Chapter 5 Above #2
Janie is the first. She was never officially reported missing, but I’ve created my own case file.
There’s little to go on. Janie left Franklin when she was seventeen.
By that time, we hadn’t been friends for two years.
No one, including me, did anything to try to bring her home.
I’ve tracked her path from the first few months, found people she met along the way as she bounced around the country.
A girl who let her crash on her couch, a man who went on a few dates with her, a bass player who took a photo with her at a concert.
It was a brief window when she was easy to find, if anyone bothered to look. But we never did.
All the people she had twined around her, intoxicated by her presence, and not one of us tracked her down while we still could. I wonder how many others breathed a sigh of relief when she took off that summer before senior year and promised she’d never come back to our dead--end town.
But she did come back. Just once. Just that one night, as far as I can tell, five years after she left, long after the trail goes cold. First the phone call, and then rocks at my window and her voice crooning my name.
Or maybe I dreamed it. There have been times when I wondered if I did. No one else saw her. No one else spoke to her, that they’ll admit. But it wasn’t a dream. She was here.
And then she was nowhere.
The photo I linger on isn’t the last one I’ve found of her—-hair loose and messy, turned to pure fiery red in the sun, sitting on the sidewalk in an unknown city.
I look instead at the last photo of the two of us in our homecoming dresses—-hers bright green, clinging to her hips, mine blue and poorly fitted to my squarish torso.
I might as well not be there at all, the way the camera focuses in on her, the hand propped just so on her hip, the knowing smile.
She’s wearing a bracelet, a thick silver thing with a chunk of turquoise at its center. In the later photos, it’s gone. Replaced with black cord and six white beads. I don’t know when she started wearing it. And whether there was someone in particular she was thinking of when she did.
My phone chimes. A text from Dev with a link to the podcast episode he mentioned. I thank him and follow the link. Barry lets out a tiny, pathetic whine and looks up at me, eyes pools of pure tragedy.
“Should we take a walk?” I ask him. He scrambles off the couch.
As I get on a coat and Barry’s leash and harness, I download the podcast episode. I never have the patience for these things. The guy’s voice is deep and melodic, but by the time I’m past the intro, I’ve sped it up until he sounds like he’s had way too much caffeine.
“When my producer suggested this story for our Halloween episode, I was skeptical. I’m not exactly a believer in the supernatural, and I have a firm rule about not doing ghost episodes.
But when I looked into the story of Jenny Red--Hands and the town of Franklin, I found real people, real events.
I found a mythology that has grown up around them, and sometimes consumed them.
It’s been a source of empowerment for young women, but it’s also become a scapegoat, one that has been used at times to downplay real crimes. ”
I’m surprised by my instant reaction—-anger.
No, I don’t believe Jenny Red--Hands is real, but what is this?
A hot take about how our story of female vengeance is actually bad?
I walk with my head down, legs pumping. Barry trots along beside me without a care in the world, used to my moody speed--walking.
If there’s something he truly wants to stop and sniff, he knows that all he has to do is plant his feet and there’s nothing I can do about it.
“Let’s begin with what exactly the story of Jenny Red--Hands is—-which is a harder question to answer than you might think.
The most popular version goes something like this: In the 1800s, a young woman—-the titular Jenny—-was wronged in some way.
Assaulted, abandoned, betrayed. In all versions, Jenny tries to get justice, but is discredited.
Instead, the perpetrators claim that she is a witch.
The town is ready to execute Jenny, but when they arrive to find her, she’s fled into the woods.
It isn’t long before she’s seen again—-her hands gloved in blood, standing at the edge of the woods.
The body of her victim, or victims, was found soon after.
The story claims she took teeth as trophies and vanished into the wilderness, but that when a woman was suffering at the hands of a man, she could go beseech Jenny for aid, searching for the sign of a red handprint.
Supplicants would leave her offerings of white beads to represent the teeth she’d taken, and carve the names of the men who wronged them into a tree.
Vengeance was sure to come to them. But sometimes, Jenny took a liking to the young women who came to her for help.
