Superstar
by Dexter Goad
Prelude
“I still don’t get it.” Johnny complained goodnaturedly. He flashed Bruce a smile before returning his attention to navigating the semi crowded sidewalk. It was finally above 40 degrees and every other person in Cleaves Mills seemed to have taken the opportunity to rush out and enjoy the first break from the bitter cold.
“Come on man, everyone in the world’s seen ‘The Sixth Sense’ ...” Bruce trailed off suddenly. “Except you, of course! Sorry, it’s easy to forget that you missed out on some great movies.”
Johnny kept his face mock impassive. “Yeah, that’s what I missed out on, great movies.”
“Okay, so I won’t make any more pop culture jokes based on movies past 1995.” His friend pledged. “But we’re stopping by Hollywood video. You’ve GOT to see all three M. Night Shyamalan
movies toNIGHT!”
“Why am I suddenly scared?” Johnny returned. He was about to add to the quip when his foot connected with something. The object he’d punted skittered across the sidewalk and into the gutter.
Johnny limped to the curb and, leaning heavily on his cane, knelt down to retrieve whatever it was. It turned out to be a trade paperback sized book. Even without the word on the front cover any observer would have realized the red leather bound book was a diary. Grimacing with annoyance at having sent it into the foul water in the gutter, Johnny held it in front of him and let the putrid smelling water drip from it.
“Nice going, whoever dropped that’s gonna be pissed.” Bruce commented.
Johnny reached out with his other hand to brush the leaves from the back cover...
“When I was a little girl I just knew I was going to be a superstar like Angelina Jolie. She wasn’t around then but I knew I’d be someone like what she is today.”
Johnny was suddenly one block down from where he had been kneeling. It was tomorrow, 10:45am, about 26 hours from now. He was standing five feet away from a 19 year old woman with long blond hair. She was retracing her steps, looking for her diary, knowing that it would never be here and wishing desperately she’d noticed sooner that it was gone. Her heart was beating loudly and Johnny suddenly realized that he could SEE it. He could see her heart beating from inside her chest. It shone with a brilliant inner light.
Jenny, her name was Jenny, was looking directly at him. She was smiling a sweet, secret smile. She wasn’t looking behind her, unfortunately, or she would have seen the white pickup truck hurtling towards her a little too fast. The truck was on the road and Jenny was on the sidewalk so there was no danger of it hitting her. But it hit a pothole and the poorly tied string keeping a load of pipes upright in the bed snapped. The end pipe shifted and fell to the side. The pipe was now jutting to the left of the truck, past the curb and over the sidewalk. The driver noticed and was slamming on the brakes but he’d never stop before the pipe intersected the back of Jenny’s skull.
Jenny didn’t hear any of this, she was lost in her thoughts and it all happened within the blink of an eye.
That was what would happen, but in his vision he saw Jenny meet his eyes and say, just before the pipe crushed her skull, “I’m going to be a superstar!”
“Johnny!” Bruce was saying. He wasn’t touching or shaking his friend, but kneeling beside him and speaking insistently. “How bad is it, Johnny?”
Johnny’s eyes unglazed, signaling his return. “Oh, it’s okay. Considering how complicated and difficult preventing most disasters end up being, this should be a cakewalk. We just have to warn this girl,” he shook the diary, sending a few droplets of stinky water flying, “to stay off this street tomorrow. It wouldn’t hurt to warn the truck driver to tie his load more carefully.”
He leaned on his cane to help himself get to his feet. “It’s actually kind of refreshing to have a simple choice for once.” Johnny added, thinking of Stillson...
Without warning another vision hit. A Florida hospital room. A small frail boy swallowed up by the white sheets. His parents holding a weeping vigil ... and then a smiling nurse rushing in with good news. The nurse opened her mouth to speak the news and suddenly she had turned into Jenny. The brilliantly shining heart shot out of her chest still beating loudly and cleanly. The heart raced across the room and hovered over the sick boy’s hospital bed.
