The Prized Girl
The splash subsided and the water calmed. Jenny slid off her sweatshirt, waiting for him to reappear. It was taking too long. Was he messing with her? She moved as close to the edge as possible, staring down at his point of entry. Her breathing stopped. This was her punishment. Rules weren’t just to ruin her day; they were in place for a reason and now this guy was drowning.
The water began to ripple, and there he was, coming to the surface. She exhaled. She could see the pale skin of his back and the stripes on his boxers, but something wasn’t right. He breached the surface flat and facedown.
Jenny panicked. It might not be as deep as everyone said and he had just jumped right in. Did he break his neck? On instinct she moved to the less severe slope of the rock, sliding on her butt down to the water’s edge. She could feel the sharp rocks stabbing her, but she didn’t slow down. She crawled over the final rock and into the water, deep immediately and the bottom unfathomable to her searching feet.
The second she started splashing toward him, his body moved.
JP rolled onto his back, then upright, taking in a huge breath through his grin.
“I’m touched,” he teased.
“What the heck?” Jenny asked.
“I knew you were gonna be too chickenshit to get in, so I thought I’d give you a little motivation.”
“You’re a jerk,” she said through shortened breaths as she kicked her arms and legs to stay afloat. Relieved and mad, but more relieved.
“Get on your back, you look like you’re going to drown.”
“I’m not going to drown, I’m tired from trying to save your life.” Jenny stopped treading water and swam closer to him. “I would have jumped in. You didn’t have to be an asshole.”
“Forgive me?” he asked, splashing a little water at her.
“Hey!” she yelled, splashing even more back.
They laughed and splashed like two typical teens, short on words and high on hormones. She was convinced the consequences, whatever they might be, would be totally worth it.
JENNY SAT DIRECTLY in the center of the couch. It was a stiff couch. All of the furniture in her house was. Her parents were trying to impress, but she wasn’t sure who. The only houseguest they ever had was Virginia and they couldn’t care less what she thought.
She wondered what her father’s place in New York City looked like. Small. That was the only detail he volunteered freely. So small it barely fit a bed. Just a flophouse for him to sleep. Jenny had never been; neither had her mother. It had been that way since Jenny was born, and it was only as she got older that Jenny started to realize how unusual it was. Occasionally her mother would make vague comments about her and Jenny visiting, but her father would only tolerate it in the abstract. He would reference “perhaps in the fall” or “perhaps in the spring,” whichever “perhaps” was at least three months away. Her mother seemed content just pretending they’d visit. Linda didn’t like being out of her comfort zone. She could keep it together enough to drag Jenny to every hotel ballroom in the Northeast for pageants, but she hated strange crowds and might implode if she ever set foot in Times Square. The city was Dad’s thing.
Her father pulled his Mercedes out of the driveway before sunrise every Monday and returned the following Friday night so late it was technically Saturday morning. Most of his coworkers worked six to seven days a week, but he worked seventeen hours a day, five days a week, so that he could spend the weekends with his family.
He stood before Jenny, rubbing his jaw, preparing his words. Linda sat on the edge of the chair to the right of the couch, her hands folded across her flawless white blouse.
“I want to know where you went,” he finally spoke.
The school had called Linda when Jenny left school to go to the swimming hole. Jenny had anticipated the call, but didn’t care. She was desperate for independence. She crossed her arms and leaned back, defiant.
“Please just tell him,” said Linda.
“Nowhere,” said Jenny.
“Nowhere?” he repeated.
“I didn’t feel well, so I left.”
Linda perked up. “Are you OK? You didn’t tell me.”
“She isn’t sick, Linda. I don’t know what’s going on with you, Jenny. Do you think I’ve been too lenient with you?” He stared hard at her.
“No,” she said, looking away.
“I think maybe I have. I let you walk away from the pageants. That was a mistake. I know something unfortunate happened to you, but it’s not an excuse to waste your life.”
“Nothing happened to me.” Jenny shot forward. “Mom is a lunatic.” She flopped back down, recrossing her arms and pouting.
Linda sighed.
“So, what’s your plan now?” he asked. “To be a degenerate like your sister? Isn’t it obvious? It’s right in your face what this behavior leads to.”
“I’m thirteen. I just want to go to school. Isn’t that enough?”
“You don’t want to go to school. You want to skip school.”
“It was one time. I won’t do it again.”
“I don’t go through all of this …” he said, waving his arms to encompass this, “so that you can just be a waste. Things won’t just work out because you’re special. You’re not special. No one is special. People work for what they achieve. We’re nipping it in the bud before it goes too far. Do you know what happens to little girls with no plan, no motivation, no goals?” he asked.
“They die?” Jenny spat back.