Those girls would vanish—-killed by Jenny, or maybe spirited away to somewhere they would forever be safe from the violence of men. ”
In the original, they were teeth, Janie told me. I had always wondered if she made that up, but here it is, reported as fact.
“There are many elements of the story that changed depending on who I heard it from. For instance, the teeth—-I heard it five times, but only from people who had attended Franklin High School around the mid--aughts. In other versions, the beads were actually pearls, gathered up from a broken necklace after the initial assault. In still others, they had no explanation at all.”
I laugh suddenly. Those would be exactly the years that Janie attended high school. Maybe she’d heard it from someone else . . . but no. Janie told that story. It’s hers. I have no doubt.
The host dispenses with the other details and origins of the story quickly; it’s clear he’s not that interested in its particulars, given its obvious lack of historical veracity.
The story originated in the early 2000s online, in a series of breathlessly serious websites and forum posts.
Every “fact” they referenced was a complete fabrication.
There was no Jenny in all of Franklin’s history that might have matched—-or Jennifer or Jessica or Janet.
Or Janie, I think. Barry pauses to inspect a bed of flowers and leave his contribution to the aroma. I’ve been letting him choose the direction, and unsurprisingly, he’s been leading us toward the coffee shop downtown that stocks dog treats behind the counter.
“I don’t think they’re even open,” I warn him. He sneezes in disgust.
The podcast has moved on. Moving from ghost stories into sociology—-the way that the Jenny Red--Hands story has shaped the discussion of violence against women in Franklin.
And soon my anger at the host has no choice but to fade, because he has a point.
The real stories of women—-and men, for that matter—-who have suffered in Franklin have been co--opted as part of the Jenny Red--Hands myth.
A young woman disappeared and was later found dead, but in the meantime, the school buzzed with the idea that Jenny had taken her, an idea that prompted more laughter than concern.
Go tell Jenny, more than one woman recalled being instructed, while no one real would listen.
But mostly, she’s been a rallying cry. A little bit of power for the young and voiceless to claw back.
We’ve come to the coffee shop. As expected, it’s closed. Barry sits on the mat out front and lets out a mournful whimper.
“We can’t just wait. They don’t open until the morning,” I tell him. He does not respect my logical explanation.
A burst of laughter sounds from nearby, followed by a familiar voice. My head whips around. Of course. The team are out carousing, less than a block away—-I can just see the back of Matsuda’s head, out on the pub patio. Luckily, I’m currently hidden by a thick wall of potted plants.
“We gotta go,” I say to Barry, tugging at him.
He reluctantly follows me. I pick up my pace.
It’s not like I’m actively trying to avoid my colleagues—-despite the fact that yes, right now I’m all but running away from them.
We have plenty of camaraderie when we’re training or working.
But I don’t do happy hours, don’t do the heavy drinking and loud conversation.
It’s the same reason I don’t talk about my SAR work at school.
There is a sacredness to it, and something shameful, too, inflected by old guilt.
I have my head down, hoping not to get spotted, when I come around the corner, which is why I don’t see Emily Hill stepping out onto the street until I’ve nearly smacked into her. She catches me by the shoulders to prevent a collision, pivoting to let my momentum carry me past her.
“Whoa!” she says. Her grip on my arms is firm, strength in her fingers. For an instant, we’re frozen there, face--to--face, close enough for me to see every tiny freckle on her cheeks, the smallest whisker of a scar along the bridge of her nose.
“Sorry,” I stammer, instinctively choking up on the leash to keep Barry snug against my thigh—-but he’s correctly assessed the threat, or lack of one, and stays put. I pull my earbuds out of my ears guiltily. “I wasn’t looking where I was going.”
“No harm done,” she says. She puts her hands in her sweatshirt pockets, backing up a step to put a more comfortable distance between us. “Urgent errand?”
“Just walking the dog,” I say, gesturing to Barry. He pants, exhibiting the vastness of his jaws.
“He’s gorgeous,” she says. Barry’s tail thumps the ground.
“He certainly thinks so.”