I’m good at math after all.
Without friends and a packed schedule to keep me busy, keeping track of time and numbers has become a prime source of entertainment. Watching the collecting rivulets of rain on my window has become a close second.
February in California is cold. Not as cold as Boston. Not nearly. The Net Report says it has dropped to a low of fifty-four degrees. ‘Oh, my,’ Lily had mocked. The temperature varies very little. Boredom reigns on all levels. The rain is a welcome change. I have seen the pond swell and the creek surge. I press my palm against the glass, imagining the drops on my skin, imagining where they started out, where they will go, feeling them like a river, rushing, combining, becoming something greater than how they started out.
I spend time on the Net. Mr Bender said there isn’t a thing you can’t learn about your neighbors there. Since he is the only neighbor I know, I learn things about him. He is famous. A recluse. There are no pictures of him. Few people have ever met him. Quirky artist. And more.
I type in the name Jenna Fox. I am overwhelmed with the hits. There are thousands. Which one am I? I turn off the Net and realize I don’t even know my middle name. It’s too much work, trying to become who I am, always having to ask others what I should already know. I lie on my bed staring at the ceiling. For hours maybe.
Other thoughts replay, collect, finger out into more thoughts.
Mr Bender’s birds and my untouchable palms …
… a watery blood-bead on my knee …
… a baptism I remember …
… and visitors.
I had visitors last night. Kara and Locke came to me again. In my deepest sleep, they shook me. Jenna, Jenna. I opened my eyes, but their voices stayed in my ears. I hear their voices even now. Hurry, Jenna. Come. Hurry.
Hurry where?
I see us at the Commons, the memory so vivid I can still smell the freshly mowed grass. We sit at the base of the George Washington Monument, squeezing close for shade, our legs stretched out before us in the long afternoon shadow. We are ditching our Sociology Seminar, and Kara is filling every space with nervous chatter, and when she laughs her black bobbed hair shakes like a skirt at her shoulders. Locke keeps suggesting that we should go. ‘No!’ Kara and I say together. It’s too late. Too late. And then the three of us are laughing again, exhilarated, bolstered together in our defiance.
We are not comfortable with it. We are rule-followers. This is new to us, and our courage comes from each other. I lean over and kiss Locke. Hard on the lips. We explode in more laughter, and snot spurts from our noses. Kara repeats the kiss, and we are limp with our howling. I ache with the remembering.
I roll from my bed to the floor and lean back against the wall, the way I leaned back that day in Boston. I had friends. Good friends.
A Curve
Mother is at the Netbook when I enter the kitchen. She is talking to Father. I have talked to her little more than I have to Lily in the past few days. She is busy and distant. Lily is in the pantry rattling boxes.
‘Morning,’ Mother says and returns to her conversation with Father.
‘Jenna?’ Father calls.
‘Morning, Father,’ I say.
‘Come here, Angel.’
I stand behind Mother and look over her shoulder so he can see me.
‘You’re looking good,’ he says. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine.’
‘Any lapses? Pain? Anything unusual?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Good.’ He repeats himself a third time, and I sense he is filling time.
‘Something wrong?’ I ask.
‘No. Not at all. I think your mother wants to have a talk with you, though, so I’ll be going. Talk to you tomorrow.’ He clicks off.
A talk. She frightens me with her control and sureness. I don’t want to talk, but I am sure we will. Claire commands and it happens.
‘Sit down,’ she says.
I do.
Lily walks out of the pantry and leans against the counter, her own busyness suddenly gone out of her. Mother looks like she is going to regurgitate last night’s dinner.
‘You’re starting school tomorrow,’ she says. ‘It’s only at the local charter. It’s the closest one, so you can walk for the days that they meet. Their emphasis is ecosystem studies, but there is nothing I can do about that. It will just have to do. The others are too far, too crowded, and too—well, they simply need too many forms that we can’t provide right now. You’re all registered, and they’re expecting you. Unless you’ve changed your mind about going to school.’
