Or someone did.
No wonder Mother and Father won’t talk about it. I killed my best friends. High speeds and reckless driving. Their precious Jenna wasn’t so perfect after all.
Hurry, Jenna. Is that why the words keep circling through me? Trying to remind me of what I did? Strangely, I feel something, but it is not guilt. Does that make me a monster?
I remember. Something. A bit.
A black sky. Stars. The halo of a streetlight.
Here. Throw them. Keys flying through the air. My hand stretched out. Hurry, Jenna. A glimpse of the night everything changed. Mother and Father may have blocked out most of it, but they couldn’t get rid of it all. A tattletale neurochip decided I would get a hooded peek of what I had done. Is the joke on Father, or me?
Mr Bender suggests a walk in the garden. He feeds the birds and they peck in his palm. I stretch out my palm briefly, but again they don’t come to me. And maybe now I know why.
One Simple Thing
I rip open boxes. Box after box. Books. Dishes. Papers. Clothing. Keepsakes. I dump them out. Box. After box. After box. I ransack. I search. I break.
None of it is mine.
I collapse in the midst of the disaster I have created in the garage, and garbled noises crawl up my throat.
It sounds like an animal.
I am.
I am a kept animal.
With no past but what they will give me.
And all I wanted today was one simple thing.
A red skirt.
Another Dark Place
‘Floor to ceiling, don’t you think?’ Claire points her laser to the ceiling and records the measurement.
‘Fine,’ I say. I watch her, measuring for drapes for my window. I take in the angles of the room, the slant of light flooding through panes of glass, the planes that separate us, the irony of drapes to create darkness.
I stare at her. My mother is an older version of me, but she is also something I will never be. Old. My skin and bones will not age—my Bio Gel will simply reach the end of its shelf life and cease to operate. If I were to marry, I would not grow old with my husband. I could either die after two years or outlive him by a hundred. An interesting prospect. What price did Claire pay to keep her only child?
She sees me staring, and it makes her busier. She chatters, fills space, is careful but does not address my gaze. She treads even faster to keep on the surface, but somehow I don’t count it against her. She said that for months she was in as dark a place as I. Maybe staying on the surface keeps her from returning to a place where she can’t breathe. She measures length and depth as carefully as a surgeon places a scalpel, as though it is a matter of life and death. Maybe for her it is.
She is always careful around me. Is that why the word hovers close in my thoughts? Careful with her movements, careful with her words. Nothing is relaxed between us. Is she careful because she thinks I will break? Or maybe because she will. When I am alone in the dark counting my breaths, is she doing the same in the darkness of her room, wondering … was it all worth it?
Now, with light streaming through the window, she is busy, determined to gain control over what is natural. Each of her movements is like a blow, a punch, a fist kneading something into shape.
‘Accident,’ I say.
Her laser clicks off. She looks at me, instantly pale, her eyes sunken. ‘What?’
‘I’ve learned how to say it. Accident. I assume that was another suggestion you and Father planted, to never bring up the accident.’
She sets her laser down on my nightstand. She looks at me blankly. Weak.
‘No,’ she says, easing herself down to the edge of my bed, ‘I think it was something inside of you not allowing you to say it.’ She nods her head, like she is plucking together words she has been saving. ‘And we didn’t want to push you.’
‘They’re dead,’ I say.
Her eyes glisten. She holds her arms out to me, and I slip through space like a feather on a current of wind, effortlessly carried by the force that is Claire.
I sit on the bed next to her, feeling her arms holding me, rocking us together in primal rhythm. ‘We tried to bring it up at the hospital,’ she whispers, her breath and tears warm on my cheek. ‘It was too hard for you. You went into distress just trying to communicate. Shortly after, you slipped into a coma. We were afraid that we had made it worse, pushing you too hard. We didn’t want to make that mistake again.’ She pulls away and looks into my eyes. ‘It was an accident, Jenna. An accident. You don’t have to relive the details.’
