by Bryan, JL
“Have a good time with Seth?” he asked. She turned to see his face, to determine what he meant by the question, but he was just giving her a tired smile.
“I did, Daddy. He’s so good to me. He’s sweet.”
“Jenny, I need to tell you about something. After that tractor fell on me, it hurt like nothing ever hurt before.”
“I bet!”
“But that only lasted a minute. Next thing I know, I’m just kind of laying there all calm and peaceful, and didn’t feel nothing. And I wasn’t afraid of nothing, not even dying. I was just looking up at the sky.”
Jenny nodded and sank into the chair across from him. She wiped down the table and chairs while she listened.
“And I started to see things, up above me, in all that lightning and rain. Your momma’s face smiling down at me, looking just as pretty and happy as I remember her. And then I could see my whole life up there, every second of it, like a bunch of pebbles spread out across the beach.” He wore a distant, thoughtful look, his glass of tea forgotten halfway to his mouth. “I never drank so much when I was young, you know that? Not in the mornings, never during the day. Not until she died.”
“When I was born,” Jenny whispered.
“Don’t think like that. I drank for losing her, not for gaining you. You was the only thing kept me alive all these years.”
Jenny felt like crying, but somehow it wasn’t an altogether bad feeling.
“When I could see all the moments of my life like that, all at once, I realized something,” he said. “All the moments I spent drunk was just a rotted black color. They wasn’t worth nothing. They was all wasted moments, time I could have spent with you, love I could have given you. I messed things up for myself, Jenny, and so I messed things up for you, too.”
“You did fine, Daddy,” Jenny said. She stood up and embraced him with her gloved hands, keeping her bare head away from him.
“I could have done a lot better. And when I was laying there, seeing this, I wanted nothing but more of those moments. I thought, if I had just a few more to spend, I’d spend them on Jenny, and I wouldn’t let another one rot like that. And I wished to God I just had some more moments to spend, even though my body was wrecked and couldn’t live no more.”
“But Seth healed you.”
“And that’s how it all fell together,” her dad said. “I asked to live, and I lived. So I poured it all out, Jenny. There ain’t nothing left.”
Jenny looked around the kitchen—no liquor bottles by the stove. No case of Pabst on top of the fridge. No empty cans and bottles scattered all over the place. He’d cleared out everything to do with drinking. No wonder the kitchen looked so bare.
“Daddy, that’s great!” Jenny said. She poured her own glass of iced tea from the pitcher, then sat by him. “That’s amazing. I’m really proud of you.”
“Funny thing is, I don’t miss it. I ain’t even really been able to drink since I died. I’ve poured a few, and look at ‘em, but I never wanted to drink ‘em. I’d always end up pouring them out.
“Maybe it’s too late,” he said. “But I still want to try and be a good father to you. If there’s any time. If you ain’t all growed up already.”
“There’s plenty of time, Daddy.” Jenny covered his hand with her glove. Her eyes were full of tears now, but not the bad kind. “Just cause I’m about grown up don’t mean I don’t need a daddy. I’m going to need you for a long time to come.”
“And I’m gonna be here for you,” he said. “I promise you.” He looked at her a long time, and it looked like there were a lot of thoughts wheeling in his brain. “It’s amazing what that boy Seth can do, ain’t it? You sure he’s immune to what you got?”
“I guess he heals himself,” Jenny said. “Or it just don’t bother him.”
“And you’re happy with him?”
“Yes, Daddy. Happiest I’ve ever been.” Jenny couldn’t resist the chance to talk about Seth. “He’s the most amazing boy, Daddy. There’s nobody else like him. He understands me. And I feel like, this is strange but, I feel like we can learn a lot from each other.”
“You think you could stand living in that big old mansion? Dressing in them fancy clothes?”
“Daddy! Why are you so serious? I’m just happy to know him right now.”
“I guess I saw how fast time really goes, when I was out there.” He snapped his fingers. “All your life goes just like that. Then it’s over.”
