The Adoration of Jenna Fox (10 page)

"You called someone that?"

"My grandmother."

He winces. "You didn't know what it
meant?"

"I told you, I've forgotten a lot
—that's assuming I ever even had that lovely word in
my vocabulary."

He grunts and runs his eyes over me. "I'm
guessing you did."

He wastes no more time on chat and shows me
what is to occupy me for the next four hours. Dirt. I will be shoveling dirt
spoonful by spoonful. The
lavanderia
is undergoing
restoration to remove a thick layer of dirt that covers its northern end,
brought about by some long-ago mudslide. The dirt must be removed carefully so
as not to damage the ancient stones beneath it. We work side by side, using
flat-bottomed trowels and occasionally shears to cut the vines and roots that
weave through the blanket of dirt. I notice he works close by my side, even
though there is a long wall of dirt to remove.

"So why is your grandmother a dickhead
—I mean, annoying?" he asks.

I'm relieved that he breaks our silence first.
"Because she said we shouldn't be dating
—"
Oh, my God, Jenna, Stupid. Stupid.

 
"We're
dating?"

"No. I mean, my mother thought
—"

"Your
mother
thinks we're dating?
Just because I'm giving you a ride home?"

"No. Well, yes. I mean, never mind."
Help.
Every word seems to bury me further. Was I always this inept?

"
Hm
," he
says. He grins and stabs his trowel in for another load of dirt. We work for
another silent few minutes shoulder to shoulder on our hands and knees, being
careful not to dig too deeply, and then he sits back resting one arm on his
knee. "So why doesn't your grandmother like me dating you, other than I
teach you bad words?"

I drop my trowel. "We're
not
dating!
And it's not you. It's me."

"She doesn't like you? I thought
grandmothers had to like you. It's a law or something."

He's right. It should be a law. Or maybe it is
for most people, Hearing him say it out loud makes it more painful. So obvious,
Of course a grandmother should like you, and I wonder once again if Lily has
good reason not to. Somehow, down deep, I think she does. I think of Kara and
Locke. I ache for them. Does it have something to do with them?
Hurry,
Jenna.
I hear their voices like they are whispering into my ear right now.
I don't have a good response for Ethan. I feel like I should cry, but there are
no tears. Not even a lump in my throat. I try to shrug off our conversation
like it doesn't matter. "I can't explain it. I guess I'm just special."

Ethan looks at me like he is trying to decide
something. His brown eyes make everything inside of me shift. He finally flicks
some dirt from his fingers at me and smiles. "Nah, Jenna. You're nothing
special."

In an instant, my insides swell, and I can't do
anything but stand there returning his stare, and even though I should be
embarrassed
—
I am embarrassed
—I can't
look away either. He moves first, awkwardly returning to his knees, and I join
him,
shoulder to shoulder, snipping, clearing, and scooping a spoon-full
of dirt at a time.

The sun is warm on my back. From time to time,
I think I hear the chanting echoes from the church float on the breeze all the
way down to the gardens, but Ethan says that is impossible. We are too far
away. But I am sure I hear it. Or maybe the angelic tune is simply stuck in my
head.

I decide I like shoveling dirt. I like the
garden sounds and the mindless repetition. It is like it is the first time in
weeks that my brain truly has been able to rest from trying to remember. For
hours we work. Ethan stands now and then, stretching his back, rubbing his
knees, but I don't tire.

"You're a horse," he says.

"And you"
—I
want to find the right word—"are
not."
Not much of a word, but
the emphasis seems to have hit him nonetheless. He makes a show of rubbing his
knees one last time and returns to my side. I smile, glad that my hair conceals
my face.

Long stretches of time go by where we don't
talk as we work. I listen to the birds in the garden, the chink of our trowels,
the trickling of water from a nearby hose, and mostly to the voices in my own
head.
You're fitting in, Jenna. You're loved, Jenna. You're normal, Jenna.
You are almost whole, Jenna.
And mostly, I believe them.

"Do you know him?"

I glance to where Ethan is looking. At the top
of the stairs that lead to the gardens, a squat man is watching us. Just as I
look up, he clicks a picture and then walks away.

"No," I answer. "I've never seen
him before." Or maybe I have and I just don't remember him?

"Probably a tourist," Ethan says.
"Usually they just visit the mission
—not
way down here. Or maybe Father Rico sent someone to check up on us."

"Maybe," I say.

Trigger

Sliding into Ethan's truck, I remember.

It's the gray leather.

I had a car.

But no license. I didn't have a license.

Mother and Father wouldn't let me get one.

Why would they give me a car

but not let me drive it?

I remember racing down the road in my car.

Hurry, Jenna.

I did.

And Kara and Locke were with me.

A Hundred Points

I slide across the seat of Ethan's truck to
make room for
Allys
. We are picking her up from her
community project before we head back to the village charter. We're outside the
offices and labs adjacent to the Del Oro University Medical Center. Besides
coming here for therapy, she also volunteers for the Del Oro Ethics Task Force.
She gathers materials for review and helps process the numerous checks and
balances that monitor their research activities.

