“When something bites you and it makes you sick. Some things are poisonous if you just get too close to them. Like poison oak.”
Jenny lifted one small, fuzzy-pink-gloved hand and looked at her fingers.
“I’m poze-nuss,” she said.
He took a long, deep breath. He kissed the mouth hole of his mask against the crown of her mask.
“You ain’t poisonous to me, Jenny.”
“Yes I am! I’m poze-nuss all over!”
“You just got to stay careful.”
“Never touch people,” Jenny whispered quickly, like a student who’d learned by rote.
“Not with bare skin,” he said. “And never, ever play with snakes!”
“Never play with snakes,” Jenny repeated, adding this one to her catalog of “Nevers.” Like: Never touch people. Never talk to anybody but Daddy.
Daddy lifted her from his lap and set her down beside him on the couch. He picked an open beer can from the table and shook it next to his ear. A little liquid sloshed inside, so he drank it down. Then he lit one of his Winstons.
“I wish your momma was still alive,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell to do with you. Little snake-killer.”
CHAPTER TWO
With her dad’s guidance, Jenny managed to make it through kindergarten and the first two months of first grade without a big incident. Jenny kept herself apart from the other kids, never touched them with bare hands, avoiding their hands and arms if they reached toward her. As long as she didn’t talk to people, and refused to play any games at recess, most people would just leave her alone.
It hurt to watch other kids play sports, or just thoughtlessly bump into each other in the hallway or lunchroom, and give each other high fives or hugs. She was different. No other kids made people sick just by touching them. Jenny kept a wide space around her and stayed quiet and wary at all times.
The incident happened in early October. Jenny was in her usual place at recess, on the little sloping hill by the playground, where most people only went for a quick break in the shade. She sat cross-legged in dirt and pine needles and watched other kids play freeze tag.
When two squirrels chased each other around a tree above her, Jenny started watching them instead. She loved how careless they seemed, even running at breakneck speed along a high electrical wire or hurtling from tree to tree, always landing in the right place without any effort. Once, in the thick woods around her house, she’d seen a squirrel leap from one treetop, sail across twenty or thirty feet of open space, and land in the lower limbs of a distant tree. The squirrel hadn’t even stopped when he landed, just kept on running.
She’d been watching squirrels a lot more since she learned they could do stunts.
The three girls that approached her were the ones that “owned” the big wooden bench in the corner of the playground. If they weren’t playing with the other kids, they were on the bench, braiding each other’s hair, whispering, or doing those games where girls sang a rhyme while clapping each other’s hands.
The three of them whispered and snickered as they passed the freeze-tag game, heading straight for Jenny. Jenny pretended not to see them coming. She closed her eyes and hoped they would go away, but she heard their shoes crunch through the pine straw and stop right in front of her.
Jenny opened her eyes. The three girls stood over her, looking down with their arms crossed. They wore bright, wide smiles. It was a look that would grow ever more familiar to Jenny in the coming years of school, the one that was extra friendly and sweet to hide the cruelty lurking behind it.
They were Cassie Winder, a short, freckled, red-haired girl; Neesha Bailey, a black girl who was really into pink camouflage pants; and the leader, Ashleigh Goodling. She was the daughter of Dr. Goodling, the preacher at the white Baptist church. Ashleigh stood a few inches higher than anyone in class, and she was the only one who was already seven. She stared at Jenny with her gray eyes, which were the color of rainclouds and impossible to read. Like the other two girls, her hair was twisted into three or four giant braids, which they’d given each other.
“Hey, Jenny Morton,” Ashleigh said, with a too-wide smile. “Whatcha doing, Jenny Morton?”
Jenny just looked back and kept her mouth shut. She felt suspicious, and a little panicked, and didn’t have any idea what to say.
“Why you always up here alone, Jenny Morton?” Ashleigh asked.
“I don’t know,” Jenny said.
“You think you’re better than everybody?”
“No.”
Ashleigh planted her hands on her hips and leaned forward, putting her eyes closer to Jenny’s. “You think you’re so great. Then why’s your hair so stupid and weird, huh?”
Cassie and Neesha snickered behind their hands.
“Do you cut your own hair, Jenny Morton?” Ashleigh asked.
“No. My daddy cuts it.”
This was too much for Cassie and Neesha, who burst into laughter. Ashleigh didn’t laugh but wore a small, tight, satisfied smile.
“Y’all go away,” Jenny said.
Ashleigh’s smile vanished all at once. Her eyes narrowed, and her voice became low and hissy.
“You don’t tell me what to do, Jenny Morton! My daddy says your daddy’s just a dumb drunk redneck and he shouldn’t even have a kid!”
Jenny’s face turned hot. Jenny was stunned at how the words felt, like a hard slap deep inside her face, the pain not instant but suddenly appearing a few seconds later, then spreading fast.
“Well,” Jenny said, “My daddy says your daddy’s nothing but a carnie-booth crook!” Jenny wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but she was pretty sure she got the words right when it came to her daddy’s opinion of Dr. Goodling.
