“What about ‘flower’?”
“Actually, yes.” Stanley winced. He could feel blood from the gash in his shoulder seeping down the back of his shirt. What was he going to tell the doctor? That a long-dead Native American lobbed an arrow at him while chasing an ancient herd of buffalo through a time aberration that his three-year-old daughter inadvertently conjured whilst in the grip of a seizure that was completely his fault?
Well, you see, Doc, I didn’t give Lilah her medicine today because I was hoping she’d summon my dead wife from her ashes so we could all have a picnic together at the cemetery.
“I hope Mommy likes her flower,” Lilah said, stopping beneath the maple tree to caress the sunflower’s crimson petals once more.
Despite the searing throb in his shoulder, Stanley couldn’t help but smile. “She loves her flower, and she loves you. Now let’s get your Daddy to a hospital before he passes out.”
“Don’t be scared, Daddy,” Lilah said, squeezing his hand. “I’ve got you.”
Chapter 13
Telomeres
Lilah sat in her usual spot at the very back of her biology class, her face buried in her arms. It had been just under a week since the “incident,” but the days following had passed like weeks. School had been torturous – even worse than usual. Seth still hadn’t said a word to her since her father banged on his front door at 6:00 a.m. last Saturday to apprise Seth’s parents of their son’s newfound recreational habits. Jace was conspicuously absent from class for the entire first half of the week, and when he finally did show up, he was in an ankle brace and crutches. He too avoided Lilah, going so far as to request a seat change in homeroom. She heard him explain to Mrs. Cameron that he was having vision problems and needed to sit closer to the board, but Lilah knew the truth: he just didn’t want to be anywhere near her.
And why would he? She was a weirdo. A freak of nature. An unwanted baby that had been dumped at the fire station most likely because she did creepy, unnatural things. Like making the cutest boy in school magically age backwards and forwards at a rock concert. And then causing the balcony they were standing on to disappear from existence because she had somehow manipulated time and space to a point before the concert venue had ever been built.
While her father – who wasn’t actually her biological father – tried to explain all of this to her at the hospital, Lilah initially burst into a fit of nervous giggles. In her mind, this was obviously his bizarre way of getting back at her for lying about the concert. But as he continued to stare at her gravely, sadness and apprehension etched into every premature line on his face, her mouth snapped shut.
I should have told you a long time ago.
Lilah covered the top of her head with her arms, doing everything she could to block out the memory of that conversation. Fortunately, there was plenty to be distracted by in Biology. Unfortunately, the topic Mrs. Pierson had chosen for that day was hitting a little too close to home.
“If you turn to page eighty-seven in your textbooks,” she droned from the front of the classroom, “you’ll see a diagram illustrating the role of telomeres with respect to cellular aging. As you can see, every time a cell divides, these strands of protein get shorter and shorter. Once the length of the telomere reaches its cut-off point, the cell becomes senescent and will subsequently die. This is the process that happens to all of our cells over time.”
Your mother – your adoptive mother – died of cancer, Li. You knew that. What you didn’t know is that you showed her the course of her disease before she even knew she had it.
“Mrs. Pierson?”
“Yes, Katie?”
“Are the, uh, tele-thingies—”
“Telomeres,” Mrs. Pierson cut in gently.
“Right. These little strings in our cells are the reason people age, right? But, like, if you have really long telomeres, will you live longer than someone with shorter telomeres?”
“Simply speaking, the answer is yes. Telomere length is what we look at to determine an individual’s biological age. Since progressive telomere shortening leads to premature cellular death, one could extrapolate that the longer your cellular strands are, the longer your life will be.”
You gave your mother an amazing gift. Instead of suffering and uncertainty, she got to play and laugh and live out the remainder of her life on her own terms. Until the very end, at least. And every moment she had, she wanted to spend with you.
“Does that mean that making them longer would make a person younger? Like, could we reverse the effects of aging by stretching them out? Or speed up time really fast for a person if we could somehow shorten them?”
Mrs. Pierson chuckled. “Hypothetically, yes. But altering organic material at a cellular level in order to affect the passage of time is veering dangerously close to science fiction, which is well beyond my purview. You may want to head over to the English Department to discuss that with Mr. Oates.”
Li, I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner. I just… I wanted you to try and have a normal life. I made a promise to your mother to love and protect you, no matter what. I couldn’t bring myself to put that kind of burden on your shoulders.
“She’s not my mother,” Lilah whispered into her desk, blinking away the tears that were gathering in her eyes.
“Lilah?” Mrs. Pierson called. “Is my lecture boring you?”
Lilah didn’t bother lifting her head, which was throbbing. Stanley had taken it upon himself to oversee her medication regimen from the moment she’d been discharged from the hospital. That morning, however, she had spit the little blue pill into a napkin as soon as he turned his back to tend to their burning eggs. Perhaps it was a simple act of teenage rebellion; perhaps it was Lilah’s way of getting back at her adoptive father for all the secrets he had kept from her over the years. Perhaps she didn’t fully believe the outlandish stories he had divulged to her in the wee hours of the morning from beside her hospital bed. Nevertheless, at that very moment, Lilah found herself welcoming some sort of magical, time-altering seizure that would suck her into a self-constructed void of oblivion. Maybe she could even bend time far enough back that she’d be eaten by a saber-toothed tiger. Or a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Anything to get out of that classroom.
“Lilah, did you hear me?” Mrs. Pierson asked. Lilah could see her brown loafers standing just beside her desk.
“Yes.”
Mrs. Pierson’s foot began tapping impatiently. “Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind saving your nap for after class?”
“Now works for me,” Lilah muttered against the inside of her elbows.
“I’m sorry?”
Lilah lifted her head to glare at the teacher. “I said, now works fine for me!”
Mrs. Pierson’s jaw tumbled open. A dozen heads turned around to gape at Lilah, who had never so much as coughed impolitely.
“Lilah, I’m vaguely aware of the problems you’ve been experiencing outside of this classroom, but I will not tolerate that kind of attitude here in class.”
Lilah burst out laughing. “You have no idea what my problems are!” Before her stunned teacher could reply, she rose from her desk, slinging her tie-dye bag over her shoulder. “I’m outta here.”