This is a little something I've been working on - I've been attending a writing club at school, and it got me inspired again. I actually edited it, too! (This is a rarity for me.) So this is Draft #2. I want your real opinions and serious critiques, so go hog-wild.
Notes: the "newspaper article" should be formatted as such: in Times New Roman, 10 pt, two columns. For simplicity's sake, I've put it in the only font change DDN will allow (that I know of). The "interview" is correctly formatted, though; it should be in Courier.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jenny
© Heart, All Rights Reserved
Draft 2
“No, I never got scared,” Jenny insisted. “Not once.”
“How do you do it?”
“I just jump.”
*****************
After the crash of American Airlines Flight 523, it was discovered that Jenny had an amazing ability: no matter where she fell from or what way she fell, she would always land gently, on her feet. She fell at terminal velocity just like everyone else. She experienced altitude symptoms just like everyone else. Doctors examined her and could not find anything out of the ordinary, not one genetic mutation or anomalous cell, in her body. But when Jenny fell, she would always land safely.
Jenny jumped from airplanes. We formed a close relationship with a local skydiving school and hitched rides in their Cessna 208s. While nervous first-time jumpers in blue bodysuits strapped on to their instructors, Jenny sat demurely in her seat, wearing a simple sweater and jeans. At our signal, she would walk up to the open cargo bay doors and gaze at the slowly moving cloudscape of the troposphere below her, sometimes parting to give her a tiny glimpse of the green earth below. Jenny never said a word. Her face remained completely impassive, giving no indication to what she was thinking. Then Jenny would just step forward and jump. She did not scream. She just fell.
When she got close to the ground, she would swivel sideways, seemingly willing herself upright. Like a ballerina, an acrobat, a dancer, she slowed down and gracefully landed, feet on the ground, one-two. But there was no hidden wire holding her upright. It just happened. Instinctually.
*****************
The crash of jumbo jet 523 took Americans off-guard. We hadn’t had an air disaster on our territory in a decade and a half, at least. The fully-loaded aircraft killed 479 people – 466 passengers, including Jenny’s parents; all 10 flight attendants; and the 3 pilots. At first, that was all that was known, and that news was devastating enough. Then came the story of Jenny.
The molten metal debris rained from the clear, crisp sky of spring. It was May, and my roommates and I had just graduated. The floor of my apartment was scattered with broken-backed textbooks and crumpled notepaper, university propaganda and syllabi, a degree audit report scribbled with notes. We heard about Jenny, but only vaguely; final exams were much more pressing matters, and we watched the headline news with glazed eyes as we mechanically ate our dinners of EasyMac.
While most of the nation was in shock at the reports coming in, Dr. Saunders knew better. He accepted the story – some would say too quickly and unquestionably – and snapped to a decision in a millisecond. (Though he would never admit this publically, he later told me that he never thought about it at all. As soon as he read the story in the Times, he was drawn to the phone like a magnet to its mate.)
Catching top officials in a traumatic stupor, Dr. Saunders made his case with smooth, honey-laden words. Before his colleagues had begun dialing, Dr. Saunders had a signed emergency order on his desk, identifying him and his team as the sole researchers given access to Jenny.
Of course, we didn’t know that at the time. The crack team of federally appointed researchers was unwashed and hungover. After our first night of heavy celebration, I heard the jarring twitter of my cell phone and rolled over, rubbing my face and discovering an indentation that precisely matched the pattern of my sofa. Grabbing my phone, I saw that my old graduate advisor was calling. I cleared my throat.
“Hello?”
“How would you like to study Jennifer Winters?”
We quickly scrapped our Ph.D. applications and joined him.
*****************
I never thought that Jenny was stupid, though she was lampooned as such by the media. She was portrayed as a simple small-town girl, from a farm somewhere out in the Midwest, and at 17, incapable of processing everything that was going on.
Jenny knew much more than we suspected, I think. She just chose not to tell us. I watched her eyes as they moved across the lab, flicking across our computer screens, never taking the eyes off the nurses as they drew blood. We never told her what studies we were doing or what papers we published, but she never asked a question if we referenced a past work. After she was gone, we went through the papers she left at the clinic. In the first drawer in a plain manila file were all the papers we had published on her in chronological order, stapled neatly.
