The Adoration of Jenna Fox

by Mary E. Pearson

  She is transformed. One simple word has wiped five years from her face. I always thought it was Claire who held all the power. I was wrong.

  I am taken with how beautiful she is and feel shame that I have withheld a treasured word for so long. She sets her armful down on the hall table. ‘I can get it … Jenna.’ Her voice is soft, my name sounding like a question mark.

  I step down from the last stair. We stare, our eyes on an even plane, like we are holding something carefully between us. Something. Suddenly I feel dizzy, like I’m stumbling. Is this what moving on feels like? I back away. I can’t do this. Something is not right. But I owe her. I know I owe her. My hands shake. My vision flashes. I try to steady myself. I shove my hands into my jeans. The key. It is still there. It is hot against my fingers.

  ‘Do you mind, then, if I go for a walk? I’ve been inside all day.’

  She hesitates, then nods. ‘But don’t go far,’ she says as she walks to the kitchen.

  When she is out of sight, I open the front door, then close it again, loudly, so she will think that I left. I concentrate on my feet, trying to step as lightly as I can, and I creep down the hallway to her room. I will put the key back before she misses it.

  I begin to fold back the spread from the corner of the mattress, but a thought stops me. Hurry, Jenna.

  There might be time.

  If I hurry.

  I turn toward the closet and listen for sounds coming down the hallway.

  None.

  I pull the key from my pocket. It slides into the lock with a soft rasp, and I hear the tumbler turn. I ease the door open slowly, willing the old hinges not to squeak. The room is cold, dark, barely illuminated with a faint green glow. I feel for a switch but can’t find one. My eyes adjust quickly to the dim light, and I see the source of the hum. Computers. Three of them. They sit on a narrow table in the small dark room. They are oddly shaped, each a six-inch square block, much larger than a home computer, and each is connected to its own battery dock. Why not just run them off house power? I step closer and I see a small white label on the middle one.

  JENNA ANGELINE FOX.

  I rub my hand across the label, soaking the name in through my skin. Jenna Angeline Fox. I should have asked long ago. It makes me feel whole. A beginning, an end, and a middle. Why is it that the unknown is always so frightening? Angeline. I close my eyes in the darkness and whisper the name. I feel my feet on the floor, my place in the world. I belong here. I deserve to be here. How can a middle name do all that? Are the details of our lives who we are, or is it owning those details that makes the difference?

  I open my eyes and examine my computer. I wonder what’s on it. Schoolwork? Letters to friends? I feel a surge, like a jolt of energy has shot through me. History. My history. It should be in my room. I try to lift it from the table, but it is secured with a metal bracket. I work to pull it loose. One rivet pops out, but the rest stay secure. I pound at the bracket with the heel of my hand, throwing the full force of my weight behind it, but my hand slips and slices into the sharp edge. Pain rips up my hand and I fall back, but just as quickly the pain is gone. I hug my hand to my stomach, afraid to look. I know the slash is deep. If Mother had a meltdown over the tiny cut on my knee, I can’t imagine what she will do when she sees this one.

  A trickle of blood oozes through my fingers. I will have to retrieve my computer later. I step out of the closet, lock it, and hurry to my room, trying to slip silently upstairs. I go to my bathroom and lock the door behind me.

  How bad could it be? It was only a little piece of metal. I hold my hand over the sink to spare the floor, but thankfully the blood has already stopped flowing. A three-inch gash runs from the fleshy part of my thumb to my wrist. I am surprised that it no longer hurts. Will I need stitches? I pull the flesh apart to see how deep the wound goes.

  It is deep.

  What. How.

  Oh, my God.

  I can’t. Think.

  Deep.

  Blue

  The stairs rock. Sway.

  I clutch my gashed hand to my stomach. The other gropes at the stair rail.

  Only a small smear of blood stains my shirt. So little. And it is barely red. Is it red at all?

  My feet stumble on the stairs, and I fall down three at a time.

  ‘Jenna?’ A distant call from the kitchen.

  More stairs. And no pain. My hand doesn’t hurt.

