Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, Book 1)
by
J. L. Bryan
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Jeffrey L. Bryan
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CHAPTER ONE
Jenny sat in the red dirt and played with a plastic dinosaur. She liked the front yard, with all its mysteries--the high clumps of weeds, the big fallen-over tree trunk shaggy with scrub growth, the shiny bottles and cans Daddy left everywhere. She liked all the funny pieces of machinery and broken furniture around the shed. People brought things to Daddy’s shed, and he fixed them, sometimes. Daddy was a Handy Man, except when he was Drinking.
Jenny heard a funny, shaking noise, like one of the old rattle toys in her room. It was from somewhere near the fallen tree. Maybe on the other side of it.
She crawled on the sandy, oil-stained dirt, through high weeds. She startled a chipmunk near her knee and he skittered away from her. She giggled at the funny little striped creature.
The rattle sounded again and she crawled to the tree. She turned and crawled along its length, stopping every foot or so to poke her fingers into the weeds and ivy that had grown over the fallen tree’s bark. She pulled aside stringy plants to peer into dark places under the tree, and she squinted her eyes to peer into knotholes.
She found the place where a narrow, weed-choked gully had washed out underneath the trunk, creating a kind of dark cave underneath. She leaned her face in close, cupping her hands around her eyes to try and shield out the sun. She couldn’t see anything, but she heard the rattle again, longer and louder this time, from the darkness right in front of her nose. It was in there somewhere.
She reached her hand deep into the gully, pushing and tearing through thick weeds. The rattling grew louder. She touched something cool and muscular. It pulled away from her fingers, and now the rattle went crazy. She reached her arm all the way into the narrow gully, up to her shoulder. Her fingers brushed the mysterious muscular thing again, and again it pulled back. She pawed around in the dirt. She could hear it rattling, but she couldn’t find it again.
She wondered if it had moved all the way to the other side of the tree. Maybe she could find it over there. Jenny drew her hand out of the gully. She scrabbled up onto the trunk, which was nearly as high as she was, clawing her way to the top with her fingernails and toenails. She leaned out over the other side of the tree, looking among the weeds and brown bottles, her bare feet dangling in the air behind her.
She tilted forward until her head was almost upside down, her thick black hair hanging down like streamers. She watched it emerge from the gully. Triangular head, black eyes. Its head looked like her dinosaur toy. Its body looked like a living piece of rope, unspooling from underneath the trunk to slither off through high weeds and towards the woods, where Jenny wasn’t allowed to go. Its long body kept coming out and out, and Jenny snickered. The creature was just so long, it was almost silly.
Its skin was olive, with pretty black diamonds all over its back. Jenny reached down and ran her fingers along it as it passed. It writhed at her touch and gave another long rattle. She wrapped her fingers around its body and picked it up to play with it, thinking it would be a good friend for her dinosaur. And she liked that rattley sound, it was like whispering, like telling secrets.
Its head arched up and twisted around to face her. It opened its jaw and hissed, revealing huge fangs.
Jenny shrieked and tumbled backward off the fallen tree. One hand tightened its grip on the ropey creature, while her other hand grabbed uselessly at the air for something to stop her fall.
She landed hard on the dirt, flat on her back, dragging the long creature over the tree with her, and its long body landed across her stomach. It was thrashing hard and rattling faster, and she could see the rattle now, a fat cone of shell-like rings at the tail end.
She lifted the creature’s long belly off her with both hands. The fanged head raised up, dripping fluid from its teeth, and then swooped towards her bare, dirt-crusted left foot. She cried out as the head struck her ankle.
But it didn’t bite her. Instead, its head slid off her leg and into the dirt, and Jenny held her breath and watched it, keeping herself very still. The creature didn’t move again.
Along the segment of the snake’s body that drooped between her hands, its scaly skin had busted open all over and dark blood seeped out. The blistering infection spread out along its skin in both directions from her hands, towards its head and towards its tail. All her fingers felt sticky and gross.
Jenny dropped the snake in the dirt and crawled over to the tail end. She tapped the rattle, but the snake didn’t react. She picked up the rattle end and shook it, and it made the funny sound. She giggled.
Excited now, her fright already fading, Jenny jumped to her feet and ran toward the front porch, dragging the long dead snake behind her. She stopped at the porch steps and shook the rattle again.
“Daddy!” she called, not sure if he were awake yet. “Daddy daddy!”
Daddy didn’t answer. She went up the three steps and through the open front door.
Daddy was snoring on the couch, in front of a heap of shiny silver cans and an overflowing ashtray on the coffee table. Jenny grabbed his arm—careful to touch only the sleeve, not the skin—and shook him.
“Daddy! Toy!” she screamed at his heavily stubbled, drooling face. She shook the rattle at him. “Daddy!”
“Wha…?” His eyes eased open, bleary and unfocused.
“Toy!” Jenny gave the rattle a good, hard shake to really make her point.
Now Daddy’s eyes snapped open wide and she could see all the little red veins in them. He smacked Jenny’s hand, hard, slapping the snake rattle out of it. The snake tail flopped to the floor while he snatched Jenny up onto the couch, putting her behind himself and away from the new toy. The shock of the slap wore off and bright red pain flared up to replace it, and Jenny started crying.
Daddy looked along the length of the snake. Its head lay just inside the front door.
“Did you kill it, Jenny?” he asked. This only made her cry harder. She’d thought the snake was more of a toy than a live animal.
Daddy chucked an empty beer can at the snake. The can struck the creature’s body, then rolled across the floor and stopped against the far baseboard, where it would remain for several months. The snake didn’t respond to this insult.
“Stay here!” Daddy said. He stepped over the snake’s body and crossed to the fireplace, where he fiddled with the rack of fireplace tools. Jenny saw his right hand, the one that had slapped the rattle from her. He had only touched her for a second, but that was enough to give him bleeding blisters all over his palm.
He took the fireplace shovel, walked to the snake’s head, and stabbed down through its neck. The shovel bit into the hardwood floor. He scraped the snake’s head forward, separating it from its body. Dark blood leaked onto the dusty floorboards.
