The Adoration of Jenna Fox

by Mary E. Pearson

  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.

  ‘I know you have the patience of a rapidly decomposing turd, Dane, but I will get to my reason for meeting here. Not that I need one. Sunshine is plenty for most people.’ Allys adjusts her position on her rock, unaware of how much satisfaction she has brought to Ethan and Gabriel. Maybe even Rae.

  ‘Before the FSEB stepped in to regulate science labs, bioengineered plants and transgenic animals were being introduced into the food chain at the rate of dozens of species a year. Since these posed no direct health concern to humans, the FDA was approving these introductions at an alarming pace. But—’

  I know where she is going. I shouldn’t interrupt, but my mouth is speaking before I can decide not to. ‘But no one looked at the effects of these new species intermingling with native populations? That’s the danger, isn’t it?’

  ‘Exactly,’ she answers. ‘They didn’t even consider the possibility. That’s why regulation is key.’

  ‘To make sure we don’t produce any lab monsters?’ I offer. ‘Ones that might get out in the world and taint the original species? Is that what you mean?’ Ethan stands and leaps to an adjacent rock to get my attention. He wants me to shut up. Do Allys and my secret frighten him that much?

  ‘Well, Jenna,’ she answers, ‘I’m not sure taint is quite the right word. It’s more like making sure native populations aren’t put at risk. It’s already too late for so many species, which is why the work of the Federal Science Ethics Board is so—’

  Ethan leaps to another rock, his hands flying over his head at the same time. ‘But that’s the sticking point, isn’t it, Allys? Even the FSEB has its share of scandal. Payoffs. Conflict of interests. Sleeping with—’

  ‘Ethan! What federal agency doesn’t have its problems? All the things you’re mentioning were early in its history.’

  Rae watches intently. She seems gratified that a simple science lesson has turned unexpectedly passionate.

  ‘Besides,’ Allys continues, ‘those issues have been worked out. And now, without their careful monitoring, who knows what labs would be unleashing on the world?’

  I stand. ‘Probably a lot of illegal things,’ I say. ‘Freakish things.’ I walk toward Allys. ‘Dangerous things.’ The freakish me, my delivery, my timing, everything about me, off. Different. Unleashed.

  ‘Right,’ Allys says. She stares at me. Quiet. Wondering at my opinion? Or my awkward stance? Or the fact that I am only an arm’s length away, meeting her stare. Her mind is racing. What is wrong with Jenna Fox? Something is different. She senses it. I can see it in every eyelash, every contraction of her pupil. She is searching. Trying to fill the gaps between her own synapses. Am I really that different from her?

  Time is suspended. I can feel the breath of Ethan, Rae, and Gabriel, held between us.

  ‘Why are we here?’ Dane’s voice cuts through.

  Allys turns to
face Dane. She spits her words out at him. ‘A short forty years ago, you hopeless moron, you would have been underwater. Look at the top of this ravine! This was once a river. In just forty short years, thanks to transgenic intervention and its domino effects, this tributary has become a mostly dry creek bed. So that is why we’re here, Dane. End of lesson!’

  I look at the sparse trickle. I look at the dry boulders. I look at what science has done.

  To me. To the ravine. And finally, to Allys.

  Yes.

  End of lesson.

  Red

  My fingers brush along the hangers in my closet. First my shirts, then my pants, all varying shades of blue. Sturdy. Neat. Functional. None with a fraction of the flair that I saw in Rae’s clothes. These have no personality at all.

  Even Gabriel, who wants to fade into the background more than any of us, looks like a strutting peacock compared to me. Yesterday, when we climbed back out of the ravine, Dane and Gabriel were the last ones out. No one saw what happened. Dane claimed he lost his footing, but it was Gabriel who went down. His shirt was nearly ripped off his back. Back in the car, Gabriel fumed. He knew it wasn’t an accident, but all he said was, ‘This was my favorite shirt.’ My favorite shirt. It struck me then. I don’t have a favorite shirt. And now suddenly it seems so very important.

  I pull out two shirts and compare them. There is no reason to like one more than the other. They almost look like lab attire. The only thing I like is—

  The color.

  A memory catches me.

  Kara and I are shopping on Newbury Street, running in and out of tiny shops on a rainy spring day. We finally hunker down in our favorite. Kara chides me: Jenna, I refuse to allow you to buy another blue skirt! Your whole closet is blue!

  My favorite color was blue.

  And Kara’s favorite color was red.

  Claire may have had to choose my clothes hastily, or maybe she chose them because they wouldn’t draw attention, but at least she tried to get a color she knew I liked. But that day almost two years ago, Kara talked me into the red skirt. She was right. It was a change I needed. What happened to that red skirt? Couldn’t Mother have packed my clothes and brought them from Boston? Or maybe that was part of the secret. A gravely ill, bedridden Jenna would have no use for short red skirts or floppy flowered hats, or jewel-trimmed blouses, and that invalid picture had to be preserved for prying eyes. Besides, a new, improved, and shorter Jenna would need new pants anyway. Ones that wouldn’t drag and reveal her lost two inches.

  I ache for that red skirt now.

  And I ache for the day I bought it with Kara.

  Sliver

  The lane to Mr Bender’s house is quiet. A breeze rustles golden leaves end over end along the gutter. The same breeze cuts across my face. It is cold, but I don’t shiver. It’s only California cold, not Boston cold. Mother and Father claim I will never feel that cold again.

  Maybe.

  Do I really want to live for two hundred years? Then again, do I want to live for only two either? Is that decision up to me? I am nearly eighteen. Eighteen what? An eighteen-year-old thing that can make a choice? If Father really believes what he says, that there is a most important ten percent, then one day I may make the choice to go to Boston. Kara and Locke are in Boston.

