Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, Book 1) (20 page)

“
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, look,” 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.

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 lining 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.

“
To be honest,” Ashleigh dropped her voice to a low whisper. “I need to talk to you about the Crusaders.”

“
Oh!” Darcy laid down her pencil and straightened up in her chair. “What is it?”

“
Well…” Ashleigh glanced around with a reluctant expression, then sat in the chair next to Darcy and spoke in an even lower whisper. “Darcy, who is your abstinence buddy?”