Sleeping Jenny Read Online Free Page B

Father 1967-2064 . He smiled like a movie star thanking his adoring public. He’d slicked his hair back in a luscious wave of blond, and his tan was the color of my mom’s coffee. Easy for him. He wasn’t the one that had to go on in a world where everything had changed. It would have been much easier to die that day with my family by my bedside. But I owed it to them to keep going.
    I wasn’t alone. Valex picked up my bags, along with a few storage containers of items my family had left for me. Len held my hand and gently nudged me along with kind words. Her tiny hand had so much strength in it that I couldn’t refuse her.
    Valex caught me mentally smiting Dr. Resin and smiled. “Let’s go, Jennifer. Our ride is just beyond that gate.”
    â€œDon’t we have to take the stairs down?” If I remembered correctly, the New England Cryogenics Institute was on the tenth floor of BMC.
    Valex shook his head and winked his dark eye. “We don’t need any stairs.”
    Len poked him in the side with her finger. “Don’t tease her. She’s had a hard day.”
    â€œWhat?” I huffed. “What am I missing?”
    Valex tilted his head toward the door. “Come on. It’s much easier to show you than explain.”
    Valex was way more easygoing than my dad. Comparing the two of them sent a shot of pain directly to my heart, and I closed down my memories in order to survive and keep walking. No matter how cool Valex was, he could never replace my real dad.
    Valex pressed a panel and the door slid open. We walked out onto a dock where strange ships with no wheels stood in rows and the sky opened up above us. Valex dug in his pocket and pulled out a black box. He pressed a button and a beep sounded from the third ship down the line, a small aerodynamic-looking bubble with striped wings.
    â€œYou own a spaceship!”
    Valex nodded. “Yup. But it’s not a spaceship. It’s a hovercraft.”
    â€œWow.”
    Len rolled her eyes and took my arm. “Everyone has one. Come on. He’s just being a show-off.”
    The hatch lifted and we crowded in. Valex put my bags in the back and took up the controls. When the ship turned on, seat restraints came down, belting us in automatically. I jerked away and Valex and Len laughed. “The seat belts won’t hurt you.”
    Great. Just my comeuppance. Now I was stuck with two parent comedians to tease me. I wanted to tell them how I used to be smart and witty, but the words stuck on my tongue and I sat in silence as the hovercraft took off.
    Bath, Maine, looked more like New York City on a Monday morning. Instead of rural barn houses and fields, high-rise buildings crowded the skyline. There was no ground anywhere, and I realized why everyone flew in hovercrafts. The buildings were so close together that there were no roads.
    â€œWhere are all the fields?”
    â€œThey grow the crops on top of the high-rises.” Len pointed to bubble-shaped greenhouses capping each skyscraper like the tops of vegan slushies.
    â€œYou mean there’s no ground?”
    Valex laughed. He turned a fast corner and the ship sped forward. “Of course there’s ground. What do you think the buildings are built on?”
    I took a deep breath and re-phrased the question. “I mean no grass, no fields?”
    Len turned around and stared at me like that was the oddest question she’d ever heard. I thought it was pretty normal, considering.
    â€œWell?”
    Valex leaned over to Len. “Back in Jennifer’s time, the population was only a smidgen of what it is now. We have to remember that.”
    Len nodded and fidgeted with her fuchsia wristbands.
    I looked at her expectantly, but she turned back to Valex.
    His hands tightened on the controls. “I’m sorry. By the time the doctors found us, you were already undergoing treatment. We didn’t have very long to plan. We haven’t done