Turnabout

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “Oh, stow it, Louise,” Mrs. Flick said in disgust. “They don’t know what they want. They’re fighting among themselves too.”

  Chewing a particularly stringy piece of chicken, Amelia wondered if Mrs. Flick was right. Certainly Dr. Reed and Dr. Jimson had been nothing but cordial to each other in public, but they mostly seemed to contrive to be at opposite sides of the room at every meeting. For a pair that had just orchestrated a scientific miracle, neither one of them seemed particularly happy.

  Amelia swallowed her chicken carefully. “What about you?” she asked Mrs. Flick. “Why aren’t you in on the fight?”

  “Yeah,” Mrs. Swanson contributed. “If anyone was gonna call from that pay phone, it’d be you—”

  “Maybe I just don’t care about seeing my family,” Mrs. Flick said defiantly. “Ever think of that?”

  Amelia and Mrs. Swanson exchanged glances. Amelia was willing to let it lie, but not Mrs. Swanson.

  “Well, why ever not? You have family, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” Mrs. Flick said. “Five kids, fourteen grandkids, and a passel of greats. Only, I raised every single one of them wrong. The ones who ain’t dead are in jail—or should be.”

  Mrs. Swanson wasn’t going to let it go. “Surely one or two of them—”

  “Nope,” Mrs. Flick said cavalierly. Amelia wondered if Mrs. Swanson saw the glitter of pain in Mrs. Flick’s eyes. “They’re reprobates and blackguards through and through.”

  “My word. Anny Beth Flick, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Why, a woman’s family is her crowning glory, which is why I worked so hard on Morty and Angeline—”

  “Louise,” Amelia said. “Shut up.”

  There was a shocked silence. Even Amelia couldn’t quite believe what she’d said.

  Then, “Well,” Mrs. Swanson sniffed. “I know when I’m not wanted.” She jerked her chair back from the table and walked away. She was probably the best walker in the group. Amelia could hear her muttering as she left, “My word, such rudeness. You’d think if they were going to grant immortality, they’d have screened people a little more closely. . . .”

  “My view exactly,” Mrs. Flick hollered after her. “How’d you get in?”

  Amelia went back to eating docilely, just a little old lady minding her own business. She didn’t look at Mrs. Flick.

  “Thanks,” Mrs. Flick murmured. “Thanks for sticking up for me. Not many people have done that in my life.”

  Amelia shrugged. “You stick up for yourself well enough,” she said.

  “Yeah.” Mrs. Flick grinned, and for a second Amelia could see past the wrinkles and picture how she must have been as a kid: eyes full of mischief, probably pigtails perpetually askew, a streak of mud across her cheek. Some things didn’t change with age, and orneriness was one of them. But now, if the doctors were right, Mrs. Flick would get the chance to be a kid again. Or, not a kid, Amelia reminded herself, but middle-aged, which sounded plenty young to her. Even after six months the idea still took some getting used to. Amelia kept waiting for the doctors to discover a catch. So far, the only thing was she couldn’t remember the last few months before the first injection of PT-1. But the doctors still said that was nothing to worry about, that the memory was bound to come back. And even if it didn’t, what was there to remember of any worth?

  “It makes you wonder, though, don’t it?” Mrs. Flick asked.

  “Excuse me?” Amelia said, wondering what she’d missed.

  “How did they pick us? Why didn’t they get them some ex-presidents? Or geniuses—you know, real important people?”

  Amelia had noticed that everyone at the agency seemed dead ordinary. “Do you see fifty ex-presidents lying around in nursing homes? We were handy. Convenient. And don’t you remember what Dr. Reed said at that last meeting—that PT-1 will probably never be offered to the whole world, just selected people who have earned the right to live forever. So we should be grateful—”

  Mrs. Flick shook her head. “This ain’t going to the Mother Teresas of the world. Can’t you see how people are gonna fight over it? Dr. Reed and Dr. Jimson, they’re on the verge of starting World War III. But you know how it’s all going to end up. Same way as everything else. The people who can pay will get what they want. Only, bet you anything it won’t be legal. They’ll have to pay in dark alleys—and maybe get their throats slit trying to live forever. This here thing’s a curse.”