The heart flashed and sparkled, spinning like a top, over the head of the boy who seemed to be clinging to life with the slightest of grips.
“Oh God.” Johnny gasped, speaking over Bruce’s renewed cries for him to return to consciousness.
“What’s wrong? It won’t be so easy?”
“You’ve got that right.” The psychic sighed. “If I save Jenny’s life then a boy down in Florida won’t get her heart ... and he’ll die.”
1.
“I came to a realization today while working at Sal’s brunch buffet. I was at my usual post making overly thick waffles. There’s no chair, so I have to stand there waiting the five minutes for the bell to ring to signal me to take out the waffle and pour in more batter. Five minutes of nothing to do and then a bell rings and I have to get them out quickly or they burn.
My realization was how long five minutes can be. It’s nothing when you have that long before the dentist calls you in but it’s an eternity when you don’t have a chair to sit in and aren’t allowed to read a book.
So I pass the time watching people still in their church clothes lining up to snag fat waffles from the basket at the edge of my table and wonder if Angelina Jolie ever worked a waffle maker.”
-Jenny, Summer 2002
“There’ll be other heart donors Johnny,” Bruce was saying twenty minutes later in Johnny’s kitchen. “You can’t sit by and watch a girl die to save someone else’s life. Nature will take its course and someone somewhere else will die and he’ll get the heart.”
“Nature will take its course.” Johnny echoed. “But that’s exactly what’s going to happen tomorrow. Nature will take Jenny so that Robbie in Florida can get her heart.” His voice was dead. It was obvious he’d decided nothing yet. More obvious that the thought of taking either course of action, saving Jenny and sacrificing Robbie or visa versa was equally painful.
“Yeah, but the difference is you KNOW about this particular case of nature taking someone. You don’t know about and can’t prevent all the other accidents that’ll happen tomorrow. You can’t be in two places at once, you can’t touch everyone, people are going to die from accidents tomorrow.”
Johnny nodded. “That’s true. 45 thousand people die from car accidents alone each year. Accidents are going to happen. People are going to die. And there’s nothing I can do about it. Tell me again how this ‘gift’ isn’t actually a curse?”
Bruce took a seat across the kitchen table from his friend. He steepled his fingers together and pressed his chin against the tips. “You’re looking at it from the wrong point of view, Johnny. You’re romanticizing your ability too much. This is like people who try to separate out the Internet as this special form of communication that is different from any other communication known to mankind. The bottom line is that our brains are sitting in our skulls, isolated from everything. The only information our brains get is electrical impulses through nerves. Sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing ... all of those are very different ways to experience the world but all of them are reduced down to electrical impulses and sent the same way to our brain. So if someone tells you ‘Hi!’ using a spoken word two feet from you, a hand signal, a facial expression, a smoke signal, a spoken word over the phone, a word written in the sand with a stick, an email, an IM message, a musical note, a drumbeat ... your brain gets that message as an electrical impulse. Ultimately the form is irrelevant, all that matters is the message.”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me.” Johnny sighed. His fingers were tapping the tabletop six inches from where the diary lay.
“The point is, you’re too hung up on HOW you get your information. If you were getting phone calls from a mole inside a mob family telling you who they plan to kill next ... would you be sitting here griping about how many phone calls you’re getting? I think you’d be taking action.”
Johnny frowned for a long time, then finally leaned back against his chair. “Point taken. But the question here is whom do I save? Jenny or Robbie? Which life is more important?”
“I guess you could look at which one of them is going to contribute more to society.” Bruce answered reluctantly.
“I can tell that you relish that task as much as I do. How could I ever decide something like that?”
“I don’t know how you could. I mean, I’m already on record for saving Jenny because you KNOW she’s going to die. Robbie still has a chance to live with another donor’s contribution. But I think we need more input here. You should call Walt and Sarah.”
Johnny made as if to get up and go to the phone but stopped himself. “If I tell Walt, nothing will stop him from saving Jenny even if that’s the wrong course of action. He’s a public servant, he’d have no choice. And I couldn’t burden Sarah with this either. Walt would never forgive her if he found out she stood by and let someone die. The burden would be the same, to one degree or another, for anyone I could share this with.”
