The Adoration of Jenna Fox

by Mary E. Pearson

  Mr Bender and I walk down the incline and cross the creek where a downed log provides a bridge. ‘I was in my yard when I saw you walk into the forest,’ he says. ‘When I saw Dane follow a short time later, I grabbed my club.’

  ‘Thank you. Between your golf club and my grip, I think he’s headed in the other direction by now.’ We walk out of the forest and up the path that leads to his house.

  ‘Should we call the police?’

  I hesitate. ‘No. It wouldn’t be a good idea for either of us. I’ll be more careful in the future.’

  ‘You shouldn’t go into the forest alone. It’s not just that criminal. Sometimes there are mountain lions in the area.’

  I stop and face him. ‘Really, Mr Bender—or should I call you Edward?—we both know I can be replaced as easily as a damaged Netbook. Backups are handy that way.’

  He looks almost as stunned as Dane did a few minutes ago. ‘How’d you figure it out?’

  ‘The backups or you?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘I have five hundred billion neurochips, Mr Bender. It wasn’t difficult. But Father probably told you about that already.’

  Mr Bender nods, looking down. He shouldn’t be ashamed. He was Father’s friend before he was mine. I resume my pace. ‘When you have five times the brain capacity, I guess it’s just a matter of time before you start using it.’ Details from two-year-old Jenna’s brain had surfaced sometime after I saw the old battered aqua car in Mr Bender’s garage. ‘And I finally remembered an old photo that hung in our brownstone when I was a toddler. It was of Father with his first car. The aqua one he passed on to you.’

  Small slips these are, memories they wouldn’t expect from a two-year-old, but my memories don’t differentiate—two days, two years, or ten—they are all the same weight and intensity.

  ‘I just found the house for him. I owed him that,’ he says. ‘I don’t know as much as you may think. Your father told me very little.’

  ‘To spare you, probably. The less you know, the less guilty, right?’

  He doesn’t reply.

  ‘So you kept in touch with him all these years?’

  ‘Not at first, but after a few years I needed that connection. I needed someone who knew me before. So that the rest of my life wasn’t invalid. It’s more painful to leave your identity behind than most people imagine. Essentially, you’ve been erased. It doesn’t really make sense, I know, but when I finally contacted your dad, he listened and he understood. He was always there for me, from giving me his car when I needed to get away to being there when I needed to talk.’

  ‘You talk often?’

  ‘Maybe once every year or so. Not often. And then we have to be careful. He called me when you were hurt. He was wild with grief. And then he called me again a few days later. He babbled mostly. Thinking out loud. I thought he was drunk at first. Really talking more to himself than me, but I guess he just needed me there to listen. He said he knew he was going to lose you unless he did something … drastic. He didn’t tell me what. He just hung up, and I didn’t hear from him again until he called about needing a house that was out of the way.’

  ‘So that was your role. Long-distance Realtor.’ A slight tilt of his head, and a hesitant nod, makes me remember what Lily said. ‘Oh, and you were also the other half of the whisking team,’ I add.

  ‘Whisking?’

  ‘Getting me out of Dodge.’

  He smiles. ‘Right. I’m part of the emergency drill. Your father said he’d rather keep you here since he can easily get medical support if something goes wrong, but if the authorities should find out, your grandmother is to bring you to my house. From there I take both of you to an airstrip not far from here. It’s only a short flight over the border into Mexico to another airstrip. And from there you’d fly to Italy. Italy has more liberal laws regarding transplants.’

  ‘And brain uploads? The Italians can’t count?’

  He is silent.

  ‘Or to make matters simpler, and save you some time, my parents could just pop my backup in the mail instead. Parcel post could take me to Italy, probably for a lot less expense and worry. Or if they really want to splurge, they could overnight me with Air Express. Or they could—’

  The rising delirium in my voice makes me stop my rant.

  ‘Come,’ Mr Bender says. ‘Let’s sit and talk for a bit.’

  I nod and follow him up the slope to his house and we sit in two chairs on his back porch looking out at the pond and my own house on the other side.

