The Adoration of Jenna Fox (28 page)

including my name. Leave because of
Allys

 and all the things she says I
am.

Leave because of all the things I am
afraid that I will never be

again.

Leave, because maybe I'm not enough.

Leave because
Allys
,
Senator Harris, and half the world knows

better than Father and Mother and
maybe Ethan, too.

Leave.

Because the old Jenna was so
absorbed in her own needs

that she said yes when she knows she
should have said no,

and the shame of that night

could be hidden in a new place
behind a new name.

But friends are complicated.

There is the
staying.

Staying because of Kara and Locke and
all that they will never

be except trapped.

Staying because for them, time is
running out and I am their

last chance.

Staying for the old Jenna and all
she owes Kara and Locke

and maybe all the new Jenna owes them, too.

Staying because often percent and all I hope it
might be

Staying because of Mr. Bender's erased life and
regrets.

Staying for connection.

Staying because two of me

is enough to make one of me

worth nothing at all.

And staying because maybe Lily
does
love
the new Jenna

as much as the old one, after all.

Because maybe, given time, people do change,

maybe laws change.

Maybe we all change.

A Plan

I have an advantage.

At four
a.m.
in the blackness of my room, I can still see. The hall light has been
strategically disabled. I stand behind my door, two hours before the appointed
time, because I am a horse and do not tire.

And because I can't sleep.

Fear is caffeine running through my
veinless
body, jumping from biochip to biochip, circling
around my preserved ten percent, my brain, only a butterfly no larger than the
real thing, but the most important piece of acreage in my universe. The
difference between staying and leaving. I do not tire, but I catch my breath
again and again.
Betrayal. Loyalty. Survival. Sacrifice.
They battle
within me.

Five
a.m.

Fifty minutes to go. Is it too late to change
my mind? Would the old Jenna have jeopardized her future for the sake of
someone else? I lean close to the wall, the open door sandwiching me, touching
my toes. In the dark, they will never see me. I play out the plan for the
hundredth time and then I hear a creak on the loose floorboard outside my door
and my remembered heart flies to my throat. Footsteps moving into place.

I don't need to look at my clock. My
neurochips
know to the second how much time has passed. It
is time. My breaths come in gulps, and in an instant I curse and cherish
neurochips
that remember and mimic too much.

Twenty minutes until dawn. Now. It's
time. I shake my fingers.

Betrayal. Loyalty.

Survival. Sacrifice.

Choose, Jenna.

I scream. Loud and long. I cry out.

I listen.

I hear doors bang. Swearing. A yell. Footsteps.

I scream again.
"No. . . stop . . .
help!"
Loud so it vibrates from the walls.

Two pairs of footsteps pound up the stairs
calling, "Jenna!"

Two pairs of footsteps running down the hall.
Seconds from my door and an empty bed.

Father curses the light that is out.

Seconds.

Through the door. To the bed. An empty bed.

And I slip out.

The door slams behind me. Lily jumps from the
darkness and, in a swift, practiced movement, inserts and turns the key.

The locked door that was supposed to shut me in
just in case
now holds them, just in case.

"Hurry," Lily says, handing me
another key. "You may not have much time. I'll try to explain, calm them
down. But you know how they are. Your father may rip this door from its
hinges."

The banging and yelling have already started. I
touch the door. "Try to understand," I say.

"Jenna! What are you doing? Let us
out!"

"Are you okay? What's wrong? Jenna!"

The door quivers with my father's shoulder.

"Go," Lily says. "Hurry."

I take the stairs two at a time, my clumsy feet
stumbling twice, my hand gripping the railing to keep me from a free fall. I
tumble to the floor at the last stair, scrambling on all fours as I right
myself. I run down the hall and grab the crowbar just inside Lily's door that
she left as promised, and then I burst into Mother and Father's room, letting
the door bang into the wall. My fingers shake as I try to maneuver the key into
the closet lock.
It won't go in! Is it the wrong one?
Mother's and
Father's pounding rattle the house. I can hear Mother as clearly as if I were
standing next to her. Her orders, her pleading, and finally her frantic
realization, stab at me. My legs weaken.
Hurry, Jenna!

"God, let it fit!" I cry, shaking and
twisting the key. It slides in. I sob and turn the lock, and the door swings
open.

"I'm here, I'm here," I say, feeling
perilously out of control.
Think. Slow down.

I lift the crowbar like a club. Which one
first?

I lower the bar and slide it beneath the
bracket on the first backup. Kara. It doesn't budge.
Please.
I heave my
full weight on it, and the rivets pop loose. The bracket flies into the wall and
down to the floor.

The second one. Locke. Three tries, and the
rivets break loose.

And finally the third one. Jenna. I
touch the top of the backup, and a dizzy wave overwhelms me.
Hurry, Jenna!
Now!
I slide the bar beneath the bracket, and with all my strength, I bear
down with a single swift push. The bracket flies loose on the first try.

I remember every detail Father told me about
the backups. Once I remove them from their power docks, they will only stay
viable for thirty minutes. The special environment that holds them will stop
spinning and will let them go.

Let them go.

Where?

Can I do this? What if. . .

My hands shake as I force them down to lie on
Kara's backup.

Please, Jenna.

