The Last Forever (20 page)

“How could I not have known about this? Listen: Two and a quarter billion seeds from the planet’s most important crops will be stored there. It’s a huge seed library. This is
monumental
. This is how we restart civilization if we ever needed to.”

“Wow.”

“There are only four keys.” His beautiful brown eyes shine.

Four keys, and guards, not to mention the polar bears. Every person on Svalbard is required to own a gun and be trained in its use, for protection from them. In Svalbard, it’s common to see people walking around with rifles slung over their shoulders. But I am not at that part of the story yet. I am at the part where I am sitting across from Henry at the Parrish Island Library, listening to him say “There are only four keys,” and then answering: “Incredible.”

It is incredible. But I don’t realize what Henry is really trying to tell me. I don’t catch on that Henry has a
plan
.

“The seeds of these plants will last for centuries. Maybe even for thousands of years. And, Tess—once you deposit a seed, it’s still yours. You own it always.”

I am running out of superlatives, so I just shake my head in appreciative wonder. He leans forward and takes my hands. Why Henry is so nice to me, I’ll never know.

“Hey, I’ve got something to show you.” I open my phone. I find the picture I took this morning, just before I left.

“It’s flowering,” he says.

It’s a delicate-looking flower, the one Pix has made. White and lovely, with four thin petals and a yellow center. “It’s so sad, Henry.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s dying.”

“You should show Sash.”

I look around. “She here?” I don’t see her. There’s only Larry, helping a little boy fill out a library card application.
His mother watches proudly, as if he’s just been let through the gates of the city, which in a way, he has.

“Sasha’s
always
here. You should see her apartment. There’s nothing in it. Books and a bed. Fridge with old takeout containers and bottles of Snapple. Her fridge is a single woman cliché. Come on.” I follow him. He heads to the desk. “Joseph, my man,” Henry says to the little boy, and gives him a high five. “Larry’s the only sucker here actually doing anything today.” Larry swats Henry as we pass, and then he swats me, too.

“Hey!” I protest. “I’m a customer.” Oh, the dear sweet pleasure of belonging. I love it more and more and more.

In the back room, Sasha is sitting on a pair of unopened cartons, leaning against the wall, talking on the phone and laughing. She makes big, annoyed eyes and waves us away, but Henry ignores her. “You gotta see this,” he says.

“Just a sec,” she says into the phone. And then to us: “All right. Hand it over.” She examines the photo, holding it up near her nose. “Oh, Tess. I don’t know what to say. It’s blooming.” She looks sincerely stricken. A tiny cartoon clown voice comes from the phone. “Abby gives her condolences.”

“We should send that picture to Dr. Johansson,” Henry says.

The tiny clown is talking again. “Abby says she just saw him. He’s got some news for you.”

What astounds me, what I just can’t seem to believe, is that all these good people are helping me. I don’t understand
it. And in a way, it makes me feel bad. They look at me and see a girl who’s lost one of the most important people a girl could lose. But it makes me want to hand them back their gifts. They don’t know the truest thing, which is that I don’t deserve this. Their kindness—I want it so much. It is almost a forgiveness. But it makes me feel ashamed.

“Did you hear that, Tess? He’s got news!” Henry gives me a second look. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

But I am trying not to see it, my father and me there that night, in my mother’s room. My father yawns. I gather up our coats. It is the last time, but we don’t know it is the last time.

Here is the bad, bad thing: I wanted out of there. Desperately. It was sad and scary in that place. When I walked down the hall, I was afraid I might accidentally see something I didn’t want to see. I was tired of sitting on that metal air conditioner over by the window while Dad perched in the green vinyl chair, all of us watching
Wheel of Fortune
on the TV up high on the wall, when we never ever watched
Wheel of Fortune
before.

The neighbor lady on the other side of the sliding curtain scared me too. She moaned every once in a while in her sleep. My mother breathed wheezy breaths. Her hand was all bruised at the top where the IV went in. That blue gown tied in the back smelled like some kind of antiseptic bleach, and it accidentally revealed parts of my mother’s body that seemed pale and vulnerable. I was
glad
to be in the car with my father. We
escaped.

I was so ungenerous. I was such a coward.