They sat in silence for a minute.
Bruce shrugged suddenly. “Well, there is one other person we could talk to. Someone who’s used to keeping confidences.”
***
“I came as quickly as I could, Johnny.” Reverend Purdy said in his mellow, cultured voice.
“I’m in a really tough spot here.” Johnny began. He quickly outlined the problem, going into as much detail as he remembered from the vision, including things that had seeped up to his consciousness hours after the vision, as sometimes happened. “Jenny is 19 years old, she works weekends at a local Italian restaurant while attending college. She’s studying to become a teacher. She’s a big fan of Angelina Jolie and secretly dreams of becoming a Superstar like her one of these days. That dream, and all her others will be snuffed out in less than 24 hours unless I do something.”
“And this sick boy?” Purdy asked quietly.
“His name is Robbie and he’s sixteen years old. He was born with a heart defect that is slowly killing him. He doesn’t have two months left to live unless he gets a transplant. Further complicating matters is his type AB blood, making a suitable donor much harder to find. There’s a good chance if Jenny survives someone else matching his requirements will not pass away soon enough to help him.” Johnny paused. “Robbie’s mother is a doctor and he has always dreamed of following in her footsteps.”
“So you’re faced with the situation of choosing who lives and who dies.” Purdy commented.
Bruce suppressed his irritation. If they’d wanted the obvious stated they could do it themselves.
Johnny nodded.
“Johnny, I’ve counseled many people who’ve gone through similar situations. Corpsmen in battle sometimes have to make snap judgments on who to work on first. To continue that line, soldiers have had to pick one of two wounded men to carry to safety. I once helped a mother who’d had to pick one of her two children to save after the three of them had fallen off a cliff and she could only make it up with one of them.”
Bruce rubbed his face with his hands as if only physical action would keep him from being snappish before resuming glaring at the Reverend.
If Purdy noticed he made no indication. “My point is that you’ve probably been sitting here thinking that you’re not God and that only God is allowed to make these kinds of decisions.”
Johnny nodded. “That’s very close to what I was thinking.”
“But I’m here to tell you that other people have faced these difficult choices before. Many times, all throughout history. When we find ourselves in this situation, we can’t hide behind God and blame everything on him. God has given us free will, so we have the freedom to make tough choices. It’s up to us to exercise that free will when the opportunities arise.”
“You’re right.” Johnny said reluctantly. “I have to make a choice. But which one?”
“You could look at which one you think will contribute more to society.” Purdy replied quickly. “Teaching is a very noble calling, and of course was your calling. So it would be very easy for you to sympathize with Jenny and what her goals are. But doctors have a much more direct effect on the well being of hundreds of people. Everything else being equal, I’d say you have to choose Robbie.”
“Besides,” Bruce finally said, “and not to make light but her hero is Angelina Jolie? She sleeps with snakes and knives and has said her goal is to sleep with everyone, male and female, in the world.”
Purdy frowned towards Bruce. “Is that who she is? She was in that horrid ‘Tomb Raider’ movie, wasn’t she?”
“Hey, that movie was all right! Very shallow, like Jolie herself, which is my point.” Bruce added, warming up to the Reverend a little.
Johnny had finished taking two aspirins. He shot the other two an irritated look. “This conversation has turned superficial! We can’t decide who lives or dies based on who their idols are!”
“I said I wasn’t trying to make light! The point is, who she idolizes says a lot about her! She could have picked anyone but she wants to be a superstar like Angelina Jolie? Come on, man! Was Madonna too old or something? I was all for saving Jenny at first but the Padre’s right. Teachers are great, but doctors save lives.”
Johnny wasn’t paying attention. Something had occurred to him. “We’re acting like this is absolute. But I don’t know for sure that Robbie will die without Jenny’s heart! I know for sure that Jenny will die, but what if there’s another heart in Robbie’s future if Jenny survives?”
