by JL Bryan
A brief howl responded, the hound’s usual way of communicating, but it didn’t come from the woods. Jenny turned toward the shed. Rocky emerged from the scrapwood doghouse she’d built him, wagging his tail. The doghouse was up on blocks, just inside the shed, with its doggie doorway facing outside to catch some breeze. When winter came, she would move it to the back of the shed and turn it around to block that same wind.
Bits of ripped cloth and cotton stuffing were scattered around inside the shed now, the remnants of a toy squirrel she’d made him from scraps of brown cloth.
Rocky step-hopped toward her and let out another quick bay. He was still almost as skittish as he’d been three months ago and didn’t even let Jenny’s dad pet him. Jenny was glad. If Rocky wasn’t so people-shy, she would have to get rid of him to protect him from her. As it was, she’d learned she could run around in light clothes, and even free of her gloves, without any fear that Rocky would brush against her hand or bare leg.
“Come on, boy! Let’s go for a run!”
Rocky wagged faster. Jenny stretched her legs a little and took off into the woods, following one of the foot paths that wound through her family’s land. Rocky chased her. He was incredibly fast despite his missing leg, and sometimes ran laps around Jenny—now behind her, now way ahead, now running parallel to her through the woods.
The running cleared her mind, burning up so much energy she couldn’t think. It was the best way to wear out the anxiety and fear that always threatened to fill her.
She and Rocky ran through the woods climbing ridges and steep hills until the sun was gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
The student council elections were on the second Friday of the school year. Before school that day, Ashleigh Goodling called a special breakfast meeting at her house. Attending were Cassie, her campaign manager; Neesha, who was running for the class historian office (on the “Ashleigh ticket,” as Ashleigh thought of it) and also Ashleigh’s boyfriend Seth, who could be useful in his way. Plus, she might be able to fit in some make-out time before school.
They sat at the long table in the high-ceilinged dining room, looking out through the giant picture window towards the duck pond in the back yard. Over coffee, juice and bagels, they reviewed Ashleigh and Neesha’s speeches, to be delivered to the senior class later that morning.
“I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Seth said after their second pass through Ashleigh’s speech. “Nobody’s going to pick Brad Long over you.”
“Almost nobody,” Ashleigh said. “I want a landslide. I want him to feel stupid for even running against me. But you’re right, Seth. We should focus on Neesha. She has two challengers for class historian.”
“Rob Pirkle from A/V club is no challenge,” Neesha said. “I’m more worried about Wendy Baker.”
Ashleigh looked at the flyers made by Neesha’s competitors. Rob Pirkle, like Brad Long, was a nobody, the kind of dweeb who always ran for office despite being way too unpopular to have a chance. She touched the other flyer, with the smiling photo of Wendy.
“She’s about middle-class popularity,” Ashleigh said. “And a French horn player. That’s why we need to worry. The band, the drama types, art club, and the random dorkers. We have to outflank Wendy there. Cassie?”
Cassie opened a Trapper Keeper with CAMPAIGN written on the front in heavy black marker. She fished out a printed page of text and laid it on the table.
“What’s that?” Seth asked.
“Wendy Baker’s speech for today,” Cassie said.
“About time.” Neesha grabbed it and started reading.
“Sorry, Neesh,” Cassie said. “Wendy only finished it last night.”
“How’d you get it?” Seth asked.
“Wendy’s little brother is a freshman,” Cassie told him. “And a real horndog, it turns out. Easy mark.”
“Really, Cassie?” Ashleigh teased. “A freshman?”
“Oh, please, like I had to do anything. Just a little…” Cassie traced her fingertips slowly down Ashleigh’s arm, and fluttered her eyelids. “‘Oh, Billy, we should hook up sometime…’”
The girls broke down in laughter.
“Okay,” Neesha said, thumping the copy of Wendy’s speech. “She’s proposing some kind of collaborative thingy, where the band, the choir, drama club, everybody gets together to put on a big spring musical. Everybody can contribute. The art club, the A/V club, everybody has a role.”
