Anytown, USA (Working Title)

Jess hastily trotted down 3^rd, toward Main. Wearing thick denim jeans, high-tops, a long-sleeve tee, winter coat, and wool knit cap, she was certainly dressed for the weather. Not accounting for the wind-chill, it was well below forty degrees out, and most in the area could’ve told you that without seeing it on the clock at the bank. Cold was something that the residents of Jarvis Ridge were accustomed to.

Rain hadn’t been in the forecast, though a broad damp pervaded the air… no. Not simply the air. In fact, the whole of 3^rd looked as if someone had taken to it with a firehose. There was dew on a good amount of the grass, as well as the bushes, cars, and even the front windows of the houses.

Repeatedly passing were a scant amount of what seemed to be the same cars as, for a certain period, Jess fingered the matchbook in her jacket pocket. She noticed the innumerable cracks in the old, broken-up sidewalk and attempted to avoid stepping on them. She pulled out the matchbook.

3^rd street was a mostly residential neighborhood, with a small business park, and various practitioners’ offices peppering the occasional intersection.

Aloud, Jess read the names on the mailboxes on the front lawns she passed.

“Hewitt… Miller… Svenson...”

Striking a match, she removed the tattered soft pack from the rear pocket of her Levi’s.

“Manning… Jacobs…”

She lit a cigarette.

“Hill…Denton… Davis…”

Jess was sixteen years of age. She had been smoking since she was fourteen- around the same time she entered high school. In spite of her youth, Jess had endured more than really any girl should ever have to.

“Davisss… Daviddd…Daviesss…”

When she was a young seven, her father died on the job in an accident at the Jaylin steel mill not a few miles outside town. She had been unaware of what the actual cause of death had been; the cause, other than the much-alluded-to “accident,” until she was twelve. Her aunt, on her mother’s side, informed her that a girder had fallen at the south end of the mill and crushed three workers- including her dad. The area was shut down for but three days; a few weeks short of what any advised professional would have recommended. It was then that Jess learned that the town truly depended on the mill. She could still recall her mother crying for days on end after the accident, then again when it was announced that the site would be open again after a coffee-break of a safety check.

When Jess was thirteen, her mother remarried. It was to a man named Chet. He hated Jess, and what was worse, he beat her mother on an almost constant basis. He was a relatively short, stocky man, with everyday stubble and rimless glasses. He often wore flannel.

Jess turned her attention away from the mailboxes and up to the trees.

“Sycamore… Sycamore… Sycamore…” 

After a year and a half of marriage to Chet, Jess’ mother surrendered and swallowed seventeen Vicodin with half a shot of bourbon. She left no note. No one was ever really sure if she legitimately wanted to die, or if it was more of a symbolic gesture. Regardless, she was dead by the time Chet got off the couch and drove her to the emergency room. The paramedics would have been called, had the phone not been destroyed in a fight between the quarreling spouses about a week earlier.

Sometime prior to the untimely death of her mother, Jess began attending Jarvis Ridge High School. She had already had significant difficulties adjusting to the general change, with her problems only being severely exacerbated by all the commotion of the presumed suicide. 

Near the end of her freshman year, Jess was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. This wouldn’t have been a shock to most, as she had been described as a “moody” girl. At this point, she was still under the care of Chet, whom had inherited the house and everything else. The two spoke as infrequently as possible, as it was apparent how similarly they despised each other. He often had women over, leaving Jess to hear their muffled moans through the too-thin bedroom walls on too many miserable nights. Even when firmly pressed against her ears, her worn body pillow still couldn’t silence the cries.

Jess’ solace was often found in school, where she could visit with her select few friends. Her friends were uniformly as dejected as she on a regular basis, though not sharing such a colorful back-story. She smoked pot for the first time when she was fifteen; first when she was fifteen, then three or four times a week up to present. She ditched school regularly and not surprisingly, Chet didn’t acknowledge her sixteenth birthday when it came and went.

