Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, Book 1) (19 page)

“
Cassie, come here!” Ashleigh held out her hand.

Cassie stood by the open door, chewing her lip and watching them.  Now she gave Ashleigh a confused, worried look, but she took Ashleigh’s hand.  Ashleigh poured energy into her, and imagined three arrows with red hearts thunking into her back. 

Cassie’s breathing quickened and her palm sweated against Ashleigh’s.  Cassie looked into Ashleigh’s eyes, lovesick, then at Ashleigh’s large breasts, then at Seth’s bare cock.

Ashleigh laid her hand on the crown of Cassie’s head and pressed. 

“Get down there,” Ashleigh said. Cassie sank to her knees on the foyer’s blond hardwood floor.  Ashleigh let a current of desire form between Seth in her left hand and Cassie’s head in her right.  Ashleigh pushed her head forward, making her take Seth in her mouth.  She pulled Cassie’s head by the hair, then pushed it forward again.  She repeated this until Cassie was doing it on her own, Seth’s hand gripping her red hair.

“
Don’t I always make you happy, Seth?” Ashleigh whispered. “No one else treats you like this.” She started kissing him again.  He pulled upward on her gown, and Ashleigh helped him, lifting it until he could lay his hands right on her breasts.  He found her left nipple and squeezed and rolled it between his strong, warm fingers, and Ashleigh cried out.  She was going to lose her mind if she didn’t do something.

She grabbed Seth’s hand and slid it down her belly and into the front of her panties.  She occasionally made him do this, though she really didn’t think he was very good at it, and preferred doing it to herself while watching herself in the mirror.  Right now, she wanted him to do it to her, clumsy fingers or not.

She positioned his fingers and moved them in little circles to show him what she wanted.  It felt good, using his fingers like little tools she controlled.  It felt better then letting him do it himself, and she continued it her way for minute before she let him take over.

She leaned forward, into him, and heard herself sigh. She pushed her tongue deep into his mouth. She slipped one hand under his shirt against his back, keeping him intoxicated with her touch.  Her other hand found its way to Cassie’s head to keep her in the energy circuit.  Cassie made choking, gagging sounds as Ashleigh shoved her forward, gasped for air as Ashleigh pulled her back.

Ashleigh felt Seth’s body shudder, and she held Cassie’s head in place, making her swallow everything, keeping her there until Seth was done.  Ashleigh suddenly yanked hard on Cassie’s hair as her own hips jerked forward, and she came against Seth’s fingers.  Cassie screamed in pain.

Ashleigh sighed and leaned against Seth, wrapping her arms around him.  Cassie slowly stood, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, face flushed, dark green eyes glittering.

“See, Seth?” Ashleigh said. “I’m the best.”

“
You are,” he whispered.  His eyes were closed.

“
And you’ll never talk to Jenny Mittens again.”

“
Never,” he agreed.

“
Wait, I didn’t get a turn yet.” Cassie leaned herself into Seth’s other side and kissed him on the mouth.  She moved Seth’s hands onto her chest.

“
Don’t be a whore, Cassie,” Ashleigh said.  She heard a car engine in the driveway. “Go play with your own boyfriend.  Anyway, my parents just got home from church.”

***

Jenny had never looked forward to school before.  Monday morning, she slid down the window on her bus to breathe the cool, bittersweet scents of autumn.  She admired the passing trees in their gradual, temporary dying, the sunset hues in all the leaves.  She wondered how she might sculpt an autumn tree, the crooked branches, the rich colors.  The trees could make you sad and hopeful at the same time.  You knew winter was coming, but you knew it came every year, and it passed and there would be spring again.  All the dying should make you appreciate life more, Jenny thought.  Knowing she could kill any living thing with a touch, Jenny saw life as dangerously fragile (except sometimes her own life, which until now had seemed cursed and painfully long).  The fall trees were living expressions of that, and it was her favorite season. 

Jenny climbed off the bus with a smile on her face, and even kept it on for anyone she passed.  Most people looked at her, saw her gloves, and then looked away quickly—or, pointed and started whispering and snickering to each other.

She breezed in through the front door and bobbed along in the stream of students until she saw the giant mitten.  She stopped in the middle of the hallway and stared at it with growing disbelief.  Other people flowed around her, some grumbling at her to move out of the way.

It was a big red mitten, made out of posterboard and hung over the hall like a banner.  The words were in stenciled Magic Marker:

MANY MITTENS!

Give back this holiday season!

Donate old MITTENS, gloves, hats & scarves

to needy children!

MANY MITTENS provides for their winter!

Sponsored by Fallen Oak Student Council

Ashleigh Goodling, Senior President

Jenny felt like she’d been punched in the gut.  As she walked further into the school, she saw more hanging posterboard mittens.  Some said: DONATE TO GET YOUR NAME ON A MITTEN!  with an example of a smaller mitten made of construction paper.  The examples all read: JENNY DONATED MITTENS!  Strings of blank construction paper mittens, all different colors, were hung along each of the side halls, waiting for the names of students and teachers to be written on them.

She noticed more of the kids looking at her and pointing or snickering, like the people outside.  She was hearing “Jenny Mittens” a lot.  The mitten posters naturally spurred talk about her among people, giving older ones an excuse to point out to younger ones the strange girl who always wore gloves, and stir up the various wild theories about why she wore them.  Ashleigh had found an innocent way to surround Jenny with a very unwelcome kind of attention, all over school, from now until Christmas break.

Jenny wondered if Many Mittens was even a real charity, or something Ashleigh had created just for this prank, just to torment Jenny.  “Many Mittens” even rhymed with “Jenny Mittens.”  That little touch had probably been Cassie’s idea. 

She’d expected repercussions for dating Ashleigh’s boyfriend, but had not expected them this fast.  It was only the night before last that Neesha had seen them together.  Ashleigh must have been planning this already, Jenny told herself.  Ashleigh hadn’t really come up with the idea, and recruited people to make and hang the mittens, all in one day.  If she had, then Ashleigh was much more frightening than Jenny had thought. 

She stopped by her locker to trade out a couple of textbooks and drop off her lunch.  She closed the door and tried to calm her stomach, which was knotty and goopy in anticipation of seeing Seth.  His locker was her next stop. 

She had no idea what would happen when she got there.  Did going on a date and kissing automatically make you somebody’s girlfriend?  If so, did throwing up afterward cancel it out? 

She didn’t have any experience, and didn’t have any friends to ask.  She thought she understood romantic things well enough when she read them in books, but people in books made a lot more sense than people in real life.  With real people, it was all odds and ends, and all you got was what you overheard, and it didn’t sound all that much like what happened in stories.  And people who had relationships talked about them in a language that was a little alien to her, since Jenny didn’t have any of the experiences that their words described.

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.