100 years later

An added on chapter for The Adoration of Jenna Fox. It was an assignment for my English class. I own nothing.

100 years later

It’s now three hundred and sixty years after I discovered that I’m not entirely human.  I’m sitting in Mr. Bender’s garden, weeding.  It’s October, so I don’t have much left to do.  I’m expecting a call from Kayla.  She calls every Tuesday at four, when she’s not really doing anything.  It’s now five, but I’m not really worried.

Alyss calls from our house, “Jenna, phone for you!”

I look up from my work.  “Is it Kayla?”

“No, it’s a guy.  He sounds like your dad,” she replies, walking outside and handing the phone to me.  I’m confused.  Dad was a doctor, a scientist, three hundred years ago.  Who could this be?

I put the phone up to my ear.  “Hello?”

The man on the phone is saying, “This is Dr. Anderson from the Boston University Research Hospital.  Are you Jenna Fox, the mother of Kayla Fox?”

“Yes.  Did something happen to her?” I ask.  I’m getting nervous.  A hospital hasn’t called me in years, not since Kayla’s husband died from a heart attack.  What had happened to my baby?

“We’re very sorry to tell you that your daughter has suffered a severe heart attack a few hours ago.  We don’t expect her to survive long, not even with the BioGel,” he’s saying calmly, as if he does this every day.  He probably does.

I breathe in deeply.  “How long will she live?”

“A few months, maybe a year at the most,” he replies.

Dad had said that the BioGel would last two to two hundred years.  He was already wrong about the two hundred part.  Maybe he was wrong about the other part as well?  So I tell the doctor, “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“She’s having her surgery tomorrow, so you might want to catch an early flight,” he advises.

“Will do,” I reply.

Hanging up, I walk over to Alyss.  She had been watching the entire time.  Now she asks, “What happened?”

“Kayla had a heart attack.”

She nods, understanding.  Her husband had a heart attack a few years ago, when he was one hundred and nineteen.  He didn’t last long after that.  “Are you moving to Boston?”  Her voice is quivering.

I nod.  “It’s time.”

“I’ll miss you, Jenna!” she says, hugging me tightly.  I feel like she’s squeezing all of my breath out of me.  Or she would be, if I had to breathe.  It’s still a habit, one that I haven’t broken in all these years.

“You have your grandkids,” I pointed out.  “You won’t be entirely alone.”

“But they age so fast!  My kids are getting close to retiring!”  Her voice breaks now, and she would be crying if she could.

I pat her on the back and say gently, “Throw them a party.  Take them to the Grand Canyon.  Be happy for them.  And when their time comes, do what I’m doing.”

She nods against my hair.  “No mother should outlive her children.”

“That’s right.”

We’re having a low-key night tonight.  We’ve been friends for too long to make a big deal out of it.  I’ve made plane ticket arrangements and hotel reservations, and Alyss called her kids in San Diego to see if she could move in with them.  When I asked her why, she just said that she didn’t want to be alone.

We’re sitting in my room, packing my things.  All my blue clothes go in one box, my books in another.  There’s a special box for Walden and Kara’s red skirt.  I asked Lily where it was a few years before she died, and she pulled it out of her closet.  It had been there all along.  I even put my ballet shoes in the box.  Fifty years ago, I started dancing again.  I would never be as good as I was when I was a teenager, but it helped make my movements more natural.

“What do you want to do with this?” Alyss is asking me.  I look up.  It’s our High School graduation photo.  We’re both in it, and Ethan is there.  So are Gabriel and Dr. Rae.  Even Dane is in it.  I’ve never forgotten our friends.

“You can keep it,” I reply, smiling.  “It belongs to you just as much as it belongs to me.”

She nods again, and we remain silent for the rest of the night.  There isn’t anything left to be said.

In the morning, she drives me over to the airport.  I’m suddenly nervous.  I’ve lived for so long, how could I just go and live in a place that would kill me?  I look over at Alyss, and she can sense my fear.  She gives me a thumbs up.  “You’ll do fine.  Go see your daughter.”  I’m suddenly calm.  She always knows exactly what to say.  I giver her one last, long hug.  I feel like I never want to let go, because I know that this is the last time I’ll ever see her.

