investigator, but then I thought that she could just assign it to Kim.
Who is Kim, you ask? Yeah, I've barely mentioned her. She's Nakia's personal assistant who manages all of Nakia's aliases. She's the one who informs Nakia that Sunny's fictional parents are dead and the only way to save their fortune and contacts is for Nakia to pretend to be Sunny. Kim comes to California to pose as Sunny's legal guardian, but, surprise, she's only twenty-one. Nakia is annoyed, not because Kim lied about her age in order to get the job (she started working for Nakia when she was thirteen), but because she looks young enough that SHE could have posed as Sunny and hired someone to play the guardian and Nakia wouldn't have to be here at all.
Anyway, aside from that, I wasn't sure until today how involved I wanted Kim to be in the plot, but she's the perfect person to manage the staff that she hired and to spy on Jacki and report back. Nakia already trusts Kim with the knowledge that she has aliases (although Kim doesn't know why), and Nakia doesn't let people into her confidence easily.
Kim will be the perfect filter for information on Jacki. We'll be able to deal with her hijinks though Kim reporting to Nakia (telling, not showing, which will help distance Nakia from it emotionally even more). Also, Kim will be invested enough that she'll also initially report about Jacki's romantic and family life, which will help the reader get to know Jacki better.
But, in regard to arcs, we don't need an a, b, and c plot for Jackie for all three books. Once Nakia realizes that Jacki is competent and caring, she basically just trusts her to do her job, and Kim stops investigating her. So, after the first book, we'll only need Jacki showing up to check on "Sunny" and maybe we'll get some updates on her personal life and stuff as we go along.
Similarly, Kim's arc with Nakia will wrap up after book two because the purpose of Nakia's aliases is for her to have a network that helps her track down The King. After she confronts The King after Book 2, Kim will only be around to pretend to be Sunny's guardian and to manage the staff. Once Sunny turns eighteen, the staff will be dismissed when she goes off to college, and Kim won't be needed after that.
I don't want to drop Jacki and Kim abruptly but they will become less important as other characters become more important.
So. In nailing down the arcs for each book with Jacki and Kim, let's figure out some plot points. First, Jacki has a kid who needs a fridge, so Nakia has a kid buy him one and fill it with food. Nice. But someone accuses the kid of stealing the fridge (what, did it just show up full of food? Yeah, right) and the kid is in trouble. Jacki handles it and Kim reports back that Nakia's generosity backfired. They both agree to hold back the next time they want to step in.
Jacki's jurisdiction straddles the rich and poor kids in Beverlee Hills, so one of her kids is neglected by his rich parents. This resonates with Kim who had rich, evil birth parents, and we'll need one more example. Oh, yeah. Actually, Jackie is an occasional interim foster parent and she has a kid living with her for a few weeks. I think, of the three, maybe the interim kid wraps up first, the fridge kid is wrapped up next, and the neglected kid is a thread that never gets satisfactorily wrapped up. We just have to assume that Kim and/or Nakia will figure out how to help at some point, because there's only so much Jacki can do.
The neglect is harmful but not bad enough to risk taking the kid away and putting them somewhere worse. I think maybe we just end up with the kid in some sort of boarding school and have to be okay with that. Ooh! Wait, maybe the kid is a classmate of Sunny's. That would add an element to the story -- to see the kid from the perspective of a fellow student and also knowing private information about them. Maybe the kid, like Nakia and Kim, is figuring it out with his own friend group. So, rather than helping, they just watch, looking for an opening to help, like being spotters instead of saviors.
Okay, also, Jacki has a personal life that she has going on that I'd like to have Kim be nosy about. At first, she's watching Jacki, not sure what is important, so she shares everything. As time goes on, Jacki's personal life is less relevant, but if Nakia asks, Kim knows the answer. You can see Kim's character profile for more information on why she's so fascinated by Jacki but I don't think that most of it will be relevant to Nakia's plot, and the series is entirely from her POV, so there's a lot going on with Jacki that Kim will know about but Nakia won't.
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