The Adoration of Jenna Fox

by Mary E. Pearson

  ‘But—’

  ‘In his final conclusion he says, It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. And building on that he says, I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.’

  ‘But what about—’

  ‘And of course, much earlier he plainly states, I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately … to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life … to—’

  ‘I get it,’ Ethan snaps.

  Dane, Allys, and Gabriel stare at me. Ethan looks away. Rae is quickly flipping through Walden, running her fingers down the pages. Finally she raises her eyes to me, too.

  Dane stands. ‘The only thing Thoreau and I have in common is that we’re both hungry,’ he says. ‘I’m outta here.’

  Rae looks at her watch. ‘Eleven. Yes, it’s time for our break. Thank you, Jenna. And you, too, Ethan.’

  Dane is already out the door. Rae is drawn away by Mitch and something more important than me.

  The others stand awkwardly. I can see I’ve upset the balance. Do they have to include the new girl who walks funny in their break plans? Do they have to redefine boundaries? Do they have to make room for someone who interrupted Ethan when she should have kept her big mouth shut? Why can I see that now, when it’s too late?

  ‘Break is for two hours,’ Allys says. ‘Time to eat, work on personal projects, conference—Rae’s big on that. You can do whatever you want.’

  Gabriel gestures over his shoulder. ‘We usually go across the street and get something to eat at the market. Everyone’s kind of on their own.’

  On their own. Right. I get it.

  I nod. ‘Then I’ll just stay—’

  ‘Want to come?’ Ethan asks.

  Allys

  Allys removes her leg and props it against the table. ‘I’m not supposed to take them off at school, but this one still bothers me.’ She massages her stump. Gabriel and Ethan go on eating their lunches. I stare at the stump and then the artificial leg. ‘Does this bother you?’ she asks. ‘I can put it back—’

  ‘No. I’m just surprised. I didn’t realize. Were you injured somehow?’

  ‘No. I had a bacterial infection. Worse than most. Antibiotics weren’t touching it, and by the time they were able to get a Restricted Antibiotic Waiver, I had already lost one leg. This one, actually.’ She runs her fingers over her stump and grimaces. ‘I guess the first is hardest to lose.’

  ‘Your other leg is artificial, too?’

  ‘And my arms. I also had some organ damage, which is why I have to take this mountain of medicine.’ She swallows a handful of pills and downs them with water.

  My eyes shift from her stump to her hands. ‘They look so—’

  ‘Real?’

  I nod.

  ‘I hear that a lot. Amazing what they can do these days.’ She pulls up her sleeve, and I can see a barely perceptible line where artificial meets real skin. ‘They even customized it with my original moles and freckles.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Gabriel adds through a mouthful of food, ‘she has a whole constellation on her other arm.’ Ethan doesn’t say anything. He just watches me while he eats.

  ‘Sure, nice cosmetics, but I still have phantom pains. It’s only been six months, so I am hoping that will go away, too. The biofeedback treatments worked on the others, but not on this one for some reason.’ She stops rubbing her stump and picks up her sandwich. I watch her artificial fingers delicately bend and adjust around the bread, just like they are real. I am aware of prosthetic devices, but I think this is the first time I have seen them so close. The skin looks as real as my own. Allys glances at me, and I look away. I already have one strike against me by showing up Ethan. I don’t want another by ogling her. They’ve invited me into their circle. I want to stay here.

  I sit back in my chair, trying to look relaxed. A small dining area is carved out of one corner of the market. It holds two small tables, each with four chairs. They’re crowded next to the juice aisle. Gabriel and Allys both got ready-made sandwiches from the refrigerated section. Ethan bought an apple, a bean-and-cheese burrito, and a bottle of milk. Even though he invited me to come, he seems reluctant to talk to me. I’m trying to keep my mouth shut, but since I’m not eating, it isn’t easy.

  ‘What about Dane?’ I ask. ‘I thought he was hungry.’

  Gabriel smirks. ‘Dane doesn’t eat with us.’

  ‘Because we’re freaks?’ I ask.

  ‘Speak for yourself!’ Ethan snaps. His voice is loud and pocks the air between us.