Jenny drew her knees to her chest and kept sobbing. She felt guilty. She’d made Daddy mad. And she felt bad for the snake. She shouldn’t have touched it.
Daddy scraped up the snake’s head onto the shovel and carried it outside. Then he came back for the body.
He looked at Jenny and sighed. He looked tired, and a little pale and sick. Jenny couldn’t stop crying.
“Gonna be okay, baby,” he said. He ran to the kitchen and washed his hands, and poured some of the icky brown stuff for scrapes onto his open sores, the sores he’d gotten from touching Jenny. He sighed in relief. “You just stay where you’re at and don’t go nowhere. Stay!”
He went into the back of the house, where the bedrooms were, and returned wearing a long-sleeve orange Clemson shirt and cloth gardening gloves. He shook out his red cloth mask and slid it down over his head. It had only two tiny holes for eyes, and one tiny hole over his mouth. It was his Cuddle Mask.
He helped Jenny put on her own fuzzy pink cotton gloves. Then he shook out her little yellow Cuddle Mask and slid it slowly down over her head, taking care not to tangle or pull her hair. He straightened the mouth hole so Jenny could breathe, and then the eyes holes so Jenny could see.
Now he could pick her up and set her in his lap. He wrapped his arms around her and she buried her face in his shirt, listening to his heartbeat, smelling his stale sweat. Her sobbing finally began to subside.
“See, Jenny?” He rubbed the back of her head, through his glove, through her mask. “It’s okay now. That was a diamondback rattler, a big one. You got to stay away from snakes, especially the rattling kind. Okay? They’re poisonous.”
“What’s poze-nuss?” Jenny asked into his chest.
“When something bites you and it makes you sick. Some things are poisonous if you just get too close to them. Like poison oak.”
Jenny lifted one small, fuzzy-pink-gloved hand and looked at her fingers.
“I’m poze-nuss,” she said.
He took a long, deep breath. He kissed the mouth hole of his mask against the crown of her mask.
“You ain’t poisonous to me, Jenny.”
“Yes I am! I’m poze-nuss all over!”
“You just got to stay careful.”
“Never touch people,” Jenny whispered quickly, like a student who’d learned by rote.
“Not
with bare skin,” he said. “And never, ever play with
snakes!”
“Never play with snakes,” Jenny repeated, adding
this one to her catalog of “Nevers.” Like: Never touch people.
Never talk to anybody but Daddy.
Daddy lifted her from his lap and set her down beside him on the couch. He picked an open beer can from the table and shook it next to his ear. A little liquid sloshed inside, so he drank it down. Then he lit one of his Winstons.
“I wish your momma was still alive,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell to do with you. Little snake-killer.”
CHAPTER TWO
With her dad’s guidance, Jenny managed to make it through kindergarten and the first two months of first grade without a big incident. Jenny kept herself apart from the other kids, never touched them with bare hands, avoiding their hands and arms if they reached toward her. As long as she didn’t talk to people, and refused to play any games at recess, most people would just leave her alone.
It hurt to watch other kids play sports, or just thoughtlessly bump into each other in the hallway or lunchroom, and give each other high fives or hugs. She was different. No other kids made people sick just by touching them. Jenny kept a wide space around her and stayed quiet and wary at all times.
The incident happened in early October. Jenny was in her usual place at recess, on the little sloping hill by the playground, where most people only went for a quick break in the shade. She sat cross-legged in dirt and pine needles and watched other kids play freeze tag.
When two squirrels chased each other around a tree above her, Jenny started watching them instead. She loved how careless they seemed, even running at breakneck speed along a high electrical wire or hurtling from tree to tree, always landing in the right place without any effort. Once, in the thick woods around her house, she’d seen a squirrel leap from one treetop, sail across twenty or thirty feet of open space, and land in the lower limbs of a distant tree. The squirrel hadn’t even stopped when he landed, just kept on running.
She’d been watching squirrels a lot more since she learned they could do stunts.
The three girls that approached her were the ones that “owned” the big wooden bench in the corner of the playground. If they weren’t playing with the other kids, they were on the bench, braiding each other’s hair, whispering, or doing those games where girls sang a rhyme while clapping each other’s hands.
The three of them whispered and snickered as they passed the freeze-tag game, heading straight for Jenny. Jenny pretended not to see them coming. She closed her eyes and hoped they would go away, but she heard their shoes crunch through the pine straw and stop right in front of her.
Jenny opened her eyes. The three girls stood over her, looking down with their arms crossed. They wore bright, wide smiles. It was a look that would grow ever more familiar to Jenny in the coming years of school, the one that was extra friendly and sweet to hide the cruelty lurking behind it.
They were Cassie Winder, a short, freckled, red-haired girl; Neesha Bailey, a black girl who was really into pink camouflage pants; and the leader, Ashleigh Goodling. She was the daughter of Dr. Goodling, the preacher at the white Baptist church. Ashleigh stood a few inches higher than anyone in class, and she was the only one who was already seven. She stared at Jenny with her gray eyes, which were the color of rainclouds and impossible to read. Like the other two girls, her hair was twisted into three or four giant braids, which they’d given each other.
“Hey, Jenny Morton,” Ashleigh said, with a too-wide smile. “Whatcha doing, Jenny Morton?”
Jenny just looked back and kept her mouth shut. She felt suspicious, and a little panicked, and didn’t have any idea what to say.
“Why you always up here alone, Jenny Morton?” Ashleigh asked.
“I don’t know,” Jenny said.
“You think you’re better than everybody?”
“No.”
Ashleigh planted her hands on her hips and leaned forward, putting her eyes closer to Jenny’s. “You think you’re so great. Then why’s your hair so stupid and weird, huh?”
Cassie and Neesha snickered behind their hands.
“Do you cut your own hair, Jenny Morton?” Ashleigh asked.
“No. My daddy cuts it.”
This was too much for Cassie and Neesha, who burst into laughter. Ashleigh didn’t laugh but wore a small, tight, satisfied smile.
“Y’all go away,” Jenny said.
