by JL Bryan
“That’s crazy,” Jenny said.
“So, if you don’t want to touch me, that’s actually great,” Seth said. “That makes you one of my favorite people to hang out with.”
Jenny laughed and felt strange, warm, gooey things inside her belly.
The big rock was nestled at the bottom of a little valley. The easiest way to get on top of it was to follow the path up the closest hill, in which the rock was embedded, and then climb down to it. The hardest way was to walk to the bottom of the valley, then climb the flat face of the rock, using little nooks and cracks as finger and toe holes.
Jenny took him the hard way, letting him see how nimbly and easily she could scale it. She looked down and watched with a smile as he followed, struggling to find the handholds and footholds. When he reached the top, she gave him a hand and helped up him the pebbly slope to the flat plateau on top of the rock.
Rocky scampered around in the bottom of the valley, which was apparently full of wonderful things to smell. His tail whipped back and forth as he snuffled through dead leaves.
There was an open space in the canopy above the rock that let the thick yellow afternoon sunlight through. Seth stood in the shaft of light as he looked around, taking in the woods, and it turned his hair a blazing red-gold color.
“So this is your big rock,” he said.
“This is my big rock,” she agreed.
“These woods are all yours?”
“Yep. They’re all full of rocks like this. You can’t do anything useful with these woods except hide in them.”
“That’s pretty useful,” he said. “I like hiding.”
Jenny realized he was still holding her hand, and she looked down at it, feeling self-conscious. Who was forgetting to let go? Was it her fault?
Seth followed her look to their hands. He rubbed his thumb on the back of her glove.
“Gloves,” he said. “I should wear gloves to block people off. That’s a great idea.” He released her gloved hand, then plucked at the sleeve of her sweater. “And sleeves all year. If I dressed like that, people couldn’t drain me all the time.”
Seth looked into her eyes. Jenny froze and didn’t dare say a word.
“You have it,” he said.
“What?”
“The touch. The healing thing.” He waved his open hand and wiggled his fingers. “You have it, too. And you figured out how to hold it in. That’s why you wear gloves. That’s why they call you Jenny M—”
“I know what they call me,” Jenny whispered.
“But you have it, too. Like me.”
“No,” Jenny said.
“Then why the gloves?”
Jenny took a breath. It was dangerous to tell him. He was very close to Ashleigh. But he was trusting Jenny, and that made her want to trust him. He couldn’t be such a bad person, if he could do things like heal Rocky.
“I don’t have it,” she said. “I have something else.”
“What?” His smile was beautiful to her in the sunlight. “You already know mine. That’s not fair. Rocky wants you to tell me.” He nodded at the dog, who was sniffing around a rotting tree stump.
“I’d better start this.” Jenny lit the joint with a match and took a couple deep pulls to soothe her nerves. She’d never told anyone about it. Only her father knew. The kids in her first-grade class had outgrown believing in the supernatural, and the parents and teachers had never believed about Jenny pox. And anyone else who’d ever known about it was dead.
“It’s called Jenny pox,” she told him.
“What Ashleigh said in class today? Everyone kind of freaked out a little bit, didn’t they?”
“You didn’t go to our elementary school.” She passed the joint to him, and he took a deep pull.
“Nope,” he said, while holding his breath. “Grayson Academy. Virtus, honor et ducatus. Chapel on Sunday and no girls.” He blew out a long blue plume of smoke.
“I gave it to Ashleigh when I was a kid,” Jenny said. “By accident. Mostly. She was attacking me and I hit her with my bare hand.”
“What happened?”
“She broke out with infected blisters on her face, in front of the whole class. She never told you about it?”
“No, I’d remember that,” Seth said.
“Everyone called it Jenny pox. That’s when I got into gloves.” She waved her gloved hand with a sarcastic smile. “I hoped people forgot about it. I think Ashleigh remembers, though.”
“Are you sure it came from you?” he asked. “Have you ever infected anybody else?”
