Jilliane Hoffman - Pretty Little Things

Like many of us in our everyday lives, Moses must make a difficult decision. A terrible decision. One that many will find objectionable, but yet Moses – well, Moses knows it is necessary. A difficult choice, but a necessary one. What does he tell them? What?

When he was done, the man turned from his work and put his brush into the turpentine mixture to soak. Next to the TV was his computer. He got up from the La-Z-Boy and moved to the swivel desk chair. His hands were shaking just a little as he rubbed a stubbly five o’clock shadow with fingers that were still wet with paint. On the screen before him, the pretty girl sat on her pink bed in her pink bedroom, surrounded by movie stars, pirates, and vampires, chatting on the phone while she tried to paint her toenails.

He tells them, ‘Slay, therefore, every male child and every woman who has had intercourse with a man.’

The man licked his lips and swallowed hard. For just a second he felt ashamed, wondering why it was he thought the things he thought. But it was too late to get a conscience. Neither his thoughts nor his deeds were pure. His soul was already damned.

But you may spare and keep for yourselves all girls who had no intercourse with a man .

He typed something on the computer and hit ‘send’, then watched as the pretty girl hopped off the bed and hurried with a smile across the room to her computer.

It was a simple question, but it had certainly gotten her attention, hadn’t it?

It always did.

r u online?

Lainey Emerson nibbled on the ragged nub of Crazy Glue and broken press-on nail that was still stuck to her thumb and stared hard at the computer. With her free hand on the mouse, she guided the arrow across the screen. Her palms were melting, and her heart was beating so hard and so fast it felt as if it was gonna push right out of her chest. The thousands of butterflies trapped in the pit of her stomach furiously fluttered their wings as the arrow approached the ‘send’ box. All she had to do was just hit the button. Hit the button and send the stupid two-sentence email that’d literally taken her – she looked at the clock in the bottom right corner of the screen and grimaced – hours to word just right. And still she hesitated, rolling the mouse back and forth in sweaty fingers.

You should never put anything in writing or in pictures that you wouldn’t want to see or read on the front cover of the New York Times, Elaine .

The ominous words sounded so loud and so clear in her head, Lainey could swear she smelled the stink of cigarettes on her mom’s breath as she preached them. She pushed back from her desk, shook the dire, ‘Don’t learn things the hard way like me!’ Parental Advisory Warning out of her brain and looked around her now almost-dark bedroom. Long shadows blacked out the faces on the dozen or so movie posters that covered her walls. Outside, all that remained of the late afternoon sun as it sunk into the Everglades were a couple of faint orange ribbons.

6:12? Was it really that late? She suddenly heard the quiet and realized the boisterous shouts from the roller-hockey game that’d been playing in the street all afternoon had stopped –the players and cheerleaders all long gone home to dinner and homework. Two things Lainey still hadn’t even started yet. And Bradley? She hadn’t heard from her little brother in a while, either. A long while, now that she thought about it. She chewed the inside of her lip. Usually a good thing, but so not a good thing now that her mom was gonna be home soon …

The front door opened and Lainey prayed it wasn’t her mother. It closed with a slam. Thirty seconds later gunfire erupted in the living room as Brad resumed blowing away cops on Grand Theft Auto , the dumb video game that he had to play at full blast just to annoy her. Anger quickly displaced relief and she regretted wasting a good prayer on her brother’s obnoxious wellbeing. At least he was home and she hadn’t lost him. She raised the volume on her Good Charlotte CD to drown out the screams and machine-gun fire and turned her attention back to the computer. She so needed to stay in the moment or she’d never be able to do this.

The picture on the screen glowed in the dark room, waiting impatiently to be shot off into cyberspace. A pretty girl she barely recognized, with sleek dark hair and smoky eyes, smiled provocatively back at her. A pretty girl Lainey still sheepishly thought looked nothing like her. Tight jeans and a midriffbaring T-shirt showed off a slim but curvy shape. Full, glossy red lips matched equally glossy, long red fingernails, which were posed confidently on her hips, like an America’s Next Top Model contestant – her friend Molly’s idea. Normally Lainey didn’t like how she looked in any picture, but, then again, normally she didn’t look anything like she did in this picture. Normally her waist-length unruly chestnut hair was pulled back in a low ponytail or put up in a clip, her boring brown eyes hidden behind wire-rimmed glasses. Normally she didn’t wear any make-up or jewelry or high heels or long red fingernails. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she wasn’t allowed.

But besides looking a little older than she was – and a little, well, sexy – Lainey rationalized that the picture wasn’t that bad that she wouldn’t want to see it in the newspaper. Some MySpace photos were a hell of a lot worse than this. It wasn’t like she was naked or doing porn or anything. The most you could see besides her stomach and the fake belly-button ring was the pink outline of the padded bra she’d stolen from her older sister Liza, under the white T-shirt that she’d also stolen from Liza. Maybe the jeans were kinda low and the shirt kinda tight, but …

Lainey shook the creeping, noisy doubts out of her head. She’d already taken the picture. She’d already broken the rule. And the truth was, she looked pretty hot, if she did say so herself. The real worry at this point was, what would Zach think when he saw it?

Zach. ElCapitan. Just the thought of him made Lainey’s hands sweat. She looked at the picture taped to the side of the computer screen. Blond hair, bright blue eyes, the quirkiest, sweetest smile, and just the cutest shadow of face gruff. And muscles … wow! She could see them even through his Hollister T-shirt. Nobody she knew in seventh grade had even the hope of either a muscle or a hair on their scrawny bodies. Since she’d met Zach a few weeks ago in a Yahoo chat room for the new Zombieland movie, Lainey had been forming a mental picture of what he might look like. This fabulous, funny guy who liked the same movies – even the really bad ones – listened to the same music, hated the same subjects, distrusted the same type of plastic people she did, had the same problems with his own parents. It would be too much to ask for him to be anything more than a geek with bad acne and even worse hair and an uncle who’d pulled strings to get him on the varsity football team. But then last Friday Zach had finally sent her a picture, and the very first thing she’d thought was, ‘Oh my God, this guy could model for Abercrombie & Fitch!’ He was that amazingly good looking. And what was even more amazing was that this totally cool, freakin’ captain of the football team with model looks liked her . That’s when she knew reciprocating with a snapshot of her own boring self just wasn’t gonna happen, especially since that self was still three years away from the sixteen she’d told him she was. A small fib that would definitely matter to a senior in high school being scouted by colleges. She knew he’d never be into that, and their friendship – or whatever it was that was happening between them – would be over before she could hit the reply button to his Dear Jane email. If he even bothered to send her one.