  “Not for us,” Amelia said.

  “We don’t really know that yet, do we?” The grin broke out again. “But hot-dang, I do like trying to figure out what’s going to happen next around here!”

  Amelia looked around at the rows of gray and white heads bent over their dinners. People didn’t seem ecstatic at the thought of living forever. They seemed mostly confused. What exactly would it mean to live in middle age for as long as anyone could imagine? What would they do with all that time?

  Dr. Jimson had begun hinting that maybe they should stop thinking so much about their families—“the families from the life where you aged,” as she put it—and realize that they would probably marry again, have more kids. But Amelia wondered: Unless their kids got PT-1 too, wouldn’t it be strange for them to someday be older than their parents? And who would she marry? There were only fifteen men in Project Turnabout, and she couldn’t imagine marrying any of them. Anyone else would grow old on her, always traveling the other direction in time.

  All the complications gave her a headache. It made her want to pick up the phone and call one of her sons, ask him to solve her problems for her. It’d been kind of nice doing that the last few years. But had she relied on them too much—so much that they were relieved when they heard she was dead? Had they seen her only as a burden toward the end? She’d seen herself that way.

  Amelia closed her eyes for a moment, more befuddled than ever. She did long to call her family. Now that Mrs. Flick had planted the notion of just rolling right up to the pay phone in the lobby, she wanted to do that. She wanted to find out if her three surviving children were still doing okay, if her granddaughter’s breast cancer had gone into remission, if her newest great-great-grandchild, the one with the funny name—Lakota? Shoshone? Something Indian—was walking yet. But if she had been just a burden, would they really want to hear from her? Should she wait until she was more independent again—walking on her own, able to live on her own, maybe even—good grief!—working?

  She wished she’d been able to see her funeral. Then she could have understood what she meant to people. Somehow, she realized, she had always expected to be able to watch everyone’s reactions at her funeral, see who cried and how hard. Sure, she’d expected to be dead before her funeral, but she did believe in an afterlife. And her view of heaven always included the ability to spy on Earth. She never expected to find herself still alive, but dead to her family.

  “Want that?”

  Amelia opened her eyes, realized that Mrs. Flick was pointing her fork at the slice of apple pie to the left of Amelia’s plate.

  “No,” Amelia murmured. “You can have it.”

  “Thanks.” Mrs. Flick beamed and slid the plate across the table. She dug in with relish.

  Watching her friend, Amelia suddenly envied Mrs. Flick’s lack of attachments. In the midst of all the confusion, one thing was sure: Mrs. Flick was going to enjoy her second chance at life.

  April 22, 2085

  Melly sharpened a pencil. Pencils were antiques now, and had been ever since erasable ink had finally been perfected sixty years ago. And of course computers made even pens pretty much unnecessary. But pencils helped her to think; her brain needed the physical act of turning the sharpener handle, the smell of wood chips and lead, the sight of the pencil point against the white paper. And today she needed all the help she could get.

  Her pencil taken care of, she switched on the computer.

  “Um, something about families looking for kids to adopt. Nice families,” she told the computer. Even though she knew it was r
idiculous, she hoped the computer didn’t hear the note of anxiety in her voice. This was an old model—she got it five years ago when she was pretending to go to college—but it still had the obligatory emotion sensor. She and Anny Beth joked that computers had become so human there was no reason for people still to exist. But everyone else in the twenty-first century was so used to computers they didn’t think a thing about it.

  “Good morning,” the computer said in a voice oozing empathy. Yep, the emotion sensor was still working. Unfortunately. “Would you care for information about adoption costs? Adoption laws? Adoption process and procedures? Adoption statistics? Availability of children to adopt? International adoptions?—”

  Sometimes Melly really hated computers.

  “No, no,” she said irritably. “I don’t need information that would help me adopt a child. I’m fifteen years old, for God’s sake. I want to find someone to do the adopting.”

  The computer made a sound that could have passed for a gasp.