“How could you find out for sure? Touching the diary again? Or touching Jenny directly?” Reverend Purdy inquired leaning forward in excitement at the idea of saving both people.
“Unfortunately, touching the diary only gives me more insight into Jenny. I need to touch Robbie or something that belongs to him. I need to do that and get back up here in time to save Jenny.”
Purdy rose from the table and pulled out a cell phone. “I can make the flight arrangements right away. And even if you can’t make it back in time I can be where it will happen and prevent Jenny’s death. I don’t need to convince her I can see the future, I just need to delay her a minute or two, right?”
“True,” Johnny hedged. “But I’d feel better if I were there so I could make sure NO ONE was harmed. If the pipes don’t hit Jenny they could hit someone else or cause some other kind of accident. Plus my visions are not always straightforward. Sometimes I don’t correctly interpret them until it’s almost too late.”
“I’ll make every effect to get you a round trip flight that will see you back here in time and also give you enough time to get the information you need.”
“Make it two.” Bruce insisted. “He’ll be in a hurry so he’ll need my help.”
Purdy snorted mildly but then nodded in agreement.
2.
“Why can’t you just waltz in there and grab his arm?” Bruce wanted to know as they cowered next to a water fountain near the entrance to the ICU ward. “I know they’re strict about visitors in this ward but we can bluff our way in.”
“We might be able to.” Johnny agreed. “But if we’re caught in a lie we get tossed from the hospital. Also, what if I touch him and go immediately into a strong vision? I could thrash out or fall on him or otherwise hurt him. Robbie’s a very sick boy. We can’t risk injuring him further and ending all chance of his life being saved. I’d feel much better about touching something that belongs to him.”
“Too bad today’s not laundry day.” Bruce replied. “We could let the maid do all our work for us and you could stroll by and put your hand in her cart.”
Johnny shot his friend a look.
“What? It’s a dirty business but someone has to touch those sheets and it’d do me no good to!”
“I think I have a better idea.” Johnny said, tugging Bruce towards the nearby janitor’s closet.
Ten minutes later Bruce was wearing paint smeared overalls, a stiff Marlins ball cap, and plaster stained boots. “Why do I have to wear this getup? This stuff doesn’t even go together!”
“You look fabulous.” Johnny quipped, “now go get me something to touch.”
“I’m only doing this because when your visions are powerful enough they happen even when you’re wearing gloves you’d probably cause a scene. It’d be like when you fell all over Walt the first time you touched him in the hospital.” With that, Bruce darted out of the janitor’s closets and sauntered casually towards the ICU ward.
He got several curious looks but the nurses and orderlies he passed were preoccupied with their current tasks and didn’t stop him.
Johnny closed the closet door and waited impatiently.
Ten minutes later he was startled by the doorknob turning. Before the door could open, however, Bruce’s voice rang out strongly. “Can I help you?”
“Um, yeah, I spilled some juice all over myself. I was looking for some papertowels.”
Johnny shot his head back and forth but there was no place to hide in the small closet. He settled for sitting on a large box of paper towels. He wouldn’t be in any serious trouble but he didn’t want any questions right now. They had barely three hours before their flight left and that included getting back to the airport and through security. If they missed the flight they might not make it back in time to save Jenny.
“Sorry, we’re fresh out of papertowels. But there’s a bathroom down the hall.” Bruce said. The door shifted a little and Johnny guessed that Bruce had just leaned on it.
“It’s being cleaned right now. Look, I just need something to wipe this crap off my arms and hands. Lemme have a roll of toilet paper or something.”
“We’re out of the toilet paper too. Why don’t you just duck into the women’s bathroom? Or go to another floor?”
“The janitor’s closet was right here, it just seemed easier. Just lemme look in there, I’ll use a new mop head or something, I don’t care. There has to be SOMETHING in there I can use!”
Bruce’s voice got hard. “Actually, the room’s completely empty. It’s the damnedest thing. I just filed a complaint that we should be resupplied more often.”
“What about THAT? Can I use that?”
