Jennifer character study
Jennifer is acutely aware that Needy is pretty.
Oh, she hides it well. Jennifer makes sure of that. Needy hides behind ugly glasses and hunched shoulders and outfits carefully selected to ensure that she could never take the spotlight off her biff. On some level, she knows she’s beautiful, and she knows she’s beautiful enough to have to make an effort to keep all the attention on Jennifer, where it belongs.
It majorly pisses her off. Only Needy’s fawning, her desperate eagerness to please, takes the edge off.
Because Needy is pretty in that fairy tale princess way, with her sweet face and her big doe eyes. Even her name, Anita, was prettier than regular old Jennifer (until Jennifer came up with a childish, slightly demeaning nickname that the whole town now used, half a putdown and half a brand of ownership). She’s the kind of pretty little girls want to grow up to be (the kind of pretty Jennifer had wanted to grow up to be, like a fucking Barbie doll or a Snowflake Queen), not the kind of hot that made boys way below her level horny enough to shoot their shot and boys too old for her willing to break laws to fuck her.
Needy’s pretty enough to make Jennifer, the sexiest girl in Devil’s Kettle, jealous. And even Jennifer can’t always tell in what way. There’s the kind of jealous that made her tell Needy not to show off her boobs, for fear of being outshone, and then there’s the kind of jealous that results from Jennifer noticing Needy’s boobs and seething over that loser Chip getting to see them and touch them more than she does.
Because Needy has Jennifer wrapped around her pinkie, even if she doesn’t know it. That’s why Jennifer works so hard to keep Needy wrapped around hers just as tight.
Needy’s the only person in this puny, hick town whose company Jennifer actually enjoys, the only person she values. There’s a reason mousy little Needy has a long-term boyfriend, where Jennifer doesn’t. Bitchy as she is, she knows she could keep any number of boys eating out of her hand if she actually wanted them there. The problem is that she can’t stand having them around for longer than it takes to get off. Any hint of something more than a fling and they get entitled to her time, her company, her affection, when she’s always reserved the lion’s share of that for Needy.
It’s so easy to string them along and break their hearts, to hurt them, to hurt anyone, really. Except Needy.
Sometimes Needy makes her so jealous and angry and insecure that Jennifer wants to hurt her, wants to see that pretty face stained with tears, wants to kiss them off and taste the salt on Needy’s lips. Wants to feel her smile and laugh into Jennifer’s mouth again, the way she had when they played boyfriend and girlfriend. But then Needy just had to ruin it when she got a real one, didn’t she? Needy was always spoiling Jennifer’s fun.
And then she wakes up by the waterfall covered in blood and she’s hurting and scared and hungry, so she goes to Needy. Of course she goes to Needy. Where else would she go?
And Needy’s scared and Needy’s pretty and she smells so damn good and for a second Jennifer wants to taste her more than she’s ever wanted before. She feels her teeth go sharp and she gets so close to biting her neck but she’s so desperate not to hurt her that she turns the bite into a kiss, instead.
Then she disappears and eats someone and feels nothing at all. He’s not Needy, he’s a boy. Jennifer doesn’t give a shit about hurting boys. She’s only ever cared about what she can get from boys, and indestructability and super strength are totally better than free dinner and mediocre dick.
She’s not so scared of hurting Needy now that she knows she can have her, can smell the desire on her. Jennifer had thought that maybe Needy was just so desperate to keep her happy that she’d hold her hand and let her touch her and play boyfriend and girlfriend just to appease her, and the thought of being secretly unwanted had been humiliating. Enraging.
But now she knows that she has power in that way over Needy, in addition to all the other ways, Jennifer doesn’t feel so reluctant to play cat and mouse. She’s always loved games, and this one she’ll definitely win.
But Needy does the unthinkable. Needy says no.
Jennifer doesn’t force the issue, even though she could. She wants to be wanted. That’s the whole point.
Instead, she decides to play with Needy’s toy before she breaks it. Chip will be easy. Jennifer could have ended their sad little relationship whenever she wanted, because she’s better than Needy. But Chip refuses to play, and she breaks him so that Needy can’t play with anyone else, just like she used to in the sandbox.
Jennifer doesn’t seriously consider eating Needy, even when she threatens to. She’s convinced that she’ll win this game, just like all the others, until Needy crosses her out with her butch-ass boxcutter. Then Jennifer feels real fear, for the first time, that Needy doesn’t want her at all anymore.
So she bites her, and fuck, she tastes as good as Jennifer always fantasized she would.
Then Needy rips off her biff necklace and stabs her through the fucking tit, and Jennifer dies knowing that, if Needy had really wanted to, she could have won every game they ever played.
Because this time, the one time it really mattered, Jennifer had let her.