‘Is that why you blocked it all from our Netbook?’
She nods again. ‘When you woke up, you didn’t seem to remember it. We didn’t want you to come upon something unexpectedly and have a setback.’
She pulls me close again, my head on her chest. I can hear her heartbeat. Familiar. The sound I heard in her womb. The whoosh, the beat, the flow that punctuated my beginnings in another dark place. I had no words for those sounds then, just feelings. Now I have both. I can remember it as clearly as I remember yesterday.
We lie back on my pillows, holding each other without talking, and time becomes a forgotten detail. Seconds and minutes stretch into an hour or more. I don’t want to move. Claire strokes my forehead, dozing, the slant of light through my panes growing golden, then dim, the afternoon passing.
‘I’m sorry,’ I finally whisper. Sorry for Locke and Kara. Sorry for her months of worry. Sorry for how we have to live now. Sorry for pushing her away. Sorry that I’m not perfect.
‘Shhh,’ she says, stroking my head again. And then she adds, ‘I’m sorry, too.’
I see the ring of swatches, sitting on my nightstand. ‘The swatches,’ I say, ‘they’re all blue. Do you have any that are red?’
‘Red?’
‘Can I have red drapes?’
‘You can have anything you want. Anything.’
I close my eyes, pressing my ear to her chest again. Hearing the sounds, the pulse of Claire, the world of my beginnings, the time when there was no doubt I had a soul. When I existed in a warm, velvet liquid that was as dark as night, and that dark place was the only place I wanted to be.
Percentages
I fold a yellowed lace tablecloth and lay it in the bottom of a box. ‘I’m sorry about the vase. I—I wasn’t careful.’
Lily makes a sound. I am not sure if it is a snort or a laugh. ‘That’s an understatement.’
I heard her cursing this morning. I knew immediately why and ran out the back door. She had discovered my rampage in the garage when she raised the door to take the car out.
‘I don’t have any money, but I’ll find a way to replace it.’
She doesn’t address my offer. ‘Breaking things seems to be your new specialty. I almost wish I hadn’t left the morning you started flipping plates for your parents.’
‘It wasn’t amusing.’
‘Not at the time, I’m sure.’
I close a filled box and begin filling another. Everything in here belongs to Lily. ‘Why are your things out here in boxes?’
‘They were supposed to go to storage. Before I came here, I was—well—I suppose you could say that I was getting out of Dodge.’
‘Dodge?’
‘It’s an old saying. It means getting out of town before there’s trouble. Except that I was getting out of the country. I knew you were—that your parents would be—’ She sighs and shakes dirt from a cashmere fedora. ‘I knew that it was about time.’
Time. Almost like a rebirth. ‘What was it like?’
Lily startles. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Did you see the construction?’ It sounds harsh. It is. It was.
She vigorously shakes her head. ‘Oh, no. Once I knew what they were up to, I stayed at my place in Kennebunk. Your mother and I hardly talked during that period.’
‘You didn’t approve.’
She is quiet, laying the fedora in the top of a full box and closing it. She pulls two feet
of tape from the roll, the screech cutting through the dusty silence. ‘Approve is probably not the right word,’ she finally says. ‘Shock, maybe. Or fear.’ She thinks for a moment longer and adds, ‘Maybe approve is the right word. I don’t know. It was the unknown.’
I understand. It’s the unknown that I fear—the bits of memories that still have no connections; the role I played in Kara’s and Locke’s deaths; the voices that linger, too fresh; the constant game of weighing percentages, wondering if ten percent of one thing can be worth as much as ninety percent of something else. And then the answer that always runs through my neurons and neurochips: unknown.
‘That’s one thing Mother and Father didn’t plan on—the unknown. There’s a lot I haven’t told them.’
She perks up, looking almost pleased that I have found fault with Mother and Father’s little coup. ‘Like what?’ she asks.