Ashleigh’s smile vanished all at once. Her eyes narrowed, and her voice became low and hissy.
“You don’t tell me what to do, Jenny Morton! My daddy says your daddy’s just a dumb drunk redneck and he shouldn’t even have a kid!”
Jenny’s face turned hot. Jenny was stunned at how the words felt, like a hard slap deep inside her face, the pain not instant but suddenly appearing a few seconds later, then spreading fast.
“Well,” Jenny said, “My daddy says your daddy’s nothing but a carnie-booth crook!” Jenny wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, but she was pretty sure she got the words right when it came to her daddy’s opinion of Dr. Goodling.
“Everybody likes my daddy!” Ashleigh said. “That’s why everybody gives him money. Everybody likes my mommy, too. You don’t even have a mommy. Prolly cause you’re so ugly! She died cause you’re so ugly!”
“Shut up!” Jenny screamed.
“You shut up!” Ashleigh countered.
“You’re stupid!” Jenny said. “Leave me alone!”
“Leave me alone!” Ashleigh mocked Jenny’s voice, but made her sound extra scared. Her two friends laughed behind her.
Jenny’s fingers dug into the pine needles beside her, looking for a rock, but instead she found a large pine cone with a lot of pointy tips. She picked it up, reared back, and threw it as hard as she could at Ashleigh.
It struck the dead center of Ashleigh’s face, between her gray eyes, prickers jabbing her forehead and upturned nose. Ashleigh just looked shocked at first, but then her face reddened and she shrieked.
She jumped on Jenny, knocking the smaller girl onto her back in the pine straw, then started slapping her with both hands, back and forth, again and again.
“Stop!” Jenny screamed. Her hand flailed out and found Ashleigh’s face, and she raked her fingernails across it.
“Ow!”Ashleigh seized a fistful of Jenny’s hair and pulled hard, ripping strands out by the roots. Jenny grabbed one of Ashleigh’s big braids and yanked it, making her scream again.
A sudden shaking, coughing fit ripped through Ashleigh. Ashleigh kicked away from Jenny and rolled over to her hands and knees. She crawled away, wheezing, struggling to breathe.
Neesha and Cassie stepped in front of Ashleigh to protect her, as if they expected Jenny to continue the fight. Instead, Jenny crawled back from them, stood up, and then backed away some more.
She watched Ashleigh coughing on her hands and knees, and she felt fear deep, deep inside her gut. She’d broken the biggest “never” of all--never touch another person.
Then she realized that the rest of the class had abandoned their games of freeze tag and kickball. They all stood on the edge of the playground, watching and pointing at the fight on the slope while jabbering at each other. Mrs. Fulner, the first-grade teacher, made her way through the crowd of kids.
“Just what on Earth are you children doing?” she demanded.
“Jenny Morton hit Ashleigh!” Cassie said.
“Oooh…” Ashleigh groaned. She lay on the ground now, hands covering her face.
“Is this true, Jenny?” Mrs. Fulner asked.
Jenny couldn’t think of what to say to make all the trouble and attention stop. So she stuck with what she knew: mouth closed, eyes on the ground, until they left you alone and went away.
Mrs. Fulner eventually did turn away, to check on Ashleigh.
“Ashleigh, honey?” She stood over the girl. “Sit up. Let me see you.”
“No,” Ashleigh groaned.
“Ashleigh, up, now!” the teacher snapped.
Ashleigh sighed. She rolled up to a sitting position, and she dropped her hands from her face.
Mrs. Fulner, and most of Mrs. Fulner’s class, let out a pained gasp. Jenny felt a sickening, falling sensation.
A thick red rash of swollen pustules covered Ashleigh’s face, hands and arms. One big bump high on her cheek burst and leaked a fat teardrop the color of Elmer’s Glue.
“Ewwwwwwwwwww!” a dozen kids squealed from the playground.
“She’s got chicken pox!” a boy yelled from the back.
“It’s from her!” Ashleigh screeched, pointing at Jenny. “She gave me pox!”
“She gave you Jenny pox!” Cassie said.
“Jenny pox!” one kid shouted, and others took it up: “Jenny pox! Jenny pox!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Mrs. Fulner said. “Ashleigh, let’s go visit the nurse, honey. I’ll call your mother.” She walked Ashleigh up the gravel path to the school building. She reached out a hand, nearly touched Ashleigh’s shoulder, then thought better of it and pulled back. The teacher shot a glare over her shoulder at Jenny.
The crowd of kids chanted “Jenny pox! Jenny pox!” until Mrs. Fulner and Ashleigh were inside the building. Then all of them turned their heads and stared at Jenny.
“What?” Jenny asked.
The whole class ran away from her, screaming, to the other side of the playground.
CHAPTER THREE
When Jenny heard the crash, she was alone at her house, working at the little foot-powered potter’s wheel she’d bought secondhand from Miss Gertie’s Five and Dime. She’d paid for it herself, with money saved from her after-school job at the library. The wheel occupied the corner of the dining room, which she and her dad never used for dining. The dining table itself was invisible under heaps of scattered hand tools, assorted junk her dad was supposed to repair, and mail no one had ever opened.
Jenny could spend hours sculpting clay. She loved the rich hues and textures, the way it turned warm and fleshy and pliant the more you worked it with your fingers. It was satisfying to turn the raw shapeless clay into something useful and beautiful. Jenny could touch plants without killing them, but clay was the closest she could come to touching skin.
She’d only had the wheel for six months, and already ‘Miss Gertie’ (actually, Rose Sutland) was selling some of Jenny’s creations on consignment at the Five and Dime. Jenny had just finished her junior year of high school, so she was finally on summer vacation and had plenty of time to make more.
The crash came from the side of the house, where the metal trash cans were stored. The sound broke a deep silence, startling her. She’d been so absorbed in the new flowerpot, she hadn’t even noticed the record player had long ago finished Side 1 of Patsy Cline’s “Sentimentally Yours.”
It was ten o’clock at night, and her dad wasn’t home. She didn’t expect him anytime soon. He’d found some work repainting an old house in town, so he’d probably stopped by McCronkin’s for a drink or ten.
