The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Jenna Fox Chronicles 1)

‘A controlled risk-free cocoon for your lab pet?’

Father sighs and runs his fingers through his hair, the only nervous habit I have observed in him. ‘Let’s not dig that up again, Jenna.?

?

‘What’s he moving?’

Father looks at me, making his own calculations, studying my face and especially my eyes. Does he know I can see lies as plainly as a deep breath or shrug? He doesn’t answer. He’s catching on. He knows I am becoming more than he planned. More than the endlessly compliant fourteen-year-old he loved. But all children grow up.

‘I’ll figure it out,’ I say.

He concedes. ‘The backups. A closet in a house is no place for them. We didn’t have time for better choices before, but now we do. He is going to move them to a safer location.’

He stares at me, too close, too carefully, like he is reading every breath and shrug from me as well. I carefully look up to my left, like I am weighing what he has told me, and slowly I look back at him. ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘That’s probably a good idea.’ He watches, and gradually I see his muscles loosen and relax. He believes me. But that is nothing new. He always did because I was a rule-follower. I played by the rules he understood. But there are new rules now, ones he doesn’t know yet. He’ll learn. Just as I am learning.

He opens the front door. ‘You coming in?’

‘No,’ I tell him. ‘We were late getting back. Ethan is picking me up soon.’

‘It’s not a school day.’ He implies a question. He’s become more like Claire than I remember. When did he start clinging to me so? But I sense the answer lies somewhere between the darkness and the fear, sometime when it looked like I would be gone forever, the accident that didn’t just change me, but made them both different, too; that was when he changed. Calculations and maneuvers drain from me. I am seven years old and leading him to a cake that is filled with my love for him. I lean forward and kiss his cheek. ‘Our friend Allys is sick. She hasn’t been to school in days. We’re going to see her.’

A simple kiss on the cheek and his eyes are glassy. ‘Be home before dark,’ he says. I don’t answer because lying is not in me right now. But I will try. Because of his eyes. Because I am his life. Because some things don’t change.

I stand at the curb, waiting for Ethan, skimming back through the whispered conversation between Father and the stranger. By tomorrow. That’s what he said. By then the backups will be whisked away. But will their voices? Will I still hear them calling to me, pleading for release? If they only had a second chance, but they’ll never have a rebirth, not like me. Their purgatory will go on and on, and somehow they’ll always know that I could have saved them. Should have saved them.

When tomorrow? Did he say?

Sometime tomorrow Kara’s and Locke’s futures will be cemented, and I will become something less than genuine, like the first in a numbered series of art prints. Kara, Locke, and me, forgotten in a storage facility.

Mother and Father won’t be going anywhere between now and tomorrow. There’s no chance I could sneak into their closet.

Witnesses. They are witnesses.

I don’t have the key to the closet anymore anyway. I was stupid to leave it in the lock when I ran out. I can’t do anything for them now. Relevé, Jenna. Relevé.

I look at my hands. Trembling. A battle between neurochip and neuron, survival and sacrifice.

Where’s Ethan? He’s late!

I stand on tiptoe, like that will help me see farther down our street. My breaths come in rapid shallow pants, and I feel betrayed by this body that remembers panic with ease but needs coaxing to remember friends. I can’t let them go.

I spot Ethan’s car, finally, turning the corner at the end of our street.

‘I can help you.’ I jump and turn around. It is Lily.

I don’t need to ask. I know what help means.

‘You have a right,’ she says, ‘at least to your own backup. And maybe more. Only you know what it’s like. If you really want this, we can figure something out—’

Ethan stops his car at the curb. I open the door but look back at Lily. ‘They’re taking them away tomorrow.’

‘Then maybe we’ll talk tonight?’

I nod, wondering at her unexpected proposal. ‘Maybe we will,’ I answer, and I get into Ethan’s car.

They Know

‘You’re shaking.’