  A gust whips my hair across my face, and I startle, stopping in the street, closing my eyes but still seeing, remembering the feeling, brushing strands from my face two years ago, the saltiness, the crispness, the foamy spray of a nearby crashing wave, the sound of gulls overhead, the feeling of sand between my toes.

  These memories descend out of nowhere, giving me pieces of who I was, but their significance is lost. I sigh and resume my walk, not knowing if this memory is important, or just more of the jumbled trivia of Jenna’s life, like sock shopping. Maybe that is all any life is composed of, trivia that eventually adds up to a person, and maybe I just don’t have enough of it yet to be a whole one.

  My half-filled memory is pocked with extremes: flashes of surgical clarity paired with syrupy-slow searches for basic words any four-year-old would know, moments of startling insights followed by fits of embarrassing denseness, vast gaps where I can’t even remember what happened to my best friends, and then glimpses from my infancy that should never be remembered. But then when I am feeling the least human, I remember kissing Ethan and feeling intensely alive—more alive than I think the old Jenna could have ever felt. Would that make a difference to the FSEB?

  In dark, silent moments in the middle of the night, alone, I count the number of times my chest rises, watching with detached interest this thing that I am, knowing my breaths don’t take in oxygen—it is only for show. I am almost impressed with the rhythm of it all, in a repulsive sort of way. And then it leads me, unexpectedly, back to a place where I can almost feel my fingers touching who I used to be. Jenna. The real Jenna.

  I wonder. Is there such a thing? A real Jenna? Or was the old me always waiting to be someone else, too?

  Hurry, Jenna. Hurry. Kara’s and Locke’s voices won’t let go.

  Or maybe it’s me who won’t let go.

  I jiggle the latch on Mr Bender’s gate and swing it open. His house reminds me of Thoreau’s Walden. It is larger, but still rustic and natural, overgrown with landscape, banks of wild white roses tangling across the porch roof. He doesn’t answer when I knock. I walk around to the side and down his long driveway. I see him examining a window on his garage.

  ‘Hello,’ I call.

  He turns and waves. ‘Good to see you.’

  I walk closer and see the window is shattered.

  ‘You broke it?’

  ‘Someone did.’ He says someone like it’s a name.

  I look inside. Tables are overturned. Paint is thrown against walls. An upholstered stool is slashed and the stuffing pulled out and tossed. But it is the aqua-colored car parked within that stops me. The dusty cover has been partially ripped away to reveal an old and obviously out-of-commission car. I’ve seen that car before. But I don’t know where. Maybe in a photo? Or maybe I’ve only seen one just like it.

  ‘Did you call the police?’ I ask.

  ‘No. I don’t want to get them involved.’

  ‘Because of your secret?’

  ‘I have to weigh the risks. This isn’t worth it. I can clean this up in a few hours, and the monetary loss isn’t more than a few hundred dollars. What bothers me most is they didn’t take anything—at least as far as I can tell. I have tools worth thousands of dollars in there. They didn’t want that. Just the sick pleasure of destroying something that belongs to someone else.’ Like the first day I met him, he looks off in the distance toward the white house at the end of my street, and he shakes his head.

  ‘I can help you clean it up,’ I say.

  ‘Not now. I need a cup of tea. I’ll do it later.’

  ‘May I ask a favor, then? Can I use your Netbook?’

  He hesitates.

  ‘Mine’s broken,’ I add. It is only a small lie.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  With a few carefully worded inquiries, the facts spit forth freely. Mother and Father would be horrified. I am equally horrified, knowing that this is another suspicion confirmed—they are still keeping secrets from me. Important ones. Are there others? Nothing is denied by Mr Bender’s Netbook as it was with mine. He brews a cup of tea and gives me privacy as he shuffles through some proofs. News clip after news clip fills in holes and at the same time creates new ones. They wrap around me in ways I hadn’t considered. I feel … what? Mother’s breathlessness? The need to look away? My bioengineered blood pooling at my feet?

  I lean back and stare at the screen. ‘You knew about Kara and Locke, didn’t you?’

  Mr Bender sets aside his proofs and nods.

  I stare at the screen, absorbing word by word a sliver of my life that changed everything.

  In spite of a pending civil action, the district attorney’s office reports that it has no plans at this tim
e to prosecute Jenna Fox, 16, daughter of Matthew Fox, founder of Fox BioSystems, based here in Boston. There were no apparent witnesses to the accident. Passenger Locke Jenkins, also 16, died two weeks after the accident without regaining consciousness. Kara Manning, 17, the second passenger, sustained severe head trauma when she was thrown from the car and as a result could not give investigators any information. She died three weeks following the accident when her family removed life support.

  My fingers shake. I press the key to bring up the next page.

  Fox, who didn’t yet have a driver’s license, is semicomatose and still in critical condition. The severity of her burns and injuries makes it impossible for her to communicate or give authorities any details about the accident. Investigators say they can’t rule out the possible involvement of a second car, but it appears that high speeds and reckless driving contributed to the car veering off Route 93 and tumbling 140 feet down the steep incline. The hydrogen in the tri-energy BMW, registered to Matthew Fox, exploded on impact, leaving investigators little evidence to piece together events from the evening of the crash.

  I close Mr Bender’s Netbook.

  Somehow I knew I would never see them again.

  Something deep inside me told me they were dead.

  How? When? Before they scanned my brain, before they removed my ten percent, did I hear someone at the hospital talking? Did Mother sob for Locke, then Kara, at my bedside, knowing her daughter was responsible for it all?

  But I wasn’t.

  I couldn’t have been responsible.

  ‘It’s not true,’ I say. ‘I didn’t do that. I would remember.’

  ‘You lost two friends. You may have blocked it out.’