WPCA - Jenny Rexrew

Jenny Rexrew was average. Well, as average as a tall, scrawny, fifteen year-old girl with acne and glasses could be. She didn't even know if she had a figure, draped under her heavy, baggy clothes as she was. She never put much thought into it. Her goal was to be as unobservable as possible. She didn't like standing out, slouched a lot. Being five-eleven and fifteen, it was kind of hard to do that.

With her sleeves rolled up past her elbows, she washed dishes. Jenny worked at a restaurant, this little Taiwanese joint on the corner of Smith and 11th that catered to various business types. She never saw the noonday rush when the place got flooded; she just worked the weekend shift. She was giving up her weekend now, scrubbing away while the afternoon rush wore off and the last of the plates and glasses and silverware came in.

"When you finish, you go, come back later, at five--okay?"

Jenny shrugged and nodded, adding "Sure thing, Mrs. Xuang," before going back at it. When she was done, she ducked out the back door and onto the alleyway adjacent to the street. A quick stretch of her lanky frame and she shoved her hands into her pockets of her hoodie and began walking in a hunched-over don't-talk-to-me and don't-touch-me way.

She lived five blocks away in an apartment complex with her mom and her younger brother, Lennard, a five-year-old punk of a brat that was spoiled and made Jenny wish she were dead. Her parents weren't together anymore. Her dad was an alcoholic. It was better he wasn't there. He used to beat Jenny when she was little. Jenny sometimes thought she still had the bruises.

The building was this projects thing, straight out of the seventies, with a concrete neo-surrealism look with chips and pock-marks. Dark water-stains slashed the building lengthwise. Jenny walked in through the front door, through a trash-ridden lobby done in 1980's style fake wood paneling into an elevator that smelt of urine and booze with fresh stains, probably from last night. Stabbing the fifth-floor button, she waited as the doors clashed closed. Tapping her foot, she waited for the door to open. It did with a gurgled ping and a grating sound. She decided to take the stairs going down.

The halls looked much similar to the exterior and lobby. Brownish, yellow-green stains with black plastic bags and beer bottles covered most of the floor space. Jenny thought there was a man sleeping under a pile of dirty clothing in the fifth-floor lobby. She didn't want to check. There was a path that wove between the piles for "home."

Home was 5 3. It was actually 533, but one of the numbers had gone missing a year back and nobody had bothered to replace it. Slipping the key into the lock, Jenny entered softly, closed the door the same way and twisted the deadlock knob back into place as quickly and quietly as she could. She sloughed off her once-white runners and began to tip-toe toward her room.

"Jennifer? Is that you?" a voice called.

Defeated, she said, "Yeah, Mom."

"Oh, good," her mother said. "I need you to go to the store and get me some things."

"But, Mom, I just got back from work, and I have to go back in a couple hours."

"It won't take long."

Jenny's mom wove into view from the living room to the right. A similarly tall woman, blonde hair that had seen one-too-many bleaching's, lips that were a strange shade of grey, dead looking brown eyes and a frail looking figure. She stood in a silken bath robe clutching a cigarette and puffing fumes like a smokestack. Painted nails and face, she looked like a cheap doll.

"But I gotta work later," Jenny said.

"It's only a block away," her mother said.

She knew she wasn't going to win. Sighing, she muttered her acceptance. Her mom rattled off some random crap they needed. Milk, eggs, other various goods. Jenny was slipping her feet back into her runners when she dropped the real bomb of the conversation: "Oh, and could you go and get your brother from David's?"

David was the new boyfriend that Jenny had suspicions was a pedo. He liked spending way too much time with Lennard. She hated him. He was just so creepy, and he gave her weird looks when he was around, and she hated how her mom would invite him in and fuck him in the middle of the night and how they'd groan away. And he smelt like booze and cigarettes.

"Yeah, fine," Jenny said. She slammed the door on the way out.

Jenny went down the hall, down the stairs and out an emergency exit onto a side street. She resumed her previous walking habit, keeping her head down.