“Now you sound like Mrs. Sutland,” Jenny said.
“She knows what she’s talking about, then.”
“I know I love Seth, and I know he loves me,” Jenny said. “Does anything else matter right now?”
“Nothing does, Jenny.” His eyes got teary, and Jenny knew he was thinking about her mother. “Don’t listen to nobody who tells you different.”
***
They were still in the process of fixing up Jenny’s car so they could return it in decent condition to Merle. Seth picked Jenny up before school on Monday, and she surprised him with a breakfast of salty country ham on homemade biscuits. She noticed he was wearing gloves, though it was a mild January and not too cold during the day. He said it was to control how much healing energy he lost during the day, but Jenny wondered if it wasn’t just to make her feel more normal.
When they arrived at school, they drew a lot of surprised and confused looks in the parking lot and hallway, but nobody avoided Seth except Ashleigh and her closer friends. Jenny wasn’t used to any kind of popularity, and she was spooked to be surrounded by so many people everywhere they went. More than twenty people sat around them at lunch, talking with Seth and even making tentative conversation with Jenny. People who’d always been cold and distant to her were turning into friendly faces. Jenny wanted to cringe and wait for the hostilities to begin, but nobody was cruel to her. Even Ashleigh and her gang just avoided them altogether, though Jenny got very cold eyes when she passed them in the hall. During P.E., they whispered among each other and glared at Jenny, but didn’t say anything directly to her.
Jenny noticed something else strange happening around her. By the end of the first week, many other students, especially in lower grades, started wearing gloves all day. By wearing gloves himself, Seth had turned the symbol of Jenny’s isolation and general freakishness into a new fad. Within days, kids were competing to wear the brightest, flashiest, most unique gloves. Jenny saw satin gloves, bowling gloves, fingerless motorcycle gloves, soccer goalie gloves.
Now that Jenny was a trendsetter, lots of people were approaching her and striking up conversations, especially the younger girls, in search of what made her cool enough for the coolest boy in school, so they could emulate it.
At home, Jenny and her dad got to work on the new fence Jenny had designed months ago. Seth usually brought her home from school, then stayed until dark, helping to dig post holes and nail up the boards, scrap wood, and shingles from which they built the fence. Jenny’s dad couldn’t help developing a little grudging respect for the rich boy who wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty and scraped with hard work. Her daddy, true to his word, never touched a drop of alcohol again.
During the late night hours, Jenny gradually finished the mask she’d molded from her own face. She’d glazed it white, and now she decorated it with designs in purple, indigo and black. She painted skull-and-bones “poison” symbols on the cheeks, and big stylized biohazard symbol on the forehead. She painted little spiked balls representing virus spores, and oily-bodied little black flies, the imaginary ones that she pictured spreading Jenny pox from her to other people.
The clay mask was too heavy to ever wear, but it made a striking, frightening little decoration. Seth hung it on the wall of his bedroom. He said he liked having her face to look at, and to look at him, when she wasn’t there.
On the third Monday of the semester, Jenny and Seth arrived at school to discover that they suddenly had a new power: dispersing crowds. People gave them disgusted looks and hurried to get aw
ay from them, even Seth’s best friends. A group of freshman girls actually ran screaming at the sight of them.
When Jenny opened her locker, she discovered a bright yellow flier someone had slipped in through the vent slits in the locker door. Around them, everyone was pulling bright yellow fliers out of their lockers, showing them to each other, whispering, pointing at Seth and Jenny. A couple of girls, and one boy, made barfing sounds and ran to the bathroom.
“It’s something Ashleigh made.” Jenny took the folded yellow paper from her locker and handed it to Seth. “You look first.”
Seth unfolded the paper. There was a moment of shock on his face, then dismay, and finally a growing, simmering anger.
“What is it?” Jenny whispered.
Seth frowned as he turned the flier towards her.
