by JL Bryan
But now she walked with her head up and her hair back, feeling proud of herself in a way that was almost silly. She could be part of humanity now. She could touch, and be touched, and she could fall in love and be married and maybe even have children, because now she had Seth. The dark, lonely part of her life was over.
She turned the corner, and stopped in the middle of the hall for the second time that morning. Seth was there, surrounded by his friends. He had an arm around Ashleigh’s waist, and was kissing her mouth hungrily.
Neesha spotted Jenny first. She smirked and winked at Jenny, then reached over to tap Cassie on the elbow. Cassie turned away from her boyfriend Everett and followed Neesha’s gaze to Jenny. Cassie laughed and alerted Ashleigh, who turned from Seth to give Jenny a tight, satisfied little smile. Ashleigh even put her hand under Seth’s chin and turned his face toward Jenny. Seth wore a blank expression, as if he didn’t recognize Jenny at all. When Ashleigh lowered her hand, Seth started kissing her cheek and neck.
Jenny realized everyone had been right. Seth wasn’t going to leave Ashleigh for her. Why would anyone abandon the pretty, popular girl for a sad little nothing like Jenny? She had been incredibly stupid (so said Cupid).
She turned and bolted down the main hall, and didn’t stop running until she was in a bathroom stall, door locked. She leaned against the handicap rail, shaking with angry sobs, covering her mouth with a blue-gloved hand to muffle the sound. Out there, the whole school was laughing at her, for one reason or another. They’d gotten her again.
Obviously, Ashleigh had put him up to it, told Seth to ask Jenny out, to trick her and smash Jenny to pieces in one unspeakably horrible moment. He was her minion, sent to break Jenny’s heart for Ashleigh’s amusement.
She waited through the homeroom bell, and through the bell to start first period. Then she eased open the stall door an inch to make sure she was alone. She went to the sink, removed her gloves and splashed cold water on her face. She looked at herself in the mirror. Stringy, pale, hopeless Jenny Mittens, whom nobody liked, but everybody liked to hurt. She’d opened herself up to Seth and told him everything, and he’d betrayed her. She would never make that mistake again, with anyone.
Jenny went to her locker, took out her lunch, shoved her backpack inside, and slammed the door. The sound echoed up and down the empty hall. She headed for the nearest exit. The slamming locker attracted a boy in an orange hall monitor vest who ran after her and demanded her hall pass. She advised him to go and fuck himself. At that moment, she would have killed anyone who stood between her and the door. The monitor kid unknowingly saved his own life by stepping aside and letting her out.
She walked into town, no longer drawing inspiration from the colors of fading leaves, no longer feeling like she’d found the place in the world where she fit. She wandered away from the school, with no particular destination in mind. She eventually walked to the town square and sat on a bench. Absentmindedly, she took a few small white bites from the plump apple she’d brought for lunch. She wasn’t hungry. She only ate it because it was in her hand. Her taste buds weren’t working, and the apple pieces felt like shredded paper in her mouth. She stopped eating, and let the few bites she’d taken out turn brown.
From where she sat, she could see the cream-colored church capped with its ultra-cutesy little bell tower and steeple, the tall stained-glass mosaic windows, the perfectly kept flower beds. And she could see the bank, dark and solid with its brown brick and its stone trim, another cornerstone of the town. The church and the bank, Ashleigh and Seth.
She felt like she’d lifted a little corner of a veil, and discovered how she lived in a world that would be shaped by a parade of people more powerful than her, people who would never treat her like a human being. She’d always imagined life would get better as she grew older. She would get wiser, discover things, make friends, find the way to her own happiness and out of the misery.
Now she realized it wouldn’t happen. She’d been born cursed and would die cursed and never understand why. There was nothing to hope for, no happiness ahead.
She left the bench and walked slowly across the green square, still holding most of the apple in her hand. She walked down the alley alongside the church and glanced behind her to see if anyone was watching. There was nobody. Even on Monday morning, downtown Fallen Oak was a corpse.