Boarding the plane, I take Walden out for what must be the thousandth time.  Literally.  The flight attendant asks, “Can I get you anything?”

I want to tell her that she can get me a cure for my one-hundred-and-six-year-old daughter, but she would just look at me strangely, so I say, “I’m fine.”

The plane ride is only two hours long.  They’re a lot faster now than they used to be.  I’m not so sure I like it.  When I land, Kayla’s great-grandchildren are waiting for me.  They go to Boston University, so they know exactly where to take me.

The college junior, Alice, is saying, “Grandma is doing good.  You don’t have to see her right away if you don’t want to.”

I frown, thinking.  “I’ll see her later.  Did they perform the surgery yet?”

The freshman, Jake, shakes his head.  “No, they’re doing that at three.”

“Awesome.”  I look at my watch.  “We still have five hours.  Do you guys want to go shopping?”

They look at each other.  The fact that their great-great-grandma looks younger than them really bothers them, so I say, “Or we can just go to the hospital.”

“No, we can go to the mall,” Alice says.

“I’ll drive,” Jake offers.

I flinch, remembering the car crash.  It’s still the clearest memory that I have from the old Jenna.  I tell them, “No, I will.”

The groan.  “Jen-na!  We can drive!  We know this place better than you do!”  I told them to call me Jenna instead of grandma.  Think about it.  They have two regular grandmas, four great-grandmas, and me.  That’s a lot of people to call Grandma.  Jenna works just fine.

I laugh.  “Come on, you know me.  I will never let anyone under forty drive a car with me in it.”

“Why, though?” Jake asks, handing me the keys to his Prius.

Again, I flinch.  There are some things that you just don’t tell family.  “I’d really rather not talk about it.”  They don’t ask any further.  They’ve learned to avoid talking about a lot of things around me, and things in my distant past are some of them.

As we’re walking towards the car, I feel something wet and cold on my arm.  Colder than I’m used to.  I look down and see something that I haven’t seen in a long time, and I gasp.  It’s a snowflake!

“What’s wrong, Jenna?” Alice asks.

I smile, staring down at the novelty on my arm.  “It’s snowing!  I haven’t seen snow in a long time.”

“That’s right.  BioGel doesn’t do well in the cold, does it?”  Jake ponders for a bit.  Then his face goes pale and I know what he’s thinking.  “How long are you staying in Boston?”

“Until my time is up,“ I reply, getting in the car.  “Fasten your seat belts, please.”

They do as they’re asked, but Alice asks, “You want to die?”

I laugh.  “Honey, no one really wants to die.  But I’ve lived long enough.  And your Grandma Kayla is dying.  I don’t want to outlive her.”

They stay silent as we’re driving.  I even have to figure out how to get to the mall by myself.  When we park the car, Jake says, “We’re going to miss you, you know.”

“Yeah, I do,” I reply, smiling.  “And when I do die, I want you to watch The Chronicles of Jenna Fox: Volumes One through Sixteen.”

We spend three hours at the mall.  I let Alice convince me to buy a green dress that she says looks gorgeous on me.  It’s her favorite color.  When we’re done, I drive us to the hospital.  They know exactly where Kayla’s room is.  When I get there, my dear, darling daughter is attached to numerous machines, like Alyss was before the Change.  It makes Jake and Alice uncomfortable, but I’ve been around a while longer than them.

“Kayla!  You look amazing!” I lie cheerfully, hugging her tightly.

She laughs weakly and starts coughing.  “I’ve been better.”

“I know,” I reply, smiling.  “And I have The Chronicles of Kayla Fox: Volumes One through Eighteen to prove it.”

The doctor walks in.  I assume it’s Dr. Anderson.  He looks at me, confused, and asks, “You are. . . ?”

Sticking out my hand, I reply, “Jenna Angeline Fox, your gorgeous young patient’s mother.”

