Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, Book 1) (12 page)

She took him along the path full of honeysuckle and wild blackberries.  It was the long way, going around the first two hills instead of over them, but it was the prettiest.

“
So,” she asked, “Are you going to be like a doctor or something?”

“
Not you, too,” Seth said.

“
What?”

“
The doctor thing.  I tell people I want to do maybe physical therapy.  So, you know, I can put my hands on injured people and heal them and get away with it.  But then everybody hears physical therapy and says I should be a doctor.  My parents, my family…Ashleigh, Ashleigh’s parents…”

“
That’s a lot of opinions,” Jenny said.

“
Yeah!” Seth said. “And I want to say, look, I’m really not all that good with the science and math, you know?  Or school in general.  I don’t even think I’d make it into medical school.  And why should I spend twelve years on that when I’m not really using medicine to heal people?  Just seems like a waste.”

“
You should do what you want to do,” Jenny said.

Seth laughed, then stopped walking and looked at her.

“What is it?” Jenny said.

“
Nobody ever says that,” Seth said. “Here, let me give you something.” He reached his hand toward her face, which was horribly, dangerously bare, with all her hair pulled up and pinned in place.  The rest of her was still covered.  She’d thrown off the high heels but still wore the stockings, even though they would get destroyed by this walk.

She realized he intended to touch her and heal the volleyball bruises around her nose, and she gasped.  She stumbled back, off the trail, over a log and into the underbrush.

“Whoa!” He stepped forward and extended his hand. “I didn’t mean to scare you.  Sorry.”

Jenny looked at his bare hand, and her fingers twitched in her gloves.  She reached out and took it.  He helped her up, taking her under one arm, and she quickly slipped away from him.

“You can’t touch me,” she said, and she felt her heart splinter as she said it aloud. “That’s the only thing.  I can’t explain why, right now.  Okay?”

Seth looked at her a minute, then frowned and nodded.

“Okay.  I understand why.”

“
You do?”  Jenny felt a little panicked.

“
It freaks you out, doesn’t it?” he said. “Knowing that healing energy comes out of me.  It’s scary.  Scary to me, sometimes.”

“
Yeah, okay,” Jenny said.  It actually wasn’t a bad excuse, for now. “Just for now, okay?  Maybe I’ll get used to it.”

“
Right,” Seth said. “Actually, that’s kind of a relief.”

“
Really?”  Jenny felt more than a little disappointed.

“
Yeah.” They started walking again. “Because I can’t turn it off.  It’s always flowing out of me whether I want it to or not.  Not just my hands.  Everywhere.”

They made brief eye contact, then both laughed nervously and looked away.

“So people always want to touch me,” Seth said. He grinned, and looked relieved that he could actually talk about it. “Think about it.  Headache, stubbed toe…bruises…anything.  If you shake my hand, it goes away.  Hug me and you’ll feel totally recharged.  Kiss me—” Seth broke off and laughed nervously again. “So, nobody really knows why, they just know they feel better when they touch me.  And that drains you, all day long.  I have to eat tons of sugar to keep up.”

“
That’s crazy,” Jenny said.

“
So, if you don’t want to touch me, that’s actually great,” Seth said. “That makes you one of my favorite people to hang out with.”

Jenny laughed and felt strange, warm, gooey things inside her belly.

The big rock was nestled at the bottom of a little valley.  The easiest way to get on top of it was to follow the path up the closest hill, in which the rock was embedded, and then climb down to it.  The hardest way was to walk to the bottom of the valley, then climb the flat face of the rock, using little nooks and cracks as finger and toe holes.

Jenny took him the hard way, letting him see how nimbly and easily she could scale it.  She looked down and watched with a smile as he followed, struggling to find the handholds and footholds.  When he reached the top, she gave him a hand and helped up him the pebbly slope to the flat plateau on top of the rock. 

Rocky scampered around in the bottom of the valley, which was apparently full of wonderful things to smell.  His tail whipped back and forth as he snuffled through dead leaves.

There was an open space in the canopy above the rock that let the thick yellow afternoon sunlight through.  Seth stood in the shaft of light as he looked around, taking in the woods, and it turned his hair a blazing red-gold color.

“So this is your big rock,” he said.

“
This is my big rock,” she agreed.

“
These woods are all yours?”

“
Yep.  They’re all full of rocks like this.  You can’t do anything useful with these woods except hide in them.”

“
That’s pretty useful,” he said. “I like hiding.”

Jenny realized he was still holding her hand, and she looked down at it, feeling self-conscious.  Who was forgetting to let go?  Was it her fault?

Seth followed her look to their hands.  He rubbed his thumb on the back of her glove.

“
Gloves,” he said. “I should wear gloves to block people off.  That’s a great idea.”  He released her gloved hand, then plucked at the sleeve of her sweater.  “And sleeves all year.  If I dressed like that, people couldn’t drain me all the time.”

Seth looked into her eyes.  Jenny froze and didn’t dare say a word.

“You have it,” he said.

“
What?”

“
The touch.  The healing thing.” He waved his open hand and wiggled his fingers. “You have it, too.  And you figured out how to hold it in.  That’s why you wear gloves.  That’s why they call you Jenny M—”

“
I know what they call me,” Jenny whispered.

“
But you have it, too. Like me.”

“
No,” Jenny said.

“
Then why the gloves?”

Jenny took a breath.  It was dangerous to tell him.  He was very close to Ashleigh.  But he was trusting Jenny, and that made her want to trust him.  He couldn’t be such a bad person, if he could do things like heal Rocky. 