After a long pause I realize her last sentence is a question. ‘No,’ I answer. ‘I haven’t changed my mind.’ I am still backtracking, trying to absorb everything she has thrown at me. School? Tomorrow? I thought it was out of the question. How did this happen? I pause in sorting out the turnaround, and I finally notice her.
Her eyes are glassy puddles. Her hands rest in her lap, weakly turned upward. The steady stream of words has ended, and she looks spent from the effort.
‘Are you happy?’ she asks.
I nod. Is it a trick? This is not what she wants. What is she really trying to do? ‘Yes. Thank you,’ I say. She pulls me close, and I feel her uneven breaths against my neck. Her grip is tight and I think she won’t let go, but then she pushes back my shoulders and she smiles. The limp hands tighten, the eyes blink, and with a deep breath she summons the infinite control that is Claire’s.
‘I’m meeting with carpenters this morning, but I will talk to you more about it this afternoon.’ She hesitates for a long moment, then adds, ‘The rain’s stopped. Why don’t you go out for a walk while you can?’ Her face is pale.
A walk, too?
I can’t respond. All I can think of is the gilded figure hanging on the wall in Lily’s church. Mother’s lifeblood is flowing out of her.
‘Thank you,’ I say again and head for the door, but before I leave the room, I see Lily close her eyes at the kitchen sink and her hand brushes her forehead, her heart, and finally each shoulder.
Plea
I hear sobbing.
And then a Hail Mary.
I hear a mumbling of prayers. And bargaining, too.
Jesus. Jesus.
Jesus.
Pleading and moaning.
In the darkest place that revisits me over and over again.
And for the first time I recognize the voice.
It is Lily.
A Walk
I am out the door in seconds. I am going to school. Tomorrow. I hurry down the walkway. Will Mother change her mind? I glance over my shoulder to make sure she is not following me. Freedom. It feels as crisp and breezy as the open sky. But then I remember her pale face. Her tentative decision. My pace quickens. Distance is my savior. I flee from my closed world into one I haven’t met yet.
Them.
Mother said it could be dangerous. For them. Is she afraid I will hurt others? My classmates? I wouldn’t. But maybe the old Jenna would? Did I hurt Kara and Locke? Is that why they aren’t my friends anymore?
There is Mr Bender. He counts as a friend. I will visit him.
With the swelling of the creek, I can’t pass between our yards, so I follow the streets around to his house. I don’t know his address or what his house looks like from the front, but I know, like ours, it is the last house on his street.
Even though the rain has stopped, the gutters are still like small rivers. Leaving our sidewalk to walk in the street, I must leap to get over the expanse. I walk down the middle of the road. The air smells of wet soil and eucalyptus. This time tomorrow I will be in school. I will be making more friends. I will be owning a life. The life of Jenna Fox. It will be mine, whatever it may be.
Our neighbor’s house, the massive Tudor, is dark and quiet. Same with the next house. But at the sprawling Craftsman I see activity. A small white dog barks at me through the bars of a gate. I stop and watch him. A woman calls to me, and I turn my head towa
rd the front drive, where she sweeps the litter of the storm.
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘He thinks he’s a guard dog. Don’t worry, though. He’s all bark. Wouldn’t hurt a flea.’
I nod. I never thought he would hurt me. He’s a dog. He barks. Should I have been afraid? Is this what all neighbors do? Warn you about things? The way Mr Bender warned me about the white house at the end of my street? Is it a nicety that means nothing, but one of the many other subtleties that has become muddled inside of me? Am I missing something, or are they?
The woman lifts her hand, holds it there, and then waves. A smile follows. ‘You okay?’ she asks.
‘Are you?’ I ask. Maybe I need to be concerned about my neighbors, too? She returns abruptly to her sweeping and I leave.
