The Prized Girl

Chapter Four

Jenny

IT WAS AN uneventful first day thus far as Jenny walked into the bustling lunchroom. Eighth graders were separated into two class blocks, and she found herself in the B block without any of her friends.

Mallory Murphy, Jenny’s best friend since kindergarten, waved at her from a table of pretty girls in the center of the room. Mallory was stocky but fit, with blonde ringlets and a reputation built around having a tryout with Olympic gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi once.

“Oh my God, Jenny, I can’t believe you aren’t in our block,” Mallory said before Jenny could even sit. “You have to tell your mom to call. It’s so stupid. They’ll switch you.”

“Yeah.” For the first time, Jenny realized she had enjoyed the peace of her morning. She felt bad. These were her best friends.

“There’s a new kid,” Mallory announced.

“I know,” said Jenny.

“You know? Did you meet him? He’s in our block. How do you know?”

“He’s in our grade?” Jenny questioned.

“Yeah, he’s old, though. He’s already sixteen. Like, he stayed back a bunch. He must be dumb, but he’s kind of hot.”

“Ew, Mallory,” Nora, one of the skinny teens flanking Mallory, spoke up.

“Whatever,” Mallory negated the girl’s opinion and switched subjects. “Christine Castleton gave me a ride to school this morning.” She paused for a reaction that Jenny wasn’t going to give. Poor Mallory, unaware of her sloppy-seconds status. “She told me there were three spots open on the varsity squad and all the freshmen are chubby losers.”

Cheerleading, Jenny’s current destiny. Mallory was a shoo-in; her gymnastic skills were set to give the small squad a legitimacy it had never experienced. Heck, Christine Castleton could barely jog on her busted knee and was somehow still the captain.

“I can’t believe you even have to try out,” Laura, another flanking groupie, gushed at Mallory.

A shift had taken place over the summer. Linda had kept Jenny on lockdown after she quit the pageants, and Mallory had eased herself into the alpha role in the group. Jenny searched her brain for jealousy, but could find only relief.

THE ONE CLASS Jenny was unable to hide out in was geometry. It was a high school course offered every other year to students who passed a certain test the school administered at the end of seventh grade. Jenny was ecstatic last year when she found out she’d passed. Now, as she took her rightful seat next to Mallory, she was less thrilled.

“Have you seen Mr. Renkin?” Mallory leaned over and whispered.

Jenny shook her head.

“He’s gorgeous.”

Almost on cue, Mr. Renkin stepped through the doorway. He had toned arms and broad shoulders, but a small stomach that bunched just a bit over his belt, a flaw that made him real. His eyes were a unique shade of green highlighted by thick black eyelashes, and Jenny thought maybe if he wore one of those veils that covered the rest of his face and body, she could have mirrored Mallory’s infatuation. Superficiality aside, his best quality was his playful demeanor, which had long awarded him uncontested status as everyone’s favorite teacher.

He dropped the textbooks he was juggling on his desk with a thud. “All right, geniuses, come grab one.”

The eight students slid out of their desks like they were disembarking a plane—most filed into an appropriate order; one asshole pushed ahead. Mallory was that asshole. She shoved this poor kid Dirk almost back into his desk. In her defense, he didn’t really exist in her mind.

She paused as she placed her hands on the textbook and gifted Mr. Renkin extended eye contact. “I’m Mallory,” she said, then waited for him to faint. The teacher nodded, and Mallory headed back to her desk cataloguing the interaction as a victory.

As the rest of the students grabbed their books, Mr. Renkin turned to the whiteboard and wrote his name in large letters, a useless thing to do. All that kids do before school starts is compare their teachers and classes.

“I’m Mr. Renkin,” he announced for those who couldn’t read, or speak, or think.

He leaned down to squint at the roster list on his desk. “Raise your hand when I read your name.”

“Laura?” Hand.

“Krystal?” Hand.

“Dirk?” Hand. He did exist!

“Brian?” Hand.

“Mallory, we met.” He grinned, mocking the girl.

“Nora?” Hand.

“Samuel?” Hand.

“And last but not least, Jenny?”

Jenny raised her hand, surprised to be last, defying the laws of alphabetization.

Mr. Renkin placed both hands down and leaned onto the desk as he looked at her. His actions could be those of a man who had reached the end of a list, but the stare felt deeper. Mallory, whose senses were on high alert, turned to look at Jenny in the millisecond before Mr. Renkin looked away and before any other student noticed. When Mallory wouldn’t let it go, Jenny gave the best explanation she could—a light shrug.