“I don’t have it,” she said. “I have something else.”

“
What?” His smile was beautiful to her in the sunlight.  “You already know mine.  That’s not fair.  Rocky wants you to tell me.”  He nodded at the dog, who was sniffing around a rotting tree stump.

“
I’d better start this.” Jenny lit the joint with a match and took a couple deep pulls to soothe her nerves.  She’d never told anyone about it.  Only her father knew.  The kids in her first-grade class had outgrown believing in the supernatural, and the parents and teachers had never believed about Jenny pox.  And anyone else who’d ever known about it was dead.

“
It’s called Jenny pox,” she told him. 

“
What Ashleigh said in class today?  Everyone kind of freaked out a little bit, didn’t they?”

“
You didn’t go to our elementary school.”  She passed the joint to him, and he took a deep pull.

“
Nope,” he said, while holding his breath. “Grayson Academy. 
Virtus, honor et ducatus
.  Chapel on Sunday and no girls.”  He blew out a long blue plume of smoke.

“
I gave it to Ashleigh when I was a kid,” Jenny said.  “By accident.  Mostly.  She was attacking me and I hit her with my bare hand.”

“
What happened?”

“
She broke out with infected blisters on her face, in front of the whole class.  She never told you about it?”

“
No, I’d remember that,” Seth said.

“
Everyone called it Jenny pox.  That’s when I got into gloves.” She waved her gloved hand with a sarcastic smile. “I hoped people forgot about it.  I think Ashleigh remembers, though.”

“
Are you sure it came from you?” he asked. “Have you ever infected anybody else?”

Jenny took the joint back from him. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”

“Maybe Ashleigh was just sick,” Seth said. “Maybe it wasn’t you.”

“
Okay, listen,” Jenny said. “But you can’t tell anyone.  I shouldn’t tell you.” She took another drag. “I just have poor decision-making skills right now, and I blame that on my drug use.  So listen.  I infected my momma when I was born.  She died.”

“
I’m sorry, Jenny.  I didn’t know that.”

“
You ever hear about the doctor’s office burned to the ground over in Millwater?” Jenny asked. “About eighteen years ago?”

“
I don’t think so.”

“
Good,” Jenny said. “That’s where I was born.  My momma went into labor and that was the nearest place.  I infected the doctor who delivered me.  He died the same night.  And the nurse who helped him, she died.  Everybody who touched me.  My daddy saw it happen, and he figured out not to touch me with his bare hands.”

“
Are you serious?”

“
My daddy—well, the whole doctor’s office caught fire and burned to the ground somehow.  I mean, everybody was dead anyhow.”  Jenny made herself shut up.  She shouldn’t have told anyone about that.  Her father had burned down the office to hide what had happened to the doctor, the nurse, and Jenny’s mother, just to protect Jenny.  It was a deep secret, one her father still worried about coming back to haunt them.  It was the last thing she needed to be sharing with Ashleigh’s boyfriend.  She couldn’t understand why she was trusting him with all of this, but she couldn’t help talking to him about it.  She’d been holding it back all her life, and he’d somehow opened up the floodgate.

Seth lay back on the rock and looked up towards the clouds.  He smoked the joint and thought about this.

“Man,” he said. “I thought mine was crazy.”

“
Yours is easy,” Jenny said. “I can’t touch nobody.  You get diseased.  If I hold on too long, you die.”

“
That sucks,” he said. “That really, really sucks.” He looked at the joint they’d been sharing.  “Uh, are you sure this is safe?  I won’t get sick?”

“
It’s not contagious,” she said. “It’s only if I touch you.  Like yours.  It’s an energy.”

“
You can have the rest, though.” He handed it back to her. “I mean, I do have practice.  I think.  Isn’t this a weekday?”  His eyes were bright red, and he seemed confused.

Jenny stubbed it out.

They lay on their backs and looked up at the circle of bright afternoon sky beyond the shadowy trees.  He was more than a foot away, but he felt dangerously, deliciously close to Jenny, close enough she could feel his body warmth and hear him breathing.  Warblers sang in the trees above them, and a woodpecker clattered away in the distance, high enough to echo across the woods.

“
So that freaked you out, didn’t it?” Jenny asked after a few minutes.

“
Nah,” Seth said. “That doesn’t scare me.  I heal diseases all the time.  And I never get sick.”

“
I don’t, either!” Jenny said. “I’ve never been sick.”

He rolled on his side to look at her. “I’ve never even had a zit.  Or a bruise.”

“I’ve had bruises.” She looked back at him, enjoying the excuse to study his face.  “Never zits or blackheads or anything.”

“
I know.  You’ve got a beautiful face,” he said.

She laughed and rolled back to face the clouds.  So did he.

“I’m really sorry about the Jenny pox,” he whispered.

“
Me, too.”

“
I have to get to practice soon.”

“
I know.”

After a while, Jenny showed him the way back.

On Saturday, in the media room at Ashleigh’s house, Ashleigh sat in one of the hanging sky chairs and tapped at her Blackberry.  Seth was sprawled on the couch, trying to enjoy the movie
Grandma’s Boy
, if only Ashleigh would stop interrupting.

“
Okay,” Ashleigh said. “Let’s co-ordinate our schedules.” She reached out an empty hand and snapped her fingers.

Seth rolled his eyes and dug into his pocket for the Blackberry she’d bought him last year.  He handed it over.  Ashleigh began typing on it.

“So that’s dinner with my parents Thursday—just come over after practice, you can shower here.” She winked at him.

“
I could just shower in the school locker room,” he said.