I watch every movement. The tilt of her head. The way her fingers rest on the table. Her pauses and her nods. My throat tightens.
Another girl, about the same age as Jenna, enters the stall and sits down next to her. They chat for a minute and then Jenna gathers a canvas bag and stands. The girl says something, and Jenna tosses her head back and laughs. And then her head turns, just a few degrees. Something has caught her attention. Her smile fades, her head turns just another degree or two, and her eyes meet mine. She pauses, her stance awkward, like she has been thrown off balance, and her eyes focus on me.
This is it.
I can't say anything or move. I just stare back, all my words, pleas, and plans gone.
And then, just like that, she looks away, as if her eyes had merely ruffled over a busy marketplace and my face was just another of many in the crowd.
She forgot me? She forgot me.
She begins to walk away, down the middle of the row toward other stalls. All of my uncertainty explodes into something burning in my chest, and I take off, weaving through the crowd after her. At the end of the row, I spot her a short distance ahead, walking toward a truck parked beneath a tree
. I stop when I am just a few yards behind her. She senses my presence and turns. I see the recognition in her eyes again. She twists one hand in the other, just the way she used to, but she looks directly at me.
"I apologize for staring back there," she says. "It was rude. I know. I didn't mean to. It's just that--" She looks down. I watch her swallow and then she looks at me again and smiles. Her voice is soft. "It's just that you look like someone I once knew." She clears her throat and adds, "A very long time ago."
Like someone? I haven't changed that much. I take a step closer, unable to speak, breathless, like she punched 260 years' worth of air out of me.
Jenna.
I don't know if it's the exchange of a glance or decades of need compressing into a single unspoken word, but I watch as realization crawls over her shoulders, her lips, and finally, her eyes. She shakes her head and whispers, "No," and then turns and runs.
I watch her, confused for a few seconds, and then chase after her, pinning her against her truck just before she opens the door. Her back is to me, and she is shaking her head over and over. "No! It's not possible! No!"
I hold her tight so she can't thrash, my mouth near her ear, and I whisper, "It's me, Jenna. It's really me."
Her hair is wet with tears, and I realize the tears aren't hers. I close my eyes, holding her, feeling her body tremble against mine. She's so small, smaller than I remember. Jenna.
"Please ... believe me."
Her head stops shaking, and her muscles go slack. I let go and she turns to look at me. She scans my face, and I see the disbelief in hers. "It's almost Locke, but your eyes..." She reaches out to touch my hair and then pulls back, her eyes still searching for an unruly cowlick that is no longer there. "And you're taller, and--"
"Bigger," I finish for her. "I didn't have a father who lovingly re-created every inch of me, like you did. I had a madman."
She pales and shuts her eyes, breathing deeply like she is going to be sick, and then finally she opens them again but doesn't look directly at me. "Get in," she says. "We need to talk, but not here."
Chapter 44
I sit at her kitchen table. We haven't spoken yet except for her to tell me to sit, or when she told me to be quiet in the car as I started to speak. "I need a moment," she had said, her breaths still deep and irregular.
After all the time I had already waited, it seemed a lot to ask, but I gave it to her. We drove down a narrow road lined with giant eucalyptus trees to a neighborhood of old homes. Most looked abandoned. Both of her hands gripped the steering wheel, and she never once turned to look at me. She pulled into a long graveled driveway at the end of the street, where there was a single-story house with a wide porch that wrapped around most of it. She parked at the back of the house, and we went in through a rear door, directly into the kitchen.
Now she stands at a faucet and fills a glass. Her hand shakes. She sets the glass in front of me, then sits in the chair opposite mine, finally looking at me, taking her time, staring, soaking in every detail of the new me. She doesn't doubt any longer.
"Why didn't you come sooner?" she asks. "Why did you wait all this time?"
"Come sooner?" And then I realize what she's thinking, that I've been out seeing the world and having a big party for the last couple centuries. "I've only had the new equipment for a year, Jenna. I couldn't come sooner. Unless, that is, I was able to mentally transport a little black cube through the air."
Her lips part, and I watch her draw a shallow breath. "You mean--"
Yeah. It isn't pretty on her face or mine. She knows exactly what I mean. She remembers the hellhole, but she only got the tour up to the front door--I got the whole house and all nine levels of the basement.
I stand, my chair squealing out behind me, my voice filling the kitchen. "What did you think, Jenna? Did you think? Did it ever occur to you to make it your business? Don't ask me why I didn't come sooner! Why didn't you come?"
She stands too, like she's ready to fight me. "I was seventeen, Locke! And I was scared and confused! You have no idea what I went through! I thought I had destroyed your mind upload. I disconnected it from the battery dock and threw it in a pond myself. Someone must have--"
"What?" I walk around the table toward her. "You?" I couldn't have heard her right. My vision spins. I'm not sure if I'm dizzy from my injuries or from anger. "You destroyed it?"