The Adoration of Jenna Fox

by Mary E. Pearson

  Don’t go, Jenna.

  Don’t go.

  Don’t go.

  I open my eyes. I remain in place. I have not gone anywhere. I am drained from the effort.

  I glare at them both. ‘How dare you!’ I say. ‘How dare you play with my brain! How dare you pretend with me that I’m normal! How dare you program me!’

  The word sends a shockwave through the room. For a moment neither one speaks, stunned by the outing of their dirty secret.

  ‘Jenna, come here,’ Father finally says. ‘Come closer to the screen. Sit, so we can talk.’

  ‘Do I have a choice? Or is that another thing that is programmed into me. Sit down, Jenna. Sit down! Sit down!’

  ‘Jenna, please,’ Mother pleads.

  ‘Jenna Angeline Fox!’ Father says. ‘Look at you. Are you in your room right now? No. You’re obviously not programmed. Let me explain!’ I don’t move. ‘Angel,’ he adds.

  I step forward and sit in the kitchen chair Mother has pulled up to the Netbook. Am I doing this of my own free will? I’m not sure.

  ‘It was a suggestion, Jenna. We only planted a strong suggestion. Like a subliminal message. It wasn’t programming. And it was for your own protection. You’ve been through a terrible trauma, not unlike any patient who has had a severe brain injury. Erratic behavior can sometimes be a side effect of such an injury. Usually medication is used to lessen adverse effects. But medicine won’t work with you, Jenna. You don’t have the same circulatory system or nervous system of other brain-injury patients. So a very simple thing we did was plant something that is no more controlling than a subliminal message in case you started behaving out of control.’

  Who is really out of control here?

  ‘I don’t want you to control me,’ I say.

  ‘We don’t,’ Mother says firmly. ‘Like your father said, you’re here and not in your room. Right? But until you could understand everything that has happened, we also had to have a way to get you out of sight fast if we had to. For your own protection, and others’, too. We’ve already told you that a lot of people have put their lives and careers on the line for you. If someone should show up here unexpectedly, someone asking questions—’

  ‘We’ve taken a lot of precautions, Jenna,’ Father interrupts. ‘But if someone were to see you right now, it would be difficult to explain. Your organ failures, severe burns, limb losses—it was all on hospital records. We’ve managed to make changes to a lot of those records, and we’re still trying to make more. But we can’t change what people saw. There are a lot of medical staff who would remember. A lot who knew you were beyond the limits of what the FSEB legally allows. For now, the official story we’ve given everyone is that you’re stabilized and receiving private nursing care at an undisclosed location. That alone has been a source of questions and rumor because no one expected you to live, much less recover. If they were to see you as you are now, it would certainly lead to an investigation, or worse. Let’s face it, I’m news, and with my background with Bio Gel and the high profile of Fox BioSystems, red flags would go flying. The media would have a field day and the FSEB would be out to make an example of us. Everyone involved would be facing jail time. And I’m not sure what would happen—’

  He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to. I can fill in the unspeakable blank. Me. What would they do to the uploaded thing that is me?

  ‘That’s why we didn’t want you to go to school, but we knew that eventually we had to let you have your life back, too, or what would be the point of it all? But no one knows where you and your mother are. The house was bought under Lily’s name, and I keep my travels there to a bare minimum to avoid anyone tracking us down.

  ‘And as I said,’ he continues, ‘we’ve been making adjustments to hospital records and eventually as time passes, if someone sees you and questions anything, we can attribute discrepancies to faulty memories. So it was for your protection, too. Since you didn’t understand the whole scope of what is going on, we had to have a way to remove you from a potentially harmful situation. You have to see that we felt we had to plant this suggestion.’

  ‘And just how did you “plant” this suggestion?’ I ask.

  Father opens his mouth to answer, but Mother intervenes. ‘It was uploaded,’ she says plainly.

  I close my eyes. This or the dark place? It is a draw. I open my eyes and look first at Mother, then at Father. ‘Is there anything else you thought it necessary to upload? We may as well get it all out right now.’

  There is a prolonged pause, each waiting to see how forthcoming the other is. My question is answered. There is something else.

