She steps aside. ‘This way,’ he says. My feet don’t move, but Ethan’s nudge at my elbow overrides a flurry of thoughts to flee. We follow him through the entryway and down a long hall. I sense the woman’s presence close behind, watching our moves. My moves. Before we reach the last room on the left, I stop.
I can already smell death. Memories shake me. Smell. It was my last connection with this world before I was swept into a dark empty one. It is distinct, sweet and yeasty, the smell of death, like spoiled bread, damp and swollen, coating walls, nostrils, skin, anything within reach, trying to tag it all. Even when I could no longer see, I could still smell death crawling over my skin.
‘She’s in there?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ her father whispers. ‘It’s okay. She’ll want to see you.’
We take two more steps. Before we can even see her, we can see medical equipment jamming the room. Suction pumps. Trays of gauze, minty mouth swabs, cups of crushed ice, and stacks of white towels.
Ethan steps back and steadies himself against the wall. ‘She’s too sick to be here. Why isn’t she at a hospital?’
Her mother answers from behind us. ‘Allys is assigned to Comfort Care only. Her liver is shutting down. And her lungs. Heart. Kidneys. Shall I go on? Pretty much all of her organs are in some stage of failure. And on top of that, her condition has triggered systemic lupus. Her body is basically attacking itself.’
‘What about a transplant?’ Ethan asks.
‘Which organ? She has too many involved. The numbers add up fast. They said she is beyond saving.’
‘There was damage when she had her last illness,’ her father adds. ‘We knew that. But they thought medications would control the damage. She was doing so well. We thought …’
He breaks. I watch him sob, hang on to the wall, wiping his eyes, embarrassed, and then looking down, pinching at the bridge of his nose. His shoulders quake and soft moaning breaths escape as he tries to suppress his grief. I have never seen my own father sob. But now the soft breaths of this man cut through me, weaken me, and I fear I may fall to my knees. These are sounds I have heard before. The sounds of a grown man crying when there is nothing left to do. The sounds of my father.
I grab Ethan’s arm and pull him into the room. Allys turns her head as we enter. Ethan can’t suppress his reaction. ‘Oh, God.’
‘You’re no prize either, Ethan.’ Her voice is raspy and weak.
‘Allys,’ I say. She is small, sunken into sheets and pillows, like she is already half swallowed up by another world. Except for her right arm, her prosthetics are gone, stored away. Her stumps barely peek from her gown. An oxygen tube lies across her upper lip, and a large patch is pressed against her chest.
‘Come closer,’ she says. ‘It’s hard to talk.’
Ethan goes to one side of her bed, and I, to the other. ‘We didn’t know you were so sick,’ he says.
She smiles, her lips a weak yellow smear across her face. ‘That’s an understatement. I’m dying. When organs start shutting down, it doesn’t take long. I always knew it was a possibility. My parents were in denial.’ She makes an effort at a chuckle. ‘Maybe I was, too.’ She coughs, her face wincing in pain from the effort. She presses a button on a pad near her fingertips. The patch on her chest clicks. ‘Sweet elixir,’ she says and smiles.
‘Allys, is there anything we can do?’ I ask.
‘No, Jenna. It’s all been done. This little train was set in motion decades ago by people who thought they were above the system. It will probably take decades more to stop it. Only the FSEB can fix this mess we’ve made. But it’s too late for me. With everything I would need, my numbers would be way over the top. It’s the law, remember?’
I am silent. For someone so sick, her voice is amazingly harsh.
‘Hold my hand,’ she says.
Ethan reaches out.
‘No. Jenna. I want Jenna to hold my hand.’
Ethan and I look at each other. How can you deny a dying person a simple wish? I reach across her bed and take her prosthetic hand. ‘Your hand is so soft. Much softer than mine.’ She touches gently at first, then squeezes hard. She pulls at me. ‘Closer,’ she says. I lean down until my face is close to hers, her sweet, sickly breaths hot against my cheek. She pushes up as far as her left stump will allow, and she whispers into my ear.
She lets go and falls back into her pillow, and I step back.
‘What’s the secret?’ Ethan asks.
‘It’s not a secret,’ she answers and then closes her eyes, her sweet elixir doing its job for another fifteen minutes.
Ethan swipes at one eye with the heel of his hand and clears his throat. ‘We should go,’ he says.
We say good-bye, but Allys has already fallen asleep.
Her father walks us to the door. His composure is regained. He has returned to the tired man who greeted us, a circle of calm of his own making. ‘Thank you for coming,’ he says. ‘I know it meant a lot to her.’
Her mother hurries out to the porch before we leave. ‘You. Jenna. You live on Lone Ranch Road, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought so,’ she says. She turns without saying anything else and goes back into the house.
Ethan and I leave, retracing the steps that brought us here. We don’t speak until we get out to the main highway.
‘I guess it’s moot at this point,’ Ethan sighs.
‘What’s that?’
‘Allys won’t be telling anyone about you now.’
I stare out the window. The landscape sweeps past as a gray blur because I am focused on a distance somewhere between the window and the world around me. An inexact distance that holds nothing but Ally’s words. Ethan underestimates her. ‘She already did,’ I tell him. ‘That’s what she whispered to me. That’s what she meant. It’s not a secret. She told her parents. She told them to report me.’
A swath of red flushes Ethan’s face beneath his eyes and his hands tighten on the steering wheel. ‘I won’t take you home,’ he says. ‘You can come to my house. Anywhere. I’ll take you somewhere where no one will find you …’
Ethan continues his desperate plans for my escape, but I find myself drifting, wondering where Ethan’s anywhere might be, caught up in a world of maybes and what-ifs and wanting to stay there because it is a much safer world for me than the one I am in.
Leaving and Staying
I almost could.
I could almost leave and never look back.
Like Mr Bender, I could leave everything I was behind, 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 of ten 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, p
eople 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 sand-wiching 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.
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.