Chapter 2

Jennifer periodically glanced behind her and smiled in smug satisfaction as her city finally disappeared from view. Finally, for the first time she could remember, she found herself truly and completely free, entirely beyond the judgmental stares of her neighbors and classmates. The smug smile began to fade as Jennifer heard a growling sound coming from her stomach as this overwhelming feeling of emptiness overtook her. Her legs felt hollow as if they were liable to snap at any moment. Her head felt light and fuzzy, as if she were being shaken softly but only her brain was feeling it. Most know this feeling as hunger, but for Jennifer who had never desired to eat anything, this feeling came as bit of a shock. The hunger got her reminiscing over a memory that she thought utterly insignificant at the time it occured, but for whatever reason she simply couldn’t get it out of her head now.

Around her tenth visit to the old man and the nurse’s house Jennifer had nearly grown six inches. She entered the house as usual, shoving the door open with reckless abandon, kicking off her villainous shoes that she’d become convinced had shrunk in an attempt to strangle her feet. Once free of them she announced, with pride, her entrance.

“Old man, nurse lady, I’m back!” She shouted, plopping herself down on the couch by the window. As per usual, the old man returned her entrance with a poor imitation of fanfare trumpets, but to Jennifer, sounded more like someone struggling to pass gas. The nurse wheeled him into the room as he leaned his head back, hands in fists over his mouth playing his imaginary trumpet, eliciting a sigh of exasperation from the nurse, now faced with having to watch over two people with the maturity of grossly over caffeinated gophers. Jennifer ran up to the old man and curtsied,addressing him with her best in play nobility,

“Your oldness.”

“Young squirt.” He declared, returning her curtsy by bowing as much as the limitations of his wheelchair would allow, but he made up for this limitation with an over embellished flourishing of the hand. Jennifer fumed for a bit, not appreciating the name squirt despite insisting on calling the old man, well… old. This would have been an understandable title for her to give him if not for the fact that he’d pointed out on each of her previous visits that practically no one appreciates that aspect of themselves. Jennifer didn’t really mind his name calling though, she was always entranced by the old guy. He was the only adult she knew that didn’t act their own age, something she was beginning to learn a lot about. Despite his lower body being paralyzed, his upper body seemed to move enough for both halves. There wasn’t a single moment Jennifer could recall where he wasn’t tapping his fingers, swaying his head or raising his arms in the air and shaking them from side to side (something Jennifer found amusing as a child but, as she grew older, sided with the nurse that it was more than a little embarrassing). He was portly, and his large head made him look a bit like a potato, but a fun potato. Grinning constantly and always winking at the nurse, at Jennifer, at cats, at inanimate objects, the old geezer acted younger than most people a quarter his age. Like Jennifer he had a large bumpy nose, but, unlike Jennifer, he wore it with pride. He boasted that a man’s sniffer is the first thing a lady sees so ya oughta be proud of it. Each time he’d say that he’d turn and wink at the nurse who responded by setting her head in her hand and shaking it back and forth until the subject had been changed. His bushy eyebrows and puffs of white hair on the sides of his head always spiked Jennifer’s curiosity and when she asked about it he’d always respond with a sly smile saying,

“Let’s just say I’m a LOT older than you.” He stressed the LOT like it was some inside joke and he’d poke the nurse in the ribs with his elbow until she walked out of the room. He’d then lean in toward Jennifer blocking his face with his hand while the other pointed toward the nurse as he whispered quite loudly, “Do you think she just didn’t get the joke?” Jennifer never got the joke either, but she always laughed and that always made the old guy smile. She loved his smile, it was the kind of smile that took effort, not the cheap smiles of younger men, but a smile fought for, won over some war Jennifer was only just beginning to understand… The war of life.

After the old man’d greeted her and he’d regaled her with a few more stories about the great adventures of Time, the nurse stepped in and made Jennifer go through the worst part of her visits, the checkups. If the checkups had started on her first visit Jennifer would have probably never come back, they were an awkward uncomfortable torture that Jennifer despised every last second of. The nurse had started them on the third visit, right after Jennifer had mentioned that her clothes were beginning to feel a bit tighter than usual. The nurse had demanded that Jennifer follow her into the other room for her to run some tests, and thus the torture began. The nurse would hit her in the knee with a tiny hammer, wrap a thing around her arm that squeezed real tight, stick a weird glass tube thing under her tongue and a wooden stick over her tongue while demanding that Jennifer make an, “AH” sound. As if that wasn’t bad enough she would occasionally stick a needle in Jennifer’s arm and steal her blood! The old man always gave her another story right after, but that did little to relieve the torment she’d undergone.

