Jenny Pox (The Paranormals, Book 1) (21 page)

Darcy drew in a sharp breath.  Ashleigh knew the answer already—Darcy didn’t have one.  Like more than a dozen other girls, Darcy had been too shy or unwilling to actually approach a boy to talk about abstinence.  She’d skipped the meeting where girls and boys were paired up to discuss their values about sex.  Ashleigh had not bothered any of the other girls who didn’t participate, but Darcy didn’t know that.

“I don’t have one,” Darcy confessed in a low, shamed whisper. Her eyes dropped to the open pages of her AP Calculus book. “I’m sorry, Ashleigh.  I messed up.”

“
Why not?” Ashleigh asked, in her most chipper and innocent voice. “You know, it’s very important to have somebody you can talk with, especially with all the temptation out there.  I wish I could be that buddy to everyone all the time, but I just can’t, Darcy.”

“
Ashleigh…” Darcy’s lip quivered. “It isn’t a problem for me.  Guys don’t try things, so there aren’t temptations.” She took off her glasses and rubbed at her wet eyes. She made herself return Ashleigh’s unwavering smile. “Sorry, Ashleigh.  I didn’t mean to be a spaz.”

“
Oh, no, you’re not a spaz,” Ashleigh said.  She laid a hand on Darcy’s and looked her in the eye. “I think I know just what you need.  A date.”

“
I don’t know.  Maybe after finals—”

“
I’d say this is an emergency, Darce.  I had no idea about your problems with boys,” Ashleigh lied. “Listen, Darcy.  I am a total matchmaker.  Any guy in school, I can get him for you.  Whoever you’ve fantasized about.  Just give me a name.  Anybody but Seth, naturally.”

Darcy snickered and blushed at the word “fantasized.”

“Come on,” Ashleigh said. “It’s okay to tell me.”

“
It’s stupid.”

“
Nothing’s stupid.  I can make anything happen.”

“
Okay.” Darcy glanced around, as if either the librarian or the sophomore boys would be interested in Darcy’s secret crush. “What about,” and now she leaned to whisper right in Ashleigh’s ear, “Bret Daniels?”

“
Really?” Ashleigh considered it.  Bret was handsome enough, in that dark hair and brown eyes sort of way, and had that loud animal stupidity some girls took for confidence.  He was dull, but not hopelessly stupid.  Ashleigh had encouraged him to become treasurer because he needed to pad his college application, and she knew he’d be too indifferent to oppose her on student council.  He had also slept with at least fifteen girls Ashleigh could name.  Ashleigh would barely need to use her power, just point him in the general direction of Darcy’s underpants.

“
Stupid, huh?” Darcy asked.

“
No way.  That’s easy, he’s a friend of mine.  I will definitely set you two up.  And I promise to act like it was all my idea.  That’s not really lying, because it is kind of my idea, isn’t it?”

“
Yeah!  Okay, right after finals, this Friday!”

“
Sure.  But you want to meet him and kind of hang out before the vacation.  Trust me, the psychology will be all different if you wait.”

“
But I have to get an ‘A’ in Calculus or my whole GPA is wrecked,” Darcy said.

Ashleigh pretended to give this some deep thought.  Then she said, “I know!  He’s in my history class.  I’ll have him come study with me tomorrow night, and you’ll be here.  I butter him up and then I bring him over.  Library romance, Darcy!”

“I don’t know.” Darcy looked very nervous. “That’s a lot to think about…”

“
So don’t think about it, do it!  That’s what life is about, Darcy.” Ashleigh rubbed Darcy’s mousy, frizzy hair and cupped Darcy’s face in her hand. “Let me do this for you.  Please.  All you ever do is work.  It’s your senior year.  Don’t you want one nice memory?”

“
Okay, Ashleigh.” Darcy gave a slackened, dopey smile.

“
Good!  Perfect!  This will be so great, Darcy!” Ashleigh managed to squeal.

The librarian shushed them, then coughed and spurted more Chloraseptic.

