The Fox Inheritance

  "And you were the new standard. Ten percent." I try to keep my voice flat, but the strain comes through just the same. I step over to a dusty Net Center and draw a smiling face on one of the tables with my finger.

  "Locke--"

  I whip around to face her. I want to walk over to her. I want to take her face in my hands. I want to kiss her the way I always wanted to back then but was too afraid to try. I want her to feel my lips pressing against hers and then hear her say that Locke Jenkins isn't human.

  But I'm good at changing subjects too. "So that's when you abandoned all this?"

  She peers sideways at me, looking just like the sixteen-year-old Jenna that I used to trail after like I was a lost puppy. She is so much the same, but so different too. She's been married. She has a child. For God's sake, she's not a freaking virgin like me.

  She had been living while I was waiting to live.

  "Yes, that's when I abandoned it," she finally answers, but I know there's more to her hesitant reply. Not quite a lie, not quite the truth. Something she is not willing to tell me. Silence and stale air hang between us. I nod awkwardly for no reason at all, just to fill the space.

  Her hands drop to her sides, and she bites her lower lip. She looks at me like something is knotting inside of her. "I was up all night last night," she says. Her hand shakes as she reaches up to brush hair away from her face. "Once I got you settled, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling. I couldn't get it out of my mind. What's been done to you, it's my fault. The way my parents worshipped me--I never thought--" She shakes her head. "My father never meant to hurt you and Kara. Maybe he should have known, but he had no idea about Ash." She begins pacing, and word after breathless word races out of her. She is looking at the ceiling, her feet, everywhere but at me. "It was my mother's idea. They had already scanned my brain, because you know my parents, they would never let me go, but day after day, my mother saw your parents at the hospital, and she couldn't bear to see what they were going through, and she begged my father to scan your brains too just in case--"

  "Jenna--"

  She spins around to face me, her blue eyes fixed on mine, and whispers, "How did you do it, Locke? How did you survive for two hundred sixty years? I was only there for eighteen months, and it haunted me for years. It still--" She stops abruptly, shaking her head like it is too painful for her to imagine. Now she looks like the Jenna I knew. The Jenna who was sometimes frightened. The Jenna who held my hand and was as uncertain about life as I was. The Jenna who had more questions than answers.

  That's something I'm still short on. Answers.

  How did I do it?

  She stares at me, unblinking, waiting.

  I don't know how I survived. I'm not sure I did. I'm not the Locke I was.

  I went where I had to go ... I survived on gulps of memory ... scraps of touch ... a good kind of quiet ... a peace. I went to be with my memories....

  "Kara. And you. That's how I survived. You were with me."

  Her head tilts slightly like she's confused.

  "My memories, Jenna. I heard you once. You cried out to me before you left. I knew you were there. I looked for you, and when I couldn't find you, I remembered. You walked with me. You talked to me. 'My eyes, Locke, look into my eyes, and you will see the sky.' That's what you told me when I couldn't remember its color anymore. You, Jenna. That's how I survived."

  Chapter 48

  Jenna wouldn't let me stay at the house alone. She insisted I come to the mission with her, Allys, and Kayla. I was reluctant to leave. What if Kara came while we were gone? Jenna promised we wouldn't be gone long and that it might be days before Kara came. Besides, there was some business she had to take care of at the mission. But I couldn't get Kara out of my mind. Where was she? It had been two full days since we'd become separated. She should have been here by now. What if something had happened to her? After all we'd been through, how far we'd come, all the years, what if something as common and random as a car accident took her away again?

  My breath catches in my chest. Jenna still hasn't brought up the accident. Neither have I. Everything that came after may have been her father's fault, or Ash's fault, or even Gatsbro's fault, but the accident that started it all, that was my doing. Jenna didn't want to go to the party, but I pushed, and pushed. I practically grabbed the car keys right out of her hand. I was so desperate to impress them, to seem older than I was, to seem like I traveled in circles that I didn't, that I never thought past the moment. Kara reminded me at least a thousand times, What did you do, Locke ... what did you do...? And that was when I would gladly have snapped her neck over and over again, as many times as she asked, What did you do...?

  "Locke?"

  Jenna's brows pinch together. I have lapsed. My feet are frozen on the pathway. I regain focus on the real world instead of the one I wandered into.

  "I'm sorry. Sometimes I just--" I shake my head, but she prods me to continue and I tell her how I lapse, as Dr. Gatsbro called it, when I forget where I am and I go back to other places. My explanation doesn't erase the worry on her face.

  Kayla skips down the path, missing my explanation entirely, and grabs my hand. "Hurry up, Locke." She giggles, amused by the sound of my name.

  "We'll catch up," Jenna tells her. "I want to drop these off for Nana first."

  Kayla lets go of my hand, giving us both another admonishment to hurry, and runs after Allys, who is waiting for her at the end of the path. They are on their way to the mission nursery, and then on to the stables.

  When Kayla is out of earshot, Jenna turns back to me. "How often do you have these lapses?"

  "Not often. I think. Sometimes I don't even notice I've had one until someone catches me. Like just now. I guess my BioPerfect isn't so perfect."

