Read The Adoration of Jenna Fox for Free Online

been seven years since that video was
filmed. Do scars disappear in seven years?
     
     
    A Glimpse
    It's been twenty-five days since I woke up.
    Eight days since I went to the mission.
    Six days since the new front walkway was laid.
    Five days since the plumbing fixtures were
replaced.
    Three days since I last saw Mr. Bender through my
window.
    Three days of rain and 4,287 cold beads of
water beating against my windowpanes.
    I'm good at math after all.
    Without friends and a packed schedule to keep
me busy, keeping track of time and numbers has become a prime source of
entertainment. Watching the collecting rivulets of rain on my window has become
a close second.
    February in California is cold. Not as cold as
Boston. Not nearly. The Net Report says it has dropped to a low of fifty-four
degrees. "Oh, my," Lily had mocked. The temperature varies very
little. Boredom reigns on all levels. The rain is a welcome change. I have seen
the pond swell and the creek surge. I press my palm against the glass,
imagining the drops on my skin, imagining where they started out, where they
will go, feeling them like a river, rushing, combining, becoming something
greater than how they started out.
    I spend time on the Net. Mr. Bender
said there isn't a thing you can't learn about your neighbors there. Since he
is the only neighbor I know, I learn things about him. He is famous. A recluse.
There are no pictures of him. Few people have ever met him. Quirky artist. And
more.
    I type in the name Jenna Fox. I am overwhelmed
with the hits. There are thousands. Which one am I? I turn off the Net
and realize I don't even know my middle name. It's too much work, trying to
become who I am, always having to ask others what I should already know. I lie
on my bed staring at the ceiling. For hours maybe.
    Other thoughts replay, collect, finger out into
more thoughts.
    Mr. Bender's birds and my untouchable palms . .
.
    ... a watery blood bead on my knee . . .
    ... a baptism I remember . . .
    . . . and visitors.
    I had visitors last night. Kara and Locke came
to me again. In my deepest sleep, they shook me. Jenna, Jenna. I opened
my eyes, but their voices stayed in my ears. I hear their voices even now. Hurry,
Jenna. Come. Hurry.
    Hurry where?
    I see us at the Commons, the memory so vivid I
can still smell the freshly mowed grass. We sit at the base of the George
Washington Monument, squeezing close for shade, our legs stretched out before
us in the long afternoon shadow. We are ditching our Sociology Seminar, and
Kara is filling every space with nervous chatter, and when she laughs her black
bobbed hair shakes like a skirt at her shoulders. Locke keeps suggesting that
we should go. "No!" Kara and I say together. It's too late. Too
late. And then the three of us are laughing again, exhilarated, bolstered
together in our defiance.
    We are not comfortable with it. We are rule followers.
This is new to us, and our courage comes from each other. I lean over and kiss
Locke. Hard on the lips. We explode in more laughter, and snot spurts from our
noses. Kara repeats the kiss, and we are limp with our howling. I ache with the
remembering.
    I roll from my bed to the floor and lean back
against the wall, the way I leaned back that day in Boston. I had friends. Good
friends.
     
     
    A Curve
    Mother is at the Netbook when I enter the kitchen. She is talking to Father. I have talked to her little
more than I have to Lily in the past few days. She is busy and distant. Lily is
in the pantry rattling boxes.
    "Morning," Mother says and returns to
her conversation with Father.
    "Jenna?" Father calls.
    "Morning, Father," I say.
    "Come here, Angel."
    I stand behind Mother and look over her
shoulder so he can see me.
    "You're looking good," he says.
"How are you feeling?"
    "Fine."
    "Any lapses? Pain? Anything unusual?"
    "No."
    "Good. Good." He repeats himself a
third time, and I sense he is filling time.
    "Something wrong?" I ask.
    "No. Not at all. I think your mother wants
to