  “Ah,” it said. “Now I understand your anxiety. You are the victim of an unwanted pregnancy. And just a teenager . . . oh my. You need counseling, my dear. I don’t mean to pressure you, and I certainly will not judge your actions, but you face several important choices. One should not rush too hastily into any of them. Shall I refer you to a counseling service right now?”

  “No,” Melly said. “Just show me a list of people wanting to adopt kids.”

  “But my dear—”

  Melly switched off the computer’s speakers. Seconds later the screen was flooded with images of happy families frolicking together in autumn leaves, playing pitch and catch, laughing together around a dinner table, building snowmen in a tree-lined yard. In spite of herself, Melly had to blink back tears. She’d taken marketing classes once upon a time, she knew it was all just image. She lived near dozens of families and had never seen any of them act so happy together. But the videos got to her anyway.

  Because she’d killed the voice option, the images were quickly replaced by text.

  THE ADOPTION SITE! the screen trumpeted in large letters. Then, in smaller print, it urged, “Choose the family that’s best for your baby!”

  Then the screen filled with choices: race, creed, color, religion, spanking/no spanking, strong disciplinarians/lax disciplinarians, income level, professional standing, geographic preference, urban/suburban lifestyle, athletic/sedentary, intellectual/nonintellectual, casual/formal, pets/no pets, boaters, bikers, swimmers, aversion to water sports, cat people, dog people, ferret people . . .

  Melly typed at the bottom, “I don’t care about any of that.”

  “Congratulations! Your selection process resulted in” appeared on the screen. Melly waited. “500,000 families!” blinked out at her.

  Melly gulped. She should have known. Birth control had been virtually perfected fifty years ago and made mandatory for all women from puberty onward, unless they and their mate could pass the rigorous Parent Test. So very few women had babies they didn’t want. Meanwhile, medical ethicists had prevented cloning, and fertility problems had skyrocketed because of environmental disasters. So there were lots of potential parents who wanted babies they couldn’t have.

  “Great,” Melly muttered. “I’m going to be a hot commodity in about fifteen years.”

  “Would you like to see your selections?” the computer screen blinked at her. She hit Y. When the list of names scrolled out in front of her, she picked one at random.

  “Sound, please,” the computer prompted.

  Sighing, Melly turned the speakers back on.

  The screen showed a curtain opening.

  “Have we got a family for you,” boomed a male voice.

  A couple stood on stage, waving.

  “Hi! We’re the Burnham-Toddy-Smythe-Wallaces!” the man said. “We have over seven million dollars in assets!”

  “Oh, brother,” Melly muttered. She zapped the Burnham-Toddy-Smythe-Wallaces and tried another choice. Two more beaming faces appeared on the screen.

  “I’m Louis!”

  “I’m Rachel!”

  “We believe in the fellowship of humankind, and we believe it is our duty to raise a child to respect himself in the godhood of the world—”

  Melly scrambled to get rid of Rachel and Louis as quickly as she could.

  Sixty families later she was sitting with her face buried in her hands, the computer screen swimming with antique-style screen-saving fish, when Anny Beth strolled into the room.

  “Hi,” Anny Beth said. “Found Ozzie and Harriet yet?” It was a reference to an ancient TV show, one that had been on in their first lives. Neither of them could remember that, of course, but there had been reruns at the agency.

  “Ozzie and Harriet died a hundred years ago,” Melly moaned. “At this point I’d take Al and Peg Bundy over anyone in there.” She pointed to the computer screen.

  “Married . . . with Children,” Anny Beth said. “Cool. I thought I was the only one who watched that historical garbage. Can I be the wisecracking, dim-witted sexpot daughter?”

  “Be my guest,” Melly said. And then she burst into tears.

  “Hey, hey,” Anny Beth said. She patted Melly’s shoulder. “It’s okay. We’ll find someone.”

  “I don’t know if I’m crying for me”—Melly sniffed—“or the world. How can any of those people think they deserve a child?”

  “They’re desperate,” Anny Beth said. “Desperate people always get weird. Don’t forget that. And people who don’t have kids yet have no clue what it’s really like—remember?”

  “I don’t remember having children anymore,” Melly said stiffly.

