These memories descend out of nowhere, giving me pieces of who I was, but their significance is lost. I sigh and resume my walk, not knowing if this memory is important, or just more of the jumbled trivia of Jenna’s life, like sock shopping. Maybe that is all any life is composed of, trivia that eventually adds up to a person, and maybe I just don’t have enough of it yet to be a whole one.
My half-filled memory is pocked with extremes: flashes of surgical clarity paired with syrupy-slow searches for basic words any four-year-old would know, moments of startling insights followed by fits of embarrassing denseness, vast gaps where I can’t even remember what happened to my best friends, and then glimpses from my infancy that should never be remembered. But then when I am feeling the least human, I remember kissing Ethan and feeling intensely alive—more alive than I think the old Jenna could have ever felt. Would that make a difference to the FSEB?
In dark, silent moments in the middle of the night, alone, I count the number of times my chest rises, watching with detached interest this thing that I am, knowing my breaths don’t take in oxygen—it is only for show. I am almost impressed with the rhythm of it all, in a repulsive sort of way. And then it leads me, unexpectedly, back to a place where I can almost feel my fingers touching who I used to be. Jenna. The real Jenna.
I wonder. Is there such a thing? A real Jenna? Or was the old me always waiting to be someone else, too?
Hurry, Jenna. Hurry. Kara’s and Locke’s voices won’t let go.
Or maybe it’s me who won’t let go.
I jiggle the latch on Mr Bender’s gate and swing it open. His house reminds me of Thoreau’s Walden. It is larger, but still rustic and natural, overgrown with landscape, banks of wild white roses tangling across the porch roof. He doesn’t answer when I knock. I walk around to the side and down his long driveway. I see him examining a window on his garage.
‘Hello,’ I call.
He turns and waves. ‘Good to see you.’
I walk closer and see the window is shattered.
‘You broke it?’
‘Someone did.’ He says someone like it’s a name.
I look inside. Tables are overturned. Paint is thrown against walls. An upholstered stool is slashed and the stuffing pulled out and tossed. But it is the aqua-colored car parked within that stops me. The dusty cover has been partially ripped away to reveal an old and obviously out-of-commission car. I’ve seen that car before. But I don’t know where. Maybe in a photo? Or maybe I’ve only seen one just like it.
‘Did you call the police?’ I ask.
‘No. I don’t want to get them involved.’
‘Because of your secret?’
‘I have to weigh the risks. This isn’t worth it. I can clean this up in a few hours, and the monetary loss isn’t more than a few hundred dollars. What bothers me most is they didn’t take anything—at least as far as I can tell. I have tools worth thousands of dollars in there. They didn’t want that. Just the sick pleasure of destroying something that belongs to someone else.’ Like the first day I met him, he looks off in the distance toward the white house at the end of my street, and he shakes his head.
‘I can help you clean it up,’ I say.
‘Not now. I need a cup of tea. I’ll do it later.’
‘May I ask a favor, then? Can I use your Netbook?’
He hesitates.
‘Mine’s broken,’ I add. It is only a small lie.
‘Let’s go.’
With a few carefully worded inquiries, the facts spit forth freely. Mother and Father would be horrified. I am equally horrified, knowing that this is another suspicion confirmed—they are still keeping secrets from me. Important ones. Are there others? Nothing is denied by Mr Bender’s Netbook as it was with mine. He brews a cup of tea and gives me privacy as he shuffles through some proofs. News clip after news clip fills in holes and at the same time creates new ones. They wrap around me in ways I hadn’t considered. I feel … what? Mother’s breathlessness? The need to look away? My bioengineered blood pooling at my feet?
I lean back and stare at the screen. ‘You knew about Kara and Locke, didn’t you?’
Mr Bender sets aside his proofs and nods.
I stare at the screen, absorbing word by word a sliver of my life that changed everything.
In spite of a pending civil action, the district attorney’s office reports that it has no plans at this tim
e to prosecute Jenna Fox, 16, daughter of Matthew Fox, founder of Fox BioSystems, based here in Boston. There were no apparent witnesses to the accident. Passenger Locke Jenkins, also 16, died two weeks after the accident without regaining consciousness. Kara Manning, 17, the second passenger, sustained severe head trauma when she was thrown from the car and as a result could not give investigators any information. She died three weeks following the accident when her family removed life support.
My fingers shake. I press the key to bring up the next page.