Jenny lifted her foot from the pedal and let the wheel spin to a stop. There was another crash. It definitely sounded like a trash can. Probably a possum or raccoon scrounging for a bite. Her dad must have forgotten to bolt the trash enclosure again.
Jenny swung through the kitchen for a broom and then walked out onto the screen-walled back porch, which faced the heavy woods behind the house. Her father had built the porch before she was born. Most of the old house had been built or rebuilt by his hands at one time or another.
The night was hot and sticky and full of buzzing insects, but very dark, lit only by shafts of moonlight through the tall pines. She wished the exterior lights on the side worked, but they’d been defunct for years. If something wasn’t used much, her dad had a tendency to put off repairing it, possibly forever.
Jenny looked out through the porch’s screen wall, but even if she could have seen anything in the thin moonlight, the house blocked her view of the trash enclosure. She went to the screen door, lifted the hook from its eyehole, and pushed it open.
She cautiously descended the stairs to the yard, holding the broom out before her like a weapon. She crept past the thorny tangle that had once been a flower bed and looked around the corner of the house.
She held back a gasp. She’d expected a small scavenger, but the creature rooting in her garbage was much bigger then a possum. She couldn’t see it very well. She tried to remember if coyotes were aggressive, or easy to run off.
Her dad had built the trashcan enclosure out of mismatched fence pieces, with a metal “ROAD CLOSED” traffic sign for a roof. The gate was from a child’s wooden playpen, complete with a row of colored sliding rings on a crossbar and a smiling sun painted at the corner. The gate was open now and the creature hunkered behind it ripping open a white kitchen bag.
As her eyes adjusted to the moonlight, she realized that it wasn’t a coyote, but a skinny mongrel dog with wild, matted fur. The dog was tearing apart the Hardee’s take-out bag Jenny’s dad had brought home. There wasn’t anything in it but empty ketchup packets and greasy napkins.
The dog wouldn’t find much to eat in their garbage. With her dad’s uncertain, off-and-on income, they couldn’t afford to waste food.
Jenny went back inside. Her pantry didn’t contain much that was good for a dog, mostly grits, cereal and soup, but she did find a can of Chef Boyardee beef ravioli. She popped it open, dumped the ravioli into one of her early, misshapen clay bowls, and warmed it in the microwave.
Back outside, the dog was still at his hopeless rooting. Jenny stood by the corner of the house, well away from him, holding the warm bowl.
“Hey, doggie,” she said.
The dog jumped, took one quick look at her, and ran into the woods. His head bobbed up and down like a galloping horse. By the sound of it, he didn’t go too far into the woods before he stopped. Jenny hoped he was watching her.
She placed the bowl on the ground where the dog had been, near the scattered spill of garbage. She walked back to the corner of the house, squatted to the ground, and made herself as small and unthreatening as she could.
“Come on, doggie,” Jenny said, in a high baby-talk voice. “It’s gonna be okay!”
She heard a little pawing in the woods, and then the dog whined. He could probably smell the heated ravioli floating in meaty red sauce.
“Gonna be okay,” Jenny tried to assure the dog.
After another minute, the dog finally crept out of the woods into the moonlit yard. He kept his head low and looked at her warily, his big black nose snuffling the air. He step-hopped over to the bowl, and now Jenny saw why he walked so awkwardly, head bobbing up and down, body rocking from side to side. He only had one front leg. The other one was just a three-inch stump.
“Oh, baby,” Jenny said. “What happened to you? Were you chasing cars?”
The dog lowered its snuffling nose to the ugly makeshift dog bowl and sniffed the ravioli. He slurped it all down in less than ten seconds. He continued the licking the bowl for a minute to search for any trace of sauce. Then he knocked the bowl over and licked the underside for a while, just in case. As her eyes adjusted more to the moonlight, Jenny could actually see his ribs outlined against his skin.
Jenny watched the stump leg to see if the injury was recent or old, if the dog needed emergency care. It didn’t seem to be bloody, or wet, or dripping. She didn’t have a way to take him, anyway, since her dad was still out with the truck.
When the dog was finished, he turned his head at Jenny and wagged his tail.
“No,” Jenny said. His tail stopped wagging. “If you eat more now, you’ll get sick. You go on, now. I’m too dangerous to you.”
The dog lowered his head, hop-stepped toward her, and gave another wag.
“I’m serious,” Jenny said. “You’ll die if I pet you. You’ll get the Jenny pox.”
The dog took another tentative hop-step toward her. Clearly he couldn’t be reasoned with, so Jenny stood up on her tiptoes, raised her arms above her head, and shouted “Go!”
The dog flinched, then streaked away into the woods.
***
Jenny awoke early the next morning and made her dad’s favorite hangover breakfast: one tall glass of milk, one over easy egg on toast, one mug of extra-strong black coffee, with a little space left in it so he could add a shot of whiskey when she wasn’t looking.
“How’s the painting job?” she asked as they ate.
“Ugh.” He shook his head. “Paint fumes. I’m not looking forward to the rest of the day.”
“Which one are you painting?”
“One of those big old places on Magnolia. Ripping down kudzu and poison ivy all over it. House hasn’t been used since the 1960s. I guess Mr. Barrett thinks he can clean it up and sell it.” The Barrett family owned the Fallen Oak Merchants and Farmers Bank, and with it half the decaying properties in town.
“Who’s gonna buy it?” Jenny asked. “Can’t nobody in Fallen Oak afford one of those big places, and nobody rich is gonna move here.”
“Who cares? A fool’s money spends as well as anybody’s. And I got to get on my way.” He drained the coffee, to which he had, of course, added that crucial dash of cheap whiskey when she’d looked away.
She stood up with him. “Can I ride to work with you and borrow the truck today?”
“It’s almost out of gas.”
“I’ll put some in. I have money.”
Her dad jingled the keys to his ancient Dodge Ram truck.
“Maybe you better drive,” he said. “I’m gonna nap on the way. I still got a little drunk left in me from last night.” He hadn’t shaved or showered, but Jenny supposed that didn’t matter too much for house painting work.