Even though it is morning, the sky is still dark with clouds and there are lights on in the next house. The white house. As I get closer, I can see a glowing chandelier through a large window over the door. More lights shine behind other curtained windows. The pillars on either side of the door are cracked, lines running the length of them, bits of concrete missing. I imagine they are bits that fell away with the last earthquake and were never repaired, but still, the house looks to be well cared for. Better than ours. It is not a frightening house, at least not what lies outside. The front door opens, catching me. I try to resume my walk before I am noticed, but it is too late. A shadowed figure reaches for a paper on the porch but then stops and straightens without retrieving it. He steps out. It is a boy. Like the boy I saw at the mission, he is tall and pleasant-looking, but his hair is as white as the other boy’s hair was black. It is short and uncombed, a scuffle of waves pointing in different directions.
‘Hello,’ he calls. His voice is pleasant, too.
‘Hello.’
‘You new in the neighborhood?’
‘Yes.’
‘Welcome. I’m Dane.’ He smiles. Even from the street I can see the whiteness of his teeth.
‘Hello,’ I say again.
I want to leave, but my feet seem stapled to the ground. He is bare-chested and his pajama-bottoms hang dangerously low. He pulls them up and shrugs. Was I staring?
‘I better go,’ he says. ‘Nice meeting you.’
‘Bye, Dane,’ I answer, and miraculously my feet are released and I continue on my walk.
When your life has had few events to occupy it, it’s amazing how a simple encounter can seem like an entire three-act play. I replay it over and over in my head while I continue on my way to Mr Bender’s house. Dane. White house. White pajamas. White teeth. There was nothing frightening about it, except the way I was frozen on the street.
Persona
Finding his house is easy. Left. Left. Left. A ten-minute walk at most. He is surprised to see me but invites me in.
‘Coffee?’
‘I can’t drink. I mean I don’t drink coffee,’ I say.
Mr Bender stirs cream into his. He offers me juice, milk, bagels, and muffins. I say no to them all. ‘I’m on a special diet,’ I tell him.
‘Allergies?’
‘No. Just special.’
He nods. It is a nod that says, yes, I know. What does he know? He says there isn’t a thing you can’t find out about your neighbors on the Net. Has he found out something about me?
‘Did you get your pictures of the pine serpent?’ I ask.
‘Yes. Dozens. I’m trying to choose the best ones to send to my agent.’
‘Did you get some pictures with the birds?’
‘A few. But the few were fairly amazing. I got lucky.’
‘May I see them?’
‘The pictures?’
‘No. The birds.’
Our footsteps make whooshing sounds on the rain-soaked ground. Puddles spot the pathway into the garden. With his long stride, Mr Bender steps over them, but I step in them. ‘I don’t know how many there’ll be,’ he says, ‘with the storm and all.’
All I want is one.
We sit on the log bench. He’s right. There are not many. Only two, the rest still huddled away from the storm. But the two that come will land only on his hand.
After twenty minutes, he puts the birdseed away and we walk back to the house. He pours himself another cup of coffee and I shuffle through photos of the pine serpent.
‘Don’t worry about it, Jenna.’
What makes him think I’m worried? And why should it matter so much whether a small brown bird lands on my hand anyway? What makes him think I care?
‘Some things take time,’ he says.
Too many things take time. I’ve lost so much time already. A year and a half might as well be a lifetime for me. ‘I don’t have time to spare,’ I tell him.
He laughs. ‘Sure you do. You’re only seventeen. You have lots of time.’
I set the pictures in my hand down on the table.
I never told him I was seventeen.
‘Where did you find that out, Mr Bender?’ I ask. ‘On the Net? Am I one of the neighbors who you find things out about?’
He refills his coffee mug. ‘Yes.’ He’s not apologetic.
‘You’re not embarrassed about your snooping?’
‘It’s not snooping. I need to know about my neighbors.’
Maybe so. Maybe I do, too. ‘Then I have a confession to make,’ I tell him. ‘You’re not the only snoop. I did some checking, and I found out a few things about you, too.’
‘Oh?’ His brows arch, and he sits down opposite me.
‘Have you had surgery, Mr Bender? Or maybe you simply have excellent genes?’