The next day, as promised, Ashleigh told Bret Daniels to meet her at the library.  He’d had other plans, but Ashleigh was holding both his hands when she asked, and she kissed him on the cheek, and that was that. 

She waited outside and approached Bret while he was still in his car, a very old, very avocado-colored GTO.  She handed him a cut-glass bottle of some expensive tequila, which she’d swiped from the copious liquor cabinet at Seth’s house. 

“What’s this for?” he asked.

“
Just thanking you for all your help on student council this semester,” Ashleigh said. “I know you didn’t really want to do it.”

“
Nah, you made it easy, like you said.  Wanna do a shot?” He patted the wool-coated passenger seat of his GTO. “We can go for a ride if you want.  I know this place with a nice view of the lake—”

“
No, that bottle’s for you, for later.  May as well leave it in your car,” Ashleigh said. “Come on, I want to get ready for this test, and I’m already sick of studying.”

Darcy was inside, at the first table, punching rapidly on her big Texas Instruments graphing calculator.  As Ashleigh had recommended, she dressed in a tight, low-cut shirt.  Darcy had protested she was too fat to wear such things, and Ashleigh had replied that if she showed enough cleavage, Bret wouldn’t look much further. 

Ashleigh gave her a friendly wave as she led Bret to the last table, near the back.

Ashleigh and Bret actually did study history for about twenty minutes, to brush over a couple of dates and names Ashleigh was unsure about.  For the most part, she absorbed history without any effort, soaking up all there was to know about wars, emperors, dictators, how to conquer and rule.  It delighted her to study things like that.  After Ashleigh was through studying for history, she made her move.

“See that girl over there?” Ashleigh whispered to Bret.  When he turned to look at Darcy, Ashleigh wrapped her hand around his wrist and pumped the Ashleigh-energy, and she imagined stabbing him in the chest with a heart-tipped arrow.

“
Darcy Metcalf?” he asked, with a husky note of admiration in his voice.

“
Yeah,” Ashleigh whispered. “Want to hook up with her?”

“
Oh, yeah.  I never saw how hot she was before.”  Judging by Bret’s past conquests, this put Darcy below a very low bar.

“
That’s right,” Ashleigh whispered. “She fantasizes about you.  She told me.  You could probably nail her tonight if you feel like it.”

“
Yeah,” Bret said. “Good idea.”

“
Come on.” Ashleigh took his hand and led him to Darcy’s table.  “Hey, Darce, got a sec?”

Darcy looked up with terror on her face, clearly too nervous to speak.  Ashleigh put a hand on her shoulder and rubbed her fingers against Darcy’s neck.  She poured energy into both Darcy and Bret, letting herself be the connecting wire.

“Have you two met?” Ashleigh asked.

“
We’ve had classes together.”  Darcy smiled up at him.  He looked down the front of her shirt.  Ashleigh felt the charge sinking in on both sides, the growing mutual attraction between them.  She visualized each of them getting struck with a dozen of her imaginary heart-tipped arrows.

“
Why don’t you invite him to sit by you?” Ashleigh suggested to Darcy.

“
Oh, yeah.” Darcy gave one of her goofy, repellently gummy smiles, reeking of Listerine. She pulled out the chair next to her. “Bret, want to sit with me?”

Bret did, very much.

As they started talking, Ashleigh slipped back to her table.  She switched to studying for her AP Biology final, which she really did need to do.  When she looked up again, they were talking with their faces close together, their hands on each other’s arms and legs. 

The next time Ashleigh looked, they were kissing, Bret’s hand way up inside Darcy’s thigh.  The librarian was either too absorbed in Tolstoy to notice, or too apathetic to say anything.

When Ashleigh looked up a third time, they were both gone.  She gave a tight, satisfied little smile and went back to studying.  Finals began tomorrow.  It was no time to goof off.