Jenny navigated the big old truck into town. It was big and hard to turn, but she was a an old pro at steering the clumsy thing around, since she’d never driven anything but the Ram.
She dropped him at a decaying mansion on Magnolia Street with wraparound porches on the bottom two floors and a balcony on the narrow third floor. Magnolia was once the center of town society, ages ago, when it was home to large landowners, cotton brokers, and horse and cattle traders. Most of those families were gone now, or still here but broke, like the Blackfields clinging to their one dirty gas station on the south end of town.
The Mortons were a little like that, too. Jenny’s great-great-grandfather had owned hundreds of acres of farmland around Fallen Oak. Her late grandfather, and now her father, had sold off the good fields bit by bit in order to survive. They were now left with twenty-five acres of brambles and woods on hilly, rocky land that was no good for farming. Jenny was determined not to lose what remained.
She passed through the town square, which centered on a green lawn with a bandstand. In the afternoons, the courthouse overshadowed the green. Whoever built the courthouse had clearly expected Fallen Oak to grow into quite a city. It was two stories high, brick, with a row of fat white columns out front supporting a triangular pediment, like the front of a Greek temple. On the pediment, the sculpted frieze depicted farmers bearing corn and cotton towards the central figure of Justice, blindfolded and holding her scale high.
Wide brick steps led from the sidewalk up to the front doors. Big, gnarled old oaks flanked the steps. Supposedly, a slave had once been hung for sorcery on the largest tree, back in the 1700s, generations before the courthouse was built.
The bottom floor of the courthouse held the courtroom, the police department, the town jail, and the mayor’s office. The upper floor was mostly storage.
Also facing the grassy square were the Fallen Oak Baptist Church where Ashleigh’s father Dr. Goodling preached, and the Barretts’ bank, and a two-story brick building with a few shops and a lot of vacancies. Dusty FOR RENT signs hung inside whitewashed windows. Jenny parked in front of an empty shop.
Miss Gertie’s Five and Dime occupied a space near the end of the building. A clump of bells and chimes jangled as Jenny pushed open the glass door.
The interior of the store was beyond dusty, and so cluttered it made Jenny’s house look organized. The store had racks of old romance novels, outdated calendars, antique tables and chairs shoved together so tight you could barely pass, wind-up clocks, creepy china dolls, creepier nutcrackers that looked like soldiers with giant teeth, typewriters, gas lanterns, faded postcards, an overcrowded clothing rack, a disused wood-burning stove that now stored handkerchiefs and embroidered linens. A bookcase near the front window displayed Jenny’s bowls and flowerpots, along with assorted hand bells, Christmas ornaments, picture frames and collectible salt and pepper shakers.
“Ms. Sutland?” Jenny called out.
Eventually, Ms. Sutland emerged from her back office, while positioning her rectangular-framed glasses on her nose. She was in her eighties and walked slowly, one arthritic hand trembling on the brass duck-head topper on her cane. Every day she pulled her white hair into the same loose and sloppy bun, with hair spilling out in every direction.
“Is that little Jenny Morton?” She may have smiled a little, somewhere within the cobweb of wrinkles on her face. “Wouldn’t you like some iced tea?”
“No, thank you, ma’am,” Jenny said. “I’m just—”
“Hard candy? I may have licorice. Let me check…”
“No, thanks, Ms. Sutland—”
“How are your mother and father, dear?”
“My dad’s fine, thanks,” Jenny said. It was pointless to remind Ms. Sutland that Jenny’s mother died when Jenny was born. The elderly lady would try to comfort her as if it had just happened, as if Jenny had ever known her mother.
“Hm. I suppose you’re just visiting for your money, then, aren’t you?”
“Money?” Jenny asked. “Did somebody buy one?”
Ms. Sutland shuffled to her mechanical cash register. She might be fuzzy about the world beyond her shop, but when it came to inventory, her mind was razor sharp. “Two little flowerpots and that lovely mixing bowl.”
“Wow!” Jenny said.
“I shouldn’t say, but all three went to Mrs. Barrett. She said she’d like more of them.”
“Really?” Jenny was stunned. If Mrs. Barrett was a fan of her work, there was money to be made. Jenny and her dad were desperate for it.
“I told her it was a South Carolina girl made them,” Ms. Sutland said. “Didn’t tell her it was anybody here in town.”
“That’s fine, Ms. Sutland. I’d rather she just buy them all through your store.” Jenny didn’t bother pointing out that ladies in town probably wouldn’t buy the pottery knowing it was made by crazy, white-trash Jenny Morton.
The bell on Ms. Sutland’s cash register clanged as she opened the drawer. She fished out four twenties and passed them into Jenny’s brown-gloved hand. Jenny accepted them gratefully. She had expected to spend money at the Five and Dime, not receive it. This was a huge amount all at once.
“Thank you!” Jenny said.
“Oh, my pleasure, dear. Would you like an iced tea?”
“No, thank you, ma’am. I actually came for a new pair of gloves. These are wearing through.” Jenny looked at the clothing rack, with its careless mixture of coats, hats, ties and dresses. Jenny’s favorite shelf displayed gloves and scarves.
“I’m so glad you reminded me, dear,” Ms. Sutland said. “I don’t know where my mind is today. I found these for you in the back room.” She placed a heart-shaped candy box trimmed in bits of pink satin and yellowed lace on the counter. She lifted away the lid.
Jenny leaned over to look inside. The old candy box held a pair of very delicate white gloves made of lace and ribbon, laid out on a silk handkerchief. They were something a lady might have worn to a Magnolia Street wedding, many decades ago.
“Those are beautiful,” Jenny breathed.
“I knew you’d like them, with you wearing them gloves all the time.”
Jenny pulled the brown cotton glove from her right hand and reached into the box. She touched the lace gloves gently with a fingertip, feeling the soft, almost ethereal lightness of them, the incredible attention and work that had gone into them. Finally, she forced herself to pull back and hurried to replace her brown glove.
“Only…” Jenny said, “They’re too nice for me, Ms. Sutland.”
