Jackson's snores filled the classroom. It was not that he was bored with the lesson- he very much loved biology and Mrs. McGregor actually taught it quite well- but it was due to the sheer fact that he was tired. It had been yet another sleepless night. Jackson had once been immune to the sounds, but now it was all he ever seemed to hear. The groaning, the grumbling, the moans- all the boy wanted was silence. Unfortunately, that silence had come in the midst of lesson on genetic manipulation. He sat in the front row.

"Mr. Peters," Mrs. McGregor cooed in his ear, startling the boy to a wake. Jackson now sat straight in his seat, the imprint of the notebook spiral just along his cheek. But the class laughed not at that, but the puddle of drool that had soaked the collar of his t-shirt. Some of it still hung from his bottom lip.

"Alright, class, silence. Now."

The class continued to roar.

"Silence or you're all assigned homework tonight! An essay, ten pages...single spaced."

Student by student, the laughter ceased. Jackson nodded his thanks to Mrs. McGregor. She had been looking out for him since the news came in. Jackson owed her a lot, and that included many overdue lab reports. "Don't worry," she told him over and over again, the corners of her mouth turning up and wrinkles extending from her emerald eyes. But he did worry. In fact, Jackson only ever seemed to worry. It was something he wore nearly as much as the second-hand sneakers on his feet, a present from his best friend, Johnny.

Johnny had looked out for Jackson nearly as often as Mrs. McGregor. They were practically brothers. They spent every waking hour together, mostly because Johnny was Jackson's bodyguard. But he was in college now, a junior. He could not look out for Jackson anymore. Jackson had to look out for himself.

Jackson always smiled thinking of the fun schemes he and Johnny had gotten into. Nearly all had been Johnny's idea in the first place: the movies, the bus, girls' camp. But there was one that was all Jackson: sneaking into the chem lab on a Friday night. Johnny could not understand how or why his younger companion had devised such a plan. "It's a Friday night, Jax, we could sneak into the movies or a party," he had protested. But Jackson was adamant. They would break into the school.

Johnny had complained right up until the crime. He was scared. Johnny was never scared. Jackson could not quite understand why. It was only school.

When the crime was done, and Jackson had the lone vial he needed, they went out for pancakes. Jackson loved pancakes. Light, fluffy, golden-brown. It had been forever since he had one.

"Mr. Peters," Mrs. McGregor warned as Jackson's eyes began to droop again.

He nodded and sat up until he mocked an officer in front of a sergeant. At the next request, he was prepared to answer with a bellowing "yessir."

It never came. Mrs. McGregor continued on for the rest of the class going on about DNA splicing, cloning, and mutations, all of which Jackson tried to be enthusiastic about, but it was hard being so tired. At the sound of the bell, Mrs. McGregor called him to her desk.

"What's going on, Jackson?"

He shrugged. "Just tired."

She knew better. "Your grandmother?"

"She's fine. I'm fine. We're all fine."

Mrs. McGregor withdrew her glasses and placed them gently onto her desk. It was in impeccable condition. Mrs. McGregor was not one for sloppiness.

Jackson felt his throat tighten. This was getting very serious now.

"Mr. Peters, you have been a student of mine for many years now. I have followed you up here since first grade. You're a freshman now. Don't think I don't know when something's up."

"I'm fine," he lied. "I swear."

She nodded, undoubtedly not convinced. Her hand leafed through a stack of papers on the left. It settled on the lime green. Jackson quickly read the title: "Biologists Beware."

"What's that?" he questioned, motioning the paper.

"An opportunity for you to use that brain you were given."

"I'm failing English, Mrs. McGregor." For kicks, he threw in, "I ain't smart."

The smile twitched her lips, but it refused to come. Mrs. McGregor leaned forward on her elbows. Jackson could feel her minty breath on his cheeks. It was cold.

"You are a smart, young man when you apply yourself, Mr. Peters. You've made it this far, have you not?"

It had been a struggle for him to get where he was now. And it had been a struggle for his grandmother too.

She was a spitfire woman, his grandmother, Nan. She had come to the States as a girl, leaving her family in Germany behind. Most of them had died already anyways. She travelled with a tall, dark man, who had set her up there in Boston at a cotton mill. She had been through hell, war, and divorce, but the hardest thing for her to tell was the name traveling companion.

"Tell me, Nan, who's the man I should thank?"

But she would only shake her head and mutter something in Yiddish, a language Jackson could not understand. Johnny could never seem to decipher it either.

"Mr. Peters?"

Jackson nodded, shaking the thoughts of Nan away. There was nothing that he could do now, not standing in the middle of a high school science lab.

"Mr. Peters, are you interested?"

"In the biologist thing?"

She smiled softly. "Yes. I feel it would be a great opportunity for you."

Jackson teetered on the thought. He did love biology, and he was good at it, but was he knowledgeable to attend this conference? He was just a poor boy from Brookline. What good could he be beside the Yale, MIT, Harvard graduates? Jackson swallowed hard, staring at the paper once more.

"Could I talk with my grandmother first?"

"Of course," Mrs. McGregor cooed. "Make sure to tell her I said hello."

"I will," he mumbled. Jackson gathered his books. His head was still spinning. What would his grandmother say to any of this?