There were three stained-glass windows on this side of the church, each of them narrow, rectangular and two stories high. They were just colored diamond patterns, not pictures like in some churches. She knew these had been added as part of Dr. Goodling’s renovation when he took over the church, before Jenny was even born.
Jenny stopped at the first of the tall windows. She took careful aim with the apple, then hurled it with all her strength. It struck dead center, shattering an entire pane of colored glass, most of which landed inside the church. Only a few jagged blue fragments were left clinging to the edges of the pane.
A burglar alarm erupted inside the church and echoed across the square. Jenny smiled as she walked away, her back to the courthouse and the figure of Justice.
Seth called her late Tuesday night, after midnight. When she heard him on the answering machine, she told herself she wouldn’t pick up. Then she went into the living room to hear his voice. Then she picked up the phone before he finished his short, please-call-back message.
“What is it?” she asked him.
“Jenny! Hi!” he said. He sounded so cheerful that she wanted to strangle him immediately. “Are you okay? I haven’t seen you at school.”
“I was there a little bit on Monday,” she said.
“Are you sick?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I help?”
You could sound a little bit ashamed, Jenny thought. “I doubt it,” she said. “What do you want?”
“I’m so glad I got you,” he said. “I need to talk to you. Can I come over, or is it too late?”
“It’s too late, Seth,” Jenny told him. “Maybe Ashleigh’s available.”
“That’s what I need to talk about. I’m having a serious problem with Ashleigh.”
“You were getting along okay yesterday.”
“That’s the problem, Jenny. I really like you. I shouldn’t even say it, but I really like you a lot. Didn’t we have a good time Saturday?”
Jenny waited a long time, not even sure how to answer.
“It was okay,” she finally said.
“Oh. Anyway, so I went to Ashleigh’s house on Sunday, because I was going to break up with her. She’s been creeping me out anyway, and I realized that I wanted to be with you—”
“And you changed your mind,” Jenny said.
“You don’t understand,” Seth said. “She does something to me when I see her. It’s how she touches you—”
“I really don’t want to hear this.” Jenny tried to sound strong and angry, instead of verging on tears. “Why are you calling me? What else does she want you to do to me?”
Seth paused a long time. “Nothing, Jenny. She hates you. She wants me to stay away from you.”
“Then why don’t you leave me alone?”
“Jenny, I think she’s like us. With the touch. My healing and your…um, Jenny pox?”
Jenny hissed involuntarily, as if she’d been wounded, when he said that last word.
“Only, listen, I’ve been thinking about this,” Seth said. “When she touches, she spreads love. Or something like it. Desire. That’s her thing. Maybe there’s someone else out there, a fourth, spreading the opposite of love, you know, hate or fear or whatever.”
Jenny actually started to believe him for a minute. And she realized that she wanted to believe him, because it meant he hadn’t tricked her, it hadn’t really been another scam by Ashleigh, and Seth really liked her. For a moment, she let herself believe it. Then she remembered her promise to herself, not to trust anyone, and a lifetime’s worth of carefully constructed shields and walls went up.
“Seth, l
ook,” Jenny said. “I know she put you up to this. Ashleigh doesn’t have any special power. Just money, tits and an endless supply of bitch.”
“She didn’t, Jenny. This is the important thing. She did something to me on Sunday—her and Cassie both--and I only just recovered from it. I’ve been in dreamland for the last three days. It’s hard to explain. It’s like really, really good drugs.”
“I’m glad she made you happy,” Jenny said. “I have to go.”
“Jenny, wait! I’m weak against her. I need your help. Please.”
Again, Jenny was tempted to believe him. And again, she was not going to be suckered, especially not by Ashleigh and her pathetic followers.
“Seth, I can’t help you,” Jenny said. “You have to make up your own mind.”
“But I don’t control my mind when she’s around.”