  “Oh, right. I was the one who got pregnant at fifteen. Anyhow, are you convinced now that this is crazy? Why don’t you come down and have lunch with me? I’ve got an hour before my next class. And don’t you have to baby-sit this afternoon?”

  Melly nodded. “But I’m not giving up. Maybe the answer is to find someone we already know, someone around here. The Rodneys are okay.” They were the family she baby-sat for. They lived across the street.

  “You’d trust them?” Anny Beth gave her a hard look.

  Melly shrugged. “I don’t know. If I got to know them better I might.”

  “You think the agency would let you tell them?”

  “They couldn’t really stop me, could they?” Melly asked.

  Anny Beth grinned. “Now you sound like me!”

  Melly blew her nose and reached to shut down the computer. Just then the computer announced, “You have mail!” and the screen-saving fish melted into an icon of a revolving letter.

  “Stupid junk mail,” Melly said. She clicked the letter open, then reached for the delete button. “All those stupid ads—”

  “Wait!” Anny Beth had already read the message over Melly’s shoulder.

  Melly looked at the screen and instantly froze. The words glowed in terrifying green:

  “Seeking information about Amelia Lenore Hazelwood, born Amelia Lenore Hibbard, April 21, 1900, in KY, possibly died December 15, 2000, in OH.”

  “Oh, no,” Melly breathed.

  March 26, 2001

  One of the men saw it on TV first. Mr. Johnson started pounding on the nurse call button and the volume control button at the same time, and screaming out what everyone later figured out was, “One of us! One of us!”

  The nurse arrived in time only to hear, “—the woman carried no identification. Police are searching missing persons reports. Anyone with information please call the number at the bottom of the screen.” But, like Mr. Johnson, the nurse got a clear glimpse of the face on the screen: It was definitely Mrs. Swanson.

  By the next news cycle a half an hour later everyone was assembled in the meeting room, staring at the four TVs the nurses had wheeled in. Amelia figured it was force of habit, because that was mostly what they did at the agency, have meetings. Certainly Dr. Reed and Dr. Jimson hadn’t summoned anyone this time. They rushed in at the last minut
e, as one of the anchorwomen chuckled, “And we’ve got a strange story out of Bedford Hills tonight. . . .” A mug shot of Mrs. Swanson appeared above the anchor’s head, and the attendants turned down the volume on the other three TVs.

  “This woman appeared at the home of prominent attorney Morton Swanson this evening, claiming to be his mother, Louise Swanson. The real Mrs. Swanson died several months ago. This woman created quite a disturbance. . . .”

  The next view was video of Mrs. Swanson beating her fists on an imposing front door and screeching, “But I’m going to live forever, Morty! You never have to worry about losing me!” Then that scene was replaced by one of a reporter thrusting a microphone at a man in a tuxedo.

  “You can only imagine the shock,” the man said. “My mother was the dearest person on earth to me. And then to have that . . . that banshee claiming to be her . . .”

  The reporter nodded sympathetically. “Did the impostor bear any resemblance to your, uh, deceased mother?”

  The man frowned. “Well, she was old,” he said doubtfully.

  Amelia gasped, along with half the rest of the room. How could he not recognize his own mother?

  On the TV the anchor appeared again, explaining that the woman claiming to be Mrs. Swanson had been taken into custody and was undergoing psychiatric evaluation, particularly in light of her claims of immortality.

  Amelia watched Dr. Reed go ghostly pale. The TV station cut to a car commercial, and Dr. Jimson turned the volume down. Everyone sat in stunned silence until Mrs. Flick rolled her chair over to Dr. Reed.

  “Why are you just standing there? Aren’t you gonna go tell them people she ain’t crazy?” she demanded.

  “I-I-I don’t know,” he stammered.

  “Well, she ain’t, is she? If she’s crazy, we all are,” Mrs. Flick said, looking back at the rest of the crowd. Then people began to mutter, “Not me!” and “What’s she mean?” But no one spoke loudly because they were all waiting for Dr. Reed’s answer.

  He sank into a chair beside the TVs and rubbed his temples.