Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, Book 1) (5 page)

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.

The student council elections were on the second Friday of the school year.  Before school that day, Ashleigh Goodling called a special breakfast meeting at her house.  Attending were Cassie, her campaign manager; Neesha, who was running for the class historian office (on the “Ashleigh ticket,” as Ashleigh thought of it) and also Ashleigh’s boyfriend Seth, who could be useful in his way.  Plus, she might be able to fit in some make-out time before school.

They sat at the long table in the high-ceilinged dining room, looking out through the giant picture window towards the duck pond in the back yard.  Over coffee, juice and bagels, they reviewed Ashleigh and Neesha’s speeches, to be delivered to the senior class later that morning.

“I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Seth said after their second pass through Ashleigh’s speech.  “Nobody’s going to pick Brad Long over you.”

“
Almost nobody,” Ashleigh said. “I want a landslide.  I want him to feel stupid for even running against me.  But you’re right, Seth.  We should focus on Neesha.  She has two challengers for class historian.”

“
Rob Pirkle from A/V club is no challenge,” Neesha said. “I’m more worried about Wendy Baker.”

Ashleigh looked at the flyers made by Neesha’s competitors.  Rob Pirkle, like Brad Long, was a nobody, the kind of dweeb who always ran for office despite being way too unpopular to have a chance.  She touched the other flyer, with the smiling photo of Wendy.

“She’s about middle-class popularity,” Ashleigh said. “And a French horn player.  That’s why we need to worry.  The band, the drama types, art club, and the random dorkers.  We have to outflank Wendy there.  Cassie?”

Cassie opened a Trapper Keeper with CAMPAIGN written on the front in heavy black marker.  She fished out a printed page of text and laid it on the table.

“What’s that?” Seth asked.

“
Wendy Baker’s speech for today,” Cassie said.

“
About time.” Neesha grabbed it and started reading.

“
Sorry, Neesh,” Cassie said. “Wendy only finished it last night.”

“
How’d you get it?” Seth asked.

“
Wendy’s little brother is a freshman,” Cassie told him. “And a real horndog, it turns out.  Easy mark.”

“
Really, Cassie?” Ashleigh teased. “A freshman?”

“
Oh, please, like I had to do anything.  Just a little…” Cassie traced her fingertips slowly down Ashleigh’s arm, and fluttered her eyelids. “‘Oh, Billy, we should hook up sometime…’”

The girls broke down in laughter.

“Okay,” Neesha said, thumping the copy of Wendy’s speech. “She’s proposing some kind of collaborative thingy, where the band, the choir, drama club, everybody gets together to put on a big spring musical.  Everybody can contribute.  The art club, the A/V club, everybody has a role.”

“
That’s a good idea,” Cassie said.

“
A big coalition,” Ashleigh said. “Neesha, who’s going first?”

“
I’m first for the historian candidates.”

“
Great,” Ashleigh said. “So add Wendy’s idea to your speech, but make it better.”

“
Like a movie instead of a play!” Cassie said.

“
Or something so big they have to use the stadium instead of the cafeteria,” Ashleigh said. “Whatever.  Just bigger, better.”

Neesha opened her laptop and began editing her own speech.

“You girls are so bad.” Seth gave all three his most dazzling, knee-weakening smile.

“
You’re as bad as us.”  Ashleigh stood and stretched.  She was still in her white silk pajama pants, with a Superman tank top.  She dropped into Seth’s lap and kissed him a few times, letting him slip in a little tongue.  He rubbed her calf through the thin silk pajamas, and then his fingertips crept in toward her thigh.

“
Hello, Ritz-Carlton?” Neesha said.  With her thumb and pinkie, she imitated a phone by her ear. “This is Ashleigh and Seth, and we need to get a room.”

“
Good idea.” Ashleigh hopped off Seth. “Let’s go up to my room.  You can use my printer while I get dressed.”

As they climbed the stairs, Seth whispered, “Your room?  Won’t your dad get pissed?”

“Oh, yeah.  And he’s in his upstairs office, too.  Not far away at all,” Ashleigh said. She stopped two stairs above Seth and turned to face him.  She hooked her thumbs inside the waist of her pajama pants, and then pulled the front of the pajamas out and away from her, as if she was about to slide them down and flash him.  If he’d been standing on the same level as her, instead of two stairs below her, he could have just looked down and seen everything. “We would be in so much trouble if he saw me doing this.”

Seth gaped at her tanned belly with hopeful eyes, mouth wide open, like a dog presented with a rare steak but told to sit.  Boys were really so simple.  Ashleigh could tell she’d totally blanked out his mind—that, despite his usual brash confidence and his gorgeous smile, he was really her bitch.

“Take it off, baby!” Cassie called down from the top of the stairs.

Ashleigh saw hope bloom fresh in Seth’s eyes, and a very obvious boner sprouted inside his khaki shorts.  She tugged the pajama pants down just a little, letting him see more of her hips, but nothing too important.

He reached a hand toward her crotch.  She slapped it away and released her pants, which snapped back into their proper place.

“
Bad boy,” Ashleigh teased.  She held up her left hand and wiggled her third finger, the one with the silver abstinence ring. “We got rules around here, you know.”

Then she turned and went up to join her friends, wiggling her rear end ever so slightly for Seth’s enjoyment (or, perhaps, his suffering).  She enjoyed enticing him to the brink of madness, knowing he could have any girl in the school, but instead was her own little slave.  And well-trained, too.

Upstairs, she sent Seth to help Neesha port her laptop to Ashleigh’s printer in the little sitting room off Ashleigh’s bedroom.  She asked Cassie to help her get dressed.  Seth was clearly disappointed, and would rather have been part of the dressing-Ashleigh project than the speech-printing one, but he did just as he was told.

Soon, Ashleigh stood in front of the full-length mirror in her walk-in closet, with Cassie standing behind her and evaluating.  Ashleigh wore a black blazer with matching slacks, and a gray blouse that perfectly matched her eyes, which had taken ages of internet shopping to find.  A cross pendant hung from a thin gold chain around her neck, pointing down at the modest cleavage revealed by the blouse.

“What do you think?” Ashleigh asked.

“
Could be sexier,” Cassie replied.

“
This isn’t sexy?”

“
The slacks look great back here.” Cassie patted Ashleigh’s ass. “But they won’t see that on stage.”

“
I’m not going for obvious sexy,” Ashleigh said. “More like restrained, professional sexy.  Like you’re trying so hard to hold the sexy in, but it keeps slipping out.  Mixed signals, you know?  You want to get them hard, but you want them to feel guilty about it, too.”

“
Then this looks perfect.  You’re a genius, Ashleigh.”

“
That’s right.” Ashleigh plucked a pair of black high heels from the shoe wall, but didn’t put them on yet. “Let’s go to school.”

Outside, Neesha and Cassie sped away in Cassie’s red Mazda.  Seth cranked his Audi convertible, but then they idled in the driveway.  He gave her a questioning, hopeful look.

“Are we ready, or…?” he asked.

“
One more thing.” Ashleigh wrapped her fingers around his head, gripping his strawberry blond hair, and pulled his face to hers.  Ashleigh was tall enough to kiss a boy dead-on, without reaching or stretching.  At five-ten, she actually looked down on many boys in her class.  She’d made her unusual height into an attractive asset, instead of whining about it and slouching and trying to downplay it like some girls would.