“That’s a good idea,” Cassie said.
“A big coalition,” Ashleigh said. “Neesha, who’s going first?”
“I’m first for the historian candidates.”
“Great,” Ashleigh said. “So add Wendy’s idea to your speech, but make it better.”
“Like a movie instead of a play!” Cassie said.
“Or something so big they have to use the stadium instead of the cafeteria,” Ashleigh said. “Whatever. Just bigger, better.”
Neesha opened her laptop and began editing her own speech.
“You girls are so bad.” Seth gave all three his most dazzling, knee-weakening smile.
“You’re as bad as us.” Ashleigh stood and stretched. She was still in her white silk pajama pants, with a Superman tank top. She dropped into Seth’s lap and kissed him a few times, letting him slip in a little tongue. He rubbed her calf through the thin silk pajamas, and then his fingertips crept in toward her thigh.
“Hello, Ritz-Carlton?” Neesha said. With her thumb and pinkie, she imitated a phone by her ear. “This is Ashleigh and Seth, and we need to get a room.”
“Good idea.” Ashleigh hopped off Seth. “Let’s go up to my room. You can use my printer while I get dressed.”
As they climbed the stairs, Seth whispered, “Your room? Won’t your dad get pissed?”
“Oh, yeah. And he’s in his upstairs office, too. Not far away at all,” Ashleigh said. She stopped two stairs above Seth and turned to face him. She hooked her thumbs inside the waist of her pajama pants, and then pulled the front of the pajamas out and away from her, as if she was about to slide them down and flash him. If he’d been standing on the same level as her, instead of two stairs below her, he could have just looked down and seen everything. “We would be in so much trouble if he saw me doing this.”
Seth gaped at her tanned belly with hopeful eyes, mouth wide open, like a dog presented with a rare steak but told to sit. Boys were really so simple. Ashleigh could tell she’d totally blanked out his mind—that, despite his usual brash confidence and his gorgeous smile, he was really her bitch.
“Take it off, baby!” Cassie called down from the top of the stairs.
Ashleigh saw hope bloom fresh in Seth’s eyes, and a very obvious boner sprouted inside his khaki shorts. She tugged the pajama pants down just a little, letting him see more of her hips, but nothing too important.
He reached a hand toward her crotch. She slapped it away and released her pants, which snapped back into their proper place.
“Bad boy,” Ashleigh teased. She held up her left hand and wiggled her third finger, the one with the silver abstinence ring. “We got rules around here, you know.”
Then she turned and went up to join her friends, wiggling her rear end ever so slightly for Seth’s enjoyment (or, perhaps, his suffering). She enjoyed enticing him to the brink of madness, knowing he could have any girl in the school, but instead was her own little slave. And well-trained, too.
Upstairs, she sent Seth to help Neesha port her laptop to Ashleigh’s printer in the little sitting room off Ashleigh’s bedroom. She asked Cassie to help her get dressed. Seth was clearly disappointed, and would rather have been part of the dressing-Ashleigh project than the speech-printing one, but he did just as he was told.
Soon, Ashleigh stood in front of the full-length mirror in her walk-in closet, with Cassie standing behind her and evaluating. Ashleigh wore a black blazer with matching slacks, and a gray blouse that perfectly matched her eyes, which had taken ages of internet shopping to
find. A cross pendant hung from a thin gold chain around her neck, pointing down at the modest cleavage revealed by the blouse.
“What do you think?” Ashleigh asked.
“Could be sexier,” Cassie replied.
“This isn’t sexy?”
“The slacks look great back here.” Cassie patted Ashleigh’s ass. “But they won’t see that on stage.”
“I’m not going for obvious sexy,” Ashleigh said. “More like restrained, professional sexy. Like you’re trying so hard to hold the sexy in, but it keeps slipping out. Mixed signals, you know? You want to get them hard, but you want them to feel guilty about it, too.”
“Then this looks perfect. You’re a genius, Ashleigh.”
“That’s right.” Ashleigh plucked a pair of black high heels from the shoe wall, but didn’t put them on yet. “Let’s go to school.”