“Everybody likes my daddy!” Ashleigh said. “That’s why everybody gives him money. Everybody likes my mommy, too. You don’t even have a mommy. Prolly cause you’re so ugly! She died cause you’re so ugly!”
“Shut up!” Jenny screamed.
“You shut up!” Ashleigh countered.
“You’re stupid!” Jenny said. “Leave me alone!”
“Leave me alone!” Ashleigh mocked Jenny’s voice, but made her sound extra scared. Her two friends laughed behind her.
Jenny’s fingers dug into the pine needles beside her, looking for a rock, but instead she found a large pine cone with a lot of pointy tips. She picked it up, reared back, and threw it as hard as she could at Ashleigh.
It struck the dead center of Ashleigh’s face, between her gray eyes, prickers jabbing her forehead and upturned nose. Ashleigh just looked shocked at first, but then her face reddened and she shrieked.
She jumped on Jenny, knocking the smaller girl onto her back in the pine straw, then started slapping her with both hands, back and forth, again and again.
“Stop!” Jenny screamed. Her hand flailed out and found Ashleigh’s face, and she raked her fingernails across it.
“Ow!”Ashleigh seized a fistful of Jenny’s hair and pulled hard, ripping strands out by the roots. Jenny grabbed one of Ashleigh’s big braids and yanked it, making her scream again.
A sudden shaking, coughing fit ripped through Ashleigh. Ashleigh kicked away from Jenny and rolled over to her hands and knees. She crawled away, wheezing, struggling to breathe.
Neesha and Cassie stepped in front of Ashleigh to protect her, as if they expected Jenny to continue the fight. Instead, Jenny crawled back from them, stood up, and then backed away some more.
She watched Ashleigh coughing on her hands and knees, and she felt fear deep, deep inside her gut. She’d broken the biggest “never” of all--never touch another person.
Then she realized that the rest of the class had abandoned their games of freeze tag and kickball. They all stood on the edge of the playground, watching and pointing at the fight on the slope while jabbering at each other. Mrs. Fulner, the first-grade teacher, made her way through the crowd of kids.
“Just what on Earth are you children doing?” she demanded.
>
“Jenny Morton hit Ashleigh!” Cassie said.
“Oooh…” Ashleigh groaned. She lay on the ground now, hands covering her face.
“Is this true, Jenny?” Mrs. Fulner asked.
Jenny couldn’t think of what to say to make all the trouble and attention stop. So she stuck with what she knew: mouth closed, eyes on the ground, until they left you alone and went away.
Mrs. Fulner eventually did turn away, to check on Ashleigh.
“Ashleigh, honey?” She stood over the girl. “Sit up. Let me see you.”
“No,” Ashleigh groaned.
“Ashleigh, up, now!” the teacher snapped.
Ashleigh sighed. She rolled up to a sitting position, and she dropped her hands from her face.
Mrs. Fulner, and most of Mrs. Fulner’s class, let out a pained gasp. Jenny felt a sickening, falling sensation.
A thick red rash of swollen pustules covered Ashleigh’s face, hands and arms. One big bump high on her cheek burst and leaked a fat teardrop the color of Elmer’s Glue.
“Ewwwwwwwwwww!” a dozen kids squealed from the playground.
“She’s got chicken pox!” a boy yelled from the back.
“It’s from her!” Ashleigh screeched, pointing at Jenny. “She gave me pox!”
“She gave you Jenny pox!” Cassie said.
“Jenny pox!” one kid shouted, and others took it up: “Jenny pox! Jenny pox!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Mrs. Fulner said. “Ashleigh, let’s go visit the nurse, honey. I’ll call your mother.” She walked Ashleigh up the gravel path to the school building. She reached out a hand, nearly touched Ashleigh’s shoulder, then thought better of it and pulled back. The teacher shot a glare over her shoulder at Jenny.
The crowd of kids chanted “Jenny pox! Jenny pox!” until Mrs. Fulner and Ashleigh were inside the building. Then all of them turned their heads and stared at Jenny.
“What?” Jenny asked.
The whole class ran away from her, screaming, to the other side of the playground.
Thanks for trying this sample of Jenny Pox! To read more, just visit jlbryanbooks.com.
Gifts of the Blood
Book I in The Gifted Blood Trilogy
copyright 2011 by Vicki Keire
Caspia Chastain is gifted (or plagued, if you ask her) with the ability to draw the future, usually at the worst possible times. Her parents are four years dead; everyday she watches her brother Logan fight his cancer diagnosis.
When an attractive outsider named Ethan appears, determined to protect Caspia and her brother from dangers he won’t explain, she's not sure what to think. She’s seen him before: in a drawing of a frightening future, surrounded by brilliant light, dark wings, and intense violence. It's a future she can only hope won't come true. But when Caspia finds herself in the middle of a supernatural war, she has no choice but to turn to her self-appointed guardian for help.
Excerpt:
“But… why? Why would someone take my drawing?” I demanded.