  She grunts. "What is? Not my Bio Gel, either. It's sensitive to cold temperatures, you know? I've always been a slave to the seasons when it comes to travel. And did I tell you that when I first woke up, I couldn't taste a thing? Nothing. Father told me the neurochips would connect soon. Ha! It took eight years. So much for soon. Of course, I wasn't supposed to eat food anyway--just some bland nutrients Father concocted."

  "What?" I grab her by the elbow to stop her. "You can't eat food?"

  "Oh, now I can. That was the one modification I allowed. I was totally against any more so-called improvements, but eating fresh summer berries or biting into warm, fudgy brownies--I couldn't forgo those forever."

  We begin comparing our new bodies like we are comparing the features on the latest model cars. The words pour out, and I talk about the changes without feeling like I am looking a gift horse in the mouth. We talk like old friends, which I guess we really are, and for the first time it feels like the decades between us are disappearing.

  "And I'm two inches shorter. Father claimed it was because of mechanics and ratio, but I think Mother just wanted me to be perfect ballet height."

  "I thought you seemed smaller, but then I thought it had to do with my being four inches taller. Who knows what Gatsbro's reasoning for that was. Probably more product for the buck."

  "I notice you've filled out."

  "Yeah, he gave me more muscles but didn't bother with the cowlick."

  "You always hated that cowlick."

  "Until I didn't have it anymore."

  "It's strange the things you can miss. Like my two inches. My memory was shot at first too. That made it even harder. It took months for it all to come back."

  "But at least it did."

  "And then there was the matter of shelf life."

  "Shelf life?"

  "How long I would last. Father had no idea. Can you believe a scientist wouldn't know that? He guessed anywhere from two to two hundred years. He undershot it a bit."

  "Gatsbro calls it an end date. We didn't find out about that until three days ago. I haven't even begun to try to wrap my head around that one. Four hundred to six hundred years."

  "Holy--" She glances sideways at me.

  "Yeah."


  "As old as a tree."

  "Of course, with the way you're going, you may be around that long too."

  "Hm." She shrugs. "I don't think so."

  I hear the change in her tone and stop walking. "You're ... okay, aren't you?"

  "Of course. I just think perfection and lasting through the ages is for Greek statues, not us mere humans." She grabs my hand and pulls me along the path. "Everything and everyone has their weakness--except my Kayla, of course--she is perfection."

  I smile. "Of course."

  "And Kara?" she asks. "What about her? Are there changes in her too?"

  I try to maintain my pace. Keep walking. Look straight ahead. I already told her that Kara is angry. I made that clear. And if she's asking only about physical changes, somehow in that regard, Gatsbro got everything right.

  "Locke?"

  "No," I say. "Kara's the same. The same old Kara."

  Chapter 49

  The mission surprises me. I don't know what I expected. The world has surprised me in so many ways--from Bots to Vgrams to transgrids to disappearing doorways--that I guess seeing something so old and yet intact seems out of place. Its bright whitewashed stucco is near blinding.

  "Over this way," Jenna says as she leads me to an area adjacent to the church with high walls. Jenna reaches for the twisted iron handle on a large wooden door, but I grab it and pull it open before she can. If my mother were watching she would smile, and that somehow reassures me, like I am doing something right. Or maybe it's just the vague hopeful notion that my mother is watching and aware of what I'm doing at all.

  The world behind the wall stops me again. I take in the bright green grass, the neat gravel pathways intersecting it, and the headstones of plaster, granite, and sometimes simple worn wooden crosses. A cemetery. I haven't been to one since my uncle died. That cemetery was just outside Boston, and the sky was dull gray, and frost crunched beneath our feet as we stood before the casket. It was closed. When your brains are blown out, there is only so much a funeral home can do.

  This cemetery is warm and bright and tearless. No one I care about is here. A fountain trickles in the center, almost making it cheerful. Jenna turns right and I follow her until she stops before a weather-streaked headstone.

  LILY HELENA BISHOP

  I was wrong. There is someone here I care about. I remember Lily. She was easy to be around. We took the train up to her house in Kennebunk a few times and stayed the weekend with her. She wasn't afraid to hug us, or laugh with us, or just to let us be. She took long walks on the beach picking up worn bits of colored glass, stones riddled with holes, and smooth pieces of wood, and she would tell us outrageous stories of how they came to be there. She tucked a piece of sea glass in my palm before I left one weekend. It was green and frosted by years of tossing on the sand. She told me it was one of the eyes of the Statue of Liberty. The statue originally had eyes, but when they were installing it, they both fell out and into the ocean. This is all that's left. I laughed and said, You sure this isn't part of a beer bottle? She had feigned offense. Dream big, Locke. Keep searching. Maybe one day you'll find the other eye. It's still out there somewhere. I kept that piece of glass in my sock drawer until-- I guess it was there until someone finally packed up my stuff and threw it away because as far as they were concerned I was dead.

  "I always bring flowers on her birthday. Better to celebrate that than the date of her death, I think." She lays a bundle of purple wildflowers on the grave.