  ‘What’s wrong with Dane, Mr Bender?’ I ask. ‘My friend Allys says he’s missing something.’

  ‘I don’t know exactly, Jenna, but I think your friend might be right. All I know for sure is that he’s trouble.’

  ‘But at least he’s legal.’

  Mr Bender jogs his chair toward me and leans forward. ‘Listen to me, Jenna. There are different kinds of laws. Some are written in books, and some are written in here.’ He taps his chest. ‘Dane may have the paper kind of legal, but he has none of the kind that’s planted inside.’

  But how does it get there?

  I look at him, his hand still resting against his chest. How does the ‘legal’ kind get inside? Can it be sewn in by a surgeon with careful stitches?

  ‘What do you see, Mr Bender, when you look at me?’

  I watch his eyes, taking in my skin, my face, my eyes. I see him consider every twitch, every blink of my eyes. I can see his every misstep, every considered lie, every return to truth. It’s a line he crosses often, and sometimes lies and truth melt into something else. His tongue runs across his lips. He blinks.

  Truth. Lie. Truth. The something else. Confusion at what I am?

  ‘Please,’ I say.

  ‘I see a lot of complicated things when I look at you, Jenna. A horrible unexpected turn, a second chance, hope—’

  I stand. ‘Hope for what, Mr Bender? A life where I can never be what I was, and can’t even be what I am now without hiding? This is all too hard.’

  ‘Jenna.’ He stands and holds my shoulders. ‘I’m sorry for what you’re going through. I know it’s been difficult. Believe me, no one knows as well as I do how hard it is to start over. I think that’s why I wanted to help you from the beginning, maybe even when I shouldn’t have. I saw the frightened teen I once was when I looked at you.’

  He lets go of my shoulders, but I keep looking into his face. Mr Bender is as old as my father, but I see something in him that is as young as me. Do certain events in our lives leave a permanent mark, freezing a piece of us in time, and that becomes a touchstone that we measure the rest of our lives against?

  I feel my fists relax, my joints loosen. ‘I think it was good luck that you were my first friend, Mr Bender.’

  ‘First?’

  ‘That’s right. Jenna’s first friend, AD.’

  His eyebrows raise.

  ‘After Disaster.’

  He laughs, his curious Mr Bender laugh, and then suggests a walk in his garden.

  We reach the circular clearing where he feeds the birds. ‘Here,’ he says as he removes his jacket. ‘I’ve been borrowing Clayton Bender’s identity for thirty years. Let me share it with you for a few minutes.’ He places his jacket on my shoulders and then takes my palm and rubs it with his own. ‘Turns out that birds have a better sense of smell than most people think.’

  We sit on the log bench and he fills my palm with seed, and even though it is only for the briefest moment, a sparrow lands and flies away with a beak full.

  ‘See? They’re used to you now. Next time you won’t need me.’

  I decide that sometimes definitions are wrong. Even if they’re written in a dictionary. Identities aren’t always separate and distinct. Sometimes they are wrapped up with others. Sometimes, for a few minutes, maybe they can even be shared. And if I am ever fortunate enough to return to Mr Bender’s garden, I wonder if the birds will see that piece of him that is wrapped up in me.

  Listening


  The silence

  darkness

  nothing

  please

  let us go

  Help us

  Jenna.

  We need you.

  Hurry, Jenna.

  We need you.

  Screaming. I hear screaming. My own screams. Theirs.

  But no one can hear. A place so dark no one can hear. Except me. ‘Help! Please! Somebody!’

  ‘Jenna! Wake up!’

  Father is holding me. Mother sits at the end of my bed. I am in a place of light and touch again. ‘You were dreaming,’ Father says, squeezing me.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I was …’ Impossible. Father’s face is lined, tired. Fear. Mother is perched, waiting, her hair a bird’s nest.

  ‘You were what, Jenna?’

  ‘I was listening.’

  ‘To what, darling? What?’ Mother asks.

  ‘To Kara and Locke. They’re calling me. I heard their voices.’