This particular checkup lead to the nurse making a lot of, “hmmmm” noises, furrowing her brow and tapping her lip lightly with the end of her pen. The nurse was normally fairly confident and went about her activities with determination and focus, like a captain preparing soldiers for battle. This was an odd change of pace for her. She was quite a tall woman with strong features and wide shoulders that gave her an unmovable presence. She always wore her wavy dark hair in a tightly knotted bun, a clear indicator that she was a woman with a job to do. She never dressed beyond the necessity of the moment, usually wearing dark green pants she rolled up halfway over her calves and a simple white buttoned up shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Her skin was a russet brown without a single scar or blemish. Jennifer often found herself jealous of how beautiful the nurse was, she may have been harsh at times but she had this alluring quality about her that made you long for her presence and a way of speaking that soothed and relieved all the stresses of the world. This of course was only when she desired to relieve stress, at a moment’s notice she could go from warm and inviting to cold and calculated; Jennifer became quite familiar with both sides. She somehow managed a motherly love that reached further than that sort of love is ought to go, so far that it entered into a realm of greyness, greyness she wore proudly, yet the weight of it slowed her steps. After her thorough and longest inspection yet, the nurse left the room without a word leaving Jennifer to fume over her soreness as she cursed the nurse under her breath. She returned moments later with a box of bars that Jennifer recognized, seeing as her dad had a cabinet full of them. From the box the nurse pulled out a rectangle wrapped in foil and handed it to Jennifer,

“Jennifer, I need you to eat this, your blood sugar’s low and I’m concerned you may be malnourished.” She said soothingly but with an undertone of command. Jennifer stared at her in confusion as she held the rectangle in her hands, unsure what the nurse expected her to do with it. Seeing Jennifer’s confusion, the nurse’s eyes widened and she held out her hand to Jennifer who returned the rectangle. Smiling the nurse tore the foil off the wrapper revealing a tan, squishy looking rectangle. She handed the tan squishy thing to Jennifer and then removed another identical rectangle from the box.

“Jennifer, I need you to follow my lead, trust me and do exactly as I do.” Jennifer nodded and watched in horror as the nurse stuck the tan squishy thing halfway into her mouth and chomped down, tearing the squishy thing in half. The nurse began moving her jaw up and down keeping her mouth open and showing Jennifer the remains of the bar in her mouth, remains that her teeth kept clamping down on. With each bite the pieces became smaller and smaller until the nurse closed her mouth and swallowed. She opened her mouth and Jennifer saw that all the squishy tan bar had vanished!

“Now I need you to try.” The nurse ordered as she motioned toward the squishy tan thing in Jennifer’s hand. Fearing the nurse and wanting nothing to do with what she just witnessed, Jennifer sat totally frozen, her eyes fixed onto the squishy tan thing, hoping something might save her from this impossible choice. Jennifer made the mistake of allowing her eyes to wander upwards until they met the nurse’s, who held Jennifer’s eyes in place with her own as Jennifer began to sweat nervously. The nurse cocked an eyebrow like a cowboy in a standoff and Jennifer, fearing the worst, shoved the whole squishy tan thing into her mouth and chewed ferociously. The tan squishy thing was barely tasted as Jennifer swallowed it opening her mouth to show the nurse it was all gone. When the nurse nodded, she sprinted out of the room and collapsed into the old guys arms in tears, he patted her on the head,

“Now what did the mean lady do to you?” He cooed. The nurse walked into the room and sat down on the couch with a proud smile on her face.

“I taught her how to eat, I can’t believe they all forgot how to eat…” She said as she leaned her head back placing a hand over her forehead.

“They’ve never needed to eat, I think she’s the first one from that city to eat anything in nearly half a millennium.” The old man replied looking down at Jennifer in a mixture of wonderment and sorrow.

“Well she’s going to need to keep eating, she’s starting to grow and her body needs nutrients again. She needs to get used to the idea.” But Jennifer did not get used to the idea, every visit became a fight as Jennifer and the nurse spent nearly an hour staring each other down hoping the other might give in and, despite her stubbornness, it was always Jennifer who lost. The nurse began serving Jennifer water with the food bars and the addition of drinking was one Jennifer minded far less than eating. Since that day she’d noticed that the grocery stores throughout the city all held these same boxes and that people around the city bought them, placed them in their cabinets and, after some time had passed, threw them out so they could buy more. It wasn’t just the bars they bought either, they would buy this green leafy stuff in the shape of a ball, these little red squishy things with leaves on top, and squishy pink stuff that they would put in a perpetually cold box. Jennifer figured that any of these things could be eaten, but she dared not try it, seeing as she could barely eat the bars much less a big ball of leaves. She’d always hated eating, that is, until now.

The urge to sprint back to the city and shove as many of those bars in her mouth as possible nearly won out over her mission. The memory of that first time eating made her salivate and her stomach rumbled in response. The discomfort became so overwhelming that she found herself hallucinating little dancing leaf balls begging to be eaten. The pain grew too much and, as she finally turned to begin her pathetic march back to the city, she smelt something entirely foreign, a smell she actually enjoyed. Spinning around frantically, Jennifer’s eyes scoped out the surrounding landscape for the source of this delightful aroma, an aroma completely beyond her ability to describe. While the words may be missing, the memories and desires attached to them remained and Jennifer finally located a small opening in the snow with dark smoke rising from it. Positive that the smell must be originating from the alcove, Jennifer sprinted desperately in the direction of the smoke and, with zero caution, pushed her way into the cave and found herself face to face with a man dangling a red squishy heap over dancing lights that snapped, popped and swayed with the wind.

“This is certainly unexpected…” The man said. The squishy heap began to brown.