“Next time, try.” Jenny hung up the phone.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For Thanksgiving, Jenny baked a turkey breast in the oven, since there was no reason to waste a whole turkey on just two people. She also made stuffing from a box and cornbread from scratch while her dad cooked turnip greens with fatback. They ate at the kitchen table, while her dad stole glances over her shoulder to check the football scores on the TV in the living room. At least he’d turned down the volume for dinner. Jenny helped herself to a can of Pabst and drank that with her turkey.
Her dad told her how Mrs. Lawson’s cat had gotten into a paint tray while he was renovating her garage, and left paw prints all over the garage floor in a shade that Lowe’s called “Sunspot Yellow.” Mrs. Lawson had decreed the paw prints adorable and wanted to keep them, so he hadn’t needed to clean up the floor. But she did make Jenny’s dad wash the paint off her cat, a much more difficult task.
Jenny told him some of the positive comments about Jenny’s work Ms. Sutland had passed on from customers. They talked about the little wood-fired brick kiln they were building in the back yard, and Jenny’s plans to take the pottery around to more stores in other towns.
When they moved on to the pecan pie, which her dad had made, a somber look appeared on his face. From his tone, Jenny could tell that he’d been putting this off the whole meal.
“Jenny,” he said, “What are you thinking about doing when you finish school?”
Jenny took an extra long time chewing her bite of pie.
“Nothing,” she said.
“What do you mean?” For some reason, he looked a little hurt.
“I can’t go to college and I can’t move to the city,” she said. “I can’t be crammed in with all them people. It’s best I stay here in Fallen Oak, where everybody avoids me anyway. I can just get a job around here.”
“They ain’t no jobs around here, Jenny,” he said. “Ask anybody. Lots of folks looking, too.”
“So I’ll keep taking the hours I can get at the library, and I’ll make more things to sell. Ladies in town like my flowerpots, so ladies in other towns might, too.”
“You’re not going anywhere? You’re just going to stay in Fallen Oak?” He gave her a weak smile. She could tell he wasn’t very happy.
“I was planning to stay right here, if that’s okay. Or were you gonna rent out my room?”
“No, this is your home, Jenny. But you ought to get out and see a little of the world when you’re young. You can tell the folks who’ve hardly ever left town. There’s something off about them.
“When I got out of high school, me and a couple buddies just got in a truck and drove west. Made it clear to Texas before we run out of money, and ended up taking six months to make it back. I guess Sammy never came back at all. Married that girl and moved to Oregon instead. You ought to at least do something like that, Jenny, travel around and see some things.”
“But I don’t have friends, Daddy. Too dangerous, remember? Just like you taught me.” She stood up, her eyes stinging a little, and took their plates to the sink. “I don’t want to talk about this no more.”
She turned on the faucet and began scrubbing dishes so she couldn’t hear him if he tried.
Later, a few of his buddies from McCronkin’s came to watch football in the living room, drinking and smoking and yelling at the TV, since McCronkin’s was closed Thanksgiving. They were in their late fifties and sixties, working guys like her dad who were alone for the holidays, divorced, widowed, or just plain never had anybody. Though her dad wasn’t quite fifty, he looked shockingly like them, going gray and his face worn down with care, just reaching for that next drink to get you through that next hour of being alive and alone. She tried to imagine herself at his age--probably alone in this same house, probably not even noticing it was a holiday. She couldn’t even have a bunch of cats to keep her company.
Jenny went into her room and played a scratchy record by June Carter and Johnny Cash, while rolling herself a Thanksgiving joint on the faded, water-damaged album cover. June and Johnny looked young and full of life in the old pictures. She remembered how they’d been towards the end, old and worn out but still in love with each other. How Jenny cried when June Carter died, and how Johnny couldn’t live without her and went to join her. It had been an epic tale of love and loss to Jenny, who’d still been young, but had grown up listening to the old records all her life. The records, along with some clothes and a vintage sewing machine, were her mother’s legacy to her.