***

The next day, Darcy didn’t make it to school until two of the three exam periods were over.  Her hair stuck up in clumps, she wore yesterday’s dirty clothes, and she reeked of tequila and sweat.  At one point she was leaning against her locker, crying hard, knowing her GPA was blown.  Darcy was too busy with her meltdown to notice when Ashleigh passed by, so Ashleigh didn’t stop or say anything to her.  She snickered at the grass stains on Darcy’s jeans and the little twig snarled in the back of her hair.

Ashleigh aced her own exams, that day and the next.

In the days leading up to winter break, Jenny kept the kiln in her back yard smoking.  She was pushing to get more pottery out in time for Christmas shoppers.  She brought them down to the Five and Dime about two weeks before Christmas.  While she was there, she shopped for a gift for her dad.  She browsed through the secondhand coats, looking for something she could tailor and embellish with new buttons and bits of fabric.  Old Christmas carols played from a cassette, and the whole store smelled like the plate of homemade sugar cookies by the cash register.

Jenny gave Ms. Sutland a Christmas card she’d made from stationary and scraps of lace and ribbon.  While Ms. Sutland oohed over it, Jenny noticed a collection of snowglobes now on display on the front shelves, near her flower pots and mixing bowls.

“When did you get these, Ms. Sutland?” Jenny asked.

“
Somebody dropped off a whole box,” Ms. Sutland told her. “Just in time for the season, too.  Do you like them?”

“
Yes.” Jenny shook one that held a little cottage with bright yellow windows.  A snowman drove a sleigh in the cottage’s front yard.  It was lovely and silly at the same time.  Another globe had a big orange Siberian tiger stalking among fir trees hung with wrapped presents.  It would be a perfect extra gift for her dad, since it looked like it could be the Clemson tiger.

Jenny brought both the snowglobes to the counter, and then added the natty brown overcoat she’d picked out for her dad.
“That coat’s awful big for you, Jenny,” Ms. Sutland joked.

“
It’s for my dad.” She gave the tiger snowglobe a shake.  “This one, too.  The other snowglobe is for my room.”

“
And what about your little boyfriend?”

“
He’s not my boyfriend.  We just had one date.”

“
That’s a shame.” Ms. Sutland placed the two snowglobes into a paper bag. “It didn’t look like a first date to me.  It looked like you two had been together for ages, when you were shopping for Halloween.”

“
Well, he went back to his old girlfriend, so…” Jenny shrugged and took out her money.

“
And you’re just going to let her do that to you?”

“
Let who do what?” Jenny asked.

“
The other girl.”  Ms. Sutland rang up the sale.  “You’re going to lie down and let her take him back?”

“
It’s his choice,” Jenny said.

“
And it’s your choice what you do about it.  If it’s something you want, it’s worth fighting for.”

“
What if he doesn’t want me?”

“
I saw how he looked at you, Jenny.” Ms. Sutland gave a wry, wrinkled grin. “He wants to be with you, even if he’s too dumb to understand that. Sometimes a man needs a woman to show him the way.  Lots of times, to be honest.”

“
But she’s too pretty,” Jenny said. “And she’s popular, and—”

“
Don’t go doing her work for her, now,” Ms. Sutland scolded Jenny.  “You take the fight to her.  Maybe she wins, maybe not.  But don’t let her beat you in your own head.”

“
Okay,” Jenny said, but only to hurry along the conversation, which was growing uncomfortable and embarrassing.  She reached for the overcoat, but Mrs. Sutland held onto it.  Her green eyes, a little cloudy with age, stared intently into Jenny’s.

“
Now you listen to me, Jenny,” she said. “You won’t regret trying, win or lose.  But you will regret not trying.  Next thing you know, you’ll be a lonely old lady who don’t stop talking about the one that got away.  Then no one will want to have tea with you.”

Jenny took all this in, remembering the lonely future she’d imagined for herself on Thanksgiving. 

“But what could I do?” Jenny whispered.

“
That’s for you to figure out, Jenny.  I don’t know what you kids are about these days, with all your funny shoes and hair.  All I can say is do it soon, because time moves a lot faster than a youngster like you would believe.  Day after tomorrow, you’ll be my age, looking back on your life instead of ahead to it.  Trust me on that, Jenny.”