  I sigh and lean back in the chair.

  ‘You were missing so much school,’ Mother says. ‘You were so sick. We knew you would have enough challenges as it was, and we honestly didn’t think you’d ever be able to go to school again.’

  ‘It was a mistake. We realize that now,’ Father says. ‘But we uploaded the tenth-through-twelfth-grade curriculum of the Boston Unified School District. It was probably too much information—not what you would have absorbed naturally—but we can’t take it back. It doesn’t work that way. Not without starting from scratch.’

  None of it is really mine.

  My synapses fire like a fireworks display.

  Thoreau.

  The French Revolution.

  The earthquake, the Second Great Depression, current events. Word by word.

  The invisible boundary.

  Ten percent.

  The most important part.

  Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

  To live deep and suck out all the marrow.

  All of it.

  I look at my hands. Clasp them and unclasp them. Perfect. Monster. Hands.

  A thousand points. A thousand illegal points.

  Clasping. Unclasping.

  The butterfly.

  Suck out the marrow.

  The marrow of Jenna Fox.

  My feet fidget. They tap. The way they always did. The nervous gesture of my childhood. My borrowed feet remember. Something that is still mine. I calm them.

  ‘Then I should have the key to the closet,’ I finally say.

  Mother looks at Father. She is not the deferring type. But in all these uncertain matters she defers to him. I see this is not her world. She is feeling her way through something foreign. She only wanted her daughter back. Would pay any price for it. But the price is navigating uncertainty and secrets that seem to keep spinning faster than she is. She’s wide-eyed, staring at the Netbook and Father. He remains steady, his eyes faltering for only a microsecond. But it’s a faltering microsecond that is a lifetime for me. I can see. He is afraid. Maybe terrified. He calculates his reply. ‘What do you mean, Jenna?’ he asks calmly.

  What are they afraid of? What do they think—

  I feel a ping, chilling and alert. The key.

  Their eyes are riveted on me, invested, waiting for an answer. ‘The key to the small door at the back of my closet,’ I tell them. I see the visible relief on both their faces. ‘If I need to really get out of sight one day, it would be logical to go there.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Father agrees.

  ‘I have it somewhere. I’ll find it,’ Mother says. She is too eager. She rummages through a drawer and produces two keys. ‘I think it’s one of these.’

  ‘I’ll go try them both.’

  I hurry upstairs to my closet, pocketing the keys Mother handed me. I rush, afraid she may follow. I overturn my hamper and riffle through dirty clothes and sheets, looking for the pants I wore four days ago. I find them and search the pocket. The key to Mother’s closet is still there. This is the key that made Father falter, the one he thought I was talking about.

  I scan my closet for a hiding place. I kneel in the corner and pull back the carpet, tuck the key there, and carefully push the carpet back down on the tack strip. I place my hand over the patch of carpeting, like some truth will filter through. Something that
is all, one hundred percent, mine.

  My hand hovers, but no truth comes, only the knowledge that maybe this is my way of balancing the power.

  Trust

  It’s midnight. The house is dark. Quiet. Mother and Lily have been in bed for an hour.

  I watch Year Seven / Jenna Fox. It’s the only disc I have watched more than once. This is my fourth time.

  Seven-year-old Jenna leads Father through the house. He has a blindfold on. Lily must be filming. Glimpses of Mother smiling and following along, giggles from Jenna, and hollow protests from Father punctuate the journey.

  ‘Where are you taking me, Jenna?’

  ‘You can’t ask, Daddy!’ Jenna wails.

  ‘The moon?’

  ‘Daddy!’

  ‘The Mayflower?’

  I watch Father being pulled, pushed, and turned. He trusts me as I lead him from room to room and down hallways. Step up. Step down. He exaggerates his movements, lifting his feet like he is stepping onto a stage. But he trusts me. He trusts seven-year-old Jenna. What did I do to make that change?

  They reach the kitchen doorway. A large, lopsided blue cake is on the kitchen table, candles already burned halfway down during the long, blindfolded walk. The icing sags and bunches out on one side like a slow-moving glacier, bringing tipping candles along with it.