The cars ceased to pass and the street was now empty. The frigid temperature seemed to toy with her mind. Somewhere down the road, dogs barked. She took note that all of the trees on 3^rd were cold and barren- not a leaf in sight.

“Deciduous… Deciduous… Deciduous…”

Jess’ sixteenth was one of her better days. Her friend Dixon surprised her with a new pipe and a pair of dollar socks from Le Grande, the resident department store. Her other companions all chipped in for a bottle of cheap vodka.

She reached the end of the block and looked up at the sign at the corner, in stride. Pointing in her direction was 3^rd Street, and facing left was MAIN ST. She turned left.

Midway through Jess’ sophomore year, Chet fell into the kitchen counter and hit his head while in a drunken stupor. Suitably enough, the phone was up and running by this point, so one of his female counterparts dialed 911, shrieking like a tea kettle all the way. Chet was left in a coma and had no visitors for quite some time.

Main ran though just about every other major street in town, much to the convenience of the locals. It sidled up along the post office, high school, grade school, movie house, and near around any shop you could think of. 

With no information to be gotten through the girlfriend, obviously no speech from Old Chet himself, and an evident inability to notice the death certificate of Jess’ mother, the fifteen year old was left untended to and alone in the house. She waited for a substantial amount of time for the cops or a social worker to come get her and put her in a foster home, but nobody came. She generally enjoyed the alone time, as nobody but she lived in the place for months. Sure, there was the periodical midnight call from a friend who needed a place to crash, but other than that: perfect solitude. She came by food easily enough and partied with her friends just about every night of the week. To Jess, it was all pretty fun. There were those times when her affliction got the better of her and she ran a blade across her arm or briefly stuck her head through a home-made noose, but her moods changed rapidly and she wouldn’t have gone through with it. That’s what she liked to think anyway.  

On this night, at least in comparison to 3^rd, Main was bustling. All the shops in plain view had their windows’ lit up and a warmth emanated from the doorways. People ceremoniously walked about, children in tow, carrying shopping bags and tucking their red noses into the collars of their coats. In a stark contrast to every other street in Jarvis, Main Street was a 3-lane road. Most others were one and, in a rare case, two. 

Jess looked up at the large clock at the corner of the intersecting Clear River Road. The River Road ran down to the southernmost parts of town, namely the rivaling dairy farms which were about a five minute drive from each other. The clock read 7:43 PM. Below the hour and minute hands, in a little box, was the current date: 12/13. Jess would have forgotten it was December were it not for the cold. She seldom cared what time of year it was.

Thin veils of steam rose from the sewer grates, clouding the faces of people who may or may not have been looking at her. She took a long drag from her cigarette, held it in, then expelled the fumes through her nostrils. About to pass through a small crowd of five or six people staring through a shop window, she threw a final glance at her smoke before tossing it into the street. She was in a courteous mood.

Jess’ friend Dixon had killed himself in Jess’ house. Rather, on Jess’ house. Well, it might be misleading to say that he killed himself, given that it was an accident. At least they thought it might’ve been. Nobody was totally sure. Dixon had gotten really drunk and fell off the roof. He had spoken briefly prior to the death about wanting to die, and it happened soon thereafter. People made of it what they wanted to. Another friend, Ally, drove Dixon, along with the rest of the pals, to the hospital before dumping his body on the curb of the emergency room, honking the car horn numerous times, then speeding off. It didn’t make much of a difference. They had all realized he was dead upon checking his body after the fall. It was pretty surprising that a fall like that killed him, considering that it was only a one story house. He would’ve made it for sure had he not landed on his head, on cement, and broken his neck in about ten different places.

Jess looked both ways before awkwardly jogging across the street. Moving slightly faster than she had been, into the wind, made it that much more cold. Lying just a few blocks ahead was Stilton Pharmacy- her destination. Jess’ friend Lor was on shift at the Pharmacy and was perfectly willing to sell her cigarettes (what she was headed to purchase), along with whatever else she might’ve wanted. She would’ve gladly stolen things for her had her manager not kept such a strict inventory.

