The Adoration of Jenna Fox

by Mary E. Pearson

  A bit there.

  And sometimes they don’t add up to anything whole.

  But you are so busy dancing.

  Delivering.

  You don’t have time to notice.

  Or are afraid to notice.

  And then one day you have to look.

  And it’s true.

  All of your pieces fill up other people’s holes.

  But they don’t fill

  your own.

  The Beach

  ‘Over here!’ Claire calls, waving her arm.

  Lily waves back. Neither of us move, and Mother resumes her walk through the tide pools. The ride to the beach was tense. We hardly talked in the car. Mother insisted we go, saying the unseasonably warm March day was perfect for a walk at the beach.

  ‘She needed this,’ Lily says.

  ‘I didn’t.’

  Lily pulls her sweatshirt over her head and ties it around her waist. ‘Then what do you need, Jenna?’ Her voice is sharp.

  I look at her and knot inside. I can’t answer. I shake my head and walk away. She grabs my arm and spins me around. ‘I asked you something. What do you need?’

  I pull away. How dare she treat me like a—

  ‘I need—I need—’ I want to spit my words into her stupid face is what I need to do, but they just keep catching, like they are snared on something inside. I stand there, my lips still searching for words.

  ‘Tell me!’ she says.

  I can’t.

  She lets go of my arm and sighs. ‘And that has always been your problem, Jenna,’ she says softly. ‘You’ve always been two people. The Jenna who wants to please and the Jenna who secretly resents it. They won’t break, you know. Your parents never thought you were perfect. You did.’

  What is she talking about? I never thought—‘They placed me on a pedestal from the day I was born! What choice did I have but to be perfect! And if I lagged in math or soccer or navel gazing, they got me a personal tutor! And then I was tutored and coached until I was perfect! I’ve been under a microscope my entire life! From the moment I was conceived, I had to be everything because I was their miracle! That’s what I had to live up to every day of my life! How dare you say that it was me when it was them! I was conceived to please!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Claire asks, running over to see why our voices are raised.

  Lily’s eyes hold on to me, like she is talking me down from a ledge. Her voice is low. ‘Start small,’ she says. ‘I’ll ask again, what do you need?’

  ‘I need …’ The words are dammed up. Start small. ‘A skirt. A red skirt!’

  ‘What?’ Claire’s confusion is obvious, but her eyes are intense and clear, focusing on me like I am the whole Pacific Ocean.

  ‘And room. I need room.’

  Claire looks at Lily. ‘What is going on?’

  ‘Listen,’ Lily says. She grabs Claire by the shoulders and turns her to face me. ‘Just listen.’

  ‘I don’t want to be your miracle anymore. I can’t be your miracle anymore. I need to be here on this planet with the same odds as everyone else. I need to be like everyone else.’

  I slow. I take a breath. ‘I can’t ever be really alive if I can’t die, too. I need the backups. Kara’s, Locke’s … and mine.’ Mother’s face is frozen like I am speaking babble. ‘I want to let them go,’ I whisper. She doesn’t move. ‘Destroyed,’ I clarify, raising my voice, so that for once my intentions can’t be twisted.

  Her face loosens, goes blank. She says nothing for much too long. Now it is me, frozen, and Lily, waiting, wondering if anything I said made it through to her. And then the part in her lips closes and her shoulders pull back. ‘We’ll stop on the way home and get you a red skirt,’ she finally says. She turns and walks away, only pausing for a moment to shoot Lily a stiff, cold stare.

  Calculations

  The ride home is quiet. I watch Lily. Mother. I see their eyes, unfocused, staring at the road ahead but not seeing it. Each of us are bound by our own thoughts, seeing the edges of our limits, maybe seeing the edges of others’. How far can we push? How far can we bend? How much can we preserve? How can we get what we want? The calculations are endless, not knowing the future, not knowing how far is too far for any of us. My thoughts drift, search, calculate, remembering, jumping to the past and back again.

  My baby, my precious baby, I’m so sorry.

