Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4)

Ward Kilpatrick and his friends stalked the prissy glam boy as he left the broken
sidewalk to squeeze through a ruptured chain-link fence into the abandoned railyard. 
The boy’s name was Joey Barrons, but Ward and his friends called him “JoJo” because
he looked so girly.  It bothered Ward just how girly JoJo sometimes looked.  It made
him want to grab the kid and just pound him.  They’d been messing with him since sixth
grade, and nothing had changed now that they’d started high school.

Ward watched through the rupture in the fence as JoJo cut across the abandoned rail
yard, stepping around and through rusty old boxcars parked on the ruins of old tracks. 
It was a shortcut for JoJo to get home fast from the high school and off the garbage-filled
streets of East St. Louis...but it wasn’t the safest path, as the glittery little
hairsprayed freak was about to learn.

Ward nodded at his friend Lars, who was fifteen, Ward’s own age.  Lars scurried to
peel up the broken chain-link as if he were Ward’s personal butler.  Ward walked under,
followed by his other friend, Carl.  Carl was a second-year freshman, sixteen years
old. 

JoJo was fourteen but looked twelve, what Ward’s father would have called a “faggy
little pinko.”  A huge fan of the newly elected President Reagan, Ward’s father, who
had repeatedly referred to the recently ousted Jimmy Carter as a “lily-wristed pinko
Commie.”

Ward and his friends were not faggy or pink.  When the kids at school were listening
to Roxy Music and David Bowie, Ward and pals slammed to hardcore bands that played
parties in the city’s countless empty factories and warehouses.  You didn’t need an
ID to get in, because the shows weren’t legal in the first place.  If there wasn’t
a party, they usually played bootleg Black Flag cassettes on Carl’s ghetto blaster

The glam boy looked back over his shoulder, and his mouth popped open in an “O” shape
that was almost cartoony.  He wore glitter on his face—
glitter
,
for God’s sake—trying to look like one of those weird English rock stars. 

JoJo turned to run, but he had to cross a lot of gravel slag and two more dead rail
lines littered with boxcar corpses before he could reach the fence on the far side
of the yard.

“Don’t run!” Ward shouted, as he and his friends took off after JoJo. “Don’t run,
little JoJo!  You run like a girl!”

JoJo picked up speed, but his dark purple platform boots failed him.  He staggered
and fell, his wavy blond hair flaring out into a fluffy mane as his face hit the gravel. 
Ward and his two friends burst into laughter as they caught up with him.

“What do you want?” JoJo looked up at Ward.  His lower lip was split open and bleeding,
and it trembled.  He was almost pouting like a baby.

“Why are you crying already?” Ward asked, folding his arms. “You don’t cry until I
tell you to.”

“Yeah, nobody told you to cry yet,” Lars quickly agreed.

JoJo looked too scared to even try standing up.  Ward’s heart pulsed a little faster. 
He was eager to get working on the kid.

JoJo was in their class at school.  They were all freshmen, though Ward’s friend 
JoJo was.

Ward and his friends had a certain look, keeping their hair shaved close, with black
denim jackets adorned with patches—skulls, flags, guns.  Nobody fucked with his crew,
not for long.

“Okay, cough it up.” Ward kicked JoJo in the ribs. “Cash.”

“I don’t have any,” JoJo said.  It was believable enough, considering the shitty half-boarded-up
house where JoJo lived with his grandmother.  It was just beyond the fence, in a neighborhood
where half the houses were empty and collapsing, like all the neighborhoods in this
part of East St. Louis.

“No money?” Ward smiled and dropped to a knee beside JoJo. “Then what are you going
to give us, JoJo?”

“What do you want?” JoJo asked in a low whisper.

“I don’t know.  You could suck Lars’ cock, couldn’t you?  You’d like that, wouldn’t
you?” Ward asked him, trying to sound cold and tough.

“What?” JoJo gasped.

“Lars, get over here and let him suck your cock,” Ward commanded.  Lars stepped forward,
grinning, pretending to unzip his fly.  He stood there for a minute, smirking down
at JoJo, and finally gave Ward an uncertain look, not sure how far he was supposed
to carry the gag.  Ward was amused watching both of them squirm, waiting for Ward’s
next words.

“Well?” Ward said to JoJo. “Are you going to pay us in cash or suckage?”

“Do I have to?” JoJo squeaked, looking up at Lars’ husky, shaven-head form leering
down at him.

“Do I have to?” Carl imitated, and Ward and Lars laughed.  JoJo tried, pathetically,
to laugh along as if he were in on the joke.

Ward seized JoJo’s face in both hands and glared into JoJo’s frightened, wet blue
eyes (which were trimmed in eyeliner, for God’s sake!)   Ward gave him a sly smile,
and then he reached into JoJo’s brain.

He dug through a bunch of crap—shopping for records, helping his stupid female friends
pick out make-up and hair products.  Then he found useful tidbits—JoJo socking away
spare coins, scrounged from lunches he’d chosen not to eat and the occasional gift
of a dollar from his grandmother.  He kept it all hidden in the box of an old watercolor
set from childhood, which he stashed under his bed.

“Eighteen dollars and seventy-three cents,” Ward said. “You’ve got it hidden under
your bed.  You want to buy a ticket for Iggy Pop.”  This set Ward’s two friends laughing.

“How did you know?” JoJo asked.  Ward’s knowledge of his secrets seemed to scare him
even more than the threat of getting his face bloodied, or sucking off Lars. “How
can you know that?”

“Go fetch it for us, you little mutt,” Ward said. “All of it.”

“No!” JoJo’s face broke down, and he really did start to cry. “I’ve been saving it
forever.”

“What did you say?” Ward grabbed JoJo’s blousy shirt and lifted him to his feet, and
JoJo goggled up at him, shocked. “Did you say
no
?”