Her father whipped his face toward her, finger pointed. “Don’t you ever take that tone with me, do you understand?” His finger remained pointed at her, teeth clenched. This was how he spoke to Virginia, not her. She felt her lip quivering.
“I’m sorry,” she said as tears started to run down her face.
“You’re going to see the guidance counselor again, figure out something to do with yourself. You don’t have to do pageants, but you aren’t going to embarrass yourself.” His phone buzzed in his pocket, stealing his attention.
Linda used the opportunity to move to Jenny on the couch, throwing her arms around her. “It’s OK. You just lost your way a little bit. We’ll figure this out and you’ll be just perfect again.” She rocked Jenny in her arms as the young girl sobbed.
Her father slipped the phone back into his pocket, seeing the tears pouring from his daughter’s face. He allowed Linda to continue to bear the brunt of the consoling, but rested his palm on the back of Jenny’s head. “You don’t need to be upset, honey. I’m sorry I raised my voice.”
Jenny heard his words, but they didn’t help. The tone of his voice was going to stick with her. She was sick of being compared to her sister, judged like somehow all the strikes Virginia had against her were on Jenny too. People talk about the pressure to live up to the firstborn; no one says anything about how hard it can be to live down to one.
JENNY STAYED IN HER ROOM the rest of the weekend, only emerging for the bathroom and meals she was ordered to attend. With no phone and no computer to entertain her, she managed to finish her homework for the week. She had spent the last twenty-four hours reading about World War I and photosynthesis and felt no more prepared for the world.
At thirteen, she was so far away from having any control over her life. Thoughts flooded her brain until she worried her ears might start bleeding. Could she sit in this room until she turned eighteen? And then what? College? Would her parents pay for an out-of-state school? Somewhere far away that they couldn’t drive to? She doubted it. She needed legal and financial freedom, two things she couldn’t even imagine on the horizon. She wanted to scream. She wanted to pound her fists against the door.
A KNOCK WOKE JENNY from her nap around six on Sunday night. She walked to the door, opening it a crack. It was Virginia, dressed in baggy clothes that looked comfortable but unflattering. Jenny could never understand her sister. She just did nothing for no reason. She wasn’t too stupid to have a real job. She wasn’t too ugly to have a boyfriend. She wasn’t too boring to have friends. She simply existed. It was maddening.
Jenny opened the door the rest of the way and went back to her bed. “What do you want?” she asked, flopping back down.
“Sunday dinner,” said Virginia.
The two sisters didn’t agree on much, but in recent months Jenny had developed a similar distaste for the formal family affair.
“Tell them I’m sick.”
“No way. With two victims, their powers are dulled. If you leave me alone, it will be too strong. I will be destroyed,” said Virginia. There was her sense of humor. Humor that could get her friends. Why didn’t she have any friends?
Jenny laughed. “I think I’m going to get it worse than you. They’ve been lecturing me all weekend.”
Virginia perked up at this. She closed the bedroom door behind her and took a seat in a white wooden chair next to Jenny’s vanity table. “What did you do?”
“Skipped some classes at school,” Jenny said, and shrugged.
“What for?”
“For fun. I don’t know. Whatever.”
“That does sound fun.”
“My mom says you quit another job.”
“I bet she did.”
“Why did you quit?” Jenny pressed.
Virginia just shrugged.
“What do you do all day?” Jenny asked, rolling to her side and propping her head on her hand like they were two girls at a slumber party.
“What’s with all the questions? You sound like Linda and Dad.”
“Just curious,” said Jenny. “Can I ask you something?” She sat back up and crossed her legs underneath her.
“You just asked me like fifty things,” said Virginia.
“Yeah, but you aren’t answering any of them.”
“Fine, what?”
“Were you always like this?” asked Jenny, keeping it vague and not sure what clarification to provide even if she wanted to.
Virginia tilted her head, staring at Jenny, as if debating whether or not to take offense.
“I didn’t mean it, like, mean,” Jenny clarified.
“Well, as long as you didn’t mean it like mean,” Virginia mocked her sister.
“Never mind,” Jenny grumbled, knowing better than to try to scratch the surface with Virginia. If it was some sort of genetic adult-onset dystopian misery, Jenny would just have to deal with it. Symptoms were already presenting themselves.
Jenny rolled off the bed and past Virginia. “Let’s get this over with.”
Chapter Eleven
Virginia
I HAD SOLVED zero murders since I stormed off Mark’s porch. I watched three episodes of Law & Order: SVU, but they were useless. The reality I had to face was, if Mark wasn’t involved in Jenny’s murder, did I really care who did it?
Yes. I could care about this. Even if it was rooted in some sick obsession with proving Linda and my father and the whole damn town wrong. The crusade could be noble regardless.