Jenny took the joint back from him. “I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“Maybe Ashleigh was just sick,” Seth said. “Maybe it wasn’t you.”
“Okay, listen,” Jenny said. “But you can’t tell anyone. I shouldn’t tell you.” She took another drag. “I just have poor decision-making skills right now, and I blame that on my drug use. So listen. I infected my momma when I was born. She died.”
“I’m sorry, Jenny. I didn’t know that.”
“You ever hear about the doctor’s office burned to the ground over in Millwater?” Jenny asked. “About eighteen years ago?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good,” Jenny said. “That’s where I was born. My momma went into labor and that was the nearest place. I infected the doctor who delivered me. He died the same night. And the nurse who helped him, she died. Everybody who touched me. My daddy saw it happen, and he figured out not to touch me with his bare hands.”
“Are you serious?”
“My daddy—well, the whole doctor’s office caught fire and burned to the ground somehow. I mean, everybody was dead anyhow.” Jenny made herself shut up. She shouldn’t have told anyone about that. Her father had burned down the office to hide what had happened to the doctor, the nurse, and Jenny’s mother, just to protect Jenny. It was a deep secret, one her father still worried about coming back to haunt them. It was the last thing she needed to be sharing with Ashleigh’s boyfriend. She couldn’t understand why she was trusting him with all of this, but she couldn’t help talking to him about it. She’d been holding it back all her life, and he’d somehow opened up the floodgate.
Seth lay back on the rock and looked up towards the clouds. He smoked the joint and thought about this.
“Man,” he said. “I thought mine was crazy.”
“Yours is easy,” Jenny said. “I can’t touch nobody. You get diseased. If I hold on too long, you die.”
“That sucks,” he said. “That really, really sucks.” He looked at the joint they’d been sharing. “Uh, are you sure this is safe? I won’t get sick?”
“It’s not contagious,” she said. “It’s only if I touch you. Like yours. It’s an energy.”
“You can have the rest, though.” He handed it back to her. “I mean, I do have practice. I think. Isn’t this a weekday?” His eyes were bright red, and he seemed confused.
Jenny stubbed it out.
They lay on their backs and looked up at the circle of bright afternoon sky beyond the shadowy trees. He was more than a foot away, but he felt dangerously, deliciously close to Jenny, close enough she could feel his body warmth and hear him breathing. Warblers sang in the trees above them, and a woodpecker clattered away in the distance, high enough to echo across the woods.
“So that freaked you out, didn’t it?” Jenny asked after a few minutes.
“Nah,” Seth said. “That doesn’t scare me. I heal diseases all the time. And I never get sick.”
“I don’t, either!” Jenny said. “I’ve never been sick.”
He rolled on his side to look at her. “I’ve never even had a zit. Or a bruise.”
“I’ve had bruises.” She looked back at him, enjoying the excuse to study his face. “Never zits or blackheads or anything.”
“I know. You’ve got a beautiful face,” he said.
She laughed and rolled back to face the clouds. So did he.
“I’m really sorry a
bout the Jenny pox,” he whispered.
“Me, too.”
“I have to get to practice soon.”
“I know.”
After a while, Jenny showed him the way back.
CHAPTER NINE
On Saturday, in the media room at Ashleigh’s house, Ashleigh sat in one of the hanging sky chairs and tapped at her Blackberry. Seth was sprawled on the couch, trying to enjoy the movie Grandma’s Boy, if only Ashleigh would stop interrupting.
“Okay,” Ashleigh said. “Let’s co-ordinate our schedules.” She reached out an empty hand and snapped her fingers.
Seth rolled his eyes and dug into his pocket for the Blackberry she’d bought him last year. He handed it over. Ashleigh began typing on it.
“So that’s dinner with my parents Thursday—just come over after practice, you can shower here.” She winked at him.
“I could just shower in the school locker room,” he said.