If I’d been giving and brave, the least my mother deserved, I might be able to accept Henry and Sasha’s compassion. If I hadn’t been
guilty
. But this—this is like a nice couple picking up an injured hitchhiker, not knowing he was stabbed by his own knife while he attempted to rob a bank. If my father and I had stayed, we might have seen it happen.
Aspiration.
We might have saved her. My chest caves in with regret each time I run it over again in my mind. All night long, I play it. My coat stays where it is. I sit in the green vinyl chair. I hold her hand. I am listening. I am there.

*  *  *

“As I suspected, it’s a
Fragaria singularis
,” Dr. Johansson says. Henry and I are hunched over the phone so we both can hear. “Singular strawberry.” I make wide eyes to Henry, and he nods his head back as if he suspected Pix of greatness all along. “It is not extinct, and not even particularly rare, but it is remarkable.”

Oh, Pix. “Remarkable how?” I ask.

“You’ve seen what look like seeds on the outside of a strawberry . . . ?”

“Yes.”

“Each apparent ‘seed’ on the outside of the fruit is actually one of the ovaries of the plant, with a seed inside it. A seed within a seed. But
singularis—
it has hundreds and hundreds of these seeds on the one fruit it bears. And given that it lives for so many years, it’s believed to be particularly resistant to disease. Botanists have attempted to breed
singularis
with
ananassa
, the garden strawberry, with no luck so far. Imagine the abundance if a disease-resistant plant that bears millions of seeds is crossed with a plant that bears more than one fruit! But that hasn’t happened yet.
Singularis
just goes on stubbornly being itself, a plant that lives a long life and bears one extraordinary progeny.”

Henry walks me out after we hang up with Dr. Johansson.

“Plant ovaries.” I snicker.

“Creepy plant ovaries.” Henry snickers back.

“We’re childish.”

“We’re ovaryish.”

This cracks us entirely up.

I have Jenny’s bike. I show Henry the brown lunch sack in the basket.

“He packed me a lunch. He even wrote my name on it.”

“If he included the four food groups, I’m giving him double Dad Points.”

I hadn’t thought to look inside yet. Okay: A small bag of Tostitos. An orange. A couple of Jenny’s chocolate chip cookies wrapped in foil. I show Henry.

“An A for effort. The only thing my father packed was a suitcase for Aruba.”

“You’ve got to come over and meet him.”

“I want to come over and meet him.”

I hand Henry the cookies. And then the chips. And then the orange. I want him to have every good thing there is. I’d give him my sweatshirt, and my shoes, and this very bike, and
the band in my hair. I’d give him words of love and gratitude.

“No.” Henry laughs. “These are for you.” He tries to hand back all the food.

“Just the orange.”

He hands me the orange. “I have an idea,” Henry says, as he unwraps the foil package and takes a bite of cookie. “Damn, that’s good.”

“Even better with milk. What idea?”

“It’s going to sound crazy.”

“Lay it on me,” I say.
And then lay yourself on me,
I don’t say.

“At first I thought, Let’s just plant the pixiebell’s seeds.”

“But that doesn’t
save
it.”

“That’s the same conclusion I came to.” He pauses. “Tess?”

“What?”

“There’s no getting around the fact that it’s going to die, right?”

“I know.” I do.

“But we can keep it forever anyway.”

“Press it in some book?”

Henry groans.
“Forever.”

“Nothing is forever.”

I know I’m being slow here, but I find Henry so distracting. Those lips, for one. Besides that, I didn’t eat breakfast, and my mind’s dragging. They know what they’re talking about when they say you’ve got to start the day off right. I peel that orange. I hold it to Henry’s nose. “Smell,” I command.

“Mmm.”

“One of the best smells in the world.”

“Tess, you aren’t listening.”

“Forever,” I say, to prove him wrong.

“Svalbard,” he says. “We’re going to get the pixiebell’s seeds into the Svalbard vault.”

“I knew you were going to say that, Henry.” Okay, I’m not
that
slow. I’m just not that keen on walking willingly toward disappointment. “But that’s impossible. You told me yourself. You said that only three US organizations have gotten seeds into that place.”

“I love having a mission,” Henry says. He polishes off that cookie.

“I love having a mission with
you
,” I say.