  The hallway rocks and the doorway sways. Mother and Lily are framed in light at the kitchen table.

  They stop their conversation. Stare at me. Mother focuses on my shirt. The bloodstain. She begins to rise, but a single word from me stops her.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Jenna—’

  ‘When were you going to tell me!’ I yell. I shove my hand out in front of me. ‘What is this?’

  Mother’s hand comes to her chin, half covering her mouth. ‘Jenna, let me explain—’

  Lily rises. ‘You should sit down,’ she says. She steps behind her own chair and offers it.

  I sit down because I don’t know what else to do. I look up at Claire. ‘What’s wrong with my hand?’ I lay it on the table and spread the gash apart with my fingers. The skin lies on a thick layer of blue. Blue gel. Beneath that is the silvery-white glimmer of synthetic bone and ligaments. Plastic? Metal composite? Mother looks away.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask. My voice is a whisper.

  ‘It was the accident,’ she says.

  The accident. ‘Was it cut off?’

  Mother reaches out. She lays both of her hands on my arm. ‘Jenna, darling.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It was burned. Terribly burned.’

  I look at my other hand resting on the table next to the gashed one. My other perfect hand. The perfect hand that won’t lace right. The monster hand. I look at Mother. She looks like she is crumbling inward, caving like a terrible weight is pressing on her. ‘What about … this one?’ I ask, raising my other hand.

  She nods.

  Oh, my God. I look down, the world disappearing beyond the circle of my lap. I am suddenly so cold. My skin that has never felt right instantly feels foreign. I hear Lily move to the other side of the table. The scraping of a chair. The sigh as she sits. It all pounds in my ears. My hands twitch. I look at them. Can I even call them my hands?

  I turn to Mother. ‘Is there anything else?’

  The tears flow. Her face is desperate. ‘Jenna, what difference does it make? You’re still my daughter. That’s all that matters—’

  My clumsy feet. My legs.

  Oh, God no.

  ‘Stand up,’ I say. I rise to my feet. Mother looks at me, confused. ‘Stand up!’ I yell. She stands, inches from me. We look eye to eye. We are the exact same height. ‘How tall are you, Mother?’ I whisper each word distinctly, like a string of knots in a rope I am clinging to.

  ‘Jenna?’ She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know what I’ve seen. In the last video that Lily told me to watch, where I blurt out my height. Fear twists her face. She doesn’t answer.

  ‘How tall are you?’ I demand.

  ‘Five-seven.’

  I collapse back into my chair, shaking my head. Mother is mumbling, rambling, saying something that is all noise for me. I finally force myself to look at her. ‘Tell me everything.’

  ‘What?’ she says, pretending she doesn’t understand what I’m asking. She does. I see it in her eyes, a frantic back-step, hoping all this will go away.

  ‘How much is me?’

  Her lip trembles. Her eyes pool.

  Lily intervenes. ‘Ten percent. Ten percent of your brain. That’s all they could save. They should have let you die.’

  I try to understand what she is saying. I watch her mouth move. I hear words. Ten percent. Ten percent.

  And then Mother is suddenly fierce. A lion. Within inches of my face. ‘But it is the most important ten percent. Do you hear me? The most important.’

  Pinned

  I lie in
my bed. I stare at the ceiling. Claire paces. Leaves. Comes back. Pleads. Informs. I listen but I don’t respond. Lily comes in, too. Watches. Whispers to Claire. Steps closer to me. Leaves. And comes back.

  They don’t know what to do with me. Father is coming. Claire called him. Hours ago. It is now the middle of the night. Two A.M. He will explain it all, Claire says. When he gets here. He will make me understand. And yet she sits on the edge of my bed and tries to explain herself.

  ‘You were burned so badly, Jenna. We tried everything. Even with all the temporary grafts, you were losing so much fluid. We had you stabilized for a few days. I was so hopeful. But then the infections set in and we were losing you fast. The antibiotics weren’t working. There wasn’t time for a lot of decisions. Your father pulled me into a closet, Jenna. A closet! That’s where we had to decide. He whispered to me the only possible way of saving you. We had to make a choice—save you the only way we knew how or let you die. Any parent in the world would have made the choice we did.’ Her hands knead the side of my bed. She stands. Circles my room. Returns to the end of my bed.