THE BELL RANG at 3:10 and the swarm of kids around Jenny jumped from their seats. Jenny didn’t rush, happy to let them all go first. It was time to grab her bag, walk to the locker room, change into tiny spandex shorts and a tank top, and earn her spot on the squad. It was stupid. It was easy. It made sense, but she didn’t want to do it. She didn’t know why. Was she being a brat? Was she being lazy? Maybe she was jealous of Mallory after all.

She got on the bus and went home. One action to bear a million consequences.

She wasn’t looking forward to facing her mother and explaining why she didn’t go to tryouts. If the gods were on her side, she would already be passed out. Linda had developed a nice little wine-drinking habit in the last few months, meaning she drank it by the bottle whenever Jenny left the house. She had debilitating separation anxiety, which only heightened after Jenny quit the pageants, dissolving their special bond. With her husband in New York during the week and Jenny back in school, Linda was buying wine by the case.

Jenny climbed the carpeted stairs to her bedroom and shut the door. The room wasn’t her at all, not anymore. Stuffed animals and dolls stared at her from a corner shelf. They looked much more foolish to Jenny than they had the day before. She was officially an eighth grader now.

She opened her closet door and began tossing the animals into the back, one at a time, until the shelf was clear and the closet was a gruesome pileup of beady-eyed carcasses. She flopped down on the bed and gazed up at the sheer princess canopy above her. That would have to go too, but she couldn’t bring herself to get back up. She would rip it down later.

So much had changed in the past few months, and she didn’t know who to blame. Maybe her dysfunctional family, maybe herself? She couldn’t blame Benjy. It wasn’t his fault.

Chapter Five

Virginia

I PARKED ON THE STREET in front of the police station at half past one. I made sure to schedule any appointments in the middle of the day so as to feel the most productive. I usually slept until ten, and if I could manage to stay out until at least three, that was only four hours until it was dark and I could go to bed again.

I found myself recently unemployed due to having quit my job. I was a temporary person. It was the only way I could get out of bed in the morning, knowing it wouldn’t be like this forever. It was hope, I guess—really mutilated, beyond recognition, hope. It was something I definitely didn’t inherit from my mother. She had no hope.

My father married my mother when they were both nineteen. They were high school sweethearts out of convenience. The town didn’t produce many attractive people, so the ones who existed tended to couple up. They had me one year later and at least four years earlier than my dad planned on procreating.

He was in college studying some business bullshit. He became a big-time finance asshole, but back then he was a kid from a small town with a lot of ambition and a hot wife. They were two kids who got out of Wrenton. They were living in New York City, but when I was born, my mom brought me back with her to be near her sister. My dad took the train home from the city every weekend. He still did.

My mom became extremely paranoid that my dad was cheating. I doubted it. He was not a passionate man. She turned into a belligerent screamer and a drunk. She was small-town, very small-town, and resented her big-city husband. It got ugly. Monday through Friday she would go to the bowling alley with me in tow and drink until the owner put us both in the county’s only cab. He would give me a lollipop. I do vaguely remember the candy.

My father would get home sometime after I went to bed on Friday, and by Sunday, they weren’t speaking. That included speaking to me. It sounds like a horrible childhood, but it wasn’t that bad. Some of my friends at school had these overbearing mothers who would show up all the time and bring them sweaters and kiss them in front of everyone. Ten is the very important age when you start to realize that parents aren’t cool and if you have any chance of being cool, they need to back the fuck off. By eleven, I was one of the most popular kids in my class. That lasted for about six months until my mom killed herself.

I lived with my aunt for two years before my father met Linda, got her pregnant, and tried this whole family thing again. Everyone would have been happy for me to stay with my aunt, but when she got sick, I had to go home—a new home with Linda and baby Jenny at the base of Sanford Hill. Everyone really enjoyed the constant reminder I provided of all the terrible shit they were trying to forget. At least I didn’t have to change schools; it would have been a real shame if I had to start high school without all that carefully cultivated baggage.

It was the same high school Jenny attended, fully equipped with her own baggage. She had only dipped her toe into those waters when she met her demise. If I could switch places with her, I would. Not for her to be alive now and for me to be dead like some selfless act of love. It’s just, if I had died a few weeks before my fourteenth birthday, it would have prevented everything.

I FIRST SPOKE to the police on the day they found Jenny’s body. Chief Garrety was geriatric, with a physique that couldn’t catch a paraplegic criminal. He was sweating profusely that afternoon, and part of me worried we might have a second dead body on our hands. I guess that’s why they brought in the big guns. A detective from Hartsfield would be taking over. Hartsfield wasn’t much of a city, but they had detectives, so they were bigger than us.

I entered the station to an unmanned reception counter. Being alone made it somehow better and then somehow worse. I didn’t want to make small talk, but at least it would be a distraction. Instead, I stood in front of the empty bull pen that seemed to shrink when I felt claustrophobic and expand when I felt small. I could hear some gruff man talk coming from the back, so I rang the bell on the desk like I was picking up dry cleaning. Then I rang it a few more times before Chief Garrety finally poked his head out from the kitchen.

