The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Jenna Fox Chronicles 1)

I stare at them both. Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, it does. I have a life expectancy between two and two hundred years. What’s next? I back toward the door. ‘How could you do this to me?’

‘We did what any parent would do. We saved you.’

‘Saved what? I’m a freak! You saved an uploaded artificial freak!’

Mother steps closer and in an instant her hand shoots up ready to slam across my face, but she catches herself, her hand frozen in midair. She deliberately lowers it to her side. Even in her rage, she cannot harm one cell on her treasured Jenna’s face. ‘Don’t you dare call yourself that! And don’t you dare judge us! Until you’ve been in our shoes, you’ll never understand!’ She turns abruptly and leaves the room.

Father and I stare at each other. Her exit leaves a hole, an imbalance to our already teetering triangle.

‘It’s been very difficult for her, Jenna,’ he finally says, his voice soft and uneven. Is he unraveling, too? They’re both disintegrating before my eyes. I need to get out. Get away, Jenna. I open the kitchen door to the backyard and step halfway out—like it hasn’t been hard for me? I turn and look at Father again.

‘I’m illegal. No matter how you play with the words … I’m illegal. I don’t even know if I’m human.’

Father collapses into a chair. He leans forward, his fingers digging across his face and scalp. ‘I do know. You are one hundred percent human.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘I’m a doctor, Jenna. And a scientist.’

‘Does that make you an authority on everything? What about a soul, Father? When you were so busy implanting all your neural chips, did you think about that? Did you snip my soul from my old body, too? Where did you put it? Show me! Where? Where in all this groundbreaking technology did you insert my soul?’

I turn and leave before I can hear his answer. If he had one.

Lily

I was always bright. I always got As. But I wasn’t smart like Kara and Locke. They were truly brilliant. More than just book smart. It wouldn’t have taken them this long to catch on.

I sit on the large flat rock that just yesterday Ethan and I kissed on. Yesterday when I was only a girl with a shaky memory. Yesterday is a world away now.

I was going to run into the woods, out of view, but I know they would panic. Maybe even follow me. What might happen to their precious Jenna? They’re probably watching me now. From a window. Wondering. Ready to pounce. Second-guessing every thought I might have. Wondering if they could have done something differently. Wondering what they should do next. I can almost feel their eyes on my back. I whip around, but all I see is a cold, silent house. Bricks sit in pallets, waiting to repair the veranda. Scaffolding for painters stands empty. All workers have been turned away today. Restoration is on hold.

I haven’t seen Lily at all. We all need space.

I stare at the pond. It is mostly still. A coot hen on Mr Bender’s side disturbs the water every few minutes, diving for something on the bottom. The ripples don’t even reach our side of the pond. They disappear somewhere in the middle. I concentrate on that short expanse, where something becomes nothing. Exactly when does it disappear? And where does it go?

I pull my sneaker off and throw it as far as I can. It splashes into the middle of the pond, and the coot hen is startled into the reeds. Ripples fan out. They reach both shores, but withi

n a minute the surface is glass again, the sneaker’s splashy entrance forgotten, and I am minus a shoe. It is the least of my worries, and now I am back to that. Me. Or whatever I am.

My own question to Father has caught me by surprise. There is no going back. Where did the question come from? Were my artificial neural chips begging me to recognize what was left behind? Was it? It burrows into me, like a foxtail inching into flesh.

My soul.

I pull my sock from my sneakerless foot. It looks like real flesh. Real toes. Ally’s prosthetics are well made, but they are clearly not like this. These are real. They feel. I skim my foot out along the rock, feeling the cold surface, the uneven granite. Bits of grit.

I stare at the once again glassy surface of the pond. I curl my toes against the rock. I listen to my toenails scratching the stone. Digging. Chipping. The questions circle back. Is there such a thing? Was mine left behind?

I look at my hand curled in my lap, the bandage now covering the secret. The sick feeling of when I first saw it returns. In one moment, one brief glance, reality can flip. Whatever we believe can vanish. Believing in something doesn’t make it so.

There were so many things Mother and Father always wanted me to be. But wanting didn’t make it so, either. Now they want me to be just who I was before. I’m not. No matter how much they want it, or how much I want it, I can’t make that happen. The feeling of failure is familiar. I always tried so hard to be everything they wanted. Everything three babies could be. Their miracle child. Me. Now I am a different kind of miracle. The artificial freak kind.

‘The world has sure changed, hasn’t it?’

I startle and turn around. It is Lily. I didn’t hear her come up behind me. I turn back without answering.

‘Mind if I sit down?’

I stare out at the pond, silent, and hug my knees to my chest. She sits down, uninvited.