by JL Bryan
“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 kno
ts 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.