My fingers surround the six-inch-square box.
Small, finite, and yet as infinite as a black hole in a galaxy. The terror and
solitude of that empty world flood back to me and I pull away.

Never,
Father said.
Nothing of their humanity was
left. They will never exist beyond the six-inch cube.

I hear the moans of an animal. Grieving.

My own cries.

I lay my hands on Kara's and Locke's backups.
"I'm sorry," I sob. "I am so sorry." I pull them from their
power docks. "It won't be long."

I look at the third backup. Mine.
What do
you need, Jenna? What? What?

I need to own my life.

I pull it loose and cross an invisible boundary
from immortal to mortal.

"This is the beginning," I whisper.
The
real beginning.

I gather the backups in my arms. Waiting here
for thirty minutes is too risky. I understand about risk management, too. 
Mother and Father are resourceful when it comes to me. One thin door won't hold
them for long. It's time to complete the plan. The backups need to be somewhere
safe where they can't be reached for at least thirty minutes.

I hear a loud crack. Lily yells from above.
"Jenna!" She doesn't have to tell me. Father is determined.

I run down the hallway and yell as I pass the
staircase, "Tell them to look out my window!"

I hurry through the kitchen out to the veranda
and down the slope to the pond. Dawn is fingering through the trees and
rooftops. I climb onto the granite rock at the edge of the pond and look back
at my house. Mother and Father are at my window, throwing up the sash.

"Jenna, no!"

"For God's sake, no!"

I take Kara's backup in my right hand.
"You're free," I say, and I throw it in the air, a soaring bird in a
violet sky. It descends and splashes into the middle of the pond, ripples and
spray exploding the quiet glass. Locke's backup follows, falling not too far
from Kara's, the low ripples of the two meeting, intertwining, and gently
fanning out to become nothing at all. Gone.

I take the third backup into my hand. There are
no screams from the window behind me. Acceptance? The final stage of grief?
It's over. They know it. And I know it. The final fall of Jenna Fox. A mere
girl, like any other.

The cube flies from my hand, high
into the sky, and it seems to hang there for a moment, almost suspended, free,
and then it falls, disappearing from this world and joining another.

I hold my breath, waiting.

There is no fanfare. The sun doesn't stop its
ascent. The coot hens are only mildly disturbed at the brief intrusion and
circle back to the cattails to resume their breakfast. One small changed family
doesn't calculate into a world that has been spinning for a billion years. But
one small change makes the world spin differently in a billion ways for one
family.

 And for me. The
only
Jenna
Angeline Fox.

I sit on the rock's edge watching the ripples
lose their bulk and energy. But gone? Who can explain where energy goes? The
pond returns to glass. On the surface it may look the same again, but it is
forever changed by what lies within.

I hear footsteps. Soft. Slow. They stop behind
me. Lily's footsteps.

"I let them out," she says.

"I should go in."

"They'll never forgive me."

I stand and brush the grit from my hands.
"The world's changed. That's what you told me. I think that maybe
forgiveness is like change
—it comes in small
steps."

She reaches out. I fold into her arms, and she
holds me tight, stroking my head.
Neurochip
or
neuron, it doesn't matter, I am weak with her scent and touch.

She steps back, still holding my shoulders.
"Go. Get it over with. I'll be in soon."

The house is still, like the breath has been
punched out of it. A low rising sun floods the kitchen with soft pink light.
The breakfast table, normally the morning hub, is empty. I walk to the hall. A
small triangular patch of light illuminates one wall, but darkness paints the
rest. I step closer to the staircase and am startled to see Claire in the
shadows, sitting on the landing, slumped against the banister. I climb the
stairs and ease myself down next to her. She stares into space like I'm not
there.

"Mom
—"

"They might have saved you, you
know?" Her voice is barely a whisper. "If there are ever any charges
—"

"Yes, they might have saved me in one way.
But I would have lost myself in other ways that I couldn't live with. I did for
them what they would have done for me."

"Jenna," she sighs.

"If it's a mistake, it's
my
mistake.
Give me that."

She tilts her head back, looking up, slightly
rocking, like she is trying to sift the events out of herself.

Father comes around the corner and pauses,
staring at me, his arms loose at his sides, his hair uncombed, and his face
lined. He climbs the stairs and breathes heavily as he sits on the stair below
us.

He shakes his head without saying anything.
Shaking it much too long, and a knot grows in my throat. "You don't know
the risks, Jenna," he finally says. "You just don't know the
risks."

I put my hand on his shoulder. "Maybe I
just know different risks than the ones you know." He doesn't reply.
"I'm here today, the same as you," I say. "Isn't that
enough?"

He is silent, but at least his head has stopped
shaking. He finally reaches up and lays his hand on mine. Mother looks at me,
her eyes focused once again, full of something that I am certain has no word or
definition. Something the old Jenna never saw and something the new Jenna is
only just understanding. She breathes in deeply and puts an arm around each of
us. We are a tangled web of arms and tears, melting and holding. We sit in the
dark cavern of stairs, giving ourselves time like we are a starfish regenerating
an arm and learning how to move again.

Lily appears at the bottom of the stairs. She
looks at Mother, her eyes hopeful, filled with the something that occupied
Claire's just a moment ago. Mother lifts her gaze to meet Lily's, a long
exchange in a language only they know. And finally Claire sighs and asks,
"Shall I put on a pot of coffee?"