Her exact words were "what a surprise, Michael." Jackson had never told his grandmother about his love in biology, nor that he succeeded in it. Then again, he never told her he was failing English either. Jackson kept home and school separate. It was better that way.

"So you think I should do it, Nan?"

Nan had become a frail lady, put on bed rest for weak bones, but in that moment, a cool air of confidence and strength washed over her face. She smiled.

"Of course you should, Jason."

Jackson smiled as he poured her a glass of water. He handed her a horse pill, which her spindly fingers gratefully.

"But what about you, Nan? Who'll take care of you while I'm away?"

Nan coughed. "I'm a grown woman, Thomas, not a child. I can take care of myself."

Jackson nodded, although nonetheless not convinced. There wad not point arguing with Nan. She would always win. So Jackson sat back in the corner of the room, comfortably on a wooden rocking chair, the very chair where he had been rocked as an infant. It was the same chair where even Nan sat rocking her children: Thomas, Jason, Michael, and Sue.

But Jackson knew that from speculation; Nan never talked about her children, nor of her late husbands, any of them. To Nan, her children were grown adults now, and only memories. The boys never visited anymore. And Sue was gone.

Sue had been Jackson's mother. He knew little of her save the fact that she was his mother and that they looked much alike. She had left when Jackson was only eighteen months. He was only a baby.

Nan had gotten into another coughing fit. They were getting worse with every passing day, and Jackson had told the doctor that, but all the tests came back negative. Nan was not sick. Her face had turned nearly blue by the time her breaths regulated. It churned Jackson's stomach.

"I'm fine," she assured him. "Fine."

Jackson nodded, but refilled the cup nonetheless.

"Now tell me more about this game."

It was a two month seminar. The first week would be lectures hosted at the local university. The second and third would be labs. At the beginning of the fourth, the students would be flown to Paris, residing in the very place of the eighteenth and nineteenth French scientists, where once again, there will be lectures and labs. Jackson had kept his explanation as simple as he could, but it was pointless; the excitement was rising up with every second he spoke.

"What a wonderful opportunity, my boy. You'd be doing your mother proud."

Jackson knew that was a lie. Even Nan’s memory was not so weak that she could believe the words she just spoke. His mother had left him as a baby. He could not stand to think of her, especially not any excuse she could have to leave a baby. Still, Jackson forced a smile and thanked Nan. Had he only known what was to come maybe he would have said a little bit more.

Jackson had sat four rows ahead of me during the seminar. I spent most of it trying to catch his eye, but he remained facing forward, eyes glued to the stage where a suited man waddled across the stage, earphone pressed against his chubby cheeks, flushed. I could not fathom how a man that paced so often and sweated so profusely could still be the egg he was. Maybe that had puzzled Jackson too for he seemed not to notice my presence.

"Here in this room are some of the greatest minds in history," the egg man wheezed.

Naturally, he was incorrect. The history had already happened. We would be the history soon. Time was a relative concept. I did not believe in time.

"Most of you are here because of your mental capacities and the love for biology," he continued, pausing to sip his water. "And it is because of that, you are here."

I rolled my eyes.

"Um...yes...biology. Many of you are great scientists already. But there are a few of you here that are not. It is quite a blend of IQs and ages in this room."

We were trapped in that theatre for nearly two hours listening to Humpty Dumpty. He knew not how to entertain nor speak, but of course he was not the man behind Biologists Beware. Rather, he was their pawn, their jolly, red face. He was the bait. And everyone in that theatre was entranced by his presence, all save me.

Instead, I had grown quite fond of the "great minds" surrounding me. They were acne-faced, red-eyed, pasty beings of stress and seriousness. Except Jackson. There was a light about him, hypothetically because he was a child, the youngest one there to be exact. Yet at the same time, his shoulders crept forward as though he carried a large weight among them, and he yawned consistently, not so much from boredom- he was enthralled- but from fatigue. The boy, maybe ten or eleven, I had yet to learn his age, wore his wrinkles on the inside. Jackson was years older than he truly was, but hid it somehow from everyone there that smiled at his bright eyes beneath his crooked wire-rimed glasses and his toothless grin. It pained me a little to see him that way, but I knew immediately he was exactly what we needed.

"Jackson!" I hollered out to him as we fled from the theatre.

All heads turned but his. And what the sneers! It was as though no one had ever seen a grown woman run through a mob to track down a child. How I hated these people!

"Jackson! Jackson!"

He turned, his eyes fumbling onto me. He shook subtly. "What do you want?"

"I’m sorry...had I known that it would have affected you, I would have-“

The boy shook his head and turned his face from me. Was he crying?

"Jackson?”

“How do you know me?” he whispered.

Poor boy, I had forgotten the time in which I had entered. I took his hand and noticed the lack of abrasions on his wrists. This was not the Jackson I had left, no, this was a different boy, a younger boy.

He pulled away. “Who are you?”

I thought of my words carefully. “I am your future, Jackson.”

He seemed not to understand.

“My name is Catherine. For years, we’ve been coming to this conference awaiting your arrival. Now that you’re here, we can finally begin.”

“Who is ‘we’ and what are they beginning?”

“Answers will come in due time, Jackson. Right now, you need to trust me. Do you trust me?”

We locked eyes and in that moment a wave of knowledge and familiarity passed over the boy. He nodded.

“I trust you.”