Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, Book 1)

by Bryan, JL

  “Um. Nothing.” Jenny couldn’t think of anything to say. She should try to be funny? Or clever? Or cool?

  “So, what are you doing for Halloween?” he asked. “Do you want to hang out?”

  “Doing?” Jenny felt herself blush. Her brain was not working for her. She struggled to remember an article from the one issue of Cosmopolitan she’d read at the library, when work was slow one day. She was supposed to act like she had a lot of other engagements and pretend to be unavailable. She wanted to smack her forehead—she shouldn’t have picked up the phone.

  “I’m hitting some haunted houses,” Seth said. “They do one in this old warehouse in Vernon Hill that’s supposed to be really scary. I’ve never been able to go. Do you want to come with me?”

  “On Saturday?” Jenny asked. “This Saturday?”

  “Yeah, Halloween. And there’s a big field party over in Barlowe that night. You can go in costume, or—”

  “Okay!” she heard herself squeal. Shit, she thought. So much for being unavailable.

  “Yeah?”

  “But Barlowe?” Jenny asked. She felt a twinge of distrust. “Aren’t they your big enemies?”

  Seth laughed. “Right. Anyway, they have better parties than Fallen Oak.”

  “I don’t know, Seth.”

  “About which thing?”

  “A party?” That word made Jenny anxious. “That’s a lot of people to bump into.”

  “Oh, the touching,” Seth said. “So wear a costume. Gloves, masks, hats—Halloween’s the perfect time for people like us to go party.” People like us, Jenny thought, and her heartbeat quickened.

  “Are your friends going to be there?” Jenny asked.

  “Maybe some. Definitely not Ashleigh or Cassie. They’re doing the lock-in at church all night.”

  “Wow!” Jenny said, then felt like a nerd. She lowered her voice a little, trying to sound like a normal human being. “I mean, okay, I guess that’s cool.”

  “I wanted to hang out with you instead.”

  “Oh.” Jenny was glad he couldn’t see how hard she was blushing, or how she kept twisting back and forth on her heel like a freak, wrapping the phone cord thick around her fingers. “Okay, Seth.”

  “What are you going as?” he asked.

  “Going? As?”

  “For Halloween.”

  “Oh! A costume.” Jenny’s mind was a complete blank. “I’m still thinking about it.”

  “I haven’t picked one, either,” Seth said. “Ashleigh usually buys it and gives it to me. She always wants it to match her costume.”

  “But Ashleigh’s not coming,” Jenny said. “So you can wear what you want.”

  “Yeah,” Seth said. “I need to shop.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Tomorrow after school?” he asked.

  “Don’t you have practice?”

  “Nah. Humbee’s out of town ‘til Thursday. Nobody’s going.”

  “Okay,” Jenny said. “Tomorrow.”

  She held onto the phone for a long time after he hung up.

  ***

  On Monday, the Leadership Committee of Christians Act!—Ashleigh Goodling, Cassie Winder, and Darcy Metcalf—met with Principal Harris in his office. His magnified, giant eyes looked incredulous behind his glasses throughout their presentation. He made no move to touch the written proposal or the pen they’d laid on his desk.

  “So, if I understand correctly,” the principal said. “You’re no longer content with just hanging those awful and inappropriate posters all over my halls. You want to make a video, and then show it to all classes on Friday. You want me to allow that?”

  “Yes, sir, Principal Harris,” Darcy said. She was a chunky girl who wore big, ridiculous folk art earrings, and she was very serious about her Christian groups. Ashleigh and Cassie had allowed her into Leadership Committee because she was a hard worker and earnest enough to take on all the boring stuff, like setting up the stupid pamphlet table and collection cup at the flagpole prayer.

  “Statistically,” Darcy continued, “The rate of risky behavior among teens rises sharply around the, quote, party holidays. It is crucial to get the abstinence message across just before Halloween weekend. Unfortunately, most of these teens will not be at safe places like the church lock-in.”

  “Yes, Darcy, I appreciate that.” Harris focused on Ashleigh. “And do you have this video here to show me?”

  “Oh, not yet, sir,” Ashleigh said. “We’re still putting it together now.”

  “But you would have it by Friday?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. Even if we have to work all Thursday night to get it done.”