Bruce snorted. “I was about to use it! Why do you think I’m carrying it around?”
“Well, okay, I guess I’ll use the girl’s bathroom then.” The other man said irritatedly, sounding farther away towards the end of his reply.
A moment later Bruce opened the door and slipped in. “Here ya go man.” He tossed a moist washcloth. “It was on his nightstand so chances are it was used on his brow. He looks really bad.”
Johnny caught it...
He saw the boy in his bed as before. This time the person who entered with the glowing heart was 20 year old man who had something wrong with his had. He’d probably died from a blow of some kind.
“We’re good.” Johnny gasped. “Someone else can step in and provide Robbie’s heart-.”
In the doorway behind the 20 year old a 40 year old man appeared. He looked pale and his expression was one of anguish. He fell to his knees, trying but failing to grab the doorjamb to keep his footing.
“Oh ... if Simon gives his heart to Robbie then Shawn might not get a heart in time.”
A 33 year old black man with a shining heart appeared behind Shawn, helping him up.
“No, it’ll be oka-.”
Behind the black man a 23 year old woman appeared. She was on her knees, gasping in pain and clutching her chest.
“But that will leave Cara without-.”
More people appeared, faster and faster. George, Kelly, Morgan, Damon, Jeffery, Debbie, Darla, Dexter, Mark, Tracy, Brandi...
Johnny screamed.
***
Bruce was helping him up several minutes later. Johnny was sheet white and sweating but he had to speak, to get it all out, before he exploded. “We were fools. Everything is connected! If we stop Robbie from getting Jenny’s heart, then the next donor will have to do it. But that keeps whoever was waiting in line behind Robbie from getting that second person’s heart, and whoever is in line behind HIM from getting the third donor’s heart and on and on and on! Plus you factor in that only so many people are compatible with each other for heart transplants so there isn’t an inexhaustible supply compatible with Robbie and those people with the same needs as him! Plus you have to consider that the longer some of these patients wait the less likely the transplant will work so you’d kill them and waste a good heart that could have saved someone else stronger but farther back in the waiting list. Pushing everyone back even a couple days could cost half a dozen people on the list fatal additional waiting time!”
Johnny finally took a breath, looking wildeyed up at Bruce. “If we save Jenny it could cost half a dozen other people their lives. It’s a massive chain reaction, I never realized how connected things are. How long term the effects of any change I make are.”
Bruce helped him completely to his feet. “Come on, we can talk on the way. We could miss the flight if we delay much longer.”
“Don’t you get it? I can’t save Jenny!” Johnny cried desperately. The pain in his voice made Bruce wince. “I want to with every fiber in my being but if I save her I could be condemning half a dozen other people! Robbie has to get her heart so that Simon’s heart is not wasted on him and can go to Shawn ... and so on. It’s all connected.”
“You can’t decide who lives and dies, Johnny.” Bruce insisted.
“I can’t play God either. It’s like you said, nature will take its course.”
“This is no different than if you saw a blind man walking in front of car and had time to pull him away. Nature taking its course would be to let him get hit but very few people would hesitate to run up and pull him away. That’s not playing God, that’s helping someone out.”
“Your other analogy was good, but this one is flawed, Bruce. Unlike seeing someone stepping in front of a car, I can see BEYOND her accident, to what happens if she doesn’t give her heart to Robbie. My only course of action is to let what was going to happen, happen.”
Bruce stared at his friend intently, his eyes blazing. “Look man, I was wrong yesterday. We can’t judge one life more valuable than another, especially on something so superficial as who she’s a fan of. I was way out of line. We have to save Jenny, that’s what’s right in front of us. Everything else you’re talking about is just potential. The one thing we know for certain is that she’s gonna die tomorrow morning and we can prevent it.”
“I understand what you’re saying.” Johnny replied heavily. “And if it was just one life for one life I would follow your advice. But more people are involved now, too many to comprehend. This touches too many people.”
