CHAPTER TWELVE

Special

Exara’s screendesk lay empty. Secretly, I celebrated, plunking down at the screendesk behind hers. Guilt came next, and I halted the party before it raged out of control. What if she was deathly ill? Or even worse, what if she had to be frozen like me? Even though I already hated her, I didn’t wish my fate on anyone.

“Morning, Jennifer.” Maxim whispered from behind as he took his seat.

“Hey Maxim.” I tried to look cool and calm while my heart raced in his presence. “Is Exara sick?”

“Exara never gets sick.” He wore a sea-green tunic today, the color bringing out flecks in his eyes. “Her personal dietician makes her take a regimen of vitamins. Her immune system is hyperstrong.”

Oh, excuse me. Was she so special she could cut class whenever she wanted? “Where is she?”

“She’s at her bi-monthly beauty treatment.”

“What? Did an eyelash accidentally fall out?”

Maxim laughed. “You’re funny. No. Her eyelash didn’t fall out. She gets a facial, teeth whitening and straightening, color enhancement for her skin, hair, and eyes, and any accumulated fat cells burnt off, among other things.”

I shook my head. “All that, huh?”

He nodded like it was a nail appointment. “Life in the upper levels isn’t what it used to be. Finding a decent career is getting more and more competitive. You need every advantage you can have to get ahead and stand out.” It was the first time I saw something close to anxiety in his eyes. “Even how you look is important, right down to every eyelash.”

“Well, I’m doomed.” I turned around in my seat, shaking my head. Did he buy into all that crap? If so, I didn’t want anything more to do with him. I tried to focus on the morning announcements, but Maxim wouldn’t drop it.

As our homeroom teacher talked about planning for the Autumn Ball festivities, Maxim’s voice hissed behind me, “What do you mean, doomed?”

I turned around. “My bottom row of teeth is so crooked that it looks like some little mouth-gnome kicked them all in. My eyelashes are nonexistent, and I can’t even understand the first General Relativity class.”

I stopped, my mouth hanging open. Why was I telling him this? I almost died. I’d just vomited all my insecurities to the hottest guy in school.

“You don’t need all those extra enhancements.” Maxim leaned forward. “You’re special, Jennifer.”

Was I hallucinating due to too much sappy sauce? I had tried more than usual at Pell’s insistence. “Special? Because I’m over three hundred years old?”

“No, because you don’t look like anyone here.” His hand rose up and touched my hair, spreading it out in a veil. The falling hair tickled the side of my face and my scalp tingled. “No one has hair this color. It reminds me of sunlight in the morning on a day when all the smog has blown away.”

I froze, utterly speechless. What do you say when a gorgeous guy recites something like poetry just for you? Am I hearing things as well? He did have a point. Back in 2012, most of the people in Maine were Caucasian and pale. Now the population in the formerly backwoods state looked more like Boston, with a wide array of ethnicities.

The techno bell rang as it always did—at the most inconvenient moment—and everyone shot up from their desks. Maxim shouldered his backpack and his tone turned trivial, like we’d just talked about last night’s homework assignment. “Besides, I can help you with that Einstein business. See you at lunch.”

I couldn’t wait until lunch. General Relativity dragged by as if time had stopped. I knew what that felt like, right? The guy that had called me bothead fell asleep on his screendesk, drooling, and I found a way to scribble concentric circles with my fingernail on the sides of the screen and erase them when the teacher walked by. Some of the concepts were actually pretty neat—our universe was still expanding, which would mean endless possibilities for other signs of life. Aliens. Although I’d joked about it with Mom and Timmy, I wished I’d been woken up when there were aliens. Anything would be better than Exara.

Just when I thought I’d die of waiting, the techno jingle rang and I filed into the lunchroom. Maxim sat in the same spot as yesterday. He smiled, his perfect white teeth gleaming. He even had a chin dent.

I wanted to kiss it. Wasn’t like I’d kissed anything in my life besides stuffed animals and Timmy’s cheek.

“Get through General Relativity okay?”

I sat across from him and took out my lunch container, this time packed by C-7 because Len was running late. “Yeah. It was interesting today.”

“Good. See. You’ll adjust to life here just fine. You just have to give us a chance.”

I pulled out a container of some gelatinous blue stuff that jiggled. “Jenny. That’s what my friends call me.”

“Jenny. I like the sound of that.”

I sporked the Smurf food and stuffed it in my mouth. The spoonful wiggled on my tongue, tasting like mint. “It’s the plainest name in all of America.”

“Nowadays, with names like XoXo and Shizznizz, it’s one of a kind.”

I covered my mouth to stop my slimy food from spewing all over the lunch table. “Shizznizz? Really?”

“Yeah.” He pointed across the cafeteria. “See that guy over there, the one with the orange hair?”

I scanned the table across the room. A guy leaned back in his seat, banging his spork on the table and listening to some jack in his ear. “Yeah.”

“Shizznizz O’Riley. I’m not kidding ya.”

“Jeez. What were his parents thinking?”

