‘Good. You ready to tell me your secrets?’
‘I don’t have any,’ I say. ‘None that I remember, at least.’
It occurs to me that Mr Bender is much more clever at finding information about Jenna Fox on the Net than I am. If he knows I am seventeen, what else does he know? Secrets that I don’t even know? My hands tremble. I have never seen them tremble before. I stare at them.
‘Jenna?’
I clasp my hands together to make them still. For the first time, I notice they don’t interlace smoothly. It feels like I have twelve fingers instead of ten. I keep reworking them, reclasping, but it still feels awkward. Why won’t they lace together?
‘Jenna? You all right?’
My hands.
I shove them both beneath my thighs, out of sight. He made it his business to know. I look at him. ‘What else did you find out about me, Mr Bender?’
‘I don’t think I—’
‘Please.’
‘I read that you were injured in an accident. They didn’t expect you to survive.’
The room spins, and I hold on to the table. Worse, I feel like I am on the edge of shutting down. It’s as though, spoken aloud, the word accident is a switch, and it’s making everything inside me go black. Is that why I avoid it with Mother and Father? I struggle to focus. Find your way. Make it your business. ‘What kind?’
‘Of accident?’
‘Yes. That.’
‘A car accident.’
A car accident? Why did I think it was something else? Something more terrible? There are thousands of car accidents every day. It is practically common. A car accident. I can almost say it out loud. Except I wasn’t expected to survive—and I did. That is not common.
‘Anything else?’
‘The article was more about your dad. Anything he does is news, and he was taking a leave of absence from his work because of your condition. Since you were underage, a lot of information was unavailable, but the Boston Globe managed to find out that the nurses thought your condition was pretty grave.’ He pauses. Is he retrieving information or planning a lie? I watch his eyes carefully. His pupils dart to the left and then back to me. ‘That was about all the article said, Jenna.’
A lie.
Does he know I have no memory? What else? But curiously, he still seems to want to be my friend, so I drop it. For now. ‘Did I pass?’ I ask.
‘Pass?’
‘The Bender Neighbor Investigation?’
He smiles. ‘You passed the day I met you, Jenna. You gave me honesty and attitude. I liked that.’
‘I don’t remember giving you anything.’
‘Attitude, Jenna. You walked right up to me. Told me what you thought of my work. You weren’t afraid of anything.’
But I’m afraid of everything. Myself. Mother. Lily. Friends who haunt me in the night. Even going to school, which is something I asked for. If I have attitude, it is hiding somewhere deep, someplace I’m afraid I may never find.
Jenna Fox / Year Twelve
Jenna is at the shore. A pitchfork is in her hands. Cords of hair whip from her ponytail across her face. She smiles at the camera and says, ‘Come on, Mom, put it down and help me!’ At twelve years old, I still called her Mom. When did I begin calling her Claire? I can’t recall, but I feel the hardness of the word on my lips. The camera wobbles, and Claire’s voice is loud. ‘In a minute. Let me get a little more first.’
Was this a family getaway? A day at the beach? Every aspect of Jenna’s life is recorded. Father comes into view with a silver pail in hand, and he waves it in front of my face. ‘All mine,’ he teases. ‘I won’t go hungry! Can’t say the same for you two.’
Jenna laughs, this person that is me, and calls, ‘He has a hundred quahogs, Mom! Put that down, or we’ll starve!’ Jenna thrusts her pitchfork into the sand and the camera zooms in on her sandy feet, then glides up the length of her body, like every inch is being adored. It finally stops on my face. It rests there. Caressing. Watching. Watching what? The enthusiasm? The ruddy cheeks? The anticipation? Watching all the breaths, heartbeats, and hopes of Matthew and Claire Fox? For a moment, I can see the weight of it in Jenna’s face. My face. ‘Mom!’ Jenna pleads. The camera wobbles, is turned off, and a new scene appears, focusing on a campfire—