The Adoration of Jenna Fox (29 page)

A billion years of spinning. We are not immune
to momentum.

Lily nods. "I'll help you."

We untangle ourselves and are just at the
bottom of the stairs when there is a firm knock at the door.

"Who could that be this early?"
Claire asks.

"It might be Simmons," Father
answers.

Or maybe someone else, I think. Maybe someone
Allys
told. Maybe someone who is here for me.

"I'll have to break the news that we don't
need storage anymore," Father says as he reaches for the door handle.

Should I warn them?

The door is already swinging open. Father's
surprise is obvious, and he hesitates, not knowing the visitors.

Mother steps forward. "Can we help
you?"

"Are you the parents of Jenna Fox?"

Mother and Father exchange glances. I see
Mother's body weight shift, like she will change into a wall if she needs to.

I step from the shadows. "Yes, they
are," I say.

"We're
Allys's
parents, your daughter's schoolmate."

"Yes?" Father says.

"We know about Jenna," her father
explains. "Our daughter
—" His voice
cracks.

"Our daughter is dying,"
Allys's
mother continues. Her face is rigid. Frightening. I
watch her swallow, her hands tight fists at her sides.
"Please,
can
you help us?" Her rigid mask breaks and tears follow. Her sobs echo
through the hall.

"Come in," Mother says as she reaches
out, putting her arm around
Allys's
mother. She holds
the sobbing woman in a way that surprises me. Like she has known her for years.
Like she understands everything about her.

"Let's go into my study," Father
says. "We can talk in there."

"We'll be a while," Mother says to
Lily over her shoulder. "Will you bring the coffee in when it's
ready?"

They slowly usher
Allys's
parents into Father's study and shut the door behind them.

Lily and I remain in the hallway, staring at
the closed door.

"Here we go," she finally says.

I shake my head. "
Allys
wouldn't approve."

Lily lets out a long breath. "What did you
say about change? Small steps? If the world changes, I suppose minds do, too.
Sometimes it just takes time and perspective."

Have my perspectives changed? Yes. But
Allys
? The world?

"I'm not so sure," I say. "But I
suppose you're right about some perspectives. Just a few weeks ago, I thought
you were a dickhead."

She smiles, tired lines tanning out from her
eyes in a way that seems like we are sitting at her kitchen counter and not
three years and three thousand miles from who we were. She puts her arm around
me. "Come help me with the coffee. And if you don't tell your parents,
I'll let you have some."

Baptism

We walk through the church as though it is a
day like any other. Lily dips her hand in the holy water, bends her knee and
moves her hand like a musical note across her chest
—she,
on her way to discuss seeds and plants, and I, on my way to meet Ethan.

But it is not a day like any other. Something
is different. Something that is small and common like a whisper, but monumental
and rare at the same time. I stop in the crosshairs of the church and look
upward to the cupola. I close my eyes and feel the cool, smell the mustiness of
history, wood and walls, listen to the echoes of our shuffles and my memories.
I breathe in the difference of being on this earth now and maybe not tomorrow,
the precipitous edge of something new for me but as ancient as the beginning of
time.

Lily's feet shuffle closer and I open my eyes
to see her standing just inches from me. Her fingers are wet, freshly dipped in
the holy water, and she raises them to my forehead. I close my eyes again and
she whispers a prayer, her hand touching my forehead and then passing across my
chest and shoulders.

"How can you know?" I ask.

"Some things aren't meant to be known.
Only believed."

A drop on my forehead. Hardly enough to feel.
But still enough for Lily. And maybe enough for me. Washing away the old,
believing in the new.

The world has changed. So have I.

Two Hundred and Sixty Years
Later

I sit in the center of Mr. Bender's garden. He
has been gone for so many decades I have lost count. I live here now. I moved
here forty years ago when Mother and Father's house burned down. They've been
gone even longer than Mr. Bender.

Father was wrong about the two or two hundred
years I would live, but I'm not bitter. Faith and science, I have learned, are
two sides of the same coin, separated by an expanse so small, but wide enough
that one side can't see the other. They don't even know they're connected.
Father and Lily were two sides of the same coin, I've decided, and maybe I am
the space in between.

"Jenna?" I hear the call of the only
person on the planet whom I can now truly call a peer. "There you
are," she says. It is
Allys
. She does not
hobble. Her words are not harsh. She is a happier
Allys
than the one I met so long ago. The new
Allys
.
Twenty-two percent. Not that percentages really matter anymore. There are
others like us now. The world is more accepting. We worked and traveled for
many years to create awareness about people like us. But I am still the
standard. The Jenna Standard, they sometimes call it. Ten percent is the
minimum amount. But people change. And the world will change. Of that much I am
certain.

Allys
and I live together now. We are old
women in the skin of teenagers. Another factor Father and his scientists didn't
count on, that biochips would learn, grow, and mutate because somewhere in that
ten percent was a hidden message:
survive.
The biochips made sure we
would. How much longer? No one knows. But Bio Gel has been modified for future
recipients so that no one lives beyond an "acceptable and
appropriate" time. In our old age,
Allys
and I
giggle about being inappropriate. We laugh easier now about a lot of things.

"Kayla's home,"
Allys
calls from the edge of the garden.

"Send her out here."

I had seventy good years with Ethan. It wasn't
until long after he was gone that I was brave enough to arrange for Kayla. She
has his coloring, wit, love of literature, and sometimes his temper. But she
has my eyes. My breaths begin and end with her. But I know that one day, when
Kayla is of a certain age, I will travel to Boston in winter and I will stay
there, taking long walks and feeling the softness of cold snowflakes on my face
once again, because no parent should outlive their child.

She bounds around the corner.
"Mommy!"

"
Shhh
," I
say, holding my fingers to my lips. She quiets, full of knowing and
anticipation, her eyes wide and ready, and as I look into them
—
every time I look into them
—I am reminded of Mother,
Lily, and the something that it took Kayla for me to truly understand.
"Come here, Angel," I whisper, and she tiptoes close and nestles
beside me on the bench.

I reach into my pocket and a squadron of birds
already flutter at our shoulders. I share my fistful of seed with Kayla and we
hold out our offering. The birds are immediately on our arms and hands. A dozen
or more. And each so light.
A few ounces at most.
They take up only a
handful of space, and yet their touch fills me in immeasurable ways. A few
miraculous ounces that leave me in awe. And today, like each time they have
landed on my hand for the past two hundred years, I wonder at the weight of a
sparrow.