Outside, Neesha and Cassie sped away in Cassie’s red Mazda. Seth cranked his Audi convertible, but then they idled in the driveway. He gave her a questioning, hopeful look.
“Are we ready, or…?” he asked.
“One more thing.” Ashleigh wrapped her fingers around his head, gripping his strawberry blond hair, and pulled his face to hers. Ashleigh was tall enough to kiss a boy dead-on, without reaching or stretching. At five-ten, she actually looked down on many boys in her class. She’d made her unusual height into an attractive asset, instead of whining about it and slouching and trying to downplay it like some girls would.
She let Seth reach into the top of her blouse, even into her bra, and grope around in there. She felt distracted and a little bit nervous. Senior class president was one of the last big check boxes.
She’d started in ninth grade, when she’d not only been elected freshman class president but also founded the Future Leaders of America club, which invited businesspeople and local politicians to give talks about how to succeed. She’d been president of that club ever since, growing it to seventy members so far.
Her sophomore year, she’d started a chapter of the national, youth-led Cool Crusaders ministry at her church, for kids 12-18. She’d taken the idea for their first big project from the Cool Crusaders website: campaigning to ban the Harry Potter series from the school libraries on the grounds that it promoted witchcraft. Ashleigh didn’t really believe Harry Potter had an evil influence, and actually liked the books personally, but she also liked organizing the kids, having them write letters to church leaders, newspapers and radio stations. She liked convincing the Women’s Steering Committee at her church to support her. She even got herself elected President of the ‘Christians Act!’ student prayer group in school, to enlist more kids.
They’d given out anti-Potter pamphlets all over town, at church, the county fair, the Wal-Mart. They held protests. They were opposed by the school librarian, the school principal Mr. Harris, some English teachers, and a few members of the school board. Eventually, Ashleigh was invited to a Christian radio station in Greenville, one that half of South Carolina could hear. She told the talk show host lurid stories about how Satan worship was really popular among the kids, because everybody wanted to be like the students at Hogwarts. How it involved lots of drugs and sex. And, of course, how the kids were brilliant at hiding the devil worship from their parents. She even took calls from listeners.
Afterward, Ashleigh and Cassie and Neesha rolled on the floor of Cassie’s room and laughed until their throats ached.
After that media attention, Ashleigh’s crusade was joined by Cassie’s father Mayor Winder, the County Commissioners, and even State Senator Rutherford “Randy” Hoke. They pressured the county school board until they caved, Ashleigh won, and the books were removed from both school and public libraries. Then everybody in town knew Ashleigh was a force to be respected, on her own terms, not just because her dad was the white preacher.
Then last year, she’d become the first junior in the school’s history to be elected captain of the varsity cheerleading squad, a job that always went to a senior cheerleader. This was helped along by some incriminating photos of a few of the senior girls, which Ashleigh had arranged, and which those girls were very eager to keep secret.
This year, Ashleigh was once again varsity cheerleader captain, president of the Future Leaders of America, president of Christians Act!, editor of the yearbook, and on track to becoming class valedictorian. All she needed to cinch the perfect Georgetown application was to win today’s election.
“Stop,” Ashleigh said. She pulled Seth’s hand from her blouse, then adjusted her bra and shirt. “Drive, or we’ll be late for school.”
***
The senior class met in the cafeteria first thing in the morning. Student council candidates, and Mr. Harris the principal, sat on plastic chairs on the raised stage at one end. The A/V club had set up the podium, microphone and speakers. The rest of the senior class and several teachers sat at the cafeteria tables to watch the speeches.
Ashleigh kept a cheerful smile as she listened to the other students give their halting, nervous speeches. There were three candidates for class treasurer, and Ashleigh’s chosen was Bret Daniels, a linebacker and friend of Seth’s. She made a big show of smiling at him in apparent admiration while he gave his short speech in a flat monotone.