When we were in the Cessna, I watched her eyes flit around the cockpit. They hovered on the altimeter, then over to the weather conditions, and back again. Jenny knew it was in her best interest to appear unknowing. You would never hear a scientific word past her lips, but there is no doubt in my mind that she would not have jumped if she didn’t think it was safe.
I don’t think that she was ever scared. I don’t think that she was a psychopath. Jenny felt emotions. She was just smart enough to know that she had nothing to fear when she fell.
*****************
But the publicity tired her. I think our tests may have, too. I would ask her if they did, but she would always deny it. “The tests are important,” she told me. “I don’t want to stop them. I don’t tire of them. They don’t tire me.” She paused, and looked down at what she had been reading.
The New York Times, Section A, page 27: a column.
Jenny Jumps: the fraud of a lifetime?
“Oh Jenny, why are you reading this crap?” I moved to pick it up, but Jenny smacked my hand.
We froze, both caught off-guard by her uncharacteristic reaction. Automatically in researcher mode, I watched her: she remained completely frozen, perfect posture with her head bent, eyes peering darkly at the newsprint. Her chest rose up and down quickly.
I was unsure what to say, scared to touch her, but the spell is broken quickly: she rolled her shoulders back and lifted her head. She smiled at me again, that twisted, unsymmetrical smile. It makes my heart jump against my ribcage to remember it.
I crept towards her, a lion tamer entering the cage. “No one with any sense would think you’re a fraud, Jenny.”
“It’s not that.” Chin in hand, she stared into the half-distance, thinking. “It troubles me what the public thinks of me. This is not what I wanted for myself. I don’t want to doubt why I do what I want do. But –“ Her voice tightened. She straightened up and retrieved her worn copy of
The Little Prince, a constant presence on her desktop. She thumbed it open to the picture of the Little Prince standing next to his beloved rose on his planet. She swallowed, lips drawn tight.
“I will never be able to have a life for
myself. I will never have any say in the matter.” She tried to go on, but her voice wouldn’t hold; I think I spied tears in her eyes. She ran her thumb over the image of the Prince’s rose under her glass globe. With a sigh, she concluded: “No matter where I go or what I do, I will always be the Jenny who could jump.”
With this last word, her voice cracked, and she buried her face in her hands. This broke my spell, and I quickly knelt beside her.
“Oh Jenny, that’s not true. All this will pass. There’s a reason you were given this gift, Jenny,” (and here she lifted her head and gave me a glare, for yes, she was still a teenager) “- yes, it is a gift. You’re young! You have your whole life ahead of you!” I kicked myself for falling for such trite quotes. I took a deep breath and tried to think.
“We all have problems with trying to figure out who we are, Jenny. Even I struggle with it.” She raised her head a fraction, and I saw a red-rimmed eye meeting mine. I put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s true! It’s really hard to find your place in life. You just need to give it time. I know it sucks, but there’s a place for you.”
She rubbed her eyes and wiped her hands on her jeans.
“And all the people who work here, Jenny, all the people who know you, we love you.”
Jenny looked at me plaintively, broken. I hugged her tight, and she actually softened in my arms. I mumbled sweet nothings - “We know you’re a truthful, honest person; you’re bright and fun and we
know that.”
Jenny said something, but I couldn’t hear her. How I wish I had listened, but instead I whispered in her ear: “It’s all going to be okay."
*****************
Jenny Jumps: The Fraud of a Lifetime
Following the crash of American Airlines Flight 523, many of us have been stunned by the seemingly miraculous survival of Jennifer Winters. While I don’t doubt that this attention is well-meant, it seems to be at the expense of something much more important: the cause of the crash.
Investigators claim to have uncovered the black box recordings, but decline to inform the public of them at this time, citing an “ongoing investigation.” Much is clear to the naked eye, though, especially given the air traffic controller’s statements to the press – for which he was quickly reprimanded and all those involved in the affair given a gag order.
The controller stated that he had discerned no indication of anything wrong with the pilots of Flight 523. He had spoken with them moments before the explosion, confirming their position and ETA. The airplane appears to have been up-to-date on its inspections, and none of the ground crew – those that could be reached before the gag order – had seen anything amiss.
Around 10:06 the morning of October 8th, the air traffic controller (who I will kindly refrain from naming, due to his legal troubles) reported that Flight 523 disappeared off his screen. Alarmed, he tried to hail them, but neither he nor any other pilots got any signals. Not one mayday call. It was not until over an hour later before the carnage raining down over a small town in Nebraska was identified as the missing aircraft.