  The principal sat back in his chair. “You want me to sign off, sight unseen.”

  “Oh, we assure you, Principal Harris, it will be high quality,” Cassie said. “Neesha is very talented. You see her posters around school.”

  “You’re going to have the same girl in charge of this video?”

  “Yes, sir,” Cassie said.

  “And will this video be similar to the abstinence posters you’ve put up?”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” Ashleigh said. “It’s all part of the ABSTINENCE IS POWER campaign. So if you’ll just sign off on that proposal…”

  Principal Harris barked out a laugh. “You really expect me to sign this?”

  “Please,” Ashleigh said. “We need to use the A/V equipment.”

  “Ashleigh, ladies, it horrifies me to think what would be on that video.” Principal Harris reached past the pen and grabbed a fat black permanent marker. “You’ve pushed me enough. You are not going to make an explicit video with my students and show it in my school. Here—” He wrote the word REJECTED across the proposal and signed it. “—here is my signature.” He shoved it back across his desk and it tumbled into Ashleigh’s lap.

  Ashleigh and Cassie stood. Darcy, after a confused few seconds, joined them.

  “I think you may regret this, Principal Harris,” Ashleigh said.

  “I could never regret saying ‘no’ to you, Ashleigh,” Principal Harris said. “Abstinence is power, am I right?”

  Darcy gasped. Ashleigh stood, tucked the rejected proposal against her chest, then turned and led the way out of the principal’s office. Darcy was the last to leave, and she looked very upset.

  They walked out into the hallway, Ashleigh and Cassie cool, Darcy acting like a spaz.

  “What was that?” Darcy said. “You said you would stand up to him, Ashleigh!”

  “It’s fine, Darcy,” Cassie said.

  “Fine? But he rejected it! There’s no, we can’t, we won’t get to make the video!”

  Ashleigh patted Darcy’s neck, discharging a little energy into her. Darcy immediately chilled out and gave Ashleigh a gummy smile.

  “Don’t you worry your pretty head,” Ashleigh said. “The video has already been made, and we will get it out there. We didn’t really need the school’s outdated A/V crap. We used the church’s.”

  “Oh!” Darcy giggled. “I should have known to trust you, Ashleigh.”

  “Yes,” Ashleigh said. “Now, run off to your little class.”

  When Darcy was away, Ashleigh turned and looked at the poster hanging in front of them, the one of Alison Newton with the open fly and the teasing, two-handed rejection.

  “Tell the Special Activities Committee to make all these posters disappear today,” Ashleigh told Cassie.

  “He didn’t order us to do that,” Cassie said.

  “I’m ordering,” Ashleigh said. “But let them think it came from the principal. Tell them wait until after school, so nobody sees them doing it. This is a secret action.”

  “Sounds good,” Cassie said.

  “I want every single poster brought to my house,” Ashleigh said. “Right away. Tonight.”

  “Are we getting into the second part already?” Cassie asked.

  “Why not?” Ashleigh waved the rejected proposal. “We got all we needed from the first part.”

  CHAP
TER TEN

  Monday afternoon, Seth took Jenny shopping in Apple Creek, which had an actual indoor mall with a whole store devoted to costumes, masks and party supplies. The store was packed with Halloween shoppers. Jenny had prepared herself with her usual long sleeves and gloves, and also tied a dark scarf as a kerchief around her head. Still, she felt nervous and guarded near so many people, especially with all the running kids, who occasionally whacked face first into her black jeans.

  “What kind of stuff did Ashleigh make you wear?” Jenny asked as they looked across a wall of masks.

  “You know, couples’ costumes,” Seth said. “Robin Hood and Maid Marian. Beauty and the Beast—”

  Jenny’s laughter rang across the store, turning heads.

  “What?” Seth said.

  “Oh,” she said. She held up a finger, still laughing, trying to catch her breath. “You were serious.”

  “Hey, I kind of liked the Beast,” he said.

  “Right. Look, you be what you want to be. But I’m going as a vampire.”

  “Where’s that?” Seth looked at the rack of costumes.

  “I just made it up. But I can get some clothes for it at the thrift store. You know, the Five and Dime?”

  Seth shook his head.