“Mom,” Kayla whines.  It’s so strange to have someone who looks so old call someone who looks like me mom.

Dr. Anderson thinks it’s strange as well.  He looks at me, bewildered.   I am almost four hundred years old, after all.

“I didn’t realize you are the Jenna Fox,” he says.  “It’s an honor to meet you.  Are you just visiting?”

“No, I’m moving here,” I reply, looking at my dying daughter.  Dr. Anderson seems to understand.

I sit and catch up with Kayla for the next hour or so.  We haven’t seen each other in a few months.  Strange, how such a short time can seem so long.

The nurses are here to take Kayla in to surgery.  I ask them what exactly is wrong with her, because I still only know about the heart attack.  She can’t have that many machines hooked up to her and not have something really major wrong.  As it turns out, my baby has multiple organ failure, and the stress on her heart gave her the attack when she was out on her daily walk.

Before they wheeled her out, Kayla asked me with fear in her eyes, “Does it hurt?”

I laugh.  “I was in a coma, so I don’t remember, but I didn’t even realize my insides were made of Jello until I got a cut.”

“So it’s not bad?”

“Not at all,” I reassure her.  She smiles, content with the answer.  Then the nurses wheel her out for a surgery that will change her life.

5 years later

“Mom, it’s time for our walk!”  I look up from Walden to see Kayla hobbling towards me.  It’s getting close to her time.  The doctors were wrong about her, though, and my dad was wrong about me.  We’ve both lived longer than expected.

“I’ll be along in a bit!” I call back, putting the book on the coffee table and slowly standing up.  It’s getting close to my time, too.  I’ve been living in Alice’s house in Boston since Kayla’s surgery.

We walk out the gate and into the white landscape.  We see kids having snowball fights and adults shoveling.  It’s a comforting scene.

“What do you want to do today?” Kayla asks.

I think about it for a bit.  “I just want to relax today, maybe have your kids over.  How does that sound?”

“Sounds perfect.”  She smiled.  Her eyes were bright from the cold, and I thought for not the first time that my daughter is the most perfect child in the world, and I never want to lose her.  That must have been what Mother was thinking when she downloaded my brain into a box.

We walk around our neighborhood for a little.  A lot of retired people live here with us, and a lot of families with small children as well.  A school was built across the street from our house, and they’re building a nursing home now.  Strange combination, but I guess it works.

“I was talking to Jake today.  His wife is pregnant,” Kayla informed me.

“Good for them.  Now I’ll finally have great-great-great-grandchildren.  What I’ve always wanted,” I reply dryly, smiling.  Kayla laughed.

We’re walking back up to the house.  Kayla’s going inside to take her shoes off, but I want to stay outside for a little longer.  I go out back to my garden, and just stop and gaze at the beauty that’s before me.

I see something.  Something strange.  It’s a bright blue butterfly, in the middle of winter.  What’s it doing here?  Isn’t it cold?  It’s nestled on my rose bush, fluttering its wings lightly.  I walk up to it and kneel next to the bush.  I whisper, “What are you doing here, little butterfly?  Aren’t you going to fly away?”

The wind picks up and it does just that.  It flies into the bright December sun, and when it’s out of sight, I gasp.  The colors.  They all seem so bright.  They’re beautiful.  Why didn’t they appear so bright a second ago?

I realize that it’s my time.

I walk over to the bench and sit down, looking at the bleak beauty of my frozen garden.  Kayla is calling my name, but I don’t hear her.  The bright blue butterfly is back.  It’s landed on the stone path.  I smile at it.  It flies away again, and I seem to follow it.

Now all I see is a blanket of snow.

Author's Note

What do you think? Did I do the book justice?

Reviews

[Taylor H.]

This was very well written :) Great job

[Bella-Marie]

You did the book perfect justice my friend. I loved it. It was such a beautiful ending and not a soppy hollywood ending either. The butterfly thing was very cool too, but I would've liked it to be sparrows - you know, because of the book? But other than that I thought it was a great great way to honour a good book. :)