The Adoration of Jenna Fox (18 page)

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 some-one 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 h
ere.
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 is 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."

He pauses and draws in a long, shaky breath.
"So I know what a monster is, Jenna, and it's not me, and it's not
you." His voice is choked. It is like my fear exposed his own. I slide my
arms around his back and hold him, strumming the knots of his spine and the
blade of his shoulder, weighing the events that have made us both who we are
now. His lips nestle close to my ear, and I feel his labored breaths on my
skin. "Don't tell
Allys
," he finally
whispers.

"About you?"

He holds me tighter. "No. About you."

Would They Ask That
of Someone

Who Was Real?

There were no days.

There were no nights.

Eighteen months was nothing.

And it was eternity.

Sixteen years of thought trapped in
circuitry.

A spinning glass ball.

Shattering inward, moment by airless
moment.

But everyone says,
Don't tell.

How can I not?

A Science Lesson

"Catch up, Dane!" I hear the bite in
Rae's voice. Her seemingly endless smile and patience must have its own
invisible boundary. Dane flashes a smile from the top of the ravine and nods,
but his face goes instantly expressionless when she turns away. I've heard about
sociopaths, people who connect with no one but themselves and their own
self-interests. That would be Dane.

I walk next to
Allys
as we make our way to a creek bed for our outdoor science and ethics session.
Allys
chose the site, which surprises me. She walks down
the incline without her braces.

"You're doing better," I say.

"Yes, the new software was a match. Right
on target. They said it would take a few weeks, and here it is three weeks
later. It's reduced the phantom pains, too."

"That's wonderful."

She shrugs. "Not the real thing, though.
It never will be. It's a patch, that's all."

"You're bitter?"

She stops to rest and smiles at me. I think of
the time she told me,
I like you, Jenna.
Her face is soft like that
right now. "Do I seem bitter?" she asks. "I hope not. Not that
there aren't days. But I'm trying to channel that bitterness into
determination. Maybe I can make a difference for someone else. That's
all."

"By volunteering in the ethics
office?"

"Yes, I guess so. I want to make sure
science is held accountable in the future so others won't have to go through
what I've been through. But I'm grateful for these." She gestures with her
prosthetics. "Truly I am. They aren't perfect, but none of us are ever
exactly what we want to be, right?"

"Right," I answer.

"When I
was
going through my bitter
phase, my counselor told me we're all products of our parents, genes, or
environment in one way or another." She begins walking again. "And I
may wish I could change the hand I was dealt, but I can't, so all I can do now
is choose how I will play it. So that's what I'm doing. Playing it the best I
can."

"Dane!" Rae calls.

An unenthusiastic "Coming" is heard
from above.

"Speaking of genes and a bad hand,"
Allys
says, glancing over her shoulder and rolling her
eyes.

I stop and grab her arm, jerking her to a halt.
"I like you,
Allys
."

She looks at me, a wrinkle running across her
forehead. "I like you, too, Jenna," she says slowly. Ethan is already
below sitting on a rock by the creek. I can see his warning look.

I look back at
Allys
.
"I just wanted to tell you," I say. "It's important that you
know."

"Sure," she answers. She tags on an
awkward smile.

I am an oaf. My timing is off. But I had to get
it out. Some things you have
to
tell, no matter how stupid they may
sound. Some things you can't save for later. There might not be a later.

 We arrive at the creek and the scattering
of boulders that will be our classroom. Rae is there for support, but
Allys
is teacher-collaborator for this session. Dane
finally arrives and sits on a nearby swooping oak branch rather than join the
covey of boulders we sit on. Rae wears hiking boots and blue jeans. They fit
her better than the suits she usually wears. I look at my own clothes, the
simple shirts and slacks provided by Claire. Light blue, dark blue. They have
the personality of a slug.

"You can hear from there, Dane?" Rae
asks.

"Perfectly," he answers, then adds
his trademark soulless smile.

Allys
begins her discussion with some
review of the manipulation of the Bt bacterium to create pest-resistant crops,
and the introduction of transgenic animals into the food supply decades ago.
"Of course, at the time, all of these 'breakthroughs' seemed like a good
thing, especially from an economic standpoint
—"

"We had to hike all the way down here to
hear this?" Dane groans.

"What's the matter? Had to break a
sweat?" Gabriel shoots back. I am surprised. Gabriel avoids confrontation.
Maybe, like Rae, he has a boundary, too, and it's been crossed too many times.
Dane stares at Gabriel but doesn't respond, no expression on his mouth or in
his eyes. A dead look. It is more disturbing than a glare. It is impossible to
know what he is thinking.