The Adoration of Jenna Fox (15 page)

"And you thought it was wrong?"

"I'm not like your parents. I think there
are worse things than dying."

I think of the dark place, where I was nowhere
at all. Trapped, dead, but alive. I hug my knees tighter and turn my face to
look into Lily's eyes that have been watching me all along. "And that's
what you think Jenna did? Died?"

She shakes her head. "There you go again.
Putting words in my mouth. You were always good at putting
—" She stops
abruptly,  like she has caught 
herself admitting  to some-thing. "Like I said before, I didn't know
what to make of you. That's all."

"Didn't. Don't. Which is it?"

"What?"

"Two different things. First time you said
you don't know what to make of me. Just now you said didn't. Past tense. Big
difference. You've come to a decision?"

She laughs. "God, you sound like Jenna.
You look like Jenna. You can even be so damn precise and picky and aggravating
like Jenna."

She begins to reach out like she is going to
touch my knee, but then she pulls back and returns her hand to her lap. "I
just don't know if you're a perfect replica of my Jenna, or
—"

"Or the miracle
you prayed for?"

She nods, her lips tight. My nana. I lay my
head down on my scrunched-up knees and close my eyes, even though I loathe the
darkness.

"I don't know either," I say. I speak
the words into the dark, crowded angles of my folded arms and legs. I'm not
even sure she can hear me. Or if anyone can. It's a familiar feeling I never
wanted to return to.

Species

Human
n. 1. A member of the
species
Homo sapiens, adj.
2. Representative of the sympathies and
frailties of human nature. 3. Sympathetic, humane. 4. Having human form or
attributes.

Where do I go from here?

How many hours can one person spend locked in a
bathroom, looking at skin, hair, eyes. Feeling fingers. Toes. And the absurdity
of a belly button?

How many definitions for human can one person
find? And how do you know which one is correct?

How many hours can you spend shivering? And
holding.

And wondering.

Details

We sit in the living room. Father builds a
fire, even though Mother warns that the top of the chimney is still missing. He
doesn't care. He wants a fire. If the house burns down, he'll build another.
She doesn't argue.

His time here is limited. He will be missed in
Boston. Questions will be asked, and the others can't cover for him for long.
So in this unplanned visit he tries to tell me more of what I need to know. At
dinnertime I learned more about the new and improved Jenna. Even though Bio Gel
is self-sufficient, I actually do have a primitive digestive system, mostly for
"psychological reasons." No stomach, but an intestine of sorts. It
explains my infrequent trips to the restroom and unusual constitution. And the
system does utilize the nutrients for my skin. At some point, I may be able to
eat some table foods. I tell Father I have already indulged in mustard and he
frowns, but he doesn't say anything. It's like he can't take any more drama.
Even if it may derail everything he and Mother have worked toward for so long.
Mustard. Irrelevant.

Mother has been mostly quiet. Before dinner she
apologized for raising her hand to me. She stumbled over her words. I don't
recall her ever hitting me, but even the possibility seems to shake her. Now
she sits in the wingback chair near the fire, her head back, her eyes staring
at something I can't see. The past? Is she retracing every moment, wondering
what she should have done differently? Always chatty and in control, she is now
the opposite, like someone has pulled her plug. Father fills the space she
leaves by adding logs in the fireplace and refilling both their brandy glasses.
I have never before seen Mother drink anything stronger than cranberry juice.

Father doesn't address the question I threw at
him before I ran out the kitchen door this afternoon. Perhaps, like mustard, it
is irrelevant to him. I don't think it is irrelevant to Lily. She had been
conspicuously absent all evening. She helped make dinner but didn't join Mother
and Father in eating it, instead excusing herself and going to her room.
"You need some time alone together," she said.

As he pokes at the fire, Father explains in
detail more than I really want to know, the tedious process of saving bits of
my skin and growing it in the lab and combining it with other specimens until
the required amount was achieved. He moves on to the technology of brain scans,
what he and his team have learned just from my experience and the implications
for future-patients facing similar problems. As long as he is in
doctor-scientist mode, he is talkative and in charge. When he veers into father
mode, he stumbles and looks in many ways like a mirror image of Mother. He
ages. Who is this Jenna Fox who has so much power over them? I feel like a
weak, unsure ghost of her. Maybe a replica. I search for some portion of her
strength.

Father leans back in a chair opposite Mother
and talks of the challenges of uploading. I am poised on the middle of the sofa
between their chairs. The scientific complexities don't matter to me as much as
the human ones do. When will we talk about that?

I cut into his safe, doctor mode.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I ask.
"The minute I woke up? Didn't I deserve to know?"

His head drops momentarily. His chest rises.
Mother's eyes close. "Maybe we should have, Jenna," he says. He
stands and paces near the hearth. "I'm not saying we did everything right.
Damn, it's not like there's a manual for this sort of situation. We're groping
our way through this. It's a first for us, too, just like it is for you. We're
—"

He stops his pacing and looks at me.
"We're just doing the best we can." I hear the catch in his voice,
and it knifes through me.

Mother opens her eyes and the lioness returns.
They are a tag team. When one is spent, the other takes up the fight. "We
know this is hard on you, Jenna. It's hard on us, too. Someday you'll
understand. Someday, when you have a child of your own, you'll finally
understand what a parent will do to save their child."