‘Meaning?’
‘You look like you’re about forty-five. Fifty at most.’
He doesn’t reply.
‘But Clayton Bender the artist was born eighty-four years ago. You either hold your age really well, or…?’
‘You expect me to fill that one in?’
‘No. I’ve already figured out you can’t be him. No one’s genes are that good. I just don’t know who you really are. A serial killer, maybe?’
He smiles. ‘You’ve got quite an imagination. Nothing that dramatic, I’m afraid.’ He takes a long sip from his mug. ‘But still serious enough it needs to remain a secret. Only a few people know. My agent, for one. He helps build the quirky-artist persona to keep people away. You’re right. I’m not Clayton Bender, but I took his name almost thirty years ago.’
‘Your own name wasn’t good enough?’
‘The name, yes. But the life that went with it, no.’
‘Where’s the real Mr Bender?’
‘He passed away.’
‘Did you kill him?’
He laughs. ‘No, Jenna, I promise you his passing was quite natural.’
‘How did you meet him?’
He stands and walks over to the kitchen sink, pouring the rest of his coffee out. ‘I ran away when I was sixteen. I had no other options.’ He turns back to face me. ‘I got mixed up with some people who could do me some serious harm. A friend gave me some money and his car, and I ended up on the other side of the country on Bender’s doorstep. He was a loner out in the desert and needed a worker, so I helped him out and he helped me, no questions asked. I stayed with him for three years.’
‘He was an artist then?’
‘Of sorts.’ He smiles and shrugs, joining me at the table again. ‘He got by with a small Net business—grinding and then selling natural pigments to artists all over the world—and the rest of the time he wandered the desert collecting stones. He piled them into little monuments wherever he took a notion. I didn’t understand it, but I helped him. In a strange way, it helped me not to think. Maybe that’s why he did it, too. Then one day he went out ahead of me looking for stones, and when I caught up with him, he was dead. I never found out what it was. Heart attack or stroke. I don’t know. I buried him and gave him his own monument and then I waited for another year, thinking someone would show up. Family, friends, someone to claim the house, but no one ever came. In the meantime, I just kept stacki
ng the stones. I lived off the money he had stashed away, but I knew that couldn’t last forever, and then one day it finally occurred to me. I didn’t have to hide out forever. I could be Clayton Bender. I had his birth certificate and other documents, and not a soul in the world seemed to know him. I’ve been him ever since.’
‘And your old life? Do you ever miss it?’
‘Parts. Mostly I regret that I never saw my parents again.’
‘Or your best friend?’
He shrugs and looks away so I can’t see his eyes. ‘Now you know my secret,’ he says. ‘Will you keep it?’
‘I have no one to tell. And I wouldn’t even if I did.’
‘Good. You ready to tell me your secrets?’
‘I don’t have any,’ I say. ‘None that I remember, at least.’
It occurs to me that Mr Bender is much more clever at finding information about Jenna Fox on the Net than I am. If he knows I am seventeen, what else does he know? Secrets that I don’t even know? My hands tremble. I have never seen them tremble before. I stare at them.
‘Jenna?’
I clasp my hands together to make them still. For the first time, I notice they don’t interlace smoothly. It feels like I have twelve fingers instead of ten. I keep reworking them, reclasping, but it still feels awkward. Why won’t they lace together?
‘Jenna? You all right?’
My hands.
I shove them both beneath my thighs, out of sight. He made it his business to know. I look at him. ‘What else did you find out about me, Mr Bender?’
‘I don’t think I—’
‘Please.’
‘I read that you were injured in an accident. They didn’t expect you to survive.’
The room spins, and I hold on to the table. Worse, I feel like I am on the edge of shutting down. It’s as though, spoken aloud, the word accident is a switch, and it’s making everything inside me go black. Is that why I avoid it with Mother and Father? I struggle to focus. Find your way. Make it your business. ‘What kind?’
‘Of accident?’
‘Yes. That.’