‘Remembering my baptism, and even earlier memories.’
‘Are you sure?’
I nod. ‘It frightened me at first, but now, somehow it comforts me. Like I have every bit of who I was, maybe even more than the Jenna I used to be ever had. Maybe it makes up for what I’ve lost. Maybe it balances the percentages?’
‘Percentages!’ she huffs. ‘Those are for economists, polls, and politicians. Percentages can’t define your identity.’ She stacks books in a box and looks up. ‘What else haven’t you told them?’
I am still mulling over the word identity as I answer her. ‘I hear voices.’
‘You mean memories?’
I hesitate. ‘I’m not sure,’ I tell her. ‘Sometimes they seem too … fresh. Like they’re whispering right into my ear.’
She stiffens. ‘Who?’ she asks.
‘Kara and Locke. At least I think it’s them.’
She sits on a nearby box.
‘I know about them,’ I say. ‘I know they’re dead.’
‘You remember the accident.’
‘No. I read about it. But I think I already knew, somewhere inside. It didn’t shock me when I found out. It was more like a confirmation.’
She looks up at the rafters, the air, her gaze floating through the timbers like she has forgotten I am even there. ‘They were good kids,’ she says.
‘I didn’t do it, Lily.’ I move in front of her so she has to look at me. ‘I didn’t kill them.’
‘It was an accident, Jenna. Unintentional, however it happened. On that much we all agree.’
I nod. But it was more than just an accident. They would have prosecuted me, except that I was too injured for them to bother. If the police saw me now, what would they do? But it is still more than that. It runs through me, trying to connect, bits that are loose. Neuron. Neurochip. I didn’t kill my friends. Or maybe I just can’t accept that I did. Maybe that would mark Jenna’s permanent fall from perfection. I gather three scattered books from the floor and stuff them in the box.
Lily stands, holding the flaps shut while I tape it. ‘Why are you telling me all this and not your parents?’
I’m surprised she would ask. Is she testing me? We both know the answer.
Because I always have.
I remember the weekends, taking the train to her house. Planning all the things I would share, all the events, worries, and mistakes I kept from Mother and Father. I saved them for Lily, because she would listen. Sometimes a person gets tired of being fixed all the time. Where every little problem becomes a project. Where every shortcoming needs to be addressed. They eventually have to share with someone. My someone was Lily.
‘I seem to remember that you had a high tolerance for listening without melting down over the content.’ I pull off a last section of tape and stick it to the flap. ‘It wears on a person, you know, always having to be perfect. You know that one day something will happen, some problem that won’t fit into a neat little project. Something that can’t be fixed. Then where does that leave you?’
She doesn’t hesitate. ‘You become mortal like the rest of us,’ she says. She turns away, busying herself with more of the mess I have created. I could almost feel sorry for her. I see the line she is dancing. It is the same one I have danced with ever since I saw blue gel beneath my split flesh.
‘You never did tell me,’ she says. ‘What were you looking for when you turned into a human tornado?’
It is a casual slip, nothing more. I shouldn’t attribute much meaning to it, but still, I notice the word human. I would gladly be a human tornado.
‘Something to wear,’ I answer.
‘The fedora is something to wear.’
‘I was looking for a red skirt I used to have.’
‘It must have been some skirt.’
‘It was. I bought it when I was shopping with Kara.’
‘Oh.’ The meaning of the skirt echoes in the single syllable.
‘I wanted a change from all the blue shirts and pants I have now. I thought it might be out here, but I guess Claire left all of my stuff in Boston. More appearances, I suppose.’
‘Probably something like that.’
I begin sweeping scraps into a dustpan and change the subject. ‘And you never did tell me—how did all these boxes end up here?’