Bruce nodded. He disagreed but he knew when Johnny had resolved himself. And there was a very real chance Johnny was right. “Okay. But let’s make our flight so you can be there for her. You owe her that much. Especially if you change your mind.”
Johnny returned the nod and headed for the closet door. They rushed from the room and headed towards the elevator.
“We have two hours, that should be enough time to make the flight.” Johnny said as he passed a short balding man with purple stained hands and arms. He was being berated by a huge security man while two scandalized looking woman glared next to them.
3.
Johnny was on the sidewalk were Jenny was to die. The streets and sidewalks were abandoned, though the sun was shining brightly. As he raised a hand to shield his eyes from the reflection glare coming from the windshields, Johnny became aware that someone was walking up behind him.
It was Jenny. For the first time in a vision (though on some level Johnny was aware that he was in a dream) she looked angry. Her eyes flashed and her teeth were bared.
She grabbed Johnny by his jacket and pulled him close. “Don’t you GET IT? How could you be so completely wrong about me??”
Johnny suddenly jerked away. It took him a second to remember that he was on the red eye flight back home to Maine. They would arrive with just a couple hours to spare.
Bruce’s eyes flicked open. “Don’t save the tadpoles!”
“What?” Johnny asked, groggily.
“Oh, your dream woke you first so you go first.” Bruce replied hastily.
“I just realized something. As you said, it doesn’t matter as far as her value as a human being, but we really did Jenny a disservice. We completely misunderstood her affection for Angelina Jolie.”
“So you’ve changed your mind again?” Bruce wanted to know. This was said entirely without malice. He was going to support Johnny either way and wouldn’t blame his friend if the man changed his mind five thousand times before the accident time.
“No.” Johnny moaned. “This doesn’t change anything except make it that much tougher to watch her die. But at least I see her know for the incredibly special young woman she was.”
***
Johnny and Bruce were standing on the street corner, fifteen feet from where it was going to happen. “There she is.” Johnny said stiffly. He’d been seeing her in visions for the past 26 hours so he was well acquainted with her appearance.
Bruce was not, however, so he gave her a casual glance.
Jenny was wearing the faded Gap blue jeans he knew she’d have on. Black knee boots, a black Macy Gray concert tee shirt, and a brown fleece vest. She looked up and met Bruce’s eyes for a second as she crossed the street to their corner. Her blue eyes didn’t stick on his eyes though. She was obviously lost in thought, and her eyes almost immediately fell back to the ground.
One block behind her, the white pickup truck rounded the corner.
Jenny wasn’t even in range for Johnny to touch so it wasn’t a proper vision that he fell into. He thought later that it was a deeper memory of visions he’d experienced last night. So much information shot into him sometimes that it could take him days to process it all. Now he was experiencing a very vivid memory recall.
Or perhaps it was just that he was standing on the same sidewalk she was and that was contact enough for something this powerful.
He was sitting tomorrow morning with Robbie and his parents. The operation had been a success but the boy was still very weak and barely awake.
“I’m going to visit you again in a couple weeks when you’re feeling better, but it’s important that I talk to you before I talk to your donor’s parents.”
The parents nodded. They’d excepted his explanation that he was the donor woman’s High School teacher.
“I just wanted you to know a little about her. And then I hope to tell her parents a little something about you. In this way I can help them a little and also help you understand the person who saved your life.”
Jenny was passing them now. She didn’t look at either of them as she did so.
Johnny realized just before he fell back into the memory vision that Jenny was wearing White Linen perfume.
“Jenny’s idol was Angelina Jolie. Not for ‘Tomb Raider’ or any other movie, but because of her work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Jolie was doing a movie in Cambodia and heard about the landmine problem there and approached the United Nations to offer her help. That led her into work that has benefited refugees across the world. Jenny was inspired by someone of that wealth and fame putting their personal time into such a human cause. For Jenny being a Superstar didn’t mean any of the superficial things that most people associate with that word. For Jenny, it meant having the power, the national stage, to actually make a difference in the world.”