Neesha gave her speech for the class historian position. She proposed a spectacular spring musical that would incorporate all the various creative clubs, a big stadium-sized production the town would never forget. Wendy Baker looked shocked, then horrified, then sick to her stomach as she listened to a larger and more elaborate version of her own big idea.
When it was finally her turn, Wendy stumbled through the first two sentences of her speech. Then she burst into tears and ran sobbing out of the cafeteria. Ashleigh watched with a look of concern on her face as Wendy ran away.
The spring musical itself would never happen, since it sounded like a huge, lame waste of time to Ashleigh. She couldn’t see how such a thing would fit into her own plans. But the point was to shepherd her people through the election.
Mr. Harris announced the presidential candidates. Brad Long did what stupid debate club kids always did—talking way too fast, with too many big words. He got a smattering of applause as he sat down.
Ashleigh, the incumbent from last year, cleared her throat into her fist and approached the podium. She adjusted the microphone height—she was taller than Brad, so this brought a few laughs. Then she looked up and beamed a smile at the eighty-three kids in her graduating class.
“Hi, I’m Ashleigh Goodling, and I’m running for president.” This brought some applause and whistles. Nobody had whistled for Brad Long. Ashleigh looked out on the crowd. For a moment, she met the evil blue eyes of Jenny Mittens, the bitch who looked like a skinny corpse with a bad, self-administered haircut and horrible clothes. And the gloves, of course. An arc of hate crackled momentarily between them, like electricity leaping from one pole to the next, and Ashleigh quickly shifted her gaze to more pleasant people.
“I want to say something before I start,” Ashleigh said. “Wendy Baker’s out of the room now, but I just wanted to say that stage fright is not easy. I’m dealing with some right now.” She got laughter out of that. “When I was a kid, I struggled with it a lot, giving talks at church, and other places. It’s something you learn to deal with. But it’s hard, and I hope nobody makes fun of her about it. Can we agree on that?”
This brought a murmur of agreement, and all the teachers smiled at Ashleigh. Then Cassie’s boyfriend Everett, probably prompted by Cassie, shouted “You said it, Ashleigh!” which made people laugh.
“Okay, now for my speech,” Ashleigh said. She’d practiced it so many times that she didn’t really need the note cards in front of her. “We’ve been together a long time, haven’t we? Most of us have gone to school right here in Fallen Oak since kindergarten. And this is our last year together, y’all. And that’s actually pretty sad when you think about it.
“All of you know who I am, and I know each on
e of you. I know people say things about me. I’ve heard some of that, and I’m sure you have.
“People make fun of me for being the head cheerleader. But to them I say, excuse me for having a little school spirit, and trying to make things fun for everybody. I think we should all have a good time at our games, and support our team. That’s just how I feel.
“They laugh at me for starting the Future Leaders of America club. Well, I just personally think it really does matter that you and I learn all we can, so we can build an even better, more powerful America tomorrow, when it’s our turn to run the world. You don’t have to agree with me, but those are my values.
“They laugh at me for being so busy with church. Well, I’m sorry, but I happen to believe in spirituality, and in giving back to the community. I just think it’s right. It’s important to me, and it’s hurtful when people make fun of me for that.
“They laugh at me for wearing my abstinence ring.” Ashleigh held up the ring finger with the silver band. “Okay, that’s fine. I just think it’s important to have self-respect, and to respect your own body, and not let people take advantage of your feelings. You know, it’s easy to fall in love and easy to get hurt, and easy to screw things up for yourself. I think abstinence is about responsibility and making the right choices for the future. I don’t insist everybody does it. I don’t make fun of people who don’t choose abstinence. So why make fun of me just for my personal choices?
“So, you don’t have to agree with everything I stand for,” Ashleigh said. “But remember, this is the year that counts. Senior year. Student council is responsible for homecoming, and most of all, prom. These are the memories that will last our whole lives. You want responsible people to make sure they turn out great, and you know that my friends and I are the people who can take care of all that, and do it in a way that makes everybody happy.” This was a little over the line, since candidates weren’t supposed to endorse other candidates, but what was Mr. Harris going to do, disqualify her?