“Impossible, dear.”
“I need thicker gloves. I would just tear those up.”
“I understand.” Ms. Sutland sounded a little sad. She replaced the lid and moved the box under the counter. “You need something to protect against the sun, don’t you? Ghostly little girl. You must burn like a lobster.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jenny smiled at her. Ms. Sutland never gave any appearance of knowing that Jenny Morton, around town and especially around school, was “Jenny Mittens,” the freakish loner who wore gloves and long-sleeve shirts every day no matter the heat. Ms. Sutland never spoke of it, and Jenny was grateful.
“Jenny Mittens” wasn’t as bad as her horrible elementary school nickname, the awful “Jenny Pox.” No adult had believed Jenny was capable of giving Ashleigh Goodling a sudden outbreak of running sores and swollen pustules just by touching her. Eventually, the kids grew up and stopped believing what they’d seen, and over the years the tale of “Jenny Pox” had gone the way of cooties, the boogeyman, and the neighbor who hides razors in apples on Halloween. The frightening girl with a wicked supernatural power had become merely the scrawny, friendless “Jenny Mittens,” who wore gloves all the time and dressed in a lot of her deceased mother’s old clothes. You avoided Jenny Mittens because you despised her, not because you feared her.
As far as Jenny could tell, “Jenny Pox” was long forgotten, and she could not be happier about that.
Jenny picked out cheap gray gloves and paid for them out of her new pottery money. As Ms. Sutland rang them up, Jenny apologized for not buying the fine white pair.
“Never you mind about that,” Ms. Sutland said. “I’m just glad you didn’t buy these at the Wal-Mart like everybody else.”
“I never go to Wal-Mart,” Jenny said, and it was true. The Wal-Mart over in Apple Creek, fifteen minutes away, was always crowded and full of running children that could bump into you. Jenny never went anywhere more crowded than the Piggly Wiggly, and even that was almost too much. Even with gloves and a full set of long clothes, Jenny lived in fear of touching somebody.
“I’ll tell you what, dear,” Ms. Sutland said. “I’ll just hold these gloves for you. When you meet that special fella, you can wear them to your wedding.”
The unexpected comment triggered every awful thing Jenny knew about her future: that she would never be married, never have children, never even kiss a boy. All of that meant touching. She bit back a rush of tears and hurried to the door, but she didn’t open it. She stared at what was happening outside, thinking that life got worse all the time.
Two cars had parked at the grassy square, a sapphire blue Audi Roadster convertible with the top down, and a red Ford Ranger truck with yellow-flame racing stripes. She recognized them both on sight, but especially the convertible. It belonged to Seth Barrett, technically Jonathan S. Barrett IV, of the Merchants and Farmers Bank Barretts. Seth had attended a private Christian school, Grayson Academy outside Greenville, all the way up to high school. Then his parents had moved him to the public Fallen Oak High School with all the other kids in town.
Jenny was in the same grade as Seth but had never spoken to him. One fact summed up all she needed to know: he’d been Ashleigh Goodling’s boyfriend since freshman year.
And there was the wretched, horrible, beautiful couple now, Seth and Ashleigh, walking hand in hand from the Audi convertible, over the sidewalk and onto the green. Several yards ahead of them were the other members of Ashleigh’s lifelong inner clique: Neesha Bailey, with her boyfriend Dedrick Moore, and Cassie Winder, with her boyfriend Everett Lawson.
Seth was the star running back on the Fallen Oaks football team, Dedrick the huge center lineman, Everett the wide receiver. The three boys spread out across the green and tossed a football. Jenny’s eyes were fixed on the girls arranging their picnic blanket on the corner of the green closest to the Five and Dime.
She looked with envy on the girls’ summer clothes, spaghetti straps and bare bellies, shorts and open-toe sandals. They were nearly naked in the scorching June heat, while Jenny was forever doomed to jeans, long sleeves and gloves anytime she left the house. If she stared at Ashleigh long enough, she could work herself into a hot hatred of the girl. She hated how Ashleigh casually blew her parents’ money while Jenny had to work hard to help her dad get by. She hated Ashleigh’s big suntanned boobs that wanted to pop out of her halter top, her long legs and perky round ass that boys openly drooled over (and Ashleigh, goddamn her, was still the tallest girl in school). Jenny was always the color of notebook paper, and her scrawny body was all flat surfaces and straight lines.
What Jenny really hated, of course, the fuel for the rest of it, was that Ashleigh was the one who made sure everyone remembered Jenny Mittens was a repulsive nobody, to be scorned at all times.
“Is there trouble with the door, dear?” Ms. Sutland asked from her counter. “Do I need to have your daddy come fix it?”
“No, ma’am. I was just, uh…”
“Out with the sheep, gathering wool,” Ms. Sutland chuckled.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jenny looked at the girls outside. There was no way to avoid them. Her dad’s truck was in plain view, right across the street and less than thirty feet from Ashleigh and friends.
Jenny wished Ms. Sutland a nice day, took a breath, steeled herself, and opened the door. The clump of bells and chimes sounded extra loud to her.
She hung her head forward and let her long black hair shield her face. She kept her eyes on her tattered tennis shoes as she walked to the old Ram.
“Hey, Jenny Mittens!”
Jenny looked up, and immediately wanted to kick herself in the ass for it. She should have ignored them, climbed into the truck and left. Instead, she was looking across the street, right at Ashleigh Goodling’s cloudy gray eyes. People said Ashleigh’s eyes were exotic and beautiful. Jenny knew that if she had eyes like that, people would call them hideous and bizarre.
“Whatcha doing, Jenny Mittens?” Ashleigh yelled. “Shopping for gloves?”
Cassie and Neesha laughed. The boys were either out of earshot or too busy to pay attention. Jenny actually wished the boys were closer. Ashleigh was at her most vicious when alone with her two best friends. The more witnesses, the sweeter and more innocent Ashleigh became. In front of a crowd, she was downright adorable.
Jenny felt her cheeks burn. Her humiliation was all the worse because she had, in fact, been shopping for gloves, and now carried the gray pair in one of her brown-gloved hands. She laid the new gloves against her hip to hide them, then opened the truck door and climbed inside.