“I don’t know if I can watch this.” Bruce moaned. “It was everything I could do to keep myself from reaching out and grabbing her as she passed by.”
“You were right. We owe it to her to witness it. So that we never make these decisions lightly.”
“Jenny ultimately came to the conclusion, not a week before her death, that she didn’t need money or fame to make a difference. She was going to make a difference on whatever small scale she could.” Johnny leaned forward and wagged her diary towards Robbie’s pale face. “Allow me to read her last entry to you.” He didn’t open the diary to read it, but he got every word exactly as she had written it. “‘Not everyone can attain fame or wealth, but everyone can make a difference. I’ve spent half my life waiting for something to happen to allow me to become a Superstar. What I didn’t realize was that I already have everything I need! In every little way that matters, with everyone I encounter, I’m going to be a Superstar!’”
The white pickup truck passed Bruce and Johnny, going about ten miles over the posted speed limit. Jenny was five feet from the spot where she would die.
“Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Caulfield. Susan.” Johnny nodded to Jenny’s parents but made a point to nod to her little sister as well. He set Jenny’s diary on the bench beside Susan. “My name is John Smith. I’m-.”
“We know who you are.” Mrs. Caulfield said coldly, glancing suspiciously at the diary. “You’re supposed to be a psychic but you couldn’t even save our daughter.”
“What do you want?” Her husband asked in a drained voice. He glanced towards the closed casket. “We’re here paying our last respects.”
They couldn’t know that he could have prevented Jenny’s death but they must have sensed it on some primal level because the hostility was barely beneath the surface. They were seconds away from walking out.
Johnny’s hands clenched into fists but he didn’t move or call out. Bruce had wrapped an arm around the signpost next to him and had his face pressed against the cold metal.
“I know this will in no way mitigate your loss, but I wanted you to know about the life your daughter saved yesterday. His name is Robbie Summers and without Jenny’s heart he’d be dead in another two months. Now he’ll live another six decades.”
He had their attention now. The coldness had not left them but they were at least listening now. “Robbie was going to be a doctor but now he will become a teacher. He’ll never make more than fifty thousand dollars a year and he’ll never be as good a teacher as Jenny would have been, but he’ll always be happy doing it and his students will love and respect him.”
“J- Jenny was going to be a teacher?” Mrs. Caulfield choked.
“Yes. I’ve just come from talking to Robbie. I told him all about your daughter. He’s never going to forget her. Never going to forget the incredible difference she made, the incredible sacrifice that allowed him to go on. He would have traded places with her in a heartbeat if the choice had been his. He has that in common with Jenny because I honestly believe she is not unhappy to have given her life for someone else to live. It was her life’s dream to make a difference and she has in more ways than even someone like me can see.”
Johnny was right. Nothing he told them, was going to tell them, would mitigate their loss. But what he told them did make a difference.
“She’ll always be there to motivate Robbie when he’s down, you see. For the rest of his life, Jenny will be Robbie’s guiding star, navigating him through the trials and tribulations of life whenever he feels like giving up.”
The front wheel of the white pickup truck was right on Jenny’s heels now. Johnny and Bruce heard the poorly tied string snap open with crystal clarity.
But only Johnny could hear Jenny’s voice just as clear.
“I just know I’m going to make a difference some day.”
The pole on the end leaned out of the truck bed, across the road and over the edge of the sidewalk. When it clanged to a stop on the edge of the truck bed, it was a mere four feet behind the back of Jenny’s head. The driver was slamming on the breaks but he would never stop in time. Even if he’d noticed Jenny and realized the dire threat to her, he would not have been able to stop in time.
“In every little way that matters, with everyone I encounter...”
Unlike the vision, Johnny and Bruce were behind her. They couldn’t see her face. But Johnny knew what her expression was right now. She’d heard none of the commotion behind her. She was lost in her thoughts and had subconsciously dismissed the noise as something happening farther away than it actually was.
She was lost in her thoughts, scanning the ground for her diary, and smiling her sweet, secret smile.
“...I’m going to be a superstar!”
The End
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