Rated: M [R] (just to be safe) for foul language and mature themes.

Jennifer and Needy created by Diablo Cody—everything else: mine. It's all fictitious. A portion of this fic is also based on a verse in the song "Through the Trees," lyrics by Ryan Levine.

Alien Life Forms by Diablo Priest

If I could through myself / Set your spirit free / I'd lead your heart away / See you break, break away / Into the light… —U2, "Bad."

} Lezzies {

Fuck.

Jennifer always knew about such things. The first time Needy heard the word in the schoolyard, she thought Billy, the other kid, had made it up because it sounded funny. Jennifer had to show her what it meant—well, not demonstrate it actually; but Jennifer knew where her mother's current boyfriend hid his porno magazines. They were in the bottom drawer of her mother's nightstand. Covertly, Jennifer led Needy into the room. Both girls knelt, like little cherubs, side by side before the night table with their heads bowed as if praying. Jennifer slid the drawer open slowly and quietly. The top magazine was Guns & Ammo; she laid it aside. Underneath it were the skin mags, she picked one up; and flipping it open, she whispered:

"That's what fucking is," and she tapped the page.

Poor Needy. She wasn't prepared for those images. The man was frightening—all tattooed with a fierce-looking bald head. In some of the photos, the female model seemed to be crying out in pain. With all that, though, it was two pictures of the young woman naked on the bed by herself that Needy couldn't keep her eyes off. And it wasn't just that she had dark hair and blue eyes like Jennifer.

Always keenly preceptive of other people's actions, Jennifer noticed Needy's fascination with the pictures of the naked girl on the bed.

"You're a lezzie," Jennifer said teasingly to Needy. "You'll steam up your glasses, lezzie." And she pulled on one of Needy's blonde pigtails.

"What's a lezzie?" Needy asked in a soft voice.

"A girl who likes other girls."

"But I like you, Jennifer," said Needy, pushing up her glasses. "What's wrong with that?"

"Not that kinda like," Jennifer said, flipping the pages of the magazine, which she had obviously perused before, to more pictures, "this kinda like. It's dirty."

"Mommy says if you do dirty things, you go to hell."

"Yup."

The new pictures were of two artificially endowed blonde girls frolicking on a beach blanket beside a pool, their legs spread wide in nearly every shot.

"Those are lezzies?" Needy asked, looking at the photos wide-eyed.

"Yup," Jennifer replied. "They say are mommies are lezzies."

"Really?" Needy said. "Why?"

"Because they've been friends for so long, I guess."

"They are not lezzies: they have boyfriends."

"Yup."

"What are you girls doing?" Gracie the baby-sitter shouted from another room. "You're awful quiet."

"We're not doin' nothing," Jennifer shouted back as she quickly replaced the magazines and closed the drawer; then the girls scampered back to Jennifer's room.