  ‘We had you moved. Immediately. To a private facility. A private room. All physicians on your case were dismissed, except for the ones who worked with your father at Fox BioSystems. The infection was moving so rapidly through you. Your father actually injected you with the nanobots while you were in an ambulance en route to the new facility. They had to start the brain scan right away.’

  ‘Why?’

  She stands again. Her face is alert. Careful. Bright. She is encouraged that I spoke. She shouldn’t be.

  ‘Your veins were collapsing. We weren’t sure how much longer your heart could last. Blood circulation is critical for a good scan. They take at least six minutes. Vital organs were already shutting down. By the time they got you to surgery, your heart had stopped twice. They had the Bio Gel waiting. They saved as much as was still viable.’

  She comes close. White. She falls to her knees beside my bed and takes my gashed hand in hers. She holds it like it is keeping her from dissolving away. ‘The butterfly, Jenna. That’s what they call it. The heart of the brain. That you still have.’

  And the rest. My memories? My history? Those aren’t all in the butterfly. What is the rest? How am I remembering so many things? Nearly everything now. Except the accident.

  I close my eyes. I want her to go away. I don’t want to talk about butterflies or hearts. I don’t even want answers. I don’t want her. I feel her cheek against my hand. Her breath. Her need. And then she slowly lets go and leaves.

  I open my eyes again. My room is dark. The silence of the house is a heavy blanket. It pins me to my bed.

  White

  There was a moment in the darkness when the fear lifted.

  A moment where white surrounded me.

  Hope.

  Lily, and someone else, and a sprinkling of water.

  ‘Holy water, Jenna.’

  ‘You can let go if you need to.’

  ‘Forgiveness, Jenna.’

  But I couldn’t let go.

  It wasn’t in my power.

  I was already swirling, flying, falling.

  To someplace deep I didn’t understand.

  Where all the sounds but my own voice disappeared.

  Only me.

  For so long.

  I don’t want to be alone anymore.

  Father

  I hear a creak. My clock reads three A.M. Father stands in my doorway, the soft yellow light from the hallway illuminating his face. A shadow of stubble is on his cheeks. His hair is uncombed. His eyes are hollow. He looks like he could have run here all the way from Boston.

  ‘Angel,’ he whispers.

  ‘I’m awake,’ I say.

  He comes in and sits on the edge of my bed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want you to find out this way.’

  ‘My hands are artificial,’ I tell him. ‘My legs, too.’

  He nods.

  I sit up and lean against the headboard of my bed. I lift my hands in front of me and stare at them. ‘I loved my hands. My legs.’ I say it more to myself than to him. ‘I had never thought about it before. They were just there. And now I can see that these’—I turn them, looking at the palms—‘these are different. They’re not mine. They’re imposters.’

  I wait for him to deny it, to erase the last twelve hours with just a few words. I watch his face. Even in my shadowed bedroom I can see how tired he is. I can see the red rims of his eyes. ‘They’re nearly identical to the original,’ he says. ‘All of your ballet recital videos allowed us to digitally measure every centimeter of you.’

  ‘Hurray for videos, huh?’

  He hears the sarcasm in my voice and closes his eyes momentarily. I ache. Maybe for his pain. For Claire’s. But mostly for mine. My loss. I can’t care about theirs. Not now. How did I get to this point? How can I go back?

  He takes my hand in his and examines the gash.

  ‘It’s not even real skin, is it?’ I say.

  ‘Yes. It’s real. Some of it is even yours.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘It’s lab skin. Grown in the lab and genetically engineered to be nourished through the Bio Gel. It took months to get all the skin types we needed. We could only harvest a small portion of yours because of the burns and infection. But still, we did get some.’ His voice is stronger, less tired. He is more confident as a doctor than as my father.

  ‘What do you mean, engineered?’