Emblazoned across the top, in blazing red letters, was the warning DON’T GET JENNY POX! Under this was a row of three clip-art biohazard symbols, not nearly as cool as the one she’d painted on her mask.
Most of the flyer was a full-color photograph that had been taken at Ashleigh’s house the day Jenny’s dad died. It was a close shot of their heads, with Jenny on top of Seth. Seth was semi-conscious, his eyelids low, while Jenny opened his mouth with her fingers. Her chin and lips were full of leaking blisters and broken pustules. Her tongue was fully extended, reaching down towards his mouth, dripping pus, blood, and clear fluid onto Seth’s lips and face.
There were smaller words at the bottom of the flyer: STAY AWAY FROM JENNY MITTENS & SETH BARRETT OR YOU’LL BE INFECTED!!!
Jenny hugged Seth and buried her face in his chest, while hundreds of students made disgusted sounds and spat out the words “Jenny pox” up and down the hall. At least there was someone to share her suffering this time.
“I’m sorry, Seth,” Jenny whispered. “This is my fault. Because Ashleigh hates me.”
“Like hell it is.” Seth lowered his mouth to her ear and whispered, “Hey, let’s make them stop.”
Jenny looked up at him, an eyebrow raised. “How?”
“On the count of three,” he whispered, “We charge them and run them off.”
“Who?”
“Everyone.”
Jenny thought about it for a second, then smiled. Why not?
“Okay,” Seth said. “One, two…three!”
Jenny and Seth charged the largest group of gawkers making disgusted faces at them.
“Everybody gets an infection!” Seth yelled. “Come on, baby, who’s first?”
The resulting stampede cleared out the hallway, leaving flyers, notebooks, and pencils all over the floor.
After that, gloves were no longer fashionable at Fallen Oaks High, and neither were Seth Barrett and Jenny Morton.
***
By February, it became obvious there was a pregnancy epidemic at Fallen Oak High. There were usually a few each year, but this year it was dozens of girls pregnant across all grade levels. Ashleigh could trace many of them to the Halloween lock-in. Others, like Darcy, she had arranged personally, enchanting pairs of individuals until they were overcome by desire. She’d even arranged a few by picking two people at random at a party or football game, then holding their hands until they couldn’t resist each other.
Ashleigh delighted in how so many girls came right to her for their first advice. Ashleigh would put her hand under their shirts and pour her energy into the fetus, and naturally some spilled over into the girl, and she would love Ashleigh even more. She would advise them to keep the baby and stay close to her.
Ashleigh and Cassie quickly organized a Girls’ Outreach Ministry based out of her father’s church, with weekly meetings for all the new mothers. Shannon McNare’s first big duty was the unpleasant task of collecting abstinence rings from any pregnant girls who wore them. She brought them to Ashleigh in a big Ziploc freezer bag.
Most important, though, were the press kits.
Ashleigh, Neesha and Cassie spent the first weekend of February at Ashleigh’s house getting the press kits together. They even split a large pizza, which was a very big indulgence for Cassie and Neesha. It was nothing for Ashleigh, who could probably burn off a hundred thousand calories in a day just by touching people, if she really wanted to.
Late Saturday night, Cassie called Neesha and Ashleigh over to Ashleigh’s computer desk.
“Is it ready?” Neesha asked.
“Y’all tell me what you think,” Cassie said. “This is what I’ve got so far. It’s still rough.”
Ashleigh put a hand on Cassie’s shoulder and leaned over to read the monitor. Cassie was designing the press release for the kit. Each kit would also include a DVD of the Neesha-produced video Abstinence is Power! along with a sample anti-abstinence poster, plus pictures of the pregnant teens of Fallen Oak. The kits would go to conservative and Christian media outlets across the country.
TEEN PREGNANCY SOARS 1000% AFTER PRINCIPAL REJECTS ABSTINENCE CAMPAIGN
At Fallen Oak High, more than 90 students are pregnant after their principal rejected a faith-based abstinence campaign early in the school year. The school had never seen more than six pregnancies in one year before the fiercely anti-abstinence Principal Dwight Harris pulled the plug on the student-led movement.