As Jenny backed up and straightened out on the road, she glanced at the green again. Neesha and Cassie were talking animatedly to each other, Jenny Mittens already forgotten. Ashleigh, though, was ignoring her friends and watching Jenny drive away, her face placid and expressionless, her gray eyes inscrutable.
***
When Jenny parked in her red dirt driveway, something blurry darted from the front yard and into the woods. Jenny smiled.
Jenny carried in the groceries she’d bought at the Piggly Wiggly and unloaded them in the kitchen. Her pottery money had allowed her to buy bread, milk, cheese, tissue-thin Carl Buddig ham and turkey, and some fresh fruit. She’d also picked up a can of dog food.
She carried the dog food outside and stood over the clay bowl she’d used for ravioli the previous night. She tapped the dog food can and whistled towards the woods.
“Come on, boy,” she said. “It’s gonna be okay, now. Just bringing you a snack!”
There was some movement in the area where the running blur had disappeared, several yards into the woods. The dog wriggled out of the underbrush and rose up on his three logs, watching her nervously.
“Stay,” Jenny said. She popped open the can and poured chicken and gravy into the bowl. She backed away to the corner of the house, saying “Stay…stay…stay…”
When she was safely away from the food, Jenny squatted low near the ground and called out in a high, encouraging voice: “Okay! Okay!”
The dog looked between her and the food bowl a few times, then hop-stepped his way out of the woods to the food. He sniffed it, then chomped it down. He watched Jenny warily as he ate, as if expecting a trap. Jenny understood how he felt.
In the daylight, she could see the dog clearly. He was some kind of mix, with a lot of bluetick hound; she could tell by the floppy black ears and speckled body. He was shaggier than a bluetick, though, and little jowly. His amputated leg looked healed, not a new injury at all, which relieved Jenny. He seemed to have adapted to three-legged walking as well as he could.
“Okay,” Jenny said. “If I’m really the best you can do, then you can stay. But there are rules. Don’t touch me—that’s for your own safety. And you can’t stay in the house, because you might get too close to me. And I can’t ever pet you—” Her voice broke a little as she said it, and in her mind she flickered back to the white lace wedding gloves. She fought the sudden unexpected tears, and swallowed them back. “But my dad can touch you,” she said. “If you want. Okay? And if you ever find a better place, you should run away to there.”
The dog wagged his tail as she spoke, which made him rock a little bit on his front leg.
When she stood up, he raced into the woods as if someone had fired a starting gun.
“Good boy,” Jenny said. “Keep away from me.”
And finally, after holding it inside all the way from the Five and Dime, she broke down and let herself cry.
CHAPTER FOUR
On the first day of her senior year, Jenny stepped off the school bus with her head already lowered, long hair hiding her face, hoping only to get through the day without being noticed. Everyone else on her long rural bus route was a freshman or sophomore. Most of the older kids either had a car or had a friend who did.
She gripped the straps of her backpack extra tight. The first day of every year terrified her.
She headed straight for the bright orange double doors, not looking right or left. She had to dodge little knots of students that gathered to chat around the outdoor picnic tables. She glanced at the mural on the front of the school: “Sonny” the Porcupine, the Fallen Oak High mascot, charged down a grassy field dressed in a helmet, football locked under his armpit. Rival school mascots, including a bear and a gamecock, were skewered on Sonny’s quills, having apparently been foolish enough to tackle a gigantic porcupine.
When Jenny made it inside, she faced a major obstacle. Ashleigh Goodling stood with Cassie, Neesha and other girls from the varsity cheerleading squad in the center of the main hallway, right where it intersected the English and Social Studies hall. There was no way to get anywhere in the school without passing them, unless Jenny wanted to turn back and go around the outside, which would only call attention to herself.
Ashleigh, like her friends, was dressed in new clothes and shoes for the first day of school, and all of them looked carefully made up and manicured. Ashleigh had added dark lowlights to her puffy blond hair. Most of the girls in school would have the same within two weeks.
Jenny felt stupid in her mother’s long-sleeved polka-dotted blouse, the cuffs tucked into her gray gloves, which had grown worn over the summer. She hoped Ashleigh and her friends were too busy for her.
Jenny approached the intersection, feeling her stomach knot itself up. She saw what the girls were doing now, greeting people from the flow of foot traffic, occasionally stopping to hug or to peck a cheek, while giving some kind of full-color paper flyer to everyone who passed.
She stayed close to the wall and held her breath as she swerved wide around the knot of people. It was easier than she expected to go unnoticed past the cheerleaders, since lots of people, especially boys, were crowding in on them, eager for anything these girls might be giving away.
Jenny managed to slip past them, but when she looked back, she saw Ashleigh staring right at her. Ashleigh’s expression was neutral, but her eyes narrowed just a little when Jenny met her gaze. Then Ashleigh snapped her head away with a flip of her golden hair, and squealed an excited greeting at some approaching boys.
Jenny hurried down the main hall, towards the next intersection—then saw she wasn’t free yet. Seth Barrett was there, with Everett Lawson the wide receiver, and a gaggle of underlings from the freshman and JV teams. They were pushing smiles and more full-color flyers on everyone who passed. Jenny sighed and moved to cut around them.
“Hey!” Seth Barrett stepped in front of her, blocking her way. She slowly raised her eyes from the ground to meet his, and she gave him her coldest, most hateful stare, imagining her blue eyes were pieces of arctic ice. He was handsome, of course—Ashleigh had very high standards—and his dazzling smile looked almost genuine. Jenny had learned what that look meant, though, the smile that was so ready to become a mocking smirk.
“What?” Jenny snapped. She imagined her voice cracking like a whip, slapping him out of her way.
“Vote Ashleigh Goodling for senior class president.” Seth’s smile didn’t waver. He held out one of the flyers, and Jenny finally had a look. Her upper lip curled.