  ‘Stop!’ Jenna says. ‘Turn. No, this way, Daddy! Bend down. Ready?’

  I remove the blindfold. ‘Surprise!’ Mother and I yell and clap our hands. Father throws his hands in the air. He gasps. Jenna beams. Her gap-toothed smile is nearly angelic.

  ‘It’s beautiful! It’s perfect! It’s the best cake I’ve ever had!’

  ‘She made it herself,’ Mother says proudly. ‘We doubled the batch because she wanted it big.’

  Mother and Father share a glance, a brief look that flies over Jenna’s bouncing head. It is a full look just between them. A look of love, satisfaction, fulfillment. Easiness. Completeness. Everything they want and need is right in that room.

  ‘It’s big, all right! And blue!’ He continues to praise and adore it. Just as he adores Jenna.

  I watch them dig in with forks and no plates. More laughter. More squeals. More looks.

  It makes me feel all the ways I’ve wanted to feel ever since I woke up.

  Trusted.

  Happy.

  Enough.

  Father takes a fingerful of blue icing and decorates Jenna’s nose, and she squeals.

  And now, in the quiet of my room, I laugh, too. I laugh out loud.

  Just as I have done every time I’ve watched it.

  Sanctuary

  The church is empty. No priests. No Lily. Not even sweet singing voices to stir the air. The sanctuary is in the shape of a cross. I stand in the crosshairs, feeling like an imposter, waiting to be found at any moment and ushered out.

  Sanctuary.

  I weigh the meanings. A holy place. Refuge.

  A place of forgiveness.

  Rows of candles flicker on either side of me in the smaller arms of the church. I step forward, my clumsy feet scuffing the floor, echoing across the stillness. Souls, if there is such a thing, are nourished and mended here. In case of error they can’t be uploaded like the whole Boston curriculum—there are no spares in case one is lost. Souls are given only once.

  I walk up the three steps to the altar and step over the small railing that separates the masses from all that is sacred. I am trespassing, but I can’t stop. I wait to feel something. Something different. But who knows what a soul feels like?

  I dare to step closer, violating the holy space that surrounds me. I rest my hands on the altar, feeling the linen cloth only meant for a priest’s fingers. History. I can feel it in the threads. I close my eyes, searching for my own history, the intangible bits that will tell me if what I am is enough.

  A voice booms. ‘You shouldn’t be up there.’

  My eyes fly open and I turn around. Just as quickly, I turn back, carefully placing my hands on the altar, willing them not to tremble. I ignore the warning and the footsteps getting closer.

  ‘Still can’t talk to the dickhead, hm?’

  Oh, God. I have to say something. ‘That’s not a word you should be using in church,’ I answer.

  I hear him getting closer, his footsteps softening as he walks up the steps. ‘Then I guess we both have one mark against us. You walking where you shouldn’t, and me saying a bad word.’

  I hear a few more steps and his shoe banging the railing as he steps over it. I turn around and face him. ‘Two.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I only have one mark against me. You have two. You also stepped over the railing.’

  His face contorts to an unflattering mix of frustration and anger. ‘You are so—’ but just as quickly, his scowl is gone and the sharpness vanishes. His soft brown eyes stare into mine for a second or two. Or three. ‘Jenna,’ he sighs, ‘I don’t want to argue. I just came looking for you. You were supposed to meet me over an hour ago down at the lavanderia. If you don’t want to work on the project with me anymore, Father Rico has someone else who—’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  He walks closer, an arm’s length from me. ‘No, you don’t want to work with me?’

  I can’t answer. What I should say and what I want to say are two different things. Have I always been this mixed up?

  Ethan grabs my arms. ‘Jenna, you have to talk to me.’

  ‘I need to—I want to keep working with you, Ethan. But—’

  He bends over and kisses me.

  And I kiss him back.

  We are kissing on the altar. We are passionately kissing on the altar of the church in front of all the sainted statues. How many marks against us is that?

  I push him away. ‘This isn’t right,’ I say.

  ‘Listen, I know I’ve done some things in the past—’

  ‘Ethan. This isn’t about you. Things have changed. It’s me. There are things.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he says.

