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I glared moodily at the tiny television screen, listening to the morbid conversation my mother and my older brother, Liam, were having. I had missed the beginning, but by the tone of their voices, I figured either we were moving, or someone. “Get Paige, please, Liam,” my mother said tiredly from the kitchen. My brother’s manly physique, all 5’9” of it, blocked the doorway. “Paige!!!” He boomed from two feet behind me. “God, Liam! I’m right here, there's no need to blow out my ears!” I got up from the couch slowly, savouring the last moments without the knowledge of bad news I assumed I was going to receive. I wandered into the kitchen, Liam behind me, taking in the catastrophic state of our kitchen and the tears on my mother’s cheeks. Jeez, I thought, it must be really bad if Mom won’t clean anything. “Paige,” my mom began, “we’re going to Jacksonville for a while. We’re going to go spend some time with Grandma, because… well, she won’t be around for much longer.” Her voice broke on the last word, and I stood amid the mess, shocked. “What’s wrong with her?” I asked quietly. “Oh, just old age I think.” My mother sniffled. I nodded, and looked at Liam; he looked as distraught as mom did. I looked into my mother’s eyes, seeing the tears that filled their faded brown depths, and fled back to the living room. As I waited impatiently for my show to come back on, for anything to distract me, a creaky old man wandered onto the screen during yet another infomercial. I watched as the man padded slowly around in his slippers, until he drank from a dark blue bottle. He suddenly popped up and began to transform into a burly, muscular young man, doing one-armed push-ups and grinning. “Have you heard of magic? Sorcery perhaps?” The commercial asked obnoxiously. “Well this isn’t magic, its science!” The man on the screen was now in a hot tub, surrounded by giggling teenage girls. “This limited time offer gives you a chance to try the scientifically enhanced water from the elusive Fountain of Youth! That’s right! YOU get to be young again. YOU get to recapture ‘the good old days’, and YOU can have it all, right now! Dial the number on your screen, provide your credit card number, and we’ll send you a year’s supply of water from the Fountain of Youth, complete with instructions, for only $58.95! That’s right! Only $58.95! Call now!” The man on the screen winked, and then it faded to black, leaving only the phone number, and the price, $58.95, popping up in different colours all over the screen. “Ugh.” I muttered, turning it off. I retreated to my room, and started brooding, hugging my prized brown teddy bear. Even though I was fifteen, and Liam never hesitated to tease me about it, my most treasured possession was that teddy bear. It was the only thing I had left that my father had given me. My biological father had left when I was four and Liam was seven, and my teddy was the last present I had ever got from him. My mother had remarried when I was eleven, but my stepdad, Henry, had died a year and a half ago in a car accident. Nowadays, Liam and I tried our best to keep our mom happy, doing chores, getting good grades, and trying not to be rude. Sometimes, it seemed as though we were the parents, setting a good example for our child. Suddenly, there was a knock on my door, and Liam came in and perched on the end of my bed. “Hey P,” he muttered. “So, what are we going to do now? Mom’s really upset, and the only way I can think of to stop that is for Grandma not to die. We need a plan.” I sat up, a strange thought coming into my head. “Well, then let’s stop her from dying!” An idea, a crazy idea, was forming. I jumped up, dragging Liam with me, and quickly showed him the silly infomercial about the ‘magic water’. “Stop,” Liam said suddenly. “That’s just making it worse. You and I both know that that would never work, and it would just get everyone’s hopes up.” He left the room, but I continued to brood in front of the T.V. It was the only plan I could think of, so I decided to cling to it. I quickly wrote down the number and retreated to my room with the portable phone and my “emergency only” credit card. “Hello,” said a dry, pre-recorded voice. “Thank you for calling Fountain of Youth! To talk to a representative about problems or side affects from your ‘Fountain Water’, please press one. For ordering information, please press two. For contact information, please press three.” I pressed two and waited as the annoying “you’re on hold!” music began to play. “Sanchez Phillips, Fountain of Youth representative. How may I help you?” After a quick conversation, I gave him the number on my credit card and warned him that I would track him down and sue him if he tricked me. After hanging up I wandered back into my room, wondering if I had done the right thing.