  “How do you not know about the Five and Dime?”

  “Not that into shopping, I guess.”

  “Okay,” Jenny said. “But I want to use that for my cape.” She took a black cloak with a cowl from the rack. “And this.” She grabbed a large make-up kit, with putty and dye for making your own designs, and latex for sealing it. “This is perfect. I don’t want to be one of those stupid sexy vampires. I want to be an ugly rotten corpse kind of vampire.”

  “That sounds cool. I think I saw a coffin full of fangs over here.”

  Jenny stopped at a display of mannequin heads wearing wigs.

  “What kind of hair would a zombie vampire girl have?” Jenny asked.

  “Green,” he said.

  Jenny smiled and lifted a glittering, kind of punkish green wig from a head. She tossed it on and looked at herself in the mirrored wall.

  “It would look good with this.” Seth gave her a giant tube of green glow-in-the-dark face paint.

  “I’ll be a glowing green zombie vampire,” she said.

  “I’ll do that, too, if you can do my make-up,” Seth said.

  “Yeah, I could sculpt something horrible from your face.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “This’ll be my best costume since Oscar the Grouch in fourth grade.”

  ***

  For the lock-in, Ashleigh told the Hospitality Committee she would bring the punch herself, at her father’s request, since there had been problems in the past with kids spiking it.

  Ashleigh and Cassie drove all the way to Greenville to visit an organic herb shop that had the ingredients she wanted. She’d read about them in a book that claimed to tell the ingredients of witch’s spells. They included ginseng, cinnamon, clove, a certain chili pepper, and some things that Cassie had to read to the clerk from a list.

  On Saturday, Ashleigh mixed these in with two big cans of Hawaiian Punch. Then she reached her left hand into the punch bowl. She imagined her special energy pouring out through her, into the liquid. She stirred the bowl for an hour with her bare hand.

  It had taken most of another hour to scrub away the red punch stain.

  Ashleigh and Cassie were going as angels, with robes custom-made by the lady who did alterations and tailoring for Ashleigh and her parents. They wore luminous white make-up, with some gold and red coloring at the eyes and lips, matching the ribbons in their hair. And of course, feathered wings from the costume shop in Apple Creek.

  She didn’t know what Seth’s problem was, but she couldn’t really blame him for skipping the lock-in. None of the guys were doing it. The senior chaperones were mostly female, and the one senior guy that was volunteering, Larry freaking DuShoun, wasn’t the type who had anything better to do. If Seth wanted to go to some stupid haunted house with his buddies, she supposed she could let that go.

  But he’d been a real dick about it. And he hadn’t let her touch him, that was the disturbing part. Like he knew about her power. He must have noticed how she just touched people and got what she wanted. How people responded to her and obeyed. That was Ashleigh’s secret, and she didn’t want anyone to know it, especially not a dumb boy like Seth. She didn’t know how to handle somebody waking up and realizing Ashleigh’s enchantment—nobody had ever done that before.

  The Crusaders and their invited friends gathered at the church as they finished up their trick-or-treating around town. Ashleigh’s father made an appearance, dressed as Zorro, and tossed out handfuls of candy to the teenagers, while telling them to have fun and stay out of the haunted parts of the church. He raised his own key to the church, and with a great flourish, locked them into the building from the outside.

  Ashleigh had a complete set of keys to the building, and could let them out in case of an emergency, but they always pretended there was no way out. Ashleigh had possessed a complete set of keys to the church since sixth grade, when she had swiped her father’s long enough to get them copied at the hardware store. That was how she’d been able to sneak a few kids into a church attic at a lock-in years ago, when Ashleigh had started the Halloween tradition of playing spin the bottle in the early hours of the morning, after the chaperones had gone to sleep.

  Of course, she was too old to play that now, and as a chaperone, it was her duty to pretend she didn’t know about it. It was going to be a pretty boring night for Ashleigh. Good thing Cassie was here, with two bottles of wine for when they “went to sleep” on their sleeping bags in a Sunday school classroom upstairs, where they would be away from the noisy kids.

  “Everyone!” Ashleigh tried to speak over the din of costumed teenagers crowded into the church lobby. The other chaperones started clapping their hands for attention.