  I look into his eyes. They call them windows to the soul. I think I can see Ethan’s. What does he see when he looks into mine? I look away and see more eyes, the statues of the saints watching us from their niches. Joseph. Mary. Saint Francis. Their gazes split me wide.

  You mustn’t tell.

  For all our sakes.

  Especially yours.

  You mustn’t say anything to anyone.

  ‘Not here,’ I tell him. ‘Let’s go outside.’

  Telling

  Like the church, the cemetery is empty, but here there are no corners or shadows to hide listening ears. Just the dead. They may hear, but they can’t tell and never will. They are one step past the dark place. I haven’t even told my parents about that. How can I tell Ethan?

  We walk on the grass, stepping over and around the tarnished markers that remember lives and moments in time. Where we are going, I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to be the place that is important but the steps in between. Ethan finally stops at a dark, moldy niche holding a statue of a watchful saint that is streaked with years of weather and grime. This must be the place of telling.

  My head hurts. It’s the first time I have felt this kind of pain. Almost like a headache. Are my biochips punishing me for trying to reveal the truth? Maybe I am programmed never to admit anything? Maybe I am self-destructing even as I stand here. I wince and drop my head into my hands, rubbing my temples.

  ‘Never mind, Jenna. You don’t have to tell me,’ Ethan says.

  I press my temples, trying to sort it out. ‘I need to,’ I say. ‘I have to tell someone.’

  It is odd. The sun is shining. The grass is a brilliant green. The cemetery is almost festive, with colorful flowers dotting the neatly trimmed graves. It is a shocking contrast to the ugly truth I am about to reveal to Ethan.

  I lay my hands out, palms up, toward him. ‘Take my hands,’ I say. He does. He squeezes them. I wonder at the feelings it sends up my arms, through my brain, through all that i
s salvaged and new. I wonder at what is real and what is replicated, the braiding of genuine and fake. I wonder at the miracle Father has fashioned. ‘It’s not real, Ethan,’ I tell him. His brows draw together and he shakes his head. ‘The accident,’ I tell him. ‘I lost my hands in the accident. These are created. Like prosthetics.’

  He gently turns my hands and examines them, as though he doesn’t believe me. ‘They’re beautiful,’ he says. He doesn’t let go. He caresses them. ‘Can you feel this?’

  I nod. I feel every callus and crease of his fingers. I feel touch in ways I never did before. Velvety, fluid, and when I concentrate, I can almost feel his skin as my own. I sigh. ‘This isn’t all, Ethan. There’s more.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘My arms. My legs.’ I watch his eyes. I look for the slightest bit of revulsion, but none is there. Yet. ‘Nearly everything,’ I blurt out. His eyes are steady. ‘Enough that I’m illegal. Very illegal. According to the point schedule Allys told me about, I could be illegal five times over.’ His eyes falter and I feel everything in me cave. I pull my hands loose. ‘So that’s why my grandmother doesn’t want me to see you. She is trying to spare you, not me. By her own words, she doesn’t know what to make of me. Neither do I, except that I’m some kind of freakish monster.’

  Ethan walks away. He comes back, his hands jammed into his pockets. He stares at me. His face is stiff. Frightening. I feel weak. What have I done? I should have kept quiet. Listened to Mother. To Lily. I want to take back every word, but it is too late.

  His soft brown eyes have turned to icy beads. All his warmth is gone. ‘I nearly killed a man, Jenna,’ he says. ‘Some people called me a monster for hitting him with a bat even after he was unconscious. But I never felt like a monster. I barely remember doing it—something inside me snapped.’ Sweat spreads across his face, even though the day is cool. His confession runs out in choppy breaths, on the heels of mine, like they are linked.

  ‘The guy was a dealer. He gave my brother HCP. My brother was only thirteen at the time, Jenna. He didn’t know anything about anything. So I went after the dealer. When they sentenced me, they said they couldn’t tolerate people out there like me, trying to wield their own form of law enforcement. “Vigilante justice”, they called it. It wasn’t justice. This guy’s free and my brother’s hooked. He’s been in and out of rehab ever since.’