I didn’t even know where to start. It seemed going outside would be productive. I decided to drive to the gas station in town and fill my tank. Having a full gas tank, instead of coasting around on fumes like usual, would make me feel adult and responsible.
It takes a long time to fill a whole tank, even in a crappy little car. I stood there holding the pump, watching cars drive by, feeling too exposed. I don’t know where I found the ego to think people would want to stop and bother me, but the mind can do crazy things.
After a parade of old cars similar to my own passed by, I saw one hit the blinker. I knew this car. A silver Mercedes that belonged to my father. Even in this tiny town, the odds of being there at the same time as him were so low that the coincidence felt exceptionally cruel.
I could have stopped the pump and left with half a tank, failing at my very first mission, but I didn’t. Instead, I ran through the entire conversation in my mind. A back-and-forth of three to four generic questions would be enough for both of us to pretend our relationship wasn’t complete garbage. The tank would certainly be full by then, a signal that we were fated to end the conversation there, and it would be over. I swallowed and relaxed my shoulders. Easy breezy.
His car slowed at the entrance and we made eye contact. I want to say I think we made eye contact, but I know we did. Then he killed the blinker and accelerated. He kept driving in some world where he had convinced himself I hadn’t noticed. It felt hypocritical to fault him for something I had considered doing only two seconds earlier, but he was the parent. It stung. I won’t say it hurt—I was too numb to him for that—but there was still a sting to it. A feeling of worthlessness crept up from not very deep, if I’m being honest. Rationally, I didn’t blame him. Our interactions sucked; talking with him wasn’t my preferred hobby either, but just … what a dick.
The gas pump clicked. There. That would have been it, the extent of the conversation. I returned the pump to its home and screwed the gas cap back on.
“Virginia?”
I heard my name coming from behind like a mallet to the back of the head. I turned to see the detective. Holden? Colton? Something I couldn’t remember.
“Hi,” I said, racing around the car to get to the driver’s side door.
“How are—?”
The door sealed out the sound of his voice. I think the timing was gray enough where maybe I hadn’t heard him attempt to extend the interaction. Didn’t matter much. I turned the key and put the car in drive.
I pulled out into the street, admiring my full tank and seamless escape. My escape from social interaction. Though the detective was probably the exact person I should be talking to. Distracted by my father being King of the Assholes, I forgot the whole reason I’d left the house in the first place was to try to figure out more about Jenny.
I turned my car around in a convenient driveway and headed back into town toward the police station, convinced that if I saw that silver Mercedes on the way, I was going to ram it off the road with some sort of ’80s action catchphrase like “Ignore this, bitch.”
Chapter Twelve
Jenny
SUNDAY DINNER wasn’t as bad as Jenny had anticipated. She didn’t realize her parents would never be willing to let anyone know Jenny had done something wrong, not even Virginia. They grilled Virginia on her recent unemployment while her sister shot Jenny dirty looks.
Jenny retreated to her room not long after Virginia left. Things felt weird with her parents. Sunday nights she used to curl up on the couch with her mother and watch a movie they could both agree on. Her father would sit in the chair with a book, uninterested but present. It was hard to explain, but Jenny always felt a little extra special to them after an evening with Virginia.
She didn’t feel special tonight. Her father had yelled at her. She just wished she could have it both ways. She wished she could break the rules without disappointing her parents. Unfortunately, these things were mutually exclusive, and she had to decide which path she preferred.
Jenny crawled onto her bed with a magazine she had already read and leafed through the pages as if a new picture or article would appear. She had no TV in her room. She had no cell phone. Her room was supposed to be a sanctuary, but without stimulation, it was suffocating. She was almost fourteen; she wasn’t going to sit on the floor playing with stuffed animals. It started to feel calculated. Her parents did this on purpose. They weren’t letting her grow up.
A knock at the door startled Jenny and felt too on the nose. As she sat on her bed, stewing over how her parents treated her like a child, there was her mother, at the door and ready to smother away any notions of independent thinking.
Another knock.
Jenny flipped the magazine to the next page, waiting for her mother to lose patience and just barge in.
Only she didn’t.
Jenny could hear footsteps, soft on the carpet in the hallway but recognizable. She placed the magazine down, the abnormality piquing her interest. Maybe she was being too hard on her mother. Jenny was the one who had quit the pageants. She had changed their dynamic. She could be more tolerant of her mother. Give her the time to adapt. Her mother was sensitive, emotional, and prone to overreaction, but they could find balance. Linda was already improving if she was willing to walk away when Jenny didn’t answer the door.
She slid off the bed and made her way across the room. She would poke her head out and tell her mother good night, rewarding her for allowing Jenny some space. She opened the door and looked down the hall, but it wasn’t her mother who had been knocking.
“Dad?”
Her father turned around to face his daughter, tentatively, and seeming like he had already mentally committed to her not opening the door.