Lor was in the senior class of the high school, while Jess was a sophomore. The two had gone to middle school together, though that was saying much, considering the fact that about 75% of the students at the high school had also attended that particular junior high. Jess supposed the rest commuted.

Lor had played “big sister” to Jess in the “Older Sibling” program sponsored by Jarvis Ridge High during her junior year; the aim of said program being to foster care for apparently troubled youth. Jess was recommended for the program after her homeroom teacher, Mr. Joyce, noticed a number of scars on her arm in a suspiciously congruent pattern. Lor was a veteran of the program herself, having served as “little sister” to a student before her after being recruited to the program for what Jess later found out was carrying gin in a water bottle to nearly every class for seven and a half months.

The sibling program was a bit of a machine. It gathered all the fucked up kids it could muster, attempted to make them socially presentable (in more ways than would meet the eye), and kicked them up to the rank of “Big Brother” or “Big Sister,” all hyped up and ready to assist the new batch of screw-ups just prime for the plucking. Best laid plans, as always. Lor taught Jess how to roll a joint and disable the smoke detector in the girl’s washroom. The two were thick as thieves.

The neon OPEN sign inside the window of the pharmacy buzzed and flashed, on and off. Jess cracked a few glances before spitting on the sidewalk. Her lips were cold. She felt rather dehydrated. A sign perched above the cracked door read “Stilton Drug.”A smaller sign below that: “Home to All YOUR Healthcare Needs…Plus More.” There was nothing catchy about that slogan at all, Jess thought, as she had many times before. She could see through the fogged glass door that the place was packed. Maybe ten, fifteen people crowded around the counter. Another ten in plain view walking about- and that’s just from what she could see outside. A dull roar was audible, secreting from the store. Jess imagined how loud it would be inside. Deafening. She grasped the stainless steel bar attached to the entrance and pushed…then saw a sticker above the handle reading PULL, and corrected herself. She wasn’t feeling very lucid. Perhaps it was the temperature.

Jess liked to read. Anything and everything, particularly about current events. Books and periodicals weren’t easy to come by around her house however, particularly when she lived with Chet. No, the most reading material she could ever come by then was Popular Mechanic or Huge A*s Fetish, and neither were known for their striking social commentary. She was able to read at a 9^th grade level when 8, yet it didn’t surprise her somehow when she failed 9^th grade English.

As the door opened, it brushed a small gold bell suspended by a blue string above the entryway, creating a short-lived dinging. The volume of the roar inside increased with Jess’ entrance, becoming full-on loud, though not nearly as loud as she had hypothesized it would be. Snippets of conversations could be heard, though so many were occurring and blending together that it became damn near impossible for Jess to make out anything that any of the people were saying. The longer she was in there, it was as if a knob in her mind was slowly being turned clockwise, and the sound of the banter and clanging and dinging and ringing and shouting and demanding was ever-so-bluntly drowning out her thoughts.

The pharmacy patrons looked very similar to the people she witnessed walking around outside, not surprisingly. Almost identical. Other than the faces of those indoors looking more red-ish. Perhaps it was due to the functioning heater or fluorescent lighting indoors. In any event, they all looked breathless and sweaty and tired. Jess took a moment to notice how much warmer it was inside than out. She unzipped her jacket.

You wouldn’t know how small of a town Jarvis Ridge was just from looking at the crowd in the drug store. In actuality, the number of people in there probably could’ve totaled the number of people living in a few square blocks in any given area of the city, and it’s not as if the store was very big. They all pushed about and hushed each other and they all wore thick sweaters and scarves and boots. They were so loud.

Jess’ thoughts washed away. The screech of the chatter was getting to her again. She wanted to leave, but she wanted a new pack of smokes even more. She quickly resolved to stick around.

Author's Note

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