Along one side, it showed a full-length picture of Ashleigh in her cheerleader uniform, her leg kicked high as if the picture just happened to be snapped in mid-cheer, which just happened to reveal one long, tan leg, and just a peek of yellow bloomers under her khaki skirt. Under this was a caption that said LEADERSHIP, referring to the fact that Ashleigh was already captain of the varsity cheer squad.
Along the opposite side were three smaller pictures of Ashleigh. One was black and white and showed Ashleigh in glasses and ponytail, pencil in hand, reading a textbook. It was captioned: HARD WORKER. The next showed Ashleigh coaching little kids at her church youth group, and was captioned: DEDICATED TO THE COMMUNITY. The last one showed Ashleigh two years ago, giving a speech on the bandstand in the town square. That had been part of her successful campaign to ban Harry Potter books from the Fallen Oak school library. The caption for this: GETS RESULTS.
Jenny looked from the flyer to Seth’s stupid wide smile. She scowled.
“Fuck you,” she told Seth.
His smile twisted down into a hard scowl. Jenny knew that move, too. It was what Ashleigh did, right as she shifted gears from teasing to insulting. Seth had probably learned it from her.
“Hey, what’s your problem?” Seth snapped.
This brought Everett Lawson’s attention around, and he slapped Seth’s shoulder. Everett smirked at Jenny under his camouflage cap.
“Oh, what’s the matter, Jenny Mittens?” Everett asked. “Wearing your gloves too tight today?”
“Shoot, it can’t be her bra,” said one of the JV players. He was a junior, a fat kid with an uneven flattop haircut. “She don’t hardly need one with them pancakes.” Then he lay his hands flat on his chest and swiveled from side to side, sticking out his tongue as if trying to lick his own nipples. This had all the JV players dying with laughter, and Everett and Seth started laughing, too.
Jenny stalked away down the science hall, where her locker was located. Sheets of bright poster board were mounted on the walls above the lockers, with blown-up pictures of Ashleigh and words written in stenciled marker, outlined with glitter, urging VOTE FOR ASHLEIGH and ASHLEIGH FOR PRESIDENT.
Jenny put her lunch in her locker, then closed the locker door and leaned her forehead against the cool metal, eyes closed. There was no way she could survive another year.
***
Jenny trudged through her classes, ignoring the overheard whispers asking why “Jenny Mittens” was there. In previous years, the school had placed her in honors classes because of her high grades, but there were no honors classes for seniors. Instead, seniors took Advanced Placement courses aimed at gaining early college credit. Since Jenny had no plans to go to college, she was taking general studies level classes.
She just wanted the diploma to make her dad happy, to convince him he’d done a good job raising his daughter on his own. If not for that, she’d have dropped out last year and gotten a full-time job. Failing that, she could at least make and sell a lot more pottery without school getting in the way. She was growing very skilled with clay, and had even treated herself to a few sculpting knives and little bamboo cutting and trimming tools to help develop her craft.
She grew vegetables in the yard, and she made her own clothes out of her mom’s old clothes and things she bought cheap at thrift stores. She didn’t need much money.
So, while the honors, college-prep kids had gotten used to her and learned to ignore her presence in class, she was a novelty to some of the general studies kids. All day, she heard them whispering the usual rumors about why she wore gloves, including that she’d been in a horrible fire that ruined her hands, or that she was obsessively afraid of germs. Jenny never argued against the rumors, since all of them were better than the truth.
The worst class, as always, was P.E. It was the only one where you couldn’t get by with just sitting in a back corner staring at your textbook. It also brought a huge danger of physical contact with others, especially when dressed in the required gym clothes.
Worse, Ashleigh and Cassie were both in her P.E. class this year, so avoiding Advanced Placement hadn’t even allowed Jenny to escape Ashleigh. There were also, of course, several of Ashleigh’s suckers-up, girls who gravitated toward her in the locker room as they dressed out, wanting to be part of her conversation, in her orbit. Jenny picked a locker in back and stayed there while she changed clothes, well away from the crowd around Ashleigh.
Ashleigh and Cassie were snickering about Brad Long, the debate club geek who was challenging Ashleigh for class president. The other girls fell over themselves to laugh at Ashleigh’s jokes. Occasionally, another girl would throw in a comment, and occasionally, Ashleigh would favor such a girl with a smile.
After a minute, Ashleigh turned to look at Jenny.
“What’s wrong, Jenny Mittens?” she asked, and the rest of the class turned to stare at Jenny. “Are you still too good for the rest of us?”
Jenny said nothing. She had already changed into her long-sleeve t-shirt and long shorts—really, a cut-off pair of sweatpants—and now held her P.E. gloves in one hand. Jenny used friction-grip batting gloves for her gym classes.
Jenny scowled, and the suck-up girls laughed.
“Coach Humbee wanted me to tell you something,” Ashleigh said. Humbee was the head football coach, a balding man with a gigantic beer gut. He was also their PE teacher. “He says no gloves allowed in PE this year.”
Most of the girls laughed. Jenny had a few things she wanted to say back to Ashleigh, but she kept her mouth closed. Escalating it would just bring more attention, and with it the risk of touching. It would probably be teasing, aggressive touching, and Jenny would have a hard time not infecting anyone.
Jenny looked at Ashleigh, who wore a tight, satisfied smile. Then Jenny just stared at the floor, and eventually the girls lost interest and went back to dressing out and chattering among each other.
Jenny strapped on the gloves anyway, though Humbee always yelled at her about them. Getting yelled at was better than accidentally killing the other girls while playing basketball or volleyball. Even if they maybe deserved it, just a little.
She closed her locker and hurried out to the gym. Twelve years later, and she still had to deal with Ashleigh on the playground.
***
When she got home, Jenny ran to her room and stripped off the too-hot polka dot blouse and jeans, and then peeled away the gray gloves and threw them on the floor. She changed into a light sleeveless t-shirt and her favorite cutoff jean shorts, relieved to finally let her skin breathe. Her hands were wrinkled like prunes from the sweat inside her gloves.
She went back outside and whistled toward the woods.
“Rocky!” she called. It was what she’d been calling the three-legged dog, because of his swaying, rocking walk.
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.
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