  I don’t know what to say. I didn’t mean that I thought he was a freak. I was just repeating Dane’s words, but I’m afraid to even explain that. I might appear like I’m correcting him again. I look out the window, a jammed-up feeling growing inside. Am I going to cry? Or is it something else? My eyes are dry, but I feel like something wants to burst out of me. I focus on the empty road outside. Hold back. Hold it in. Keep your mouth shut, Jenna. Keep it shut. Shut. Shut.

  ‘Well, Dane was certainly right about one thing,’ I say, turning from the window to look straight into Ethan’s eyes.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asks, daring me to answer.

  ‘You do have a magnetic personality.’

  Wonderful timing, Jenna. Now is not the time for my attitude to come out of hiding.

  Gabriel stops chewing, and his eyes grow wide. Allys sets her sandwich aside. Ethan sits, stunned, like I just slapped him across the face. The tension holds us like a shock of electricity, and then something odd happens. Allys chuckles. A little snort at first. And then a deep expelling of air that comes all the way up from her belly. Her laughter snags Gabriel, and puffs of air fill his cheeks, and then in the next breath, Ethan and I are snorting, too, unable to maintain our scowls. Pieces of bread fly from Gabriel’s mouth, and we all howl louder, until finally Allys says, holding her stomach, ‘I like you, Jenna.’

  My laughter subsides, and I hear her soft voice over and over in my head until I just sit there with satisfaction wrapping around me. I like you. That’s what she said. I like you, Jenna.

  Ethan’s eyes are softer now, gently focused on mine, like the day I first saw him at the mission. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean to be a dickhead.’

  Dickhead? Another word I’ve lost. It must mean annoying or small-minded.

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ I say, which brings another small chuckle from him.

  ‘Dane pushes our buttons,’ he says. ‘Especially mine. Most of the time I try to ignore him.’

  ‘We’re different from others,’ Gabriel says, like he is admitting something. ‘But that doesn’t mean we’re freaks.’

  ‘Dane has a way with words,’ Allys adds.

  Ethan swigs down a big gulp of milk and brings the bottle down like a gavel. ‘Dane has a way with everything.’

  ‘He keyed Ethan’s truck last week,’ Gabriel explains. ‘No one can prove it, but weird things always seem to happen around Dane.’

  ‘He’s missing something. I mean, really missing something,’ Allys says.

  Gabriel shakes his head. ‘He’s not like us.’

  ‘He’s not like anyone,’ Ethan says. ‘That’s probably why he’s in school with us. In that sense, he’s right. We all have reasons for needing to come to a small alternative school. My theory is Dane’s already been kicked out of every school within a thousand-mile radius.’

  ‘At least,’ Gabriel confirms.

  I don’t know what to say. They seem to be releasing every frustration they have about Dane, and yet I found him interesting. Blunt maybe, but something about him intrigues me. Maybe his honesty? He’s the only one who bothered to tell me that I walk funny. Why didn’t Claire? And what exactly is funny?

  I’m glad when Allys turns the conversation from Dane to her. ‘My reasons for coming to this school aren’t so mysterious,’ she says. ‘A large campus just doesn’t work for me anymor
e, and a flexible schedule makes therapy easier to work in. At an academy I would always be missing school. That’s one of the reasons I’m here.’ Allys picks up her sandwich and resumes eating. ‘Plus, I like the course study better. Especially after all this’—she gestures with all four limbs. ‘I have a particular interest in bioethics, and Rae lets me explore that. Why’d you want to come here, Jenna?’

  ‘I didn’t exactly want to. My mother chose it. I’ve been sick and …’ I don’t know how to finish. I still have a lightheaded aversion to saying the word accident. Has Mother drilled it into me that deeply not to speak about it? Or is there some other reason? But I don’t want to lie.

  ‘Accident,’ I say much too loudly. ‘I had an accident. And I’m still recovering.’

  They all stare at me. My words have come out in halting spurts. Lovely, Jenna.

