“It's an experiment,” Brooke said. “You can always throw this part out. You might have done that anyway. Isn't that what you told me? Or at least implied?”
Franke glanced from her to De. Then Franke straightened his shoulders, as if the gesture made him stronger. “I believe that Brooke is right. My studies have convinced me that something becomes important to a child's development because that child is told that something is important.”
“So us losers will remain losers the rest of our lives,” Los Gatos said.
Franke shook his head. “That is not my conclusion. I believe that when something becomes important, you choose how to react to it.” His voice got louder as he spoke. His professor's voice. “Some of you wearing letters have not done as well as expected. You've rebelled against those expectations and worked at proving you are not as good as you were told you were.”
A flush colored De's tan cheeks.
“Others lived up to the expectations and a few of you, a very small few, exceeded them. But—” Franke paused dramatically. “Those of you who wear numbers are financially more successful as a group than your lettered peers. You strive harder because you feel you have something to overcome.”
Brooke felt Los Gatos shift behind her.
“I think it goes back to the parameters of the study,” Franke said. “Your parents—all of your parents—wanted to improve their lot. They all had drive, therefore most of you have drive. We've found a biological correlation.”
“Really? Wow,” Santa Barbara said.
“But there's more than biology at work here.”
“I'd hope so,” De said. “I'd hate to think you can determine who I am by reading my genes.”
Franke gave him a small smile. “Your parents,” Franke said, “all chose a contest as the method of improving their lives. A lottery, if you will. And most of them failed to win. Or if they succeeded, they discovered Easy Street wasn't so easy after all. You numbered folk have realized that luck is overrated. The only thing you can trust is work you do yourselves.”
“And what about those of us with letters?” one of the twins from Akron asked.
“You learned a different lesson. Most of you learned that luck is what you make of it. You might win the lottery, but that doesn't make you or your family any happier than before.” Franke looked at Brooke. “There were a lot of studies, some of them prompted by your mother, that showed how many unsuccessful Millennium Babies were abandoned or mistreated. But the successful ones had similar problems. Only no one wanted to lose the golden goose as long as it was still golden. Many of those abandonments were emotional, not physical. People became parents to become rich or famous, not because they wanted children.”
“Sounds like you should be studying our parents,” Los Gatos said.
Franke grinned. “Now you have my next book.”
And the group laughed.
“Feel free to enjoy the rest of the day,” Franke said. “Over the rest of the weekend, I'll be talking to individuals among you, wrapping things up. I want to thank you for your time and participation.”
“That's it?” De asked.
“When you leave here tonight, if I haven't spoken to you,” Franke said. “That's it.”
His words were met with a momentary silence. Then he started to make his way through the group. Some people stopped him. Brooke didn't. She turned away, not sure how to feel.
She wasn't as successful as she wanted to be, but she was better off than her mother had said she would be. Brooke had her own house, a good job, interests that meant something to her.
But she was as alone as her mother was. In that, at least, they were the same.
“So,” De said. “Is your life profoundly different thanks to this study?”
The question had a mixed tone. Half sarcasm, half serious. He seemed to be waiting for her answer.
“What's your name?” she asked.
“Adam,” he said, wincing. “Adam Lassiter.”
“The first man.”
“If I'd missed my birth time, I'd have been named Zeb.” He smiled as he said that, but his eyes didn't twinkle.
“I'm Brooke Cross.” She waited, wondering if he'd guess at the name, despite the change. He didn't. Or if he did, he didn't say anything.
“You didn't answer my question,” he said.
She looked at the room, at all the people in it, most engaged in private conversations now, hands moving, gazes serious as they compared and contrasted their experiences, trying to see if they agreed with Professor Franke.
“When I was a little girl,” she said. “We lived in a small white house, maybe 1200 square feet. A starter, my mother called it, because that was all she could afford. And to me, that house was the world. My mother's world.”
“What kind of world was that?” he asked.
She shook her head. How to explain it? But he had asked, and she had to try.
“A world where she did everything right and failed, and everyone else cheated and somehow succeeded. If she'd had the same kind of breaks your parents had, she believed she would have done better than they did. If she hadn't had a child like me, one who was chronically late, her life would have been better.”
He was watching her. The crease between his eyes grew deeper.
Her heart was pounding, but she made herself continue. “A few years ago, when I was looking for my own home, I saw dozens and dozens of houses, and somewhere I realized that to the people living in them, those houses were the world.”
“So each block has dozens of tiny worlds,” he said.
She smiled at him. “Yeah.”
“I still don't see how that relates.”
She looked at him, then at the room. The other conversations were continuing, as serious as hers was with him. “You asked me if this study changed my life. I can't answer that. I can say, though, that it made me realize one thing.”
His gaze was as intense as Franke's.
“It made me realize that even though I had moved out of that house, I hadn't left my mother's world.”
He studied her for a moment longer, then said, “Sounds like a hell of a realization.”
“Maybe,” she said. “It depends on what I do with it.”
He laughed. “Thus proving Franke's point.”
She flushed. She hadn't realized she had done so, but she had. He leaned toward her.
“You know, Brooke,” Adam said softly, “I like women who are chronically late. It balances my habitual timeliness. How's about we have lunch and talk about our histories. Not just the day we were born, but other things, like what we do and where we live and who we are.”
She almost refused. He was from Louisiana, and she was from Wisconsin. This friendship—if that's all it was—could go nowhere.
But it was that attitude which had limited her all along. She had been driven, as Franke said, to succeed materially and professionally on her own merits. But she had never tried to succeed socially.
She had never wanted to before.
“And,” she said, “you get to tell me what you learned from this study.”
“Assumin',” he said with a grin, “that I'm the kinda man who can learn anything a'tall.”
“Assuming that,” she said and slipped her hand in his. It felt good to touch someone else, even if it was only for a brief time. It felt good.
It felt different.
It felt right.