“Only that he’d be the mega-coolest guy in school.”

“Well, they were clearly wrong.”

Maxim stopped mid-bite. “What do you mean?”

“’Cuz you’re the mega-coolest guy in school.” I tsk-tsked and shook my head. “They should have named him Maxim.” Although I sounded sarcastic, I meant it. I pretended to drop my spork in my lap to hide the blush on my face. Why did I always gush like a baby when I was nervous?

Thankfully, he didn’t freak out. Instead he waved my compliment away like he didn’t deserve it. “You won’t think so when you see me dance.”

“You can’t be that bad.”

“Trust me. I am.”

The techno bell rang too soon, mocking me with its casual tone. I could have stayed in that lunchroom for the rest of the day talking about dancing, names, and General Relativity as it applied to me and Maxim. Ironically, for a three-hundred-year-old teen, time had run out. Tomorrow Exara would be back, and I’d turn back into the third wheel.

“See ya.” I picked up my backpack as he stuffed his lunch container into his.

He reached in the front pocket and passed a plastic card across the table. Did they allow teens to have credit cards nowadays? “Here’s my miniscreen number. Call me if you have any questions on Einstein.”

I took the card, feeling the raised digits under my skin. “Thanks.”

“Later, Jenny.” His eyes stuck on mine and I couldn’t move. Chad’s playful eyebrows appeared amongst the sharper features that made him all that much more enticing. I made a mental note to ask C-7 who Maxim’s ancestors were.

His lips curled slightly and he spun around, leaving me in the lunchroom with the gurgling of the recycling tubes.

When I got home, Pell was napping while C-7 folded laundry. Since I’d already asked him to investigate the other cryosleepers, I didn’t think it was the best time to ask about Maxim. Even robots had their limits.

I dragged my feet to my room and took out Maxim’s card, flipping it over and over on my bed. The numbers shimmered in the fluorescent light like the wings of a butterfly.

Why did he want to help me? Was I just another history experiment for him? Or was there something more? Something I’d never had with anyone at Ridgewood Prep.

I needed to talk to Angela so badly, my heart ached. She’d know exactly what his intentions were. I reached for the closest thing to her and popped in the next video in the series I referred to as My Previous Life.

Timmy stood in front of the camera holding Buzz Lightyear and his ratty Elmo doll. His hair had grown out into long curls around his ears. He looked like he’d grown two inches. Watching an older Timmy dance around brought a wave of melancholy.

“Hi, Jenny. You’re still sleeping. When are you going to wake up?”

He held his Buzz Lightyear figure up and flew him through the air. Buzz collided with Elmo, who, of course, fell on the floor with a kaboom.

“Mommy says not to talk about you because it makes her sad. So I decided to turn on the camera and talk to you myself.”

In the background, I heard my mom’s voice. “Timmy, what are you doing? Lunch is ready.”

The sound of her voice cut to my heart, slicing out a piece. I missed her. Even if she had ranted on and on about her upcoming campaign. Now I’d sit and listen, maybe even help make signs.

My mom came into Timmy’s room and grabbed his hand. She wore the same blouse she’d worn to a New Year’s party last year— really three hundred years ago—with black sequins in the front. I decided I missed sequins, too.

“Wait! I have to shut off the video.” Timmy ran back into the room and put his little arm up. He stuck his tongue out at the screen and made googly eyes before it flickered off. I laughed and cried at the same time, feeling like he was in the next room when he really was a world away.

Angela appeared on the next clip. I almost gagged when I saw who she sat next to. Chad played on his iPhone, probably texting his best jock buds. They sat in the stadium, watching the cheerleaders practice their routine on the football field.

“Hi, Jenny.” She seemed happier than I remembered her, with a squeak in her voice and a bounciness to her curls. “I wanted to bring you along for the preparations for the Autumn Ball. Shelly Smith is working on the theme this year. It’s going to be Underwater Illusions. See, the cheerleaders are all dressed in green and blue.”

The video focused on the cheerleading team and I sighed, sitting back and fingering Maxim’s card. Since when did Angela care about them?

She turned the camera back to her face. Her eyes blinked and she bit the side of her mouth. I knew that expression. She was hiding something. Or was it just my imagination on overdrive? Maybe she tried to hide her sadness for me. I didn’t know.

“Chad and I are working on the decorations. We thought we’d do a big disco ball in the center with streamers that blew like currents underwater. What do you think?”

Chad’s voice mumbled beside her, “Jenny never liked that kind of stuff, Angie. She’s going to think this is the lamest video of all time.”

I laughed. He was right.

Wait a second. How come he called her Angie? And how did he know me so well?

I thought he didn’t even know my last name. It must have been the famous “after you’re dead” syndrome. You know, when someone died tragically and then everyone pretended they knew them just to have something to talk about, because knowing them turned from lame to mega-cool. Maybe I was the famous dead girl at Ridgewood Prep.

But I wasn’t dead. They were.

Tears stung my eyes. I clicked off the screen. I’d seen enough for tonight.