Fox Forever (Jenna Fox Chronicles 3)

She doesn’t show and she doesn’t show, and just when I think she’s not coming at all, I see a glimmer of white at the rooftop edge. She’s wearing a nightgown, which means she doesn’t plan on coming down, but then she lowers the rope ladder anyway and begins her descent, her nightgown flapping in the breeze against her bare legs.

It’s both a frightening and strangely beautiful thing to watch, an eerie marriage of freedom, desperation, and insane risk. I hate that she’s coming down, and yet that’s what I was waiting for. Why am I here? I spent all day telling myself I wasn’t going to come tonight, but then I did. Maybe I really am developing a sleeping problem.

I maintain my position on the tree root until she’s walking across the lawn, and then I stand, wondering if it was her father who prevented her from coming earlier.

“I can’t stay long,” she says.

“You didn’t have to come because of me. I already told you I just like hanging out in the Commons at night.”

She looks at me, her chest rising in a long, slow breath. “Really? Is that all it is?”

The Commons is big. There’s a million places I could perch myself besides right across the street from her building. She’s not stupid. But I can’t really answer why I’m here. Only more information? It’s not just that.

“It’s not safe to climb down the side of a building in a nightgown,” I tell her.

“It’s not safe to climb down at all. That won’t keep me from doing it if it pleases me.” She walks past me and sits on the root, her legs jutting out in front of her like she’s ready to trip me.

I watch the hard Raine return. The closed one who pushes people away. But it affects me differently now than it did the first time I saw her. She’s afraid. She covers her soft underside with prickly armor.

I make a deliberate show of stepping around her outstretched legs and I sit down beside her. “So tell me what pleases you, Raine. When I’m not here how do you spend your nights? Where do you go? What do you do?”

She slides her feet up on the root, hugs her shins, and looks at me. Her eyes grow warmer, like the question has unleashed a part of her that she lives for. Her pupils widen in the deep brown pools and I watch the play behind them, almost like a feral animal … like a fox who enjoys the cleverness of her game, and I realize she’s probably the most complex, contradictory person I’ve ever met. Her eyes narrow. “If my father’s anything, he’s a man of order and routine. That’s both his strength and his weakness. I know I have four and a half hours of guaranteed freedom each night. He doesn’t sleep much but when he does, he sleeps as deeply as a corpse. The only time I’ve ever had a close call was once when he became ill and woke during the night. Hap covered for me.”

At least I know with certainty where Hap’s loyalties lie.

She stares unfocused into the shadows of the trees surrounding us, a glimmer in her eyes. “I use that time to breathe. To do the things he would never allow. The first time I went out, I was looking for my mother.”

“I thought your mother was dead.”

“She is. This was after she died. I was looking for my birth mother. Not because I wanted to talk to her or know her. I just wanted to see the kind of woman who would abandon a baby. She threw me in a trash bin.”

I wince, unable to fathom Raine being thrown away like trash.

“Maybe that’s why Father didn’t want me to know my origins in the first place. He’s the one who found me crying in a heap of garbage. He fished me out and took me home as a temporary measure, but as soon as my mother laid eyes on me, she wouldn’t let me go. Of course they made it all legal, but I wasn’t exactly a planned acquisition.”

“Did you find your birth mother?”

“I may have seen her. I don’t know. I went to the parts of town Father would never let me enter—the places where Non-pacts live—and I looked at women there, wondering if one of them was the woman who threw me away, wondering what kind of animal she was. Wondering why she did it. Not many Non-pacts are out in the middle of the night, but a few times in the late hours I found gatherings hidden away in other parts of the city, and I watched them from dark alcoves, looking for a woman who looked like me.”

“How do you know your birth mother was a Non-pact?”

She shrugs. “The location where I was found. The clothes they found me in. Besides, Father said they’re the only ones who would throw a baby away. He reminds me every day of the life he saved me from. He had me scanned regularly for years, looking for any lasting damage. He still has me scanned occasionally.”

I can’t imagine anyone throwing her away, especially not a Non-pact. I saw how the children were well cared for at Xavier’s dinner, and the way he tenderly looked after his own children. I know that sort of thing happens—I’ve heard news reports like that before—but no one in his neighborhood would do such a thing. Why would Raine’s father tell her this, even if it’s true? It seems too cruel. Maybe some lies are for the best.

“I’m sorry, Raine.”

She shakes her head. “Nothing to be sorry for. Ancient history. A mere curiosity,” she says, like she doesn’t care. “After those excursions, I went to other places Father wouldn’t allow, like the cathedral on Washington Street.”

“Holy Cross?”

“You’ve been there?”

Every Sunday at 11:30 A.M. At least until I was twelve. I was an altar boy when I was just ten years old. I can still see my parents and grandparents beaming as I walked in the processional with my hands folded in front of me in prayer. When I was getting ready in front of my sister, I pretended I hated the cassock and crisp white tunic I had to wear, but I remember secretly thinking that maybe God would see me wearing those fancy holy clothes and mistake me for a priest. That, I was sure, would give me a direct line to God, because my regular connection to him seemed pretty shaky. Even though my house, my neighborhood, and my family are gone now, it’s comforting to know the church we went to has survived the ages. Still, I answer cautiously, not knowing what kind of shape it’s in now or if it’s even used as a church anymore—especially since the library is now a food warehouse.

“I only drove by. I don’t remember much about it.”

“That’s a shame. It’s beautiful. Spires of open emptiness, jeweled shadows, musical echos, and best of all, I listen to whispers from the stained-glass saints surrounding me. I always sit in the center pews all alone and pretend … I pretend I’m somewhere in heaven.”