Read Sleeping Jenny for Free Online

silent like none of them wanted to talk about it. But they’d already told me the horrible news and broken my heart. I had to know why.
    â€œWell?”
    Valex placed his spork on the table. As the head of the family, I guess it was his job to explain. “Little by little, humans took up more space, and we had to make decisions. Big animals consumed too many resources. Livestock were fed more than three times the human-edible grain than what their bodies produced in meat.”
    â€œSo what did they do to all the animals? Kill them?”
    â€œOver time it cost too much to breed them, so they died off naturally.”
    I dropped my spork on the table. “There’s nothing natural about it.”
    Pell froze as if unsure who to believe.
    Len glanced at me, and then at Pell. “Jenny, please. You’re scaring
    Pell.”
    I stared at her in disbelief. She was calling me out for scaring Pell? Sure, Pell was too young to understand, but Valex and Len could have more sympathy. I may have expected the cold response from Len, with her “everything’s perfect” attitude, but from Valex? I had to remind myself that Valex hadn’t killed all of the animals; he was simply a product of his generation. Most likely, when he was born they were already all dead or goners to be sure. Still, his laid-back manner about everything hit a sour chord with this. How could he be so okay with it?
    What I couldn’t fathom was how humans didn’t stand up for the animals. Guess we had picked our own kind over theirs.
    Disgust brought up bile from my stomach. “Excuse me. I’m sorry.” I stood up and my chair screeched backward.
    Len moved to rise, but Valex waved her down. “Your room is the first door panel down that hall. Take all the time you need.”
    â€œThank you.”
    I stumbled down the hall and dull blue lights flickered on, sensing my presence. I wanted to run away from the world, but I settled for my new room. I pushed the door panel, like I’d seen Valex do earlier, and the wall fizzled out, revealing a small bed like the one in the hospital. Great, no sheets . A stark white desk protruded from the wall. Valex had stacked my containers on top of it. He’d opened the DVD cases and flipped through them. They were numbered one to thirty-one. Dread settled like a cold rock in my stomach. What had happened to make them stop? I’d have to watch each one to find out.
    The first one was already hooked up to a cord plugged into the wall. I pressed the panel and hit the play button with my finger. The screen blinked on, casting my room in a white glow. I sat down, rocking back and forth and hugged myself, trying to calm down. Angela’s face shone in front of me, and my insides almost melted into that soybean slush I tried for dinner.
    Oh, Angela, where are you now when I need you the most?
    She walked in front of the maple trees planted in perfect rows leading to Ridgewood Prep. “Your parents let me bring the video camera to school. I’m supposed to document what you’re missing so when you wake up, you can get all caught up.”
    She turned the camera on three boys kicking a hacky sack. Behind them, Chad flirted with one of the cheerleaders. Turning the camera back to her, she shook her head. “So far, you’re not missing much.”
    I laughed out loud, surprising myself. Who knew I’d get her joke three hundred years later? What did it matter? Seeing the video made me feel normal, like my life wasn’t some fairy tale I made up before I got to futuristic hell.
    Angela kept the video on until she got to first period and clicked it off just as Ms. Dayton wrote a trigonometry problem on the board. Thank goodness she didn’t make me sit through that. The video flicked to gym class. The volleyball nets were still up in the same place as when I broke my leg. Seeing them again sent a shiver across my shoulders.
    Angela turned the camera