“You want to keep your mother’s plant forever? Well, Tess, Svalbard is the last forever on earth.”

I get chills when he says it. And suddenly I want that. I want that so bad. The vital part of Pix, in the most protected and permanent place that exists. “The last forever,” I say.

Henry is excited. He puts his arms around me and lifts me off the ground. That’s when we both hear the whistle. One of those high-pitched ones that people make by putting two fingers in their mouth. I always wanted to know how to do that.

Henry sets me down, looks around. I see him walking up the street, carrying a bag from Quill, the stationery store. Elijah.

The mood goes awkward. Once again, I don’t know if things feel weird because I feel weird, or if I feel weird because
things feel weird. Let me just say this: If you’re even thinking,
Is it just me?
It isn’t. Trust me.

“Hey, stranger,” Elijah says.

“Hey, ’Lij,” Henry says.

Elijah grabs Henry’s wrist, bends it behind his back. It’s one of those playful gestures that actually kind of hurt. “I’m surprised you even remember my name.”

Henry wrenches free. “Come on. Don’t.” He sounds weary, as if they’re continuing a private disagreement that’s been going on for a while now. One I obviously don’t know anything about.

“And, look, it’s the damsel in distress,” Elijah says.

I can’t stand that guy, I really can’t. Him and his iceberg sister with their perfect blond hair and their perfect noses and their perfect eyes. Elijah’s wearing white shorts and a bright green shirt and plaid sneakers. People who dress like they’re in a perfume ad shouldn’t be trusted, in my opinion. They’re disingenuous with floral overtones.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say.

“Henry loves to save the day. Especially for a female.”

“Shut up, Elijah,” Henry says.

“Reminds him of his mother.”

“Elijah’s parents are both psychiatrists,” Henry tells me. “He forgets he didn’t get the degree himself.”

“I know Oedipal issues when I see them.”

“You’re an ass,” Henry says.

“One of the finest around. Hey, aren’t you supposed to be working?” Elijah asks.

“Slow day.”

“It’s always a slow day.” Elijah lifts his bag, gives it a shake for Henry to see. “New ink pens.”

I don’t even want to say another word to the guy, but standing there with my mouth clamped shut is making me feel small. “Are those for the piece you’re doing in Jenny’s class?”

“Using a lot of black,” he says. “This one’s dark. A dark tale of love and war.”

No one speaks. Henry is looking down at his shoes. I don’t know what’s happening here, only that it feels bad. I realize that Elijah is waiting for me to leave. I should stand my ground or something, but Elijah’s presence is shrinking me by the second. This is a contest of some kind, and I’m coming in second place. No, I’m not coming in at all. I’m the marathon runner still slogging along the day after the race.

“Well, hey, guys. I’m going to head out,” I say. I don’t even kiss Henry good-bye, and he doesn’t kiss me. I kind of slink off on my bike, which is even more awkward than it sounds, especially when you have to pedal uphill with your butt halfway in the air.

Elijah’s eyes—they’re not perfect after all.

He’s got the eyes of a pickpocket.

chapter seventeen

Cannabis sativa
: marijuana. When male plants are eliminated in a crop, it is possible to generate “feminized” marijuana seeds. Essentially, the female plants grow “balls” and reproduce by themselves when no males are around. Growers sometimes ditch the male plants purposefully, as the seeds from the females are more potent and supposedly grow a far superior product. Enough said.

Once I get up that damn hill, I’m pissed at Henry. Damsel in distress? I’ll show him damsel in distress. I know Henry wasn’t the one who said it, but he could have done more to defend me. Wait. Does that make me even more of a damsel in distress? What did Elijah mean, anyway? Obviously, Henry was Millicent’s big shoulder to cry on, which is a little like the rabbit helping the viper, if you ask me.

I make it home, ditch Jenny’s bike on the lawn, and try to ignore Vito’s excessive display of joy at my return a mere three hours after I last saw him. “Jesus, Vito,” I say. Either he has
the shortest memory in the world, or his watch is broken. His devotion is more annoying than usual, probably because he’s me in dog form, jumping all over Henry with slavish adoration and bad hair. Vito isn’t the least bit discriminating. I could have just stolen a baby from a carriage and he’d still jump on me with all the love in his tiny heart.