"We've taken a lot of precautions, Jenna," Father interrupts. "But if someone were to see you right now, it would be difficult to explain. Your organ failures, severe burns, limb losses — it was all on hospital records. We've managed to make changes to a lot of those records, and we're still trying to make more. But we can't change what people saw. There are a lot of medical staff who would remember. A lot who knew you were beyond the limits of what the FSEB legally allows. For now, the official story we've given everyone is that you're stabilized and receiving private nursing care at an undisclosed location. That alone has been a source of questions and rumor because no one expected you to live, much less recover. If they were to see you as you are now, it would certainly lead to an investigation, or worse. Let's face it, I'm news, and with my background with Bio Gel and the high profile of Fox BioSystems, red flags would go flying. The media would have a field day and the FSEB would be out to make an example of us. Everyone involved would be facing jail time. And I'm not sure what would happen — "

He doesn't finish. He doesn't need to. I can fill in the unspeakable blank. Me. What would they do to the uploaded thing that is me?

"That's why we didn't want you to go to school, but we knew that eventually we had to let you have your life back, too, or what would be the point of it all? But no one knows where you and your mother are. The house was bought under Lily's name, and I keep my travels there to a bare minimum to avoid anyone tracking us down.

"And as I said," he continues, "we've been making adjustments to hospital records and eventually as time passes, if someone sees you and questions anything, we can attribute discrepancies to faulty memories. So it was for your protection, too. Since you didn't understand the whole scope of what is going on, we had to have a way to remove you from a potentially harmful situation. You have to see that we felt we had to plant this suggestion."

"And just how did you 'plant' this suggestion?" I ask.

Father opens his mouth to answer, but Mother intervenes. "It was uploaded," she says plainly.

I close my eyes. This or the dark place? It is a draw. I open my eyes and look first at Mother, then at Father. "Is there anything else you thought it necessary to upload? We may as well get it all out right now."

There is a prolonged pause, each waiting to see how forthcoming the other is. My question is answered. There is something else.

I sigh and lean back in the chair.

"You were missing so much school," Mother says. "You were so sick. We knew you would have enough challenges as it was, and we honestly didn't think you'd ever be able to go to school again."

"It was a mistake. We realize that now," Father says. "But we uploaded the tenth-through-twelfth-grade curriculum of the Boston Unified School District. It was probably too much information — not what you would have absorbed naturally— but we can't take it back. It doesn't work that way. Not without starting from scratch."

None of it is really mine.

My synapses fire like a fireworks display.

Thoreau.

The French Revolution.

The earthquake, the second Great Depression, current events. Word by word.

The invisible boundary.

Ten percent.

The most important part.

Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

To live deep and suck out all the marrow.

All of it.

I look at my hands. Clasp them and unclasp them. Perfect. Monster. Hands.

A thousand points. A thousand illegal points.

Clasping. Unclasping.

The butterfly.

Suck out the marrow.

The marrow of Jenna Fox.

My feet fidget. They tap. The way they always did. The nervous gesture of my childhood. My borrowed feet remember. Something that is still mine. I calm them.

"Then I should have the key to the closet," I finally say.

Mother looks at Father. She is not the deferring type. But in all these uncertain matters she defers to him. I see this is not her world. She is feeling her way through something foreign. She only wanted her daughter back. Would pay any price for it. But the price is navigating uncertainty and secrets that seem to keep spinning faster than she is. She's wide-eyed, staring at the Netbook and Father. He remains steady, his eyes faltering for only a microsecond. But it's a faltering microsecond that is a lifetime for me. I can see. He is afraid. Maybe terrified. He calculates his reply. "What do you mean, Jenna?" he asks calmly.

What are they afraid of? What do they think —

I feel a ping, chilling and alert. The key.

Their eyes are riveted on me, invested, waiting for an answer. "The key to the small door at the back of my closet," I tell them. I see the visible relief on both their faces. "If I need to really get out of sight one day, it would be logical to go there."

"Yes, of course," Father agrees.

"I have it somewhere. I'll find it," Mother says. She is too eager. She rummages through a drawer and produces two keys. "I think it's one of these."

"I'll go try them both."

I hurry upstairs to my closet, pocketing the keys Mother handed me. I rush, afraid she may follow. I overturn my hamper and riffle through dirty clothes and sheets, looking for the pants I wore four days ago. I find them and search the pocket. The key to Mother's closet is still there. This is the key that made Father falter, the one he thought I was talking about.