He was silent a long time, staring off at the patches of moonlight that crept in through the big bay window that took up most of my bedroom’s front wall. His eyes were a little unfocused, his head tilted as if listening intently. I studied his profile, thinking of him as lines and angles, of mysteries and secrets. My brother must have fallen asleep; the apartment was silent. The only noise was the faint sound of people and traffic from the square. “I don’t know,” he finally murmured, as if the silence had given him an answer. “I wish I did. But I don’t like it.” My scraped-up side pressed into the sheets beneath me. It throbbed dully, reminding me of other aches. Full-body tiredness crept across me like steam from a hot scented bath I suddenly wanted. I felt pleasantly foggy and slow.
“Ethan,” I murmured into my forearm. I wondered where he would go. Did drawings come to life have places to sleep? I imagined him picking random paintings from his imagination and stepping into them. “If I was a drawing come to life,” I said, swinging my legs over the side of my bed, “I would pick a different famous painting every night to sneak into.” He had moved, again without me noticing, to the very center of my bay window. He stared at the sky as if looking for something specific. I joined him there, leaning my forehead against the cold glass. “Starry Starry Night,” I sighed. “I’d like to sleep under a sky like that.” The full chill of October after dark hit me, seeping through my thin ripped t-shirt and chilling me all the way down to my toes. I shivered violently, but it didn’t break my dreamy lassitude. “Do you have a place to stay, Ethan?” I heard myself ask. I knew I should be horrified, giving a stranger-than-stranger the option to stay, but I wasn’t. I just shivered some more and looked at the sky, trying to see what Ethan found so fascinating up there. I could see only light pollution haze and a few pinpricks of white, meant to be stars.
Warm fingers draped a soft leather jacket around my shoulders. Behind me, he lifted my tangled dark brown hair from beneath the collar of his jacket and smoothed it so it hung across my shoulder blades. I leaned backwards into his touch as Abigail had nudged him for petting. Later, I would wonder at this. Later, I would be angry at myself for relaxing so completely and unwisely with someone who’d scared me senseless earlier that very day. But for now, I was conscious only of Ethan’s fingers untangling my hair and a growing sense of peace, stronger than anything I’d felt since before Logan’s diagnosis.
“What else, Caspia?” he almost whispered, warmth and the scent of new growing things all around me. “What other paintings would you visit, if you could?” His arms wrapped around me, tight with nervous care. Sleep pulled against me like waterlogged socks.
“I want to live in that Escher drawing,” I murmured. My eyes fluttered closed. “The house with all the crazy stairs.” I felt movement and warmth.
“Relativity.” He supplied the name absently, as if his thoughts were far away. I opened my eyes to find we were no longer by the window, but back on my bed. I lay stretched out on my uninjured side, covered with his jacket. He knelt by the side, his blue-green tinted eyes clear again and even with mine. I reached out for him but my hand felt so heavy I pulled it back under his jacket. I remembered feeling sedated when I first woke up, after meeting him for the first time in Mrs. Alice’s shop.
“Hey,” I tried to demand, but I sounded more like I’d been drinking. “Did you do something to me earlier? Outside Mrs. Alice’s shop?”
"Other than scare the hell out of you, you mean?” He snorted. “I sincerely hope so.”
“You are so not answering my questions,” I accused through half-closed eyes.
“You are so resistant to… routine persuasion,” he sighed. “I think you might be in danger.”
“Is that why I drew you? Why you came?” I asked.
He looked absolutely, positively grief-stricken. “I’m not here for you at all.” He visibly sagged after the words left his mouth, like he’d just admitted to the darkest sin of all. “But it didn’t make a difference, did it?” He laughed bitterly. “I… interfered. Like my half-cursed brothers. I’m no better.” He moved so quickly I couldn’t track him. One second he was staring at me by my bed, and the next, he was at the window, palms flat against the glass as if in supplication.
I tried to sit up but sleep threatened to drag me under like a drug. “How do you do that? Move so fast?” I complained. “And what do you mean, I’m in danger? Or that you interfered? With what?”
“How is it,” he countered, turning to me, his voice low and dangerous now, “that you’re still awake and asking questions?”
“I’m stubborn like that.” I tried to sound fierce, but I wasn’t very convincing. I could barely keep my eyes open and my vision was starting to fuzz. “And don’t forget your jacket when you get the hell out of my…”
“Keep it.” My eyes were mere slits, struggling to stay open against a sudden vivid light. “You might need it. It offers some protection against… cold, and… other things.” He sounded frustrated, and the lig
ht flared painfully. Still I tried to keep my eyes open, desperately curious about the light, about Ethan, about…
“Sleep, Caspia. I’ll see you again. Sleep.”
Gifts of the Blood and its sequel, Darkness in the Blood, are both available now from major online retailers.
The third book in The Gifted Blood Trilogy is due to be released Fall 2011.
About the author:
Vicki Keire grew up in a 19th C haunted house in the Deep South full of books, abandoned coal chutes, and plenty of places to get into trouble with her siblings. She teaches writing and literature at a large, football-obsessed university while slipping paranormal fiction in between the pages of her textbooks. Please stop by her website, http://vickikeire.com, to learn more about upcoming releases, check out free downloads, and connect with her online. She loves hearing from readers.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
Zellie Wells Trilogy Page 51