A framed picture of her mother hung on the wall of Jenny’s bedroom. It was just a snapshot, Miriam in a cowboy hat and sleeveless checkered shirt, maybe twenty-two years old. She held a bottle of Bud Light high in the air like a trophy, and a big, open smile like she was cheering. She had Jenny’s black hair and blue eyes, but somehow it was all much prettier on her mother, in Jenny’s opinion. In the picture, she was surrounded by friends at McCronkin’s, which must have had a younger, wilder crowd back then.
Jenny didn’t know if she believed in heaven, or the afterlife, or anything like that. She found it hard to believe in a God who would pick Dr. Maurice Goodling as his spokesperson. Or take Jenny’s mother away the moment Jenny was born. When she was a little girl, she liked to pretend her mother was an angel looking out for her. Now she wondered whether the woman would care at all about the child who’d killed her.
Jenny put the joint in her jacket pocket and tiptoed out the back door. She whistled, and Rocky trotted along with her into the woods, where enough leaves had fallen to let big patches of sunlight through. She made her way to her boulder and climbed up to her spot. She struck a match, got the weed burning, then lay on her back and smoked.
She looked up at the sky, which was clear of clouds and full of a gorgeous sunset that was starting to burn out into purples and blacks. She thought about Seth, lying beside her right here. Was it really possible that their time together was fake?
Ashleigh couldn’t possibly have been responsible for the rabbit, for Rocky dashing out into the street, for Seth stopping to heal him, for Seth’s immunity to Jenny pox. All of that was beyond Ashleigh’s capability, unless Ashleigh was some kind of witch. Those things had been real, not Ashleigh’s manipulation.
But Seth chose Ashleigh, Jenny reminded herself. There was no point in smashing up her own heart by thinking about him, and about things that could have happened, had almost happened, if only the world had been slightly different.
She smoked her joint, watched the remaining leaves rustle in the wind and spin down around her, and tried to empty her mind.
Ashleigh sat at one of the rectangular tables in the town library and studied the Napoleonic Wars for her AP World History final. She enjoyed reading about the little general who had seized control of Europe, making every royal family pee their thrones.
The library itself was small and occupied the bottom floor of an office building. The upstairs were shared with a lawyer/realtor (Dick Baker, The Attorney/Realtor You Trust, said his advertising over toilets around town) and Dr. Carson the dentist.
There were free-standing bookshelves to supplement the shelves li
ning the walls, and four tables with hard plastic chairs. There was also a miniature table and chairs in the corner that served as the children’s section. The librarian sat at the checkout station reading Anna Karenina, coughing and squirting her throat with cherry Chloraseptic, the smell of which filled the room. It was raining and thundering outside, and the library smelled like mildew and sick children.
Ashleigh despised the public library—not only was it cramped and smelly, but you could also run into Jenny Mittens there, shelving the books for what had to be a pathetic amount of money.
Ashleigh was only here to keep watch on Darcy Metcalf, who studied at another table. Darcy was not only her pet religious busybody, the one Ashleigh could stick with the tedious jobs. She was also Ashleigh’s main competitor for the title of class valedictorian. Ashleigh did not intend to lose that competition.
Ashleigh stood and stretched, as if taking a casual break. A couple of geeky sophomore boys at the library’s two computers eyed her as she did this, and Ashleigh smiled at them. You never knew who might be useful. She walked past the two boys, winking at the marginally cuter one, who looked like he might suffer a stroke in response. She stopped at Darcy’s table.
“What’s up, Darcy?” Ashleigh gave her a big smile.
Darcy shook her head and leaned back. “Calculus is killing me. I feel like I’ve been faking it all semester. I know what equations to plug in, but it’s like I don’t really understand what’s going on. Don’t you hate that?”
“Yeah, I’m dying for finals to end,” Ashleigh said. “I need a Christmas break.”
“Me, too!” Darcy gave her a big, stupid smile, as if they were bonding over this rare trait of preferring vacation to school.