“It really changed the culture here,” said Ashleigh Goodling, president of the Christians Act! prayer group that organized the abstinence push. “If your leaders tell you abstinence isn’t important, what do you expect teens to do?”
The group wanted to provide student-designed posters, literature and a video to explain the benefits of abstinence to their peers, with the theme “Abstinence is Power!” The campaign encourages girls to consider the impact of sexual behavior on their future careers.
Principal Harris, who describes himself as “spiritual, not religious,” rejected the proposal without explanation. Some say that his strong rejection of abstinence encouraged the outbreak of sexual experimentation among the student body.
“I know religion offends our principal,” Goodling said. “But we believe abstinence is the right choice for all girls.”
To help the many confused teen mothers, Goodling and her friends have started a special girls’ outreach ministry at church, which counsels them to choose life and to return to morality.
“We don’t just have these girls to consider,” Goodling said. “Now we have their innocent babies, too. I believe that every last soul can be saved for God, if we try hard enough. Most of these girls regret their choice, and want to set things right.”
Donations to help the young mothers and babies can be made to Fallen Oak Girls’ Outreach Ministry, by mail or through their website.
“What do you think, Ash?” Cassie asked.
“This is great!” She squeezed Cassie in a hug and gave her a generous dose of love as a reward.
“I think this is the best picture to go with it.” Neesha turned her laptop toward them. She’d gathered the ten most pregnant-looking girls in school and taken them to the football field for pictures. Each of them looked sad, or somber, or ashamed, some of them turning their faces away from the camera as if they couldn’t bear it.
“They know this is going to national media, right?” Ashleigh asked.
“They all signed a release,” Neesha said.
“Sweet. Good job, Neesh!” Ashleigh hugged her.
“One more thing, Ashleigh.” Neesha turned her laptop back around and tapped at it. “I think we should include these pictures, too.”
The first picture on the screen showed the three of them in bikini tops at Barrett Pond, with Ashleigh in the middle. They hugged tight, their three faces squished together, grinning like loons, just three innocent best friends from a good old small town. Another showed Ashleigh in stylish glasses and a professional black blazer, a picture from her student council campaign.
“But we’re not pregnant,” Ashleigh said.
“Duh, Ash,” Neesha said. “This isn’t about them, it’s about you. You want reporters to interview y
ou, right? More will do it if they know you’re hot.”
“Good thinking,” Ashleigh said. “That’ll probably help.”
“Probably?” Neesha rolled her eyes. “Come on. A hot girl talking about naughty, forbidden sex?”
Ashleigh and Cassie both laughed.
“I bet they’ll put you on TV,” Neesha said. “You’re really that pretty, Ashleigh.”
“Aw, thanks, Neesh.” Ashleigh hugged both girls close to her, much like the pose in the swimming photo. “I’m so glad you guys are my best friends. We’re totally powerful together! Let’s never split up. Promise?”
The other girls promised such a thing would never happen.
***
On Monday, Ashleigh, Cassie and Neesha skipped first period to visit the Fallen Oak post office. They mailed two hundred and thirty-one press kits to a carefully selected list of newspapers, magazines, radio talk shows, and television programs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
On Tuesday, the second week in February, Jenny discovered that someone had used a knife to carve lots of little crosses all over her locker. They’d gouged through the pasty yellow paint and scratched into the metal underneath. They also carved two words, right at eye level: WITCHES BURN.
Someone had gone after Seth’s locker with more of the little crosses. They’d also taken the time to etch a pentagram into the metal, and then scratched big, fat “X” on top of that. More words were scratched on his locker: EXODUS 22:18.
The next day, the Christians Act! group stood in a circle around the flagpole, holding hands for morning prayer before homeroom. A clear majority of the girls were pregnant. Ashleigh and Cassie were noticeably absent. Neesha Bailey was leading the prayer.