  Father brushes my hair from my face and touches my cheek. ‘That’s impossible, Angel. You were only dreaming. That’s all.’

  I don’t argue. There would be no point. But I didn’t dream the voices. I heard them. Fresh and now. Somehow, someway, they found me. They need me.

  But I need them, too.

  In the flash between darkness and light, between dream-world and reality, I cross a boundary. I remember the accident.

  The Accident

  Every detail. Sharp, like claws.

  It wasn’t the Bio Gel, the searching neurochips, or any of the shortcomings of my new self. It was me all along. The grieving me. The shocked me. The in-denial me. But now, Kara and Locke are forcing me to remember.

  I sit in the dark, a sliver of light from the hallway slashed across my bed. I listen to the faint wheeze of air entering and leaving my chest. Breathing. A new kind of breathing. Because of that night.

  Keys flying in the air.

  My fingers outstretched.

  My fingers were throwing the keys. Not catching them.

  ‘I can’t drive, Locke,’ I told him.

  ‘You’re the only one with a car,’ he complained.

  ‘If you don’t drive, Jenna, then we don’t go,’ Kara added. ‘We need you!’

  ‘I’m not driving without a license. Besides, my voice commands aren’t even programmed into the car yet. I couldn’t start it anyway.’

  ‘Kara could drive,’ Locke says. ‘And starting it’s not a problem. There’s an override. You must have a code or keys around here somewhere.’

  The kitchen drawer. Where Claire keeps all the extra keys.

  I could have pretended I didn’t know where they were.

  I could have distracted them.

  But I didn’t.

  I opened the drawer and pulled them out.

  ‘Yes!’ Locke says and snatches the keys from my hand. He throws them to Kara. They wait for my response. I hesitate. Wondering. Thinking. But not for too long. I nod.

  So we went. Kara drove.

  I gave her the keys.

  I let her drive my car that even I wasn’t supposed to drive yet.

  Mother and Father were away for the night. Maybe I was eager for a fall, the thing I feared most. I had been easing toward it, testing the water, not sure what I wanted, except not to be everything I knew I wasn’t.

  It was a party. A stupid one. We were bored. Uninvited. No one knew us. We didn’t know any of them. It was crowded. Tight circles of strangers were drinking and smoking, oblivious to us. Crashing the party was a thrill that lasted five minutes. We were about to leave. But then the unexpected happened. A fight broke out. We didn’t know what might happen next. We were out of our neighborhood, out of our league. We were scared and we ran. I had the keys in my purse. Locke and I were on one side of the car. Kara on the other. ‘Hurry, Jenna! Hurry!’ It was dark. I frantically searched the black cavern of my purse for the keys. When I found them, I threw them to Kara, my fingers outstretched, trying to be sure of my aim.

  There was yelling. Shouts. We were out of our element. Panicked. We were only rule-followers pretending to be renegades. Other cars screeched away.

  ‘Go, Kara!’ Locke yelled from the back seat.

  She did.

  When we made it to the highway, the adrenaline that streaked through us subsided and our fear was replaced with laughter. I hadn’t noticed that Kara’s foot was still firmly on the accelerator. None of us had. The curve came up so fast. She braked, but it was too late. The car spun, hit the graveled shoulder. There were last-minute shouts.

  ‘Turn!’

  ‘Kara!’

  ‘Stop!’

  Kara was crying and screaming, desperately turning the steering wheel. We were tossed about, none of us having bothered with seat restraints in our rush to leave the party. The car skidded, then rolled when the shoulder turned to cliff, a blurred, chopped nightmare where sound and light cut through us. I was screaming, flying. Tumbling. Glass sprayed like a thousand knives, and the world had no up or down. The fear was so complete it webbed together our screams and motion. Blinding white heat and light. Flying free and the sickening thud of my skull on soil. Or was it Kara I heard, landing next to me? And then the sudden sharp contrast of quiet sounds, like tinkling crystal. Dripping. Hissing. A drawn-out crackle. And soft moans that seemed to hover in the air above me. And finally just blackness.

  I never saw Kara and Locke again.