“Oh, Ms. Kennedy, hello.” He brushed some crumbs off his shirt and came to meet me. “How are you doing today?”

“You know …” I trailed off. I didn’t know how long I would have to wait before I could answer “Good” to that question. Death is a funny thing. Murder is worse.

“Yeah.” He nodded, then leaned in and hushed his voice. “Look, this guy thinks he’s a real hotshot. Solved some big case once. Don’t let him push you around, ya know? Just answer his questions and smile a lot. You’re a pretty girl.”

That wasn’t comforting at all and possibly insulting. I couldn’t tell. “I’ll do my best.”

Chief Garrety was convinced. “Follow me.”

The chief showed me into the interrogation room and it put me on edge—steel table, two matching chairs, a mirror spanning the wall, dim lighting.

“I’ll grab the detective,” he said. “And remember …” He guided the corners of his mouth up with his fingers into a creepy grin. If I smiled like that, I’d be suspect number one in all murders ever.

I took a seat on the chair facing the door and settled in. The wait was rubbing me the wrong way. I came in on my time. This is your job. Get it together. I decided to believe this hotshot detective was taking a shit, a nervous shit because this was the biggest case of his life. I didn’t want to be all annoyed when he finally came in. This made him more sympathetic.

I had bitten off three of my fingernails by the time he came in. He sat at the table with a file folder in his hands, staring down, fixated on its contents just like on television. He glanced up and reacted like he hadn’t known I would be there. This guy was a trip.

“Hello, Ms. Kennedy. Thank you for coming in. I’m Detective Colsen.” He extended his hand and we shook. So formal. He was attractive enough. No traits in particular were anything to fawn over—thirties, twenty-dollar classic haircut, acceptable face shape, average height. Still, he was a stranger, and there was something inexplicable about him that made me nervous.

He helped himself to the other cold, hard chair and fanned his sacred file out on the table. Right away a picture of Jenny’s dead body appeared. I hadn’t seen it before; I’d only heard what happened. She was covered in leaves and dirt, cemented to her by the early morning rainstorm. There were splotches of blood on her nightgown where the knife had entered. Cuts and bruises were everywhere. Her blonde hair was chopped to pieces, eyes closed, face devoid of color. Her hands were placed so peacefully together over her stomach, I imagined that’s how they were now, inside the coffin. I couldn’t stop staring. A dead body. A kid. My sister.

Images flashed in my head. Memories of Jenny as a clumsy toddler. My brain’s defense mechanism showing her to me at her most innocent, back when I lived in the house and saw her regularly, often letting her sleep on my chest because she couldn’t string enough words together to bother me. Back when she was a blob—before she was a person, before she was a performer, before she was my replacement.

The detective caught me staring. “Oh, I’m sorry.” He quickly covered the picture with his notes. It wasn’t convincing. I knew he wanted to see my reaction.

“Am I a suspect?” I asked.

“Right now, everyone’s a suspect, but I wasn’t particularly thinking it. Should I be?”

I smiled as instructed in an attempt to subvert the implication.

“Why don’t you tell me where you were the night of the murder?” he asked.

“At home. In my apartment.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

He jotted down some notes. He wrote more than seemed reasonable based on how little I had said. “Your parents were home alone that night too,” he stated.

“Is that abnormal? I think most people are home alone in the middle of the night. What were you doing in the middle of the night on Saturday?”

“And how was your relationship with your sister?” He ignored me.

I shrugged. “Pretty limited.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“I only saw her on Sundays for dinner.” That was a lie. I had seen her more recently. Two times to be exact. It was a sad state of affairs that I could so easily count how many times I had seen my sister outside of Sunday dinner. “I don’t really get along with my stepmother, and Jenny is, was, thirteen years younger than me. We didn’t have much in common.” Nothing I could share about my sister seemed relevant. It also didn’t seem like his business. It’s kind of sick how, since my sister was dead, it was acceptable for this stranger to pry into my personal life.

“You don’t get along with Linda?” he plucked from my statement.

“Linda? You guys on a first name basis already?”

He looked up for a hot second, acknowledging my point without fueling the fire.

“Linda has always found me to be a burden and I’ve always found her to be incessantly annoying,” I explained. “Over time, we have worked out a comfortable groove of avoidance.”

“How was her relationship with Jenny?”

“Super.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know. She thought Jenny was the bee’s knees.”

“And your father? How was his relationship with Jenny?”

“Fine, I guess. He likes her much better than me and nobody killed me, so I guess you can take him off the suspect list.”