  The hospital room is dim. Her chair is pulled close. She rocks, hums, whispers, and she smiles. The smiles are the hardest to watch. They are beyond her strength, but somehow she makes them come forth.

  Let me die.

  Please.

  I screamed the words. Over and over. But only in my head. The words couldn’t get past my lips. But even as I pleaded within, hoping some message would get across, I knew. As I lay there in the hospital bed, unable to move or speak, as soon as I looked into Claire’s eyes, I knew.

  She would never let me go.

  So much strength within her, but not the strength to let go.

  I was forever her baby. Forever her miracle.

  How long is forever?

  Grasping

  Forever adv. 1. Without ever ending, eternally: to last forever. 2. Continually, incessantly, always.

  There are many words and definitions I have never lost.

  But some I am only just now beginning to truly understand.

  Moving

  Lily swings her door shut and heads off to her greenhouse, to simmer, I presume. Father is standing on the walkway talking to someone. He lifts his hand and waves but returns to his conversation. I am startled to see a visitor, since we have never before had one. The visitor’s back is to me, but his girth is oddly familiar. Mother gathers two bags of groceries we stopped for on the way home. We didn’t get a red skirt. It’s not important. It never really was.

  ‘Come in the back way with me, Jenna,’ Mother says. Her voice is near an edge I have already calculated. How far can I push? I turn, leaving her at the garage entrance, and walk around to the front where Father talks to the visitor. They are close, keeping their words tight, like the air itself might snatch them up. Father glances at me, willing me to hurry in the door. But I linger, of course.

  Tomorrow …

  Not safe …

  I concentrate, trying to decipher the whispered words. I detect a rush within me, an ache, and then a stillness, like the words are being whispered right into my ear. Like every available neurochip has been called to task. And they have. I have billions of available neurochips.

  They’re too vulnerable where they are.

  I have several possibilities. By tomorrow I’ll move them.

  It can’t be—

  Traced. I know. I have it covered.

  And secure.

  Have I let you down yet?

  She’s my life, Ted.

  The visitor shakes Father’s hand, then turns, knowing all along that I have been watching them both. He nods in my direction, and I feel everything drop within me. He is the tourist from the mission. The one who took Ethan’s and my picture.

  He leaves, shuffling down the walk and sliding his wide girth into a small car that wheezes under his weight.

  ‘Who is he?’ I ask Father as he approaches me.

  ‘It’s not important,’ Father answers. ‘Let’s go inside.’

  ‘I’ve seen him before.’

  Father frowns, knowing I won’t let it go. ‘My security specialist. He takes care of … things.’

  ‘Like me?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘He took my picture at the lavanderia.’

  ‘Not you. He was investigating Ethan and the community project at the mission. Making sure the risk factor was minimal.’

  ‘Is that what my life is now?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A controlled risk-free cocoon for your lab pet?’

  Father sighs and runs his fingers through his hair, the only nervous habit I have observed in him. ‘Let’s not dig that up again, Jenna.�
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  ‘What’s he moving?’

  Father looks at me, making his own calculations, studying my face and especially my eyes. Does he know I can see lies as plainly as a deep breath or shrug? He doesn’t answer. He’s catching on. He knows I am becoming more than he planned. More than the endlessly compliant fourteen-year-old he loved. But all children grow up.

  ‘I’ll figure it out,’ I say.

  He concedes. ‘The backups. A closet in a house is no place for them. We didn’t have time for better choices before, but now we do. He is going to move them to a safer location.’

  He stares at me, too close, too carefully, like he is reading every breath and shrug from me as well. I carefully look up to my left, like I am weighing what he has told me, and slowly I look back at him. ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘That’s probably a good idea.’ He watches, and gradually I see his muscles loosen and relax. He believes me. But that is nothing new. He always did because I was a rule-follower. I played by the rules he understood. But there are new rules now, ones he doesn’t know yet. He’ll learn. Just as I am learning.

  He opens the front door. ‘You coming in?’

  ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘We were late getting back. Ethan is picking me up soon.’

  ‘It’s not a school day.’ He implies a question. He’s become more like Claire than I remember. When did he start clinging to me so? But I sense the answer lies somewhere between the darkness and the fear, sometime when it looked like I would be gone forever, the accident that didn’t just change me, but made them both different, too; that was when he changed. Calculations and maneuvers drain from me. I am seven years old and leading him to a cake that is filled with my love for him. I lean forward and kiss his cheek. ‘Our friend Allys is sick. She hasn’t been to school in days. We’re going to see her.’

  A simple kiss on the cheek and his eyes are glassy. ‘Be home before dark,’ he says. I don’t answer because lying is not in me right now. But I will try. Because of his eyes. Because I am his life. Because some things don’t change.

  I stand at the curb, waiting for Ethan, skimming back through the whispered conversation between Father and the stranger. By tomorrow. That’s what he said. By then the backups will be whisked away. But will their voices? Will I still hear them calling to me, pleading for release? If they only had a second chance, but they’ll never have a rebirth, not like me. Their purgatory will go on and on, and somehow they’ll always know that I could have saved them. Should have saved them.

  When tomorrow? Did he say?

  Sometime tomorrow Kara’s and Locke’s futures will be cemented, and I will become something less than genuine, like the first in a numbered series of art prints. Kara, Locke, and me, forgotten in a storage facility.

  Mother and Father won’t be going anywhere between now and tomorrow. There’s no chance I could sneak into their closet.

  Witnesses. They are witnesses.

  I don’t have the key to the closet anymore anyway. I was stupid to leave it in the lock when I ran out. I can’t do anything for them now. Relevé, Jenna. Relevé.

  I look at my hands. Trembling. A battle between neurochip and neuron, survival and sacrifice.

  Where’s Ethan? He’s late!

  I stand on tiptoe, like that will help me see farther down our street. My breaths come in rapid shallow pants, and I feel betrayed by this body that remembers panic with ease but needs coaxing to remember friends. I can’t let them go.

  I spot Ethan’s car, finally, turning the corner at the end of our street.

  ‘I can help you.’ I jump and turn around. It is Lily.

  I don’t need to ask. I know what help means.

  ‘You have a right,’ she says, ‘at least to your own backup. And maybe more. Only you know what it’s like. If you really want this, we can figure something out—’

  Ethan stops his car at the curb. I open the door but look back at Lily. ‘They’re taking them away tomorrow.’

  ‘Then maybe we’ll talk tonight?’

  I nod, wondering at her unexpected proposal. ‘Maybe we will,’ I answer, and I get into Ethan’s car.

  They Know

  ‘You’re shaking.’

  ‘Just my hands.’

  ‘No, all over.’ He pulls me close with one arm while he drives with the other. I notice my shoulders trembling for the first time. I try to make it stop, but I can’t control them. Is this what Father talked about? If there are conflicts with your original brain tissue … signals that might create almost an antibody effect … one trying to override the other … that’s why we have backups. Just in case.

  Ethan leans over, one eye on the road, and rubs his lips against my temple. It sends a current through me and, for at least a moment, disconnects me from my thoughts. ‘It’s okay,’ he says. He straightens, returning his full attention to the road, but continues to rub my shoulder. I look at him, wondering how someone so gentle could ever swing a bat into someone else’s skull. Do we all have surprising capacities hidden within us? ‘Don’t worry about Allys telling. She’s been out for four days. If she had told someone, we’d know it by now.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I answer. ‘Or maybe not. You said the FSEB is a bureaucratic machine. My guillotine order may just be delayed in paperwork.’

  He’s silent, but his eyes dart back and forth across the passing landscape, like he is reading words that are hidden from my view. He rubs my shoulder more vigorously. Finally he blurts out, startling me, ‘The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything …’ He pauses, waiting.

  I smile and concede. ‘…it is very likely to be my good behavior.’