The Winters family was traveling out of South Dakota for the first time in their lives. Relatives claim it was an early graduation gift to young Jenny. Noting their working-class roots, it seems odd they would take such an expensive vacation. Conveniently, nearly all of the aircraft was vaporized – along with any human remains. Yet Jenny survived without a scratch. How?
Officials seem to be as clueless as we are, though say it requires “event reconstruction” and “extensive testing.”
I’ll help them out: Jenny is a fraud.
She is another Balloon Boy, exploited by her destitute parents for a chance at wealth; a Piltdown man accompanied by effects from a Michael Bay movie. In a time of economic upheaval, a family in the Midwest devised the perfect media event to capture the nation’s heart.
But there are too many holes, and at too great a cost. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to actually harm anyone; something clearly went wrong. Unless Winters’ parents were in such poverty they were suicidal, it seems impractical that they would count themselves in as casualties. Is it possible that playing with fire got them burned? Or did they know that Jenny’s case would be all the more poignant if she was a lone survivor? Or did the plane never crash at all?
This all reeks of the controversy over 9/11, which has been proven over and over again to be inane. Yet buildings do fall down: what is proposed here is pure fantasy. One can’t fall from 35,000 feet and land, as one witness put it, “as light and as graceful as a cat.” A hidden wire, a quickly stowed parachute (she was wearing a “long, flowing skirt”), lessons in gymnastics, diving, acrobatics; to leap from an image to pure fantasy is leaving far too many scenarios unexamined.
Jenny is the greatest fraud this country has seen in decades. She is controlled by masterful media hounds; her isolation is a strategy used time and again to create mystery around a celebrity, fueling tabloid speculation and paparazzi hiding in the bushes. The Catholics murmur of beatification. The paranormal enthusiasts have begun their hunt for ectoplasm. Jenny’s quaint Midwestern looks charm us, as she shies away from the few cameras that have caught her photo.
I see something different, however.
I see a devil child, Rosemary’s baby, leading us in to false hope only to dash us to the earth later on. Her plans have murdered 479 people, including her own parents, her own flesh and blood. She shamelessly exploits the death of hundreds for her own financial gain, as if we won’t be able to find the hidden wire, the parachute, the jet pack that slows her as she nears the ground.
Just you wait, Jenny. We will find out. May God punish you for the slaughter of innocents you’ve concocted, for your shameless greed. We’re on to you. It’s only a matter of time before you are caught and brought to justice.
It escapes me why anyone could fall into this trap, but I understand the psychological impact of a disaster, of false hope. One cannot help but to shake their head at the gullibility of the people and pray that the answer will reveal itself soon.
I do not believe in Jenny Winters’ amazing story. I believe in the truth, and with our patience, the truth will be revealed.
*****************
I was not surprised when Jenny left after the indictment.
When she didn’t show up, the officers began a search. They started at her apartment first. I wasn’t there, but they raided the place top to bottom. They pulled drawers out of the dresser, as if she would be hiding in there. They opened the fridge and the pantry, yanked back the shower curtain, unmade the bed, pulled the cushions off the couch, opened the closets, the washer, dryer, and dishwasher. Jenny was nowhere to be found. (Later, they would go back and view security tape footage of her porch for the last 48 hours, but no one was seen jumping anywhere on the premises.)
Then they came to the clinic. They banged through all the bathroom stalls and prowled through all our offices, walking slowly and eyeing our desks and chairs as if they were going to make a break for it. They stalked through the clinic rooms and even the experimental chamber, though Dr. Saunders followed closely behind them, ready to unleash hell if they disrupted any of the carefully aligned instruments.
Lastly, they demolished Jenny’s desk. With blatant disregard, they rifled through all her files, demanding the master key from Saunders and opening the bottom drawers, seizing the folders they felt relevant. (Little did they know that as soon as he had heard, Saunders had sense enough to dash to the files and make copies. We had a backup copy of all Jenny’s papers sitting in the back of the freezer in the break room.)
They left then, to her favorite haunts – the skydiving school and drop zone, the public library, the smoothie shop, the parks. Jenny was nowhere to be found.
*****************
After the plane crash, I think Jenny was lost. She had never left the state without her parents before. She had never been anywhere without her parents. Despite her portrayal in the media, those who knew her in her hometown did not say she had no personality. She wasn’t especially quiet or shy. She was just normal.