“And who do you think should be on the suspect list?”

“Isn’t that your job?”

“I suppose so,” he answered, charmingly unoffended by my obnoxiousness. “Let me ask you something,” he said as if I had to give him permission. “I’m going to show you a picture, OK?”

I nodded. It was nice of him to warn me this time.

He slid out another picture of Jenny’s body. This one was zoomed in on her neck, her face and body cropped out. “Does this necklace look familiar to you?” he asked, pointing at a small gold pendant in the shape of a heart, the thin chain it hung from caked in mud across her collarbone.

“No,” I answered.

He slid the picture back into the folder, nodding. “No one seems to recognize it.”

“Kids have secrets,” I said, shrugging.

“What do you know about Benjy Lincoln?” he asked, transitioning flawlessly.

“Same thing that it probably says in the file.” And a smile.

“Indulge me?” Then he smiled. Too much smiling was happening.

“I don’t really know the details, just what I’ve heard from my father and Linda.”

“Do you think he abused her?”

“I wouldn’t know. We weren’t close like that … or at all, really.” I waited patiently to be judged, but he just nodded.

“Families are tough,” he offered.

I wasn’t sure what the point of this interview was, but I knew it wasn’t to be my personal therapy session. “Are you arresting Benjy or what?”

“We’re trying to find him.”

“He’s on the lam? Seems suspect.”

“I don’t know if he’s on the lam, per se. He left his home a few weeks ago. We’re trying to track him down.” He leaned back in his chair and stared at me like I would have an answer.

“Well, you should try harder.”

He closed the file. “Yes, thank you for coming in, Virginia.” He’d graduated to my first name without my offering it. I was on par with his close friend Linda now.

“That’s it?” I asked.

“That’s it. I just like to meet with the family, create a relationship to move forward with. I want you to feel comfortable coming to me if you think of anything.” He pulled a business card from his pocket and handed it to me. I shoved it into my pocket to be destroyed the next time I washed these pants.

We stood in unison, and he guided me out of the room, putting his hand on the small of my back. “I apologize for not saying this sooner, but I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” One last smile couldn’t hurt. He reciprocated.

I walked out of the station and straight to my car. I hoped it was Benjy Lincoln. It felt like an awful thing to hope for, but she was already raped and murdered. Would hoping it was someone else be any better? I just wanted it to be over. That fucking picture. Now I had five hours to spend thinking about it before it would be dark again.

Chapter Six

Jenny

JENNY’S LAST PAGEANT was on April 19, and almost five months had passed since then. It wasn’t her biggest competition, not even close. She would have won the Grand Supreme title with ease if she had gotten that far.

She hated pageants by this point. It had been years since she actually enjoyed them, but it was Linda’s obsession. Even her father embraced the pageants. He told her it was a real opportunity for her to become something. She wasn’t sure what.

With success comes fans. Even a child beauty queen from a small town can have fans, obsessive ones. Her biggest fan was a grown man with a child’s IQ named Benjy. She started noticing him when she was nine. He was at almost every pageant. He sat alone, watched the entire show, and always gave a standing ovation during crowning.

When she was ten, he gave her a birthday card. She was walking from the stage to her mother in the back of the ballroom when he stopped her. He was bashful and wouldn’t make eye contact. The card was homemade with ten balloons individually cut out from different pieces of construction paper. The message was simple: Happy Birthday, Jenny. You’re the prettiest of all the girls. Love, Benjy.

Jenny made it a point to say hi to Benny at every pageant after that, always when Linda was out of sight. She wouldn’t understand.

Sometimes he would bring her small presents, usually something from a vending machine. Her parents felt strongly that presents were for birthdays and Christmas only, which gave it an added thrill. Occasionally, Benjy would give her letters. They were short and harmless, usually about something she did in a pageant that he liked. Jenny would squirrel the letters away in her pocket, feeding off keeping a secret from Linda.

On April 19, Jenny came to the pageant with her own letter for Benjy. It was one page of notebook paper about how she didn’t want to do pageants anymore. She wrote it down so she could get it out, and then realized she didn’t have anyone else to share it with.

It was a glitz pageant, Jenny’s least favorite kind. It required hours of prep time, with Linda poking and prodding at her hair and face. The pageant had an Easter theme, and the irony of having all these slutted-out children dress as bunnies was lost on the starry-eyed parents. Linda was still in the back, adding last-minute sequins to the tail, when Jenny took the opportunity to give the note to Benjy.

He was sitting in the fourth row, and she waved him over to the corner of the ballroom. He bumbled over to her. “You looked very beautiful onstage. You look beautiful now too, I didn’t mean … I just …” He tripped over his words, worried he had offended her, shifting from one foot to the other.