"Look at me!
I can never have a child!"

She softens. "We saved an ovary, darling.
It's preserved at an organ bank. And a surrogate mother won't be a problem
—"

God! Bits of me have landed everywhere. It
would be funny if it wasn't so horrifying. I stand abruptly, judging whether to
leave or stick it out. "Please, can we stay with one issue at a time? I
asked a simple question," I say. "Why didn't you tell me? You didn't
forget. I remember that much about both of you. Details don't escape you. I've
lived with details for years." I look directly at Claire. "I won't
even bring up the fact that I am two inches shorter now
—acceptable ballerina height—another detail I know wasn't an
oversight. So let's just go back to my original question. What took you so
long?"

"Listen very carefully," she says.
Her face and voice are hard. "Every ounce of our breath was sucked out of
us. For days we didn't breathe. Literally,
that's
what it felt like. And
every time I looked at you, I was afraid to look away again, like my eyes were
the only thing anchoring you to this earth. It was unbearable every time I
looked at you, but I couldn't look away either.

So, if we didn't do everything just right,
understand it wasn't just you who's been through hell."

Stalemate. It's true. I read it on their faces.
The years and the lines I've added.

"But you're right. There's more," she
adds. "It doesn't matter anymore, but weeks ago we couldn't tell you
because we weren't sure what your mental state would be. Judgment,
specifically. There are a lot of people who have laid their lives and careers
on the line for you, Jenna. We had to be careful. If you slipped and told
someone, you would not only jeopardize your future but theirs as well."

How can I argue with this? But how can I handle
any more weight of being the perfect Jenna, now not just for Mother and Father,
but for people I don't even know? When does it end? I lean my forehead against
the mantel and close my eyes.

"And for the record," Father says,
"your mother had nothing to do with your being two inches shorter. It was
a decision based on mechanics, ratio, and the limitations of balance. A few
inches shorter would have been even better, but two was the perfect
compromise."

Perfect. A shorter, more perfect Jenna. How
wonderful.

Careful, Jenna.

There's still more. It speaks to me. Somewhere,
winding inside, pieces are trying to come together, synapses trying to form, a
complete story trying to connect within. Four hundred billion extra neural
chips trying to put together what the old Jenna never could.

Mother's hand is on my shoulder. "Please,
for all our sakes
— especially yours—you mustn't
say anything to anyone."

I nod, unable to speak. Father reaches out. He
pulls me close, squeezing, and I melt into his shoulder, letting his arms
circle me like a warm, tight blanket.

Hold On

"Do you hear me, Jenna?

I'm here. I won't let you go."

I dreamed I was riding my bicycle.
My first two-wheeler,

    the training wheels
gone.

But Father's voice was all wrong.

"Hold on, Jenna. For me, Angel.
Please." Tight. Desperate.

I open my eyes. Father has turned
away.

There is no bicycle, only a hospital
bed.

He doesn't see me watching him.

He slumps against a wall, staring
blankly at the opposite one

I want to
get
out of my bed
and hold him up

the way he always had for me.

I want to wrap my arms around him
tight so he can be

happy again.

But against my will, my eyelids
close

and shut him out.

Denied

Jenna Angeline Fox.

I narrow down the possibilities.

Plus,
Accident. Boston.

Searching for pieces with the pieces I have
gained.

The
Netbook
blinks,
and I wait for the thousands of bits to become the few I need.

A blink. Red.

Access Denied.

Denied.

Denied.

Shut out. No matter how many times I ask, it
will not give it over. Why is Mr. Bender allowed but I am not? What have they
done to this
Netbook
?

Keys fly in the air. My fingers
reach out. Hurry, Jenna.

The pieces speak, but there are not enough.
Yet.

An Invisible Boundary

"
I
left the woods for as good a
reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives
to live, and could not spare any more time for that one."
Ethan pauses
from his reading of
Walden
and looks in my direction.

It is the second time he has paused his reading
and discussion to look at me, like he is giving me an opening to interrupt him.
I don't take it, and he goes on. I am still unsure about continuing with
school. It seems wrong to even be here. I am out of place. Like I am playing a
game, pretending at being something I'm not. What am I? The question won't go
away. Monday morning Father had to return to Boston. It was too risky to draw
attention with his absence. They both said I should resume my normal routine,
too. Doesn't a normal life go hand in hand with a normal routine?

 I am not normal.

The group exchanges thoughts.
Allys
comments. Gabriel comments. Even Dane comments..

"Jenna?" Rae prompts.

I shake my head and remain silent. Rae doesn't
pressure. It is not her style. She nods at Ethan to continue. He shifts his
cross-legged position on the desktop and looks at me for much too long before
he finally returns to the pages in his open book.

"Even though he left after two years,
Thoreau decides his time at Walden is a success if only because,
I learned
this, at least, by my experiment, that if one advances confidently in the
direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things
behind
—" He stops and looks at me
again. I feel my agitation with him grow. His dark eyes drill into me and won't
turn away, waiting.
"He will put some things behind
—" he
repeats. More waiting. The silence is thunder. Dane smirks but everyone else
remains quiet.