Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, Book 1) (13 page)

“
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.

“Hey, Seth!” she said.

“
Oh, good.  What’s up?”

“
Um.  Nothing.” Jenny couldn’t think of anything to say.  She should try to be funny?  Or clever?  Or cool? 

“
So, what are you doing for Halloween?” he asked. “Do you want to hang out?”

“
Doing?” Jenny felt herself blush.  Her brain was not working for her.  She struggled to remember an article from the one issue of
Cosmopolitan
she’d read at the library, when work was slow one day.  She was supposed to act like she had a lot of other engagements and pretend to be unavailable.  She wanted to smack her forehead—she shouldn’t have picked up the phone.

“
I’m hitting some haunted houses,” Seth said. “They do one in this old warehouse in Vernon Hill that’s supposed to be really scary.  I’ve never been able to go.  Do you want to come with me?”

“
On Saturday?” Jenny asked. “This Saturday?”

“
Yeah, Halloween.  And there’s a big field party over in Barlowe that night.  You can go in costume, or—”

“
Okay!”  she heard herself squeal. 
Shit
, she thought.  So much for being unavailable.

“
Yeah?”

“
But Barlowe?” Jenny asked.  She felt a twinge of distrust. “Aren’t they your big enemies?”

Seth laughed. “Right.  Anyway, they have better parties than Fallen Oak.”

“I don’t know, Seth.”

“
About which thing?”

“
A party?” That word made Jenny anxious. “That’s a lot of people to bump into.”

“
Oh, the touching,” Seth said. “So wear a costume.  Gloves, masks, hats—Halloween’s the perfect time for people like us to go party.”
People like us
, Jenny thought, and her heartbeat quickened.

“
Are your friends going to be there?” Jenny asked.

“
Maybe some.  Definitely not Ashleigh or Cassie.  They’re doing the lock-in at church all night.”

“
Wow!” Jenny said, then felt like a nerd.  She lowered her voice a little, trying to sound like a normal human being. “I mean, okay, I guess that’s cool.”

“
I wanted to hang out with you instead.”

“
Oh.” Jenny was glad he couldn’t see how hard she was blushing, or how she kept twisting back and forth on her heel like a freak, wrapping the phone cord thick around her fingers. “Okay, Seth.”

“
What are you going as?” he asked.

“
Going?  As?”

“
For Halloween.”

“
Oh!  A costume.” Jenny’s mind was a complete blank. “I’m still thinking about it.”

“
I haven’t picked one, either,” Seth said. “Ashleigh usually buys it and gives it to me.  She always wants it to match her costume.”

“
But Ashleigh’s not coming,” Jenny said. “So you can wear what you want.”