“Don’t be gross. Game Friday, then Saturday, we chaperone the Halloween Lock-In…” Her thumbs flew as she typed.
“Nah,” Seth said.
“What’s that?” She looked up.
“I don’t want to do the lock-in.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Come on,” Seth said. “Halloween’s on a Saturday night this year. And we’re seniors. I don’t want to waste it at church with a bunch of kids again. Think about it.”
Ashleigh frowned, and a single wrinkle appeared on her forehead.
“But the lock-in needs chaperones,” Ashleigh said.
“You have plenty of seniors,” Seth said. “You don’t have to go. Just turn it over to that Darcy Metcalf girl or something. She’d do it. I want to do something fun.”
“The lock-in is fun!” Ashleigh said. “We’ve got a dance room this year, a haunted maze—”
“The lock-in is fun when you’re fourteen,” Seth said.
“We had a lot of fun there when we were fourteen,” Ashleigh said. “Well, I was fifteen. The first time we kissed. Remember those kissing games at five in the morning?”
“Yeah. Now I want to do something new.”
“Seth,” Ashleigh said. “We always do the lock-in.”
“That’s kind of my point.”
“Seth.” She put her hand against her forehead. “I need to be there.”
“I’m not going,” he said.
“Seth!” She glared at him. “What is wrong with you?”
“I can’t enjoy Halloween?”
“And just what would you rather be doing than spending the night with me?” she asked.
“I still want to go to some haunted houses,” he said. “Some churches even do them, you’d like that.”
“I’m not doing that,” Ashleigh said quickly.
“I know, because you’re a scaredy-cat.”
Ashleigh smiled and left her chair. She sat beside him on the couch and reached toward his hand. Something about the gesture creeped him out, and Seth scooted back out of her reach.
“Seth!” she said. “What’s your problem?”
“I told you.”
“Come on, Seth.” She slid toward him and reached for him again, and again it struck him as strange. Maybe he was just extra aware of people leeching off his energy, after his conversation with Jenny.
He got off the couch and stood up, escaping Ashleigh’s hand.
“Seth! Come back here!”
“No.” He crossed his arms.
“Seth!” She jumped up and reached both hands toward him, and he used a hanging chair as a shield.
He didn’t know why he was freaking out, but he suddenly had the very strong idea that Ashleigh had figured out a way to control him through pulling out his energy. Or something like that. Maybe she didn’t even understand it herself, just knew that it involved touching him. Or maybe he was paranoid.
“Why are you being a freak?” Ashleigh said.
“Last year, I spent the whole night sticking kids’ hands into spaghetti and telling them it was gorilla brains. And we had to clean up after that one guy that puked. And there was the girl who wet her sleeping bag—”
“But we could have fun together,” Ashleigh said. “And Cassie will be there.”
“We’ve done your thing for three Halloweens. I want real fun, not sitting-in-the-church-basement fun. I’m going to do my thing. Get pissed off if you want.”
“Seth, come here and let me touch you.” Ashleigh spread her arms wide, and pushed her chest forward.
The back of his neck prickled. How many times did she touch him during a typical day? Hundreds?
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I want to make you feel better.” Ashleigh slowly unbuttoned her shirt, revealing a scarlet bra underneath. “Don’t you want to feel better, Seth?”
“Why would that make me feel better?” he asked.
“Seth!” Her hands fell to her sides, leaving her last button still in place. “You asshole!”
“Why would it? Why do you want to touch me?”
“Why would you even ask me that?” Now there was a cold, calculating look on her face. She was studying him with her unreadable gray eyes.
“You’re not going to change my mind,” he said.
“Maybe I will.” She unfastened her last button, shrugged her shirt to the floor. She approached him, eyelids lowered, lips pouting. “You know, my dad’s busy at the church. We have the house by ourselves.”
“I have to go, Ashleigh.”
Her face turned to a hard scowl. Her voice became strangely low and husky, and throbbed with anger. “Then go! Get the hell out of my house!”