  ‘We had to make some changes so nutrients and oxygen could be delivered in a modified way.’

  ‘So it’s not human skin.’

  ‘It is human. Completely human. We’ve been genetically altering plants and animals for years. It’s nothing new. Tomatoes, for instance. We engineer them to withstand certain pests or to give them a longer shelf life, but it is still one hundred percent a tomato.’

  ‘I am not a tomato.’

  He looks at me sharply. ‘No. You’re not. You’re my daughter. You have to know, Jenna, I would do anything to save you. You’re my child. And I want to be honest with you. So let’s cut the crap. Lab skin is yesterday’s news. You want to know more than that. Let’s move on.’

  I always loved that about Father. He was direct. Claire and I could dance around a subject for days and weeks. But not Father and me. Maybe because he was around less. He didn’t have time to dally. Right now I want to dance. I feel like I could dance forever.

  ‘Jenna,’ he says, nudging me.

  ‘Skin, bone, that’s one thing,’ I say. ‘But Lily says you only saved ten percent of my brain. True?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Then what am I?’

  He doesn’t hesitate. ‘You’re Jenna Angeline Fox. A seventeen-year-old girl who was in a terrible accident and nearly died. You were saved the way so many accident victims are saved, through medical technology. Your body was injured beyond saving. We had to patch together a new one. Your skeletal structure was replicated. You have all the bone structure of a normal teenage girl. Muscle areas are taken up with additional modified Bio Gel. Most movement is accomplished through digital signals within the bone structure. Some is accomplished through the traditional method of cabled ligaments. Your skin was replaced. Your brain, the ten percent we saved, was infused with additional Bio Gel. But obviously ten percent is not enough for full function, so we scanned your whole brain and uploaded the information for safekeeping until we had the rest of the elements in place—’

  ‘Uploaded? You uploaded my brain?’

  ‘The information. Every bit of information that was ever in your brain. But the information is not the mind, Jenna. That we’ve never accomplished before. What we’ve done with you is groundbreaking. We cracked the code. The mind is an energy that the brain produces. Think of a glass ball twirling on your fingertip. If it falls, it shatters into a million pieces. All the parts of a ball are still there, but it will never twirl with that force on your fingertip again. The brain is the same way. Ille
gal brain scans have been going on for years. Nanobots the size of blood cells are injected, sometimes even without a person’s knowledge since it’s all wireless transfer. Bits of information are extracted. But the mind, the mind could never be transferred. It’s an entirely different thing from bits of information. We found that it’s like a spinning glass ball. You have to keep it spinning or it falls and shatters. So we upload those bits of information into an environment that allows that energy to keep spinning, so to speak.’

  ‘To keep thinking.’

  He nods.

  That environment was my hell. My black void I didn’t understand. My endless vacuum where I suffocated, screamed, cried, but no one came to help me.

  My own father put me there.

  I lay my face in my hands. The hands that are not really mine. I suck in a ragged breath. Do I even have lungs, or is this just a remembered action? I shudder, repulsed at everything that I may or may not be, wanting to escape but trapped again. By what? Myself? I don’t know who or what I am anymore.

  I feel Father’s arms around me. His stubble scratching my cheek. Whispering in my ear, ‘Jenna. Jenna. It will be all right. I promise.’ He is my father again, not the doctor. The confidence is gone. I hear the fear in his voice. He is not sure things will be all right.

  I push him away. ‘I need to know. Everything.’

  ‘You will. But even that ten percent needs rest. Let’s both get some sleep. We’ll talk more in the morning.’

  I am tired. Drained. I nod and I lie back on my pillow.

  Just before he reaches the door, I stop him. ‘Is it true?’

  ‘True?’

  ‘Is there really a most important ten percent?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I truly believe there is.’

  Day One / New Jenna

  Father staples my skin together. I feel a quick pinch.

  ‘It’s deeper than I thought it was last night,’ Father says. ‘How did you do this?’

  ‘It happened when I—’ Careful, Jenna. They hid your computer from you. ‘It happened when I went for a walk. I stumbled and came down on a rock.’