“Were you sleeping?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she lied, not wanting to admit she was just in there being a brat. “It’s OK, though.”
“I was just going to let you know that I am heading back to work tonight.”
“OK,” she said. It wasn’t uncommon for him to leave late Sunday night instead of Monday morning. Jenny noticed it always correlated with a particularly stressful weekend. Usually Linda or Virginia was to blame. She was pretty sure it was her this time. He had never felt the need to personally notify her before. “Are you mad at me?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head but keeping his distance.
“OK,” she said, hoping he would elaborate a bit, but at least he hadn’t said yes. “I’m going to see Ms. Willoughby again,” she offered, to seal the deal. “The guidance counselor,” she clarified.
“That’s good.” He adjusted his stance a bit, clearly uncomfortable. “I’m trying to do things differently with you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, knowing full well he meant he didn’t want her to be like her sister.
“I’m not going to let things get out of hand. Do you understand? You have a lot of potential. I don’t want you to throw it away.”
“I’m not, Dad,” she spat back in kind to what she felt was at least an insult and at most a threat.
“Watch the attitude,” he barked.
“It’s not attitude. I just want you to trust me and stop treating me like I’m a freaking baby.”
“If you don’t want me to treat you like a child, you need to stop acting like one.”
“OK, whatever you say. You’re always right. You’re the best dad who ever existed,” she scoffed, not sure exactly why the whole interaction was making her so angry.
The door to her parents’ bedroom opened, and out came Linda to insert herself. “Is everything OK? What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Jenny muttered.
“Calvin?” Linda looked to her husband, eyes glazed over from the post-dinner glasses of wine.
“Everything is fine. Go back to bed.”
“Why don’t you stay tonight? It’s already so late,” she suggested.
“No, we talked about this. Don’t even start.”
Linda’s head fell to the side as if there might be a little more protest left in her, but she couldn’t find the strength and just slunk back inside the bedroom. It was gross to watch, and Jenny felt disgusted by both of them.
“Bye, Dad,” she said, stepping back into her own room and shutting the door. He wouldn’t come in for the last word. She knew he regretted knocking in the first place.
LINDA’S BEDROOM DOOR had been closed for over an hour when Jenny cracked her own door open. She hadn’t seen JP all weekend. She had been too scared to try to sneak out while her father was home, but now he was gone, and after their little interaction, she felt even less motivated to do as she was told.
She tiptoed down the stairs, the ritual almost second nature by now. She reached the bottom and went right for the lamp on the end table, no need to feel her way around anymore. As soon as the room lit up, her senses were heightened and she noticed it right away: The door to the alcohol cabinet was wide-open. Someone was in the house.
Jenny turned the light back off to hide in the darkness. She crept toward the kitchen, feeling the floor turn from carpet to tile under her feet. She paused again for any sounds. Silence.
As she reached the kitchen island, halfway to the garage door, she noticed the bottle of bourbon that had assaulted her nasal cavity the first night she snuck out. Things weren’t adding up, but time wasn’t on her side. Getting out of the house was her only concern.
She reached the door to the garage, and as she grabbed for the handle, the light over the oven switched on. Jenny whipped around to see Linda revealed under the pointed yellow glow. It wasn’t an intruder, but her mother, looking like a stranger. Mascara ran down her red face as she stood holding a glass of the brown liquor.
“Mom?”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Nowhere.”
The lie seemed to cause Linda physical pain. She recoiled into herself, relying on the counter to keep her on her feet.
“Mom?” Jenny asked, taking careful steps toward her.
“Did I do this to you?” Linda whined, alcohol robbing her of any dignity.
“Everything is OK,” Jenny argued, reaching a hand to her mother’s shoulder.
The touch triggered Linda, who regained her strength and lunged toward her daughter, grabbing her by both arms. “Tell me where you’re going! Are you doing drugs? Are you having sex?” She shook her daughter for an answer.
“No, Mom, I promise. Please stop.” Jenny was tearing up now. An uncontrollable reaction to being violently shaken.
Linda’s eyes widened in a moment of brief clarity, and she released Jenny’s arms, horrified at what she was doing, and collapsed back against the counter.
Jenny retreated one step at a time until she felt the door, reaching behind her back and sliding her fingers around the knob.
“Mommy needs you to be a good girl,” Linda pleaded. “You are being a very, very bad girl.”
Her mother had devolved into something infantile, a behavior scarier in that moment than any physical harm she could do. Jenny returned to her first plan, yanked the door open, and bolted.
“Jenny!” her mother yelled into the night, watching her daughter sprint down the driveway where she could find cover just beyond the jurisdiction of the house lights. “Come back! I’m sorry!” Her screams faded away with every stride Jenny took.
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