"Grunt work," Ethan called it when he
described it to me. How could it be any more grunt work than spooning dirt? And
I remember the way
Allys
spoke of it a few days ago.
It's important to her. She is passionate, and I think she would do it even if
Rae did not require a community volunteer project. She has accepted the loss of
her limbs but blames an out-of-control medical system for the outcome. She
thinks if someone had regulated antibiotics long ago, when they first knew
about the dangers of overuse, she and millions like her would have had a
different fate, and now she seems determined that no new medical injustices
will be unleashed on the world.

When he talks about
Allys
,
Ethan's voice takes on an edge I hadn't heard before. Like he feels her
injustices, too. Does he care about her? How much does he care? Or does he have
injustices of his own? I know nothing about him, really. Why is he at the
village charter? Ethan said they all had their reasons for being there.
Allys
talked about her physical limitations. Gabriel said
he had an anxiety disorder and the small environment was more comfortable for
him, but Ethan never revealed his reasons.

"Can you take these?"
Allys
hands me the braces that still steady her, and she
slides in next to me. "Two more weeks, and these will be gone. At least
that's what they tell me." Her eyes sparkle, and her words come out in a
continuous excited stream. "They uploaded some new technology that will
help the prosthetics anticipate my own balance system. It will supposedly read
nerve signals from my brain and learn from them. They said to walk as much as
possible to speed up the learning process. Imagine that
—I've got smart legs." She shoots a warning look at Ethan.
"Don't say a word."

"Me?" Ethan says sweetly.

"I thought you were here for your
volunteer project," I say.

"That, too. But the therapy and the ethics
offices are in the same complex, so I get it all done the same days. How'd your
project go?"

"Shoveling dirt?"

"She's a horse," Ethan says,
repeating his assessment of me.

"I liked it," I tell her. "It is
not exactly a mental challenge
— well, except
maybe for Ethan—but Father Rico was very grateful."

Ethan jogs the steering wheel to register my
point, and
Allys
laughs. "The mission's a good
cause. They don't have funds, so without volunteers they'd never be able to
keep it up. It has a lot of history that's important. It was my second choice
right after the ethics office."

"Who runs the ethics office? The
hospital?" I ask.

"Are you kidding? The hospital hates the
ethics office, but they'd never admit it. You've never heard of the FSEB?"

I try to scan my pathetic excuse of memory. It
seems like I should know it. Like it is almost within my reach.

"It's not another bad word, if that's what
you're thinking," Ethan says.

"It's the Federal Science Ethics
Board,"
Allys
says. "They run the office.
They're the yea and nay of all research and a lot of medical procedures, too.
If you don't file all the forms and report every procedure, they shut you down.
Whole hospitals. They've actually done it. Not often, but enough times that
it's put the fear into every medical and research facility in the
country."

"Why do they do it?"

"They're the watchdog. There has to be
some central control. Look at human cloning at the turn of the century. Even
though it was illegal, some lab facilities were still doing it because the
checks and balances were so weak. And then there's Bio Gel. That alone is
probably responsible for Congress even establishing the FSEB."

Allys
is still talking, but it is a
garbled echo.
Bio Gel.
Father's work. I can hear Lily saying it again,
He
made a big splash.
"Bio Gel?"

"It changed everything. It made almost
anything possible."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

Allys
raises her eyebrows. "You do
have big blanks, don't you? Well, Blue Goo
—as
the hospital calls it—is, well, blue."

"Brilliant," Ethan interjects.

"And,"
Allys
says, raising her voice, "it's artificially oxygenated and loaded with
neurochips
. They're smaller than the human cell and communicate
with each other pretty much the same way neurons do, except faster. And they
learn. Once you've loaded them with some basic information, they pass on
information to other
neurochips
and begin to
specialize. And of course, the truly spectacular thing is they can communicate
with human cells in the same way. You pack a human or lab liver in Bio Gel, and
the
neurochips
do the rest
—deliver
oxygen, nutrients, communicate with the central database, until it can be
transplanted into someone who needs it."

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"Sometimes. But just because we
can
doesn't
mean we should. That's what the FSEB considers."

"How so?" I ask, trying to sound only
mildly interested.

"Well, one way is point values," she
says. "Everyone gets a lifetime maximum of one hundred points. My limbs,
for instance. The implanted digital technology to work with the prosthetics is
very low point value. Sixteen points for all of them. But a heart:
—that's worth thirty-five alone. Throw in lungs and kidneys and
you're at ninety-five points."

"That sounds simplistic," I say.

"Maybe. But fair, too. It doesn't matter
how rich or important you are. Everyone's in the same boat. And medical
resources and costs are kept under control."

"What about brains?" Ethan asks.
"What are they worth?"

"Brains are pretty much illegal. Only
biodigital
enhancement up to forty-nine percent is allowed
to restore some lost function and that's it."

"That's an odd number," I say.
"Why only forty-nine percent?"

"You have to draw the line somewhere,
don't you? Medical costs are a terrible economic drain on society, not to
mention all the ethics involved. And by restricting how much can be replaced or
enhanced, the FSEB knows you are more human than lab creation. We don't want a
lot of half-human lab pets crawling all around the world, do we? I think that's
the main point of it all."

"And the FSEB is always right?" Ethan
asks.

Allys
sits up straighter, and her words
come fast and clipped.

"They're trying to preserve our humanity,
Ethan. How can anyone argue with that? They're protecting us, and I for one,
think that is quite admirable. Plus, I happen to know there's a lot of very
intelligent and qualified people in that agency."