There were several documentaries about Jenny right after the plane crash. I couldn’t sleep for a while after she went missing, so I went through and compiled all they had to say about her.
“She had a lovely singing voice,” says her church choir teacher. (After she fell from the sky, Jenny never raised her voice in song again.)
“Oh, she did like to sew,” says one of her friends. “At the Corn Festival, there’s this contest, to make a ball gown for the Corn Queen. One year Jenny sewed hers all out of corn shucks. She took the slimmest thread and she sewed it all up, it looked like a real prom gown, too. She filled out the underneath with crinolines and she had to sew it right on the mannequin. She won, of course, and come coronation day she had to sew it on Fanny Sue, too. She gave her this big lecture on how she had to sit just right, so she wouldn’t rip the dress, it was too funny. She was so talented with a needle and thread.”
“She made me laugh!” says another. “Always had her head in the clouds.”
“She didn’t much like to run with the boys,” said a football player. “Jenny was one of them sweet ones. A girl you took home to your momma. I don’t mean she were shy. She was… she had good manners.”
“Jennifer was one of our best students,” says Ms. Humphrey, the principal of her high school.
“I wouldn’t say the best,” counters the teacher of her grade. “The records are confidential, of course, but I would say a B average, around there. Always good quality work. Nothing wrong with it at all. Just not perfect.
“And nothing wrong socially, either,” she adds, shaking her finger at the camera. The entire tone of her voice says
I know what you want me to say, I know what you’ve been saying, and you’re wrong. You are not going to misquote me. “she was a perfectly normal student. Jennifer had friends. She was kind to her neighbors. She did well in class, she participated in clubs, went to school dances. There was not a darn thing wrong with that girl. She was not different in any way from anyone else.
“And I don’t mean that in a bad way, either. There is nothing wrong with normal. Jennifer was not a bland normal. A clean, healthy normal.”
*****************
So what happened up there, when the fuselage broke apart in the air? Did something change in Jenny’s body? Did the pressure change shock her system? Did she tap into some foreign evolutionary instinct we’ve never learned before?
Some of the more fanatical said that Jenny could not jump. She could fly. She had unlocked the secret of human flight.
Jenny was quite clear on that point. She did not fly. She did not jump. She fell.
*****************
Jenny remembers everything. She does not like to talk about it in detail. People say it’s because it never happened, but they are wrong. The “black box” recordings confirmed her story, and she spoke of what happened in great detail to the investigators, going over exactly what she heard and saw and felt.
DET. Did you fall or jump?
J.W. I fell.
DET. Are you sure about that?
J.W. Positive, sir.
DET. Can you describe it?
J.W. The wall had ripped open next to my seat. The floor tilted, and then I heard a crack, and the row had fallen off, and me and my seat and the seat next to me, which was empty by now as I already said, we were tumbling down. I was on my side at first, and the air was wooshing by, not terribly fast yet, it didn’t feel like, but it was very loud. So loud I couldn’t hear the explosions from the plane anymore. Then as we fell, the seats tipped forward, and I was flat facing the ground, and all my weight was against that seatbelt, and I was trying to grip the sides of the chair thinking oh, no, but my weight sank into it, and it teared and teared and then ripped and I was flying downwards, just me all alone in the sky, and I lost track of the seats and the plane and everything, it was just complete vertigo, falling.
I imagine there was a pause in the room after that. There is no mention of it in the transcript, but I just can’t imagine there wasn’t.
The next question is this:
DET. Do you remember la…. Do you remember, um…. The end of your fall?
J.J. No sir, I do not.
DET. Nothing after just falling through the air.
J.J. No sir.
DET. What is the next thing you remember?
J.J. Standing on the ground.
That is one part of Jenny’s story I do not believe. She could not have remembered all of that and not remembered hitting the ground. I think that she did. But it was such a personal, private moment, she is – was – never going to let us in on it.
But this, I admit, just may be my own personal speculation. There has never been any evidence to support this, and her demeanor when recalling that portion of her experience never differed greatly from any other time.
*****************
Jenny was never seen again. For a long time, I held on to my hope, as I know the rest of our team did. But after six months past, and then a year, our private fears evolved into a tacit agreement.
No evidence of fraud was found in the plane crash. No evidence of Jenny’s whereabouts was ever uncovered.
It is as if she vanished.
but the narrator doesn't. There's one or two very slight hints. But nope, that's the end of it. Where she is isn't really the point, anyway