  ‘You don’t have to tell us—’

  ‘And the worst part of it is, I’ve forgotten everything. I don’t remember my parents, my friends, which things I love, and which things I hate. I can’t even remember which side I parted my hair on—or maybe it was down the middle? And look at this,’ I say, pointing at my legs. ‘I obviously can’t even remember how to walk!’

  ‘It’s okay—’

  ‘It’s all a blank. My life, my parents, my friends. I’m not sure I should even be here. I can’t remember anything that matters,’ I say in a desperate breathless finish, feeling like I have confessed a sin and I need forgiveness. Their forgiveness. Three friends. Are they friends?

  Ethan’s eyes, at that moment, are the kindest, deepest, safest brown I am sure I will ever know. I wait for him to absolve me of not remembering a mother who birthed me, a grandmother who saved me, friends who rebelled with me, and a suffocating fear I can’t name.

  ‘Jenna,’ he says. His voice is as soft as a sparrow’s beating wing, and I can almost feel the gentle flutter across my cheek. ‘Thou speakest the loveliest … load of crap.’ He leans close and whispers, ‘A single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten …’

  He waits expectantly. I lean in closer.

  He watches my lips, and I let my words trickle out as softly as his. ‘… on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us …’

  Ethan downs the rest of his milk. ‘Two points made.’

  ‘Three,’ I say.

  He raises his eyebrows.

  ‘You’re far more versed in Walden than you let on,’ I say.

  And not a dickhead at all, I think to myself.

  Pieces

  Isn’t that what all of life is anyway?

  Shards. Bits. Moments.

  Am I less because I have fewer, or do the few I have mean more?

  Am I just as full as anyone else? Enough?

  Pieces.

  Allys saying ‘I like you’.

  Gabriel snorting out bread, freeing me to laugh.

  And Ethan reminding me how much I do know.

  Pieces.

  I hold them like they are life itself.

  They nearly are.

  Fine Tuning

  ‘Don’t forget, I’m coming home with Ethan,’ I call out to the kitchen. ‘So don’t pick me up.’

  I walk down the hallway, turn around, and walk back again, watching myself in the full-length mirror. I lift my feet carefully, but it seems overdone. Maybe it’s my arms? Do they swing properly? I go back to the end of the hallway and try again.

  Claire calls back, not to me but to Lily, loud so I can hear, ‘Did you hear that, Mom? Jenna’s coming home with Ethan. Sounds almost like a date.’

  I smile. The last few days, Mother has been so cheerful, almost giddy that school has gone well. Perhaps she sees my life—and hers—coming back to us.

  I stare at the mirror. I think it’s my knees. I walk slowly, willing them into smooth movements. Better. I go to the kitchen. ‘It’s not a date, Mother. I’m just working at the Mission with Ethan until I find my own community project.’

  Mother tilts her head and rolls her eyes. ‘Oh. Sure. A community project. I’ve seen Ethan the last two days when I picked you up. He’s—’

  ‘Claire!’ Lily yells. ‘What’s gotten into you? Do you really think it’s wise to encourage this? Dating? Think it through!’

  I glare at Lily. Mother and I are finally having something that resembles a conversation and she has to put a stop to it. Why does she have to be so annoying? So small-minded? So—

  ‘Don’t be such a dickhead, Lily!’ I tell her.

  Mother’s jaw drops and she seems to forget what she was going to say.

  Lily is silent for a moment and then bends over the counter.

  Laughing? Is she laughing?

  I’m afraid I will never understand either one of them.

  Jenna Fox / Year Fourteen

  Since Lily isn’t driving me to the mission until ten o’clock, I continue to fill the morning with the task of walking. I was hoping to have it figured out before I saw Ethan again. I practice in front of the mirror. I move slow. I move fast. I sway my hips, my hands, my chin. I glide, but it is all still off. I see that now. Am I trying too hard?

  I decide to watch the videos. Maybe I’ll learn something. Isn’t that what Mother says? That it might trigger something? Maybe it will trigger something in my legs and arms so I walk like everyone else. I want to be like everyone else. I saw how Dane looked at me, before he saw me clod my way across the classroom. I liked the way his eyes were fixed on me. Close. Personal. So slow it almost felt like he was sliding his hands over me. It makes me feel different. Familiar. Maybe like the old Jenna.

