Body Surfing

the ghost of his former friend. But there was only one way to find out. It was about forty miles from the mountains on the west side of the river where Jasper had hidden out for the past day and a half to Q.’s house in Kinderhook, on the east side. Jasper jogged it in five hours. Not quite a world-record pace, but not far off either. Every new task Jasper attempted made him realize just how complete his control over Jarhead’s body was. Hungry? A couple of minor adjustments to the hypothalamus, a small increase in leptin, a decrease in ghrelin, and Jarhead felt like he’d just finished a six-piece bucket of McKennedy Fried Chicken. Tired? Feeling the need for some REM sleep? A bump to his serotonin, cortisol, thyroid hormone, and insulin levels, and everything was right on track. Hand in a campfire? Stimulate white blood cell and collagen production, get those macrophages to work. A third-degree burn would practically disappear overnight.
    The fire thing was just a theory—among other things, Jasper didn’t need a campfire since he didn’t get cold. But he had fiddled with Jarhead’s broken wrist during the sleepless night. The injury had healed poorly—Jarhead’s family lacked medical insurance, and his care had been cursory. The fracture lines in ulna and radius were gnarled with calcium deposits, and the bones were slightly crooked, and ached if Jarhead attempted to lift anything that weighed more than twenty pounds. Jasper couldn’t exactly blink them straight, but he could recalibrate Jarhead’s immune system to soften the seams, allowing him gradually to realign the two halves of the bones, straighten them, strengthen them. It took all night to do it, but by dawn any trace of the former injury had disappeared. Jasper made fundamental changesto Jarhead’s metabolic rate while he was at it, permanently enhancing his host’s reaction time, speed, strength and flexibility, increasing his resistance to pain and injury, slowing down the aging process. He’d fixed his hearing already, and now he sharpened his eyesight, his sense of smell, touch, balance. The only thing left to do was add a couple of notches to his belt to keep his pants from falling down. Possession was turning out to be the best diet Jarhead West had ever been on.
    A shrieking bluejay snapped him from his reverie. The little bird was hounding a crow across the lawn, diving at it, screaming, and Jasper looked up, found the jay’s nest in a locust tree. The downy heads of two chicks just showed above the nest’s rim, and as Jasper looked back at the jay on the lawn, fearlessly defending its young, he wondered if maybe he should’ve gone to see his father. There was something to be said for the paternal instinct after all.
    To one side of the driveway was a small box mounted on a pole. The staring orb of a camera next to a single unlabeled button. When he was alive, Jasper had never actually pressed this button, preferring to park outside the gates and call Q. from his cell. Now, nervously, Jasper placed one of Jarhead’s plump (but thinning) index fingers over the plastic disk.
    He pushed.
    Two minutes later, a single syllable emerged from the intercom like a toll ticket.
    “Yes?”
    Jasper recognized the voice as Miranda, Q.’s mom’s English maid.
    “Um, hi. I, um, I’m a friend of Q.’s.”
    Miranda’s voice answered him almost before he’d finished speaking. “Master Mohammed has gone away.”
    He and Q. had always giggled at “Master Mohammed,” but now Jasper wanted to cry with relief.
    “Q.’s okay?”
    “Master Mohammed was unhurt in the accident,” the voice said, impatiently but also with a note of awe. “It was something of a miracle.”
    “Oh thank God,” Jasper said, more emphatically than he’d meant to. “Was…was anyone else hurt?”
    This time the silence stretched on so long that Jasper glanced at the house. Miranda’s shadow wavered in the sidelight beside the front door. The window was a good hundred yards away. Jasper adjusted for the distance, compensated for the semitransparent curtain, and all at once Miranda’s face sprang into focus. Her slightly open mouth, half-lidded eyes, the finger digging busily in her ear. The maid pulled her finger out, squinted at it, then flicked something away. Jasper was almost relieved he couldn’t see the speck of wax on her fingertip or hear it hit the floor. What he did see was that Miranda was…not unattractive. Nice breasts in particular. The whole