  "There was something different about Lily. I always envied you that you had her."

  Jenna smiles. "Yes. She was different. And a bit of a dickhead at times."

  "What?"

  She laughs and shakes her head. "I say it affectionately. It was a joke between us. I was very tempted to write Here lies a dickhead on her gravestone. I know she would have gotten a hoot out of that, but I don't think the mission would have allowed it."

  I smile. Only Lily could have found anything amusing about being called something that would have topped my mother's banned-words list. And our parish priest definitely wouldn't have been amused.

  I look out around the cemetery at the nearby headstones. "Are your parents here too?"

  She sighs. "No. They respected Lily's wish to be buried here, but they weren't the sort to bother with funerals and prayers or any kind of fuss once they were gone. Both donated their bodies to a medical school. Besides, they weren't Catholic."

  Jenna places her hand on Lily's headstone and closes her eyes for a few seconds. Even if it didn't stick, I was raised Catholic from baptism to altar boy, but I never remember Jenna attending mass or even mentioning church, much less praying in front of me. Is that what she just did? Pray?

  "Are you Catholic?"

  She must hear the surprise in my voice, and she smiles and shrugs simultaneously. "I'm pretty much nothing that I can name--a work in progress--but still..." She stoops to push some tall grass away from the stone. "I do believe in some version of Lily's God. I have some sort of faith, even if I can't explain it."

  My surprise at the mission suddenly clicks. I didn't picture a future that would have room for faith. I thought everything would be explainable by now, right down to the atom of every mystery, but the world has more mysteries for me now than it ever did. In fact, I am one of those mysteries. How does someone like me fit into this world now?

  I turn and look at the marble gravestone next to Lily's, the moss-covered cross on the next grave, the worn plaque on the one after that, the hundreds of markers across the cemetery, and I wonder about my family. Where are they buried? Do they have gravestones? Or maybe they were cremated. Or maybe lost at sea. Or--

  Mysteries. More now than ever. I will probably never have the answers. My family is forgotten by everyone but me. What happened to them? Did my parents live long lives? Did my brother or sister settle down? Get married? Have careers? Build any kind of life that could make my parents happy again? They're all gone. It shouldn't matter, but it does. They're still a part of me.

  "Their ashes are interred at Sacred Heart Cemetery in Andover," Jenna says. "Your parents, that is. Your brother and sister both had their ashes spread off Brant Rock."

  I look at her, startled.

  "Don't worry. I can't read your mind, Locke. Mostly I can't. But my Bio Gel allows me to read a lot on someone's face. It doesn't take much to get it right most of the time. And most of it's just plain logic. It's natural to want to know."

  I step to a low wall just behind Lily's gravestone and ease myself down like an enormous weight has settled in my gut. Sacred Heart. That's where my uncle was buried. And my cousin who died in the war. And my grandfather. I lean forward, looking between my knees. My parents are dead. Of course, I knew they were dead. I knew it. But everyone has to hear news like this for the first time, even if it comes two hundred years late for me.

  Jenna sits next to me. "I'm sorry. I thought--"

  "It's all right." I sit up and run my fingers through my hair, trying to pretend it doesn't matter. I mean, it would be crazy to think they were still around.

  I look at Jenna. "Did they live long lives? Do you know?"

  She nods. "Your father lived to eighty-six, and your mother was ninety-four." She lays her hand on my shoulder. "And your brother and sister lived long, good lives too. I kept track of them. I guess I wanted to make up for you not being in their lives. Your sister got a nursing degree and worked as a pediatric nurse for forty years. She never married, but her life was full and happy."

  My sister, a nurse. The world holds more mysteries than I thought. "And my brother?"

  "He took your accident, and what we thought was your death, very hard. Maybe it made him realize that the things he really cared about wouldn't always be there. If anything good came out of the whole situation, it was him. He moved back in with your parents to help them get through it, and he got a job--a real job--working at a local hardware store. Cory eventually married, had a daughter, and his daughter married a fe
llow named Derring, and then they had a couple of kids. I was able to keep track of his descendants up until the Civil Division. After that, so many records were lost, and people moved in droves--I couldn't find them anymore."

  "Why would you keep track of them too?"

  "It doesn't really matter. The point is, as painful as your leaving was for them, you can feel good about how your family went on." She squeezes my hand. "They went on."

  It's a small thing. A tiny bit of information that is almost ancient history, but the weight that pressed on me grows lighter. I didn't destroy any of them. They moved on. They lived when I couldn't. My brother even stepped up to the plate. That in itself is a miracle.

  Chapter 50

  Jenna gives me a quick tour around the mission grounds, and then we walk down to the nursery at the bottom of the hill. She shows me what she calls a lavanderia that runs through the center of the nursery. It was the first project she took on at the mission. Water runs through a narrow canal that is flanked by banks of graduated stones, but she says the first time she saw it, the stones were only dry ruins, most covered by dirt. "I guess I have a little bit of my mother's passion for restoration." It's obvious she's proud of the lavanderia and the surrounding lush landscape. She spots a priest in the distance where a grove of orange trees begins. He's examining the leaves on one of them.