  ‘Play,’ I say, and the disc follows my command.

  I get lucky. Year Fourteen appears to be all about Jenna walking and moving.

  As with all the discs, Year Fourteen begins with my birthday. I pose next to a street sign, Champs-Elysées, and then run along the street, the Arc de Triomphe as my destination. Paris. Not bad for a fourteenth birthday. ‘Hurry, Dad!’ I call. But I don’t fuss too much. Jenna is so used to every move being recorded at this point that she seems to have surrendered herself to the adoration of Jenna Fox. There is no such thing as hurry for Mother or Father. I am too important. Why is this Jenna Fox so strong, but I feel less powerful than a single kilowatt?

  Jenna stops on the sidewalk, a speck in the distance. She twirls, her arms outstretched, her face lifted to a blue and cloud-puffed sky, strangers passing her, absorbed in her perfect, happy world. Her movements are smooth and assured. Her limbs, graceful and elegant. Even her fingers look like calligraphy against the sky.

  ‘Pause.’ I stand and move to the center of my room. I stretch out my arms. I look at my fingers. They are every bit as lean and delicate as the ones on the disc. I turn. Slowly, at first. And then faster. I try to imitate fourteen-year-old Jenna, but my feet cannot keep up. My ankles collide. I stumble to the side and catch myself on my desk. Nothing has been triggered. I am still not the nimble Jenna Fox on the disc.

  I look at my fingers again, the ones that trembled and shook just a few days ago at Mr Bender’s kitchen table. I bring them together, fingertip to fingertip, like a steeple. Each one perfect in appearance. But something is not … right. Something that I still have no word for. It is a dull twisting that snakes through me. Is this a tangled feeling that everyone my age feels? Or is it different? Am I different? I slide my steepled fingers, slowly, watching them interlace. Trying to interlace, like a clutched desperate prayer, but again, I feel like the hands I am lacing are not my own, like I have borrowed them from a twelve-fingered monster. And yet, when I count them, yes, there are ten. Ten exquisitely perfect, beautiful fingers.

  The New Lily and Jenna

  Lily drives. I tap my knee. We don’t speak. I watch her from time to time. Sideways, when I am sure she doesn’t notice. I look at the lines fanning out from her eyes, the simple knot she has pulled her hair into, and the hastily pla
ced clip that holds it together. She drives me to the mission because of Mother. I have figured that out now. Anything she does for me is really for Mother. There is nothing she wouldn’t do for Claire.

  They seem to be at odds right now over me. But I see the way Lily watches Claire, the way she will come up and squeeze her shoulders, or hug her for no reason at all, the way they still share something that I am not a part of.

  I think she loved me once. But it is clear that is not the case anymore. She tolerates me. For Claire’s sake, I gather. Occasionally she is touched by something in our past. I see a crack. Like the day I thought I was drowning. But then she puts her rigid exterior back on, like protection against me. Does she think I am dangerous? That I would hurt her?

  Would I? I wanted to this morning in the kitchen when she told Claire to stop encouraging me. I think I wanted to hit her. Hard. I could have. But I didn’t.

  Strangely, I want her to like me. I don’t know why. Maybe it is just wanting to go back to the way things were. To be the old Jenna. The one I don’t know but the one she loved.

  We take back roads. The hills are brown, dry, cold. But beneath the dry scruff, spring is emerging. Bright emerald grass contrasts with the brown chaparral that hovers above it. Winter is not welcome in California. It is only the beginning of February, and spring is already forcing its way in. Claire says she likes the temperate climate—that she will never go back to the icy winters again. That I will never go either. How does she know? I might. I will not always be seventeen.

  We pass a toppled building, its rubble being eaten by weeds, and vines. Apparently after the quake, some parts of California were worth rebuilding and others were not. ‘Hm,’ Lily comments as we pass, forgetting our agreed silence.

  ‘Are you afraid?’ I ask.

  She feigns surprise. ‘Of earthquakes? No. When it’s my time to go, I go.’

  Is she really that confident? Just where does she think she’s going? ‘Go where?’ I ask, enjoying pushing her.