  I heard them. For a few seconds I heard their breaths, their sighs, their screams. I heard them. Like I do now.

  And for all those months, in the dark place where I waited to be reborn, not knowing if I would ever see light again, between my own voiceless cries and pleading, those were the sounds I heard over and over again, the hellish sounds of Kara and Locke dying.

  Self-preservation

  They are my witnesses. They alone know that I didn’t drive.

  Someday, sometime, someone will come for me. And I will have Kara and Locke to help me. Save me.

  I can keep them.

  The entitled Jenna.

  How bad could it be to exist in a box forever?

  The Last Disc

  The cut-glass panes of the living room cabinet prism my reflection into a dozen distorted pieces. I search those pieces, the borrowed blues, reds, and violets, blended with glimmering flesh. I look for a shine, a difference. But I see nothing that says I am different from Dane.

  Versions of me and my friends are trapped where I never want to go again. And I won’t help them. Blues. Reds. Violets. Flesh. Fragments. Almost human. The same reflection Dane might have.

  I turn from the cabinet and go to the credenza that takes up a large portion of the living room wall. I rummage through the drawer, looking for Year Seven / Jenna Fox, the year where I can watch a girl who was still a child and didn’t know about expectations. A year when blue birthday cakes and surprises were all that mattered. Year Seven, probably the last year before I knew I was special.

  Mother has straightened the drawer and the disc is not where I left it. I run fingers along the file of discs, searching for it, when I notice something else. The camera. It is at the back of the drawer in a space that has been saved for it, but it has been jarred. A disc has partially popped out. I reach in and pull it loose and look at the label.

  JENNA FOX / YEAR SIXTEEN—DISC TWO

  It shakes between my fingers. This is the last disc. The real last disc.

  This is the one Lily wanted me to watch.

  A Recital

  Jenna floats across the stage. Her movements are precise. Her arms are curved in a graceful arch. Her feet pointing, her legs extending, arabesque, Jenna…

  … chassé, jeté entrelacé …

  …plié … pas de bourrée, pirouette, Jenna.

  All at perfect angles, perfect timing. She raises en pointe, her balance pure elegance.

  But her face is dead. The performance is all in her arms and legs and muscles, and none of it is in her heart.

  I remem
ber that night, the feel of the slipper, the ribbon snug at my ankles, the tight bodice of my costume that showed off my perfect tiny waist, the moisture forming at the nape of my neck. I remember before I even see it repeated on the disc. I remember looking out into the audience that night, my performance almost complete, and seeing Lily in the second row and the disappointment in her eyes and how that shook me and gave me permission all at the same time for what came next. Relevé, relevé. My well-trained muscles and bones were speaking to me, ordering me to perform. Relevé, Jenna. But I was frozen. The music passed me by. Relevé, Jenna! The audience is fidgeting. Uncomfortable. Hoping that the moment can be salvaged. I’m not sure it can. I am looking at Lily’s eyes on me, but I am seeing us at her kitchen counter just a few days before. I was complaining about my upcoming recital.

  ‘Who are you, Jenna? How can anyone know if you don’t show them?’

  ‘I’m tempted. Just once I’d like to let it out.’

  ‘And what would you do?’

  ‘While I was there onstage, I’d move in all the ways I’ve dreamed of. I’d stomp and grind and swing my hips and show them all.’

  ‘So what’s stopping you?’

  I remember she was serious, and I remember looking at her like she was crazy. ‘It wouldn’t be appropriate. I’d let too many people down.’

  ‘You mean your parents. I think they’d live.’

  The audience is holding its breath. The music has stopped.

  Relevé, Jenna! My muscles are demanding action.

  Stomp! Grind, Jenna. Swing your hips!

  And then I feel it. My calves stiffen. My heels lift. Relevé. And then a quick hop to en pointe. Hold. Hold. Down to fourth position, plié, and bow. The audience heaves a single sigh of relief, even though I am completing my dance long after the music has stopped. Their zealous applause erases the gap.

  I have delivered. That is all that matters.

  Pieces

  A bit for someone here.