Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life Read online

  “Let’s bring it closer to home now,” Dr. Grady says happily. It’s great watching someone who loves what he does. Dad was like that, at the comics store. Mom loves the library, and Lizzy’s dad loves the post office. I wonder if I’ll ever find something I love as much. I tune back in to hear Dr. Grady say, “Our own solar system was formed 4.5 billion years ago. It took about another billion years until the surface of the earth cooled. Pretty much as soon as life could begin, it did. Out of the primordial soup—some basic chemicals and gasses mixed with UV radiation and lightning—arose the building blocks of life: amino acids. These were followed by bacteria, then single-celled organisms, multicelled organisms, plants, invertebrates, vertebrates, reptiles, and mammals, all adapting to their ever-changing environment over billions of years.”

  A group of teenagers dressed in white lab coats approaches, trailing after an older woman who looks like the female version of Dr. Grady. The kids each carry a clipboard. Lizzy nudges me and whispers, “That’s you in five years!”

  “Very funny,” I whisper back. But I stare at their faces as they file by. Their eyes look eager and bright. It wouldn’t be so bad to look like that.

  Dr. Grady waits for the group to pass and continues. “It may be not very appealing to think that we came from the same sludge that produced the amoeba, but we all have a common ancestor; our DNA shares the same chemical structure. You, I, and the fruit fly all have the same blueprint for life. All life on this planet is connected—some people can feel it more than others, on a spiritual level. If there is life on other planets, it will likely have evolved very differently from us. The chance of duplicating what happened here is close to zero.”

  “How come?” I can’t help asking.

  “Trust me,” Dr. Grady says. “We are here because over billions of years, countless variables fell into place, any of which could have taken another path. We are essentially a beautiful fluke, as are the millions of other species with which we share this planet. Our cells are composed of atoms and dust particles from distant galaxies, and from the billions of living organisms that inhabited this planet before us.”

  He pauses here and wipes a little tear from his eye. To be polite, Lizzy and I look away.

  “So now you know the scientific explanation of how we got here,” Dr. Grady says, clearing his throat. “As you can see, it also answers the question of why we are here. Physics tells us we’re here because gravity keeps us from floating away into space. In the most basic biological terms, we’re here because some of the earliest inhabitants of this planet—bacteria—allow us to be. Our bodies would not be able to function without the jobs they perform for us—in the air around us, on our skin, and inside our organs. We think we’re the most powerful species on the planet, but we’re far from it. We would not live for one day without them, but bacteria are so adaptable, they will be here when the sun burns out. Bacteria and cockroaches!”

  I look at Lizzy, who has started squirming. I have no doubt she’s thinking about the bacteria living on her body. Somehow I thought the answer to why we’re here would be a little more, I don’t know, glamorous?

  Lizzy begins scratching. Long red welts appear on her arms.

  “I fear I have rambled too long,” Dr. Grady says, consulting his watch. “I hope I didn’t overwhelm you.”

  “No, it was great,” I tell him honestly. I have a million questions to ask, but I’m pretty sure Lizzy will kill me if I do. “Oh,” I say, suddenly remembering the bargain Lizzy made, “your telescope came from—”

  He puts up his hand to cut me off. “I changed my mind. Let it be a mystery as to why it has returned to me after fifty years. I’ve spent my life trying to find rational explanations for life’s mysteries.”

  “Okay,” I say with a smile. Lowering my voice, I ask, “Maybe someday I could… come back?”

  “Of course,” he says, slapping me on the back and grinning. “And you won’t even have to bring me anything.”

  We shake hands, and I turn to Lizzy. “Are you ready to go?”

  She nods frantically.

  “Are you all right, Lizzy?” Dr. Grady asks, his brow crinkling in concern.

  Lizzy nods again. “I’ll be okay as soon as I can get into a really hot shower.”

  He laughs. “Remember, bacteria are friendly, for the most part. You don’t want to wash, or scratch, them all away.”

  Lizzy hastily sticks her hands in her shorts pockets to keep from scratching anymore. I know she’s not convinced. We head for the archway that will lead us back to the dinosaur exhibit and James.

  “Never forget,” Dr. Grady says as we enter the exhibit, “as immense as the universe is, and as much as we will never know about it, there is only one Jeremy Fink, one Lizzy Muldoun. One Amos Grady. That makes each of us special and unique beyond comprehension. Why are we here? In my opinion, we’re here because we won the evolutionary lottery. We’re here because as far as we know, this is the only place we can be.”

  “So basically what you’re saying is,” Lizzy says, scratching her thighs from inside her pockets. “We’re here because we’re here?”

  “Precisely!” Dr. Grady says.

  Lizzy pinches me on the arm. “Does that work for you, Jeremy? Or is your existential crisis gonna continue?”

  My brain is still spinning from all Dr. Grady has said. But spinning in a good way. “You know it takes me a long time to sort through things,” I reply. “I can’t make decisions at the drop of a hat like you can.”

  “How true. Once,”Lizzy begins, scratching her belly now as we walk, “when we were six, Jeremy’s parents took us for ice cream. It took him so long to decide between chocolate and vanilla, that eventually the guy had to close the shop and he didn’t get anything.”

  I sigh. I liked it much better when Lizzy was consumed with tearing away layers of her skin. Dr. Grady chuckles and says, “Coming to terms with why we are here and the meaning of it all can be a lifelong quest. Someday when you two are old and married, you’ll look back at—”

  “AAAAH!!” we scream in unison.

  “We’re not getting married!” I exclaim.

  “At least not to each other!” Lizzy adds.

  At that moment, the life-size dinosaur skeleton looms into view. No doubt anxious to change the subject, Dr. Grady says, “If a meteor hadn’t struck the earth and made that guy extinct, mammals wouldn’t have grown any bigger than a large rat or a small pig. You and I wouldn’t be here. So it worked out well for us.” He looks up at the dinosaur fondly. “Not so well for him, though. There’s your friend,” Dr. Grady says, pointing to James. James is standing behind one of the dinosaur’s huge front legs. He’s leaning over the railing and peering so close that his nose is almost touching it.

  “It’s not real,” Dr. Grady says when we approach.

  “No?” James says, clearly disappointed.

  Dr. Grady shakes his head. “But the other leg is.”

  James immediately rushes over to that leg and peers closely again. I follow him. “I didn’t take you for a dinosaur guy.”

  James nods. “My father used to collect fossils and bones. He once found a mollusk that was over a million years old.”

  “Wow!” I say, truly impressed. “My dad’s greatest find was a scratch-off lottery ticket worth twenty-five bucks stuck inside a book he found on the street!”

  “Hey,” James says, cocking his head. “What’s wrong with Lizzy?”

  I turn to see Lizzy in the corner of the exhibit, scratching her head crazily. She has pulled her ponytail out, and her hair is now sticking up in every direction. “Oh. That’s because Dr. Grady told us that bacteria basically cover us from head to toe, inside and out.”

  “We’d better take her home,” James says.

  I look for Dr. Grady to say good-bye, and find him engrossed in a conversation with a father and his two young boys. He waves and salutes as we leave.

  In the car on the way home, Lizzy curls up on the seat, occasionally twitchin