Seth left the room, went down the hall, down the front steps, to the front door. As he opened it, Ashleigh ran out onto the landing above, now wearing only her underwear.
“Don’t even think about coming back until you apologize to me!” Ashleigh screamed down at him.
“Okay,” Seth said. He walked out the front door, and he left it wide open behind him.
***
Jenny’s dad had a few odd jobs in town, so Jenny spent Saturday organizing and scrubbing the house. She called her dad on his cell phone and asked him to buy some new cleaning supplies at Piggly Wiggly, because she was using up all they had.
Jenny scrubbed everything in the kitchen and both bathrooms, then worked her way up to organizing the junk in the living room, dining room, the laundry room, the front and back porches.
She got absorbed in the work and lost track of time. By the time her dad arrived home at midnight, she was sitting on a folding chair in the front yard, exhausted and sweaty, looking at all the weeds and machinery pieces.
He parked the truck slantwise, then stumbled out, clutching his flask in one hand.
“Whatcha doon, sugarbeet?” he asked her.
“I’m just thinking,” she said. “We should get rid of all this junk.”
“T’ain’t junk,” he said. He took a swig, then gestured around with his flask. “Lots of them good, scrappy parts in there. Don’t know what I need til I need it.”
“But we shouldn’t leave them out here like this,” Jenny said. She looked toward the shed, but that was already full and cluttered itself. “What if we build a new shed?”
“Nother shed?” He looked off into the space between the shed and the house, as if imagining it. “Oh, yeah. Take some doing, but we could put it up.”
“It doesn’t have to be a whole shed,” Jenny said. “Just a roof to keep your stuff out of the rain. And some tall fencing so company can’t see it.”
He took another swig and pondered this. “We got company coming?” he asked.
“Maybe,” Jenny said.
“Friends of yours?”
“Yes.”
“Aw, good for you, Jenny.” He stumbled towards her and reached out his arms to hug her.
“Daddy, no!” Jenny skittered back. “I ain’t covered up!” She was dressed lightly, in old, moth-eaten clothes that left her arms and shins bare
.
“Oh, sorry, honey.” He tried to drink from his flask, then turned it upside down and shook it. Empty. He dropped it in the dirt and staggered up the porch steps. “All right then. Going in.”
“Good night, daddy.”
“Night.”
Jenny walked to the shed and turned on the electric lamp hanging from a roof beam. She found a pencil and paper and sat at the workbench, one of the few surfaces her dad kept clear. She designed improvements for the house, starting with a fence from the house to the shed. They could move all the front yard junk behind that, and then be free to work on the yard itself. Then they could build additions onto the shed, extending it behind the fence.
When she was sure her dad wasn’t coming back, she took out the roach of the joint she’d shared with Seth. It had been almost intimate, both of them touching their lips to it, back and forth. The closest she could come to kissing him.
She’d figured out long ago that her body’s castoffs—her hair, her spit, her blood—weren’t contagious. It was only her live, skin-to-skin touch that was dangerous. The Jenny pox wasn’t a virus, but more like a dark energy that flowed out from her, inspiring disease in others. The opposite of Seth.
She lit the roach with a match and held the smoke in her lungs, imagining traces of Seth mingling with her. She listened to Rocky snoring in his dog house, and smiled.
***
The next day, she woke up early and resumed her cleaning binge, and she didn’t worry about keeping quiet for her dad’s sake, and he managed to stay asleep anyway.
The phone rang around one-thirty, and she let the machine get it. Jenny never answered the phone if her dad was home. On the old answering machine in the living room, which ran on giant orange cassettes that were no longer manufactured, she heard her dad’s recorded voice, saying to leave a message. Then it cut off as the caller hung up.
A minute later, the phone rang again. This time, he left a message after the beep:
“Hey. This is Seth Barrett calling for Jenny. Um, you can call me back at—”
Jenny ran to pick up their one house phone, also in the living room.
