‘Ethan! What federal agency doesn’t have its problems? All the things you’re mentioning were early in its history.’
Rae watches intently. She seems gratified that a simple science lesson has turned unexpectedly passionate.
‘Besides,’ Allys continues, ‘those issues have been worked out. And now, without their careful monitoring, who knows what labs would be unleashing on the world?’
I stand. ‘Probably a lot of illegal things,’ I say. ‘Freakish things.’ I walk toward Allys. ‘Dangerous things.’ The freakish me, my delivery, my timing, everything about me, off. Different. Unleashed.
‘Right,’ Allys says. She stares at me. Quiet. Wondering at my opinion? Or my awkward stance? Or the fact that I am only an arm’s length away, meeting her stare. Her mind is racing. What is wrong with Jenna Fox? Something is different. She senses it. I can see it in every eyelash, every contraction of her pupil. She is searching. Trying to fill the gaps between her own synapses. Am I really that different from her?
Time is suspended. I can feel the breath of Ethan, Rae, and Gabriel, held between us.
‘Why are we here?’ Dane’s voice cuts through.
Allys turns to
face Dane. She spits her words out at him. ‘A short forty years ago, you hopeless moron, you would have been underwater. Look at the top of this ravine! This was once a river. In just forty short years, thanks to transgenic intervention and its domino effects, this tributary has become a mostly dry creek bed. So that is why we’re here, Dane. End of lesson!’
I look at the sparse trickle. I look at the dry boulders. I look at what science has done.
To me. To the ravine. And finally, to Allys.
Yes.
End of lesson.
Red
My fingers brush along the hangers in my closet. First my shirts, then my pants, all varying shades of blue. Sturdy. Neat. Functional. None with a fraction of the flair that I saw in Rae’s clothes. These have no personality at all.
Even Gabriel, who wants to fade into the background more than any of us, looks like a strutting peacock compared to me. Yesterday, when we climbed back out of the ravine, Dane and Gabriel were the last ones out. No one saw what happened. Dane claimed he lost his footing, but it was Gabriel who went down. His shirt was nearly ripped off his back. Back in the car, Gabriel fumed. He knew it wasn’t an accident, but all he said was, ‘This was my favorite shirt.’ My favorite shirt. It struck me then. I don’t have a favorite shirt. And now suddenly it seems so very important.
I pull out two shirts and compare them. There is no reason to like one more than the other. They almost look like lab attire. The only thing I like is—
The color.
A memory catches me.
Kara and I are shopping on Newbury Street, running in and out of tiny shops on a rainy spring day. We finally hunker down in our favorite. Kara chides me: Jenna, I refuse to allow you to buy another blue skirt! Your whole closet is blue!
My favorite color was blue.
And Kara’s favorite color was red.
Claire may have had to choose my clothes hastily, or maybe she chose them because they wouldn’t draw attention, but at least she tried to get a color she knew I liked. But that day almost two years ago, Kara talked me into the red skirt. She was right. It was a change I needed. What happened to that red skirt? Couldn’t Mother have packed my clothes and brought them from Boston? Or maybe that was part of the secret. A gravely ill, bedridden Jenna would have no use for short red skirts or floppy flowered hats, or jewel-trimmed blouses, and that invalid picture had to be preserved for prying eyes. Besides, a new, improved, and shorter Jenna would need new pants anyway. Ones that wouldn’t drag and reveal her lost two inches.
I ache for that red skirt now.
And I ache for the day I bought it with Kara.
Sliver
The lane to Mr Bender’s house is quiet. A breeze rustles golden leaves end over end along the gutter. The same breeze cuts across my face. It is cold, but I don’t shiver. It’s only California cold, not Boston cold. Mother and Father claim I will never feel that cold again.
Maybe.
Do I really want to live for two hundred years? Then again, do I want to live for only two either? Is that decision up to me? I am nearly eighteen. Eighteen what? An eighteen-year-old thing that can make a choice? If Father really believes what he says, that there is a most important ten percent, then one day I may make the choice to go to Boston. Kara and Locke are in Boston.
A gust whips my hair across my face, and I startle, stopping in the street, closing my eyes but still seeing, remembering the feeling, brushing strands from my face two years ago, the saltiness, the crispness, the foamy spray of a nearby crashing wave, the sound of gulls overhead, the feeling of sand between my toes.