Three days later, the doorbell rang loudly through the house and I raced to answer it before my mother got there. I opened it and there stood the mailman, holding a large box and a clipboard. I signed for the package and ran inside, clutching the box that could save my grandmother’s life. When we got to the hospital that day, Grandma was lying in bed, looking very frail. I had whispered to Liam during the ride over that I had a bottle of the water with me. He had looked at me strangely, but didn’t try to stop me. A quick word with my mother and the accompanying doctor, and Liam and I were alone in the room with Grandma. “Hi,” I whispered to her, squeezing her hand gently. “Hello, Paige,” she smiled back. She struggled to sit up and slowly pulled off a locket I had never seen her without. “This was given to me by your Grandpa on our first anniversary,” she explained. “I have never taken it off, with the exception of one day, nine years ago, when the original chain broke and I had to get it replaced. On the inside, in tiny writing, are the words ‘Voi siete la mia vita’. It means ‘You are my life’ in Italian. Your Grandpa explained to me that day, that his life was only worth living because I was in it. I want you to have this, Paige, because I want you to remember that true love is possible, even nowadays when people don’t seem to care that much anymore. Always remember, my dear, that I love you.” Grandma sank back into the pillows, and closed her eyes. “Grandma?” I asked quietly. When there was no response, I asked again, more loudly. I frantically uncorked the bottle that contained the possible cure for my Grandmother and tipped the contents into her mouth. She sputtered, and swallowed. “Grandma?” “Eli?” she asked, waiting for my grandfather to reply. “Grandma? It’s Paige!” I gently shook her shoulder, and then stepped back into Liam’s grip as she began to tremble. “Grandma?” The frail, 87 year old woman opened her eyes and smiled as her hair began to turn a shiny, light brown, and her wrinkles disappeared. The muscles in her body firmed up from the puddles they had become in her old age, and her tired eyes lit up with excitement. She was evolution flying in reverse, and she was thrilled. Suddenly, she leaped out of bed, and a young woman, no older than 25, stood before me.

“Paige! Paige, look at me! I’m young and beautiful again! Oh, Paige, what’s going on?” My twenty-five year old grandmother danced around the room, spinning as her long hair twirled around her.

Three months later, after the initial shock from the doctors and my mother had died down, Grandma came over for dinner. She warned us in advance that she had some news to share. When our family was busy with their dinners of roast beef and mashed potatoes, Grandma cleared her throat. We all looked up. “I’d like to make a toast,” she said clearly, her warm brown eyes smiling. We all raised our glasses. “To Paige,” she announced, as I blushed. “Without whom I would not be here.” “To Paige!” my mother and brother repeated obediently. “However,” Grandma continued, “there is one thing that I have to explain to you about my… condition.” She set down her knife and fork, and settled forward into a storyteller’s pose. “Every morning when I wake up, I am middle-aged. If I don’t drink a bottle quickly, I will start to become old again. As much fun as I am having being young and beautiful, I had an epiphany the other day. I was standing in front of the mirror, watching myself slip further and further away from the youth I was experiencing, when I noticed something. My old locket looks a little bit newer, a little shinier when I am young. But what I love so much about it is how it should look, worn, scratched, but still strong. That represents my life with Eli. Having it look new again is like rewinding all of the time we spent together, and that’s just not right. My most cherished treasure, other than my family, is this locket. As I explained to Paige, it says ‘Voi siete la mia’ ‘You are my life’, on the inside. I realized that I couldn’t go through my entire life again without Eli. As much as I want to spend time with you, it’s unnatural for me to still be here. He never got a second time to do things over, and I shouldn’t either. I know he’s waiting for me, and I can’t let him wait another lifetime.” Grandma settled back into her chair and picked up her fork, tears in her eyes. “I’m going to stop taking this water as soon as everything is in order.” There was shocked silence at the table. My mother began to cry, and Liam immediately jumped up to comfort her. “But Grandma,” I whispered. “You’ll be gone forever.” “Yes, Paige, sweetheart,” she said gently, “but I’ll be where I should be: with Eli.”

A week later, our little family surrounded Grandma, hugging, crying, and saying goodbye for the last time. Grandma pressed presents and her will towards us, and slid the old locket towards me. “Take care of it, Paige.” “I will, I promise. I love you.” I kissed her cheek, and Liam wrapped his arms around her. My mother whispered in her ear, hugging her fiercely. Finally, all three of us got into the car, and, watching my twenty-five year old Grandmother waving from her door, we drove away. We got the notification a few hours later, and the obituary was in the paper the next day. Anna Elizabeth Woods, it read, passed away yesterday at age eighty-seven.