  “Everyone,” Ashleigh said. “Before we get started, I want to thank the Hospitality, Decorating and Activity Committees for all their hard work this year. This will be the best Halloween lock-in ever!” A lot of kids applauded. Others pushed impatiently at the double doors to the church basement. “We have a few rules, for those of you who are guests or haven’t come to our lock-in before. Stay downstairs, the upper floors are off limits. Most areas you aren’t allowed are locked anyway. Second, respect church property: no breaking, vandalizing or stealing. Duh. Third, no fighting, no kissing, no inappropriate behavior. Fourth, any problems or questions, come to a chaperone. Chaperones, raise your hands.” Ashleigh, Cassie, Darcy Metcalf, and the gawky Larry DuShoun raised their hands.

  “Now,” Ashleigh said. “We always start with a prayer. So everybody take the hands of the person to your right and left.” Ashleigh took Cassie’s hand with her right, and some freshman guy in an insect costume’s hand with her left. As she spoke, Ashleigh imagined her energy, her special power, coursing out not just into the people she touched, but through the entire crowd, hand to hand. She pushed it out as hard as she could, and she felt the crowd charging up.

  “…help us to remember that being young is a fleeting, special time,” Ashleigh was saying. “And this time will fade soon into the hard and cold life of adulthood. Let’s celebrate the magic while we have it. Amen.”

  “Amen,” the other kids said. Ashleigh signaled to Darcy, who nodded and unlocked the basement doors. She and Larry, the only male chaperone, led the horde of excited young people downstairs, nearly getting trampled in the process. Cassie hung back with Ashleigh, as did the freshman bug-boy, who still hadn’t released her hand.

  “Everything okay down there?” Ashleigh asked him.

  The boy moved closer, his eyes big and glistening behind his yellow bug-goggles. “I like you,” he whispered.

  “Well, aren’t you sweet?” Ashleigh tried to pull her hand free. She’d pumped a lot of Ashleigh-power out through this one, probably overloading him. He’d have a
crush on Ashleigh for years. “Go on down with the others. You don’t want to miss the fun.”

  “I’d rather stay with you,” he whined. Cassie snickered.

  “I’m too busy chaperoning,” Ashleigh said. “Go on down with the others, I promise you’ll have fun!” When he didn’t let go, she added, “Maybe I’ll hang out with you later. But only if you leave me alone right now.”

  The boy pouted, but he finally released her and trudged to the stairs.

  “New boyfriend?” Cassie asked.

  “Shut up,” Ashleigh said. “He might be an improvement. At least he showed up.”

  “No big deal, about Seth,” Cassie said. “Everett never comes.”

  “Seth does. Ever since I invited him freshman year.”

  “And now it’s senior year.” Cassie took Ashleigh’s hand and smiled. Cassie was always touching Ashleigh, unconsciously sipping energy out of her. It got annoying. Now Cassie was pulling her to the stairs. “Come on. Let’s go supervise.”

  They descended to the basement hallway, where there was a snack table with bowls of candy corn, orange cupcakes topped with plastic spiders and ghosts, and Ashleigh’s huge bowl of red punch, to which she’d added ginger ale to make it fizz. Some party-goers were already dipping out cups of punch, while others were in a hurry to see the attractions.

  Activity Room A had become “The Monster Maze” built of room dividers, large cardboard panels, and bed sheets. People had to find their way in the dark, through twists and turns among glowing spiderwebs and skeletons, and spooky music and sound effects, ending at the “Devil’s Throne Room.” Here, a sophomore boy dressed in a devil mask sat on an elevated chair under red light, welcoming the lock-in guests to an eternity in Hell. Then they escaped through a very narrow passage (two mattresses on their sides, in wooden frames, pushed close together) and out of the room. Cassie stood at the entrance door, daring the teenagers to take their “abstinence buddies” into the scary maze.

  Activity Room B was the “Nightmare Nightclub,” which Ashleigh had neglected to clear with her dad, or mention to him. A junior girl named Brenda Purcell, in a Bride of Frankenstein costume, played club music mixed with Halloween sound effects—groaning ghosts, clanking chains, howling wind. People could dance in there, and rest on cushions scattered along the walls if they got tired. Room B was Ashleigh’s responsibility.