‘A detour,’ she says, frowning. ‘Claire called me. The house situation had become a problem. She was frantic. The place they had originally planned on hadn’t worked out at the last minute. But then your father had an old childhood friend, Edward, whom he knew he could trust. Edward told him about a place near him that was perfect—the right climate, out of the way, roomy, a little run-down, but otherwise just what your parents needed. Except they didn’t want ownership traced to them or your father’s business. They were in a hurry, so I was the quickest solution. Claire and I have never had the same last name, and no one keeps tabs on what I do anyway. So I bought it for them.’
‘Buying it didn’t mean you had to come here.’
‘She asked. No, correction. She begged. She said she needed me. She was scared. And I figured that no matter what I thought about the whole thing, she is my daughter. My only daughter.’
So Lily is under Claire’s spell, too. She’s not that different from me.
Lily looks up, squints, then shakes her head. ‘Might as well tell you the rest. I was also drafted as part of the escape plan—if it became necessary.’
‘What?’
‘They needed an escape plan in case the authorities caught up with them. So while your parents provide subterfuge, I am to whisk you to Edward, who in turn will help whisk both of us out of the country. The choice was Italy, since they don’t have the same restrictive laws as us and the climate would work well for you.’
Whisk me. Like I am a piece of dust deposited in a dustpan. ‘Why didn’t they just whisk me out to begin with?’
‘Why do your parents do any of the things they do? They want it all. And if they can get away with it, they will.’
I note her take. Getting away with it. It being me, and me being illegal. And now, against her will, she is caught up in something she doesn’t believe in and that is against the law. How far will a parent go for a child?
‘Well, just where would you be right now if you weren’t stuck in this lovely little resort?’
She smiles. ‘I was on my way to a friend’s villa near Montalcino in Tuscany. A nice enough place to drop out. They offered it to me for as long as I wanted. I was even going to try my hand at winemaking.’
Lily’s own little Walden, never realized. For this. ‘So you traded an Italian villa and wine for a crumbling Cotswold and an illegal lab pet. You’re not very good at trades, are you, Lily?’
She empties a dustpan of broken glass into the trash and looks at me straight on, briefly, then bangs the dustpan against the can to get off all the last particles. ‘I do okay,’ she says.
The clean-up is done. There is no busyness to keep us here.
We stand there uncomfortably. Our reason for working together has ended, and I still want so much more from Lily. The oafish o
ut-of-step me surfaces, and I cross the thin line we dance.
‘Would I have wanted this, Lily? Would the Jenna you knew have wanted what I am now?’ In an instant I am desperately afraid because I have crossed a boundary. A black-and-white, yes-and-no one.
‘That depends, Jenna,’ she says. ‘What are you now?’
The black-and-white answer I was expecting swirls into murky gray. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, until you can answer my question, I can’t answer yours.’
Identity
Identity n. 1. The condition of being oneself and not another. 2. The sense of self providing sameness and continuity over time. 3. Exact likeness in nature or qualities. 4. Separate or distinct existence. 5. The qualities of a person that make them different from others.
I check them off.
Different from others. Is one yes out of five enough?
Lily says percentages and politicians can’t define identity, but they’ve defined mine: illegal lab creation. The hand that I have been dealt. Is this what Allys meant?
Allys is so sure of herself. So confident. She calls Dane a decomposing turd without blinking. Without knowing it, she calls me a lab pet. Why am I so drawn to someone who could destroy me? Why do I need her to be my friend?
The dictionary says my identity should be all about being separate or distinct, and yet it feels like it is so wrapped up in others.
The Unknowable
Are there some things I will never know?
The unanswerable I will have to accept?
Have I changed the way everyone does, time and events molding me?
Or am I a new Jenna, the product of technology, changed by what was put in or maybe what was left out?
And if my original ten percent really is enough, what if it had been nine percent? Or eight?
Is one numeral that different from another?
When is a cell finally too small to hold our essence?
Even five hundred billion neurochips aren’t telling me, and I’m not sure they ever will.
The question that twists inside me again and again—am I enough?—I realize, for the first time, is not just my question, but was the old Jenna’s question as well.