  ‘No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes …’

  ‘… or in silence passes by as true today may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow.’ I put my hand up to stop another quote from leaving his lips. ‘Ethan, I truly appreciate the effort, but I can recite Thoreau all day long and still be afraid.’

  ‘But maybe I can’t,’ he says. He squeezes me. ‘And feel. Your shoulders have stopped shaking. Guess you don’t know as much as you think.’

  I notice. The trembling is gone. Afraid but calm. It’s a slightly better place to be. I think of the wild energy of cyclones, but at their center is a tiny circle of calm. That is what Ethan has given me. I lean in closer to his shoulder. ‘Maybe she’s not sick. Maybe she just doesn’t want to see me.’

  ‘She didn’t look good the last time we saw her. Her color. Something about her was off.’

  It’s true. I remember noticing her yellow pallor and the way her pills stuck in her throat. Another virus? It couldn’t be, not again, but of course, deep down, I know it’s possible. Deadly viruses are the plague of our age.

  The road to Allys’s house dips and weaves. It’s a road I have not yet traveled on. It winds deeper and deeper inland, getting narrower, the trees choking the road. Is this really a place I want to go? Does Ethan really know the way?

  ‘She lives this far?’

  ‘Not so far. It only seems that way when you haven’t been somewhere before.’

  He turns down an impossibly narrower lane. The road is uneven, not quite paved, a mixture of heavy gravel pressed into dirt. It is not a road on which I can picture Allys walking. No homes can be seen from the road; tall scrubby bushes obscure the view. We arrive at a driveway, marked by a simple white post with an address. Ethan maneuvers his truck down the narrow path and we are swallowed up by overgrown oleander, pink and white blooms brushing our windows. It is a cheery contrast to our reality and the reason we are traveling such a long and unknown road. The flashing of white, pink, and green briefly transfixes me.

  Our tunnel finally opens up to a large expanse, an emerald lawn skirting a small gray house with a deep shady porch. It is a silent house, still, like it is waiting to breathe, and I brace myself against the seat.

  ‘Maybe no one’s home.’

  ‘They’re home,’ I say.
Which neurochips are already reaching beyond what my neurons know? How are they telling me? Or is it simply what they call intuition? But I know with precise certainty. We are being watched. Eyes size up our car.

  We park on the circular drive and walk up the porch steps. Ethan’s heavy boots boom against the silence. Even birds are afraid to chirp.

  I hesitate on the last step. ‘I’m not sure—’

  ‘I don’t feel good about this either.’

  My imagined stomach catches. ‘She’s our friend.’ It’s a question as much as a statement.

  ‘I’m not reassured,’ Ethan answers.

  The door opens before we can knock.

  ‘Is Allys home?’ Ethan blurts out.

  A woman stares at us, her face blank and her eyes dark and circled. ‘I remember you,’ she says. The hollowness of her eyes reminds me of Mother when I looked up from my bed in the hospital in those days that I traveled a thin line back and forth between life and death, days where she never left my side. ‘Ethan,’ the woman finally adds.

  ‘Yes, I picked Allys up once for school.’

  ‘That was kind of you.’ Her gaze drifts away like she is recalling an important moment.

  ‘And I’m Jenna,’ I say, holding my hand out.

  Her focus jerks back, her pupils small, hard beads. ‘Jenna,’ she says, like she knows who I am. She looks at my outstretched hand and slowly reaches out and holds it. She runs her thumb along my knuckles like she is counting each one, and then she doesn’t let go. I look at Ethan, afraid to pull away. She sees us exchanging glances and drops my hand. Her back stiffens. ‘Allys isn’t well,’ she says.

  ‘May we see her?’

  A hand reaches around the door and pulls it open wide. ‘Why not?’ a man says. He is clearly as spent as the woman, the circles under his eyes and the lines of his forehead speaking of days of no sleep.

  ‘She might not be up to it,’ the woman protests, blocking the way.

  The man’s voice is tender, barely a whisper, a short knife in the tension that grips the house. ‘They’re her friends, Victoria. If not now, when?’