But?
BUT I MEAN, IF IT HAPPENS FOR A SOLID REASON, THEN YES, THAT IS IDEAL.
And a broken heart and self-loathing aren’t solid reasons?
NO. NO ONE WILL WANT TO READ ABOUT THAT.
A knock on her door triggered off an impulse to move off the bed, but she fought it bravely, instead loudly mumbling, “Commnnn,” which meant, of course, come in.
Leslie peeked her head in and Jess felt immediately annoyed. Meek little Leslie would knock on her own dorm room door before entering. Sheesh.
“I just wanted to make sure you were dressed.” When the door opened wider, Jess understood the reason for minding Jessica’s modesty.
How long had it been since Jessica had last seen Wendy in person? The woman still rocked an A-line skirt like nobody Jessica had ever seen could. Her hair was slicked back into a large knot high on her head, and her heels clacked loudly and shamelessly across the linoleum floor as she entered like she owned the place.
Which was close to the truth, since Wendy Peterman owned whatever room she walked into, even if it was a musty dorm room with empty pizza boxes stashed under the lower bunk.
Leslie followed her in and sat in her usual spot at her desk across from Jessica’s bed. Wendy didn’t bother sitting, but instead towered over Jessica with her fists on her hips. “You done?”
Jessica stared up at the woman, knowing she should sit up but unable to muster the strength. “Not yet.”
“Well you better get done. Because I just drove four hours down here on a Sunday to drag your depressed butt out of bed.”
Jessica muttered her new catch phrase: “What’s the point?”
Wendy huffed, but rather than responding, she turned to Leslie. “You just let her carry on this way all week?”
Leslie cowered. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
Wendy turned her body back toward Jess and her eyes fell on the stash of empty pizza boxes. “Okay, I know break-ups are hard or whatever,” she began, and Jess wondered if this was Wendy’s attempt at sympathy, “and I’m sure plenty of people stay in bed and miss class for a week after one, but you don’t get to. Here.” She stepped forward, reached in her purse and pulled out an envelope, handing it to Jessica. “I’ll save you the effort of opening it, since I know you don’t have energy to spare. It’s a get-well card from Jameson.”
Jess lifted the letter so she could see her name written in cursive on the front.
“That’s more than I deserve,” Jessica said miserably.
“Like hell it is. Someone shot that man in his face and you brought him back to life.”
“Wait,” Leslie interrupted. “Jameson Fractal? He sent you a get-well card?”
Wendy glanced over at Leslie like she’d forgotten the girl was there. “Yes.” Then she turned back to Jessica. “He wanted to come himself, but I told him not to screw up the production schedule of Jack Justice III on your account.”
“He was going to come here?!” Leslie said hysterically.
Wendy ignored her, and Jessica remembered why she kept this woman, this charitable harpy, around. Laser focus.
“That’s sweet of him, but still more than I deserve.”
“For the love of … Jessica McCloud. You are the daughter of God Himself, and you’re moping around like who you date even matters.”
Indignation provided the pop of energy Jess needed to prop herself up on her elbows. “It does matter!”
Wendy bit back a smug smile. “So I guess something does matter.”
Jess narrowed her eyes on the wily woman. “You tricked me.”
“Fine. Can I trick you out of bed and into the shower, too? It smells like you’re sweating out pure pepperoni.”
“How did you even know I was missing class? I have no friends, no one ever calls me, and Leslie is the only person who’s seen me like this.” She turned her head toward Leslie. “Did you call Wendy?”
Leslie shook her head adamantly, and before she could say anything, Wendy chimed in. “I came because Eugene ran a story about it this morning. So here I am on a Sunday, in your stank-ass dorm room, trying to convince the daughter of God that there’s a reason to keep on living.” She sighed but her posture remained straight and confident. “Okay, here’s the deal. We have two options if I’m going to put a tourniquet on this media situation. You either need to get out of bed, head into the world and put on your happy Jessica face—or any Jessica face, so long as you’re not just sitting around letting your legs atrophy—or we need to figure out how the hell Eugene is getting the dish on you so we can stem the flow and get on top of this until the daughter of the one who created everything finds a reason on the big, beautiful earth to shower.”
Okay, so Wendy had no pity for her. Fine. She didn’t deserve pity. But she certainly had no plans of getting out of bed any time soon. The thought alone exhausted her. “It could be anyone,” she said. “My fight with Chris wasn’t exactly quiet. Maybe Courtney heard about it from one of my—”
“Sh!” Wendy flapped her fingers and thumb together to indicate it was time for Jessica to stop talking. “I’m gonna spare you the effort. Because it’s not Courtney Wurst who’s been working with Eugene.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I do my research. And I knew you were going to blame her, so I decided to track her down before I came to your dorm. Girl hates Eugene Thornton. You can see it in her eyes.”
Jessica was puzzled. “Well, of course she hates Eugene Thornton. Everyone hates Eugene Thornton. That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t feed him info.”
“Sure, except I talked to her and realized that she knows Eugene and Jimmy are working together.”
Jessica waited for Wendy to explain, because that seemed like an argument for Courtney being the snitch. “And?”
“And I won’t go into details, but that girl is crazy, and she might actually hate Jimmy more than you do.”
“Wait what?”
Wendy nodded in similar disbelief. “Yeah, color me surprised. But I know it’s true. I mean, she hates you, too, but I think she actually hates Jimmy more.”
“But why—?”
Wendy raised her chin. “Do you need a reason? The point is that it’s not her. I’m sure it’s not.”
“Who else could it be, though?”
Leslie stood up from her chair. “Probably Carrie next-door. You know she’s a gossip?”
Jessica rolled onto her side to get a better look at Leslie. “Carrie? Why on earth would Carrie do that?” That was the dumbest guess.
Leslie shrugged. “I don’t know. You want me to go talk to her? I’ll go talk to her.” She started toward the door, but Wendy held out a frighteningly toned arm to stop her.
“Hang out a while, Leslie. Maybe you can help us brainstorm.”
Leslie looked up into Wendy’s eyes. They might have been on eye level had it not been for Wendy’s Stiletto heels. Leslie seemed uncomfortable. “Um, okay.”
Wendy kept her arm extended to keep Leslie corralled. “Go on, Jessica. Surely you can figure out who’s been ratting you out to Eugene. Was there anyone who was around or who you told about your philosophy class and the party and your fight with Chris and staying in bed?”
“No. Only—”
Oh. Okay. Now she understood where Wendy was leading her. Damn, it’d taken her a while to arrive there. Wendy probably knew it before she even set foot on campus, though.
Leslie squirmed in place.
“What the hell, Leslie?” Jessica asked, swinging her legs over the side of the bed to get a better look at her rat of a roommate.
“Huh? I don’t know what you mean?”
Jessica glanced at Wendy, who provided encouragement with a sharp smile and nod.
“What do I mean? I mean you ratted me out to Eugene? Why would you do that? I trusted you!”
Leslie’s fearful act melted from her face and she scoffed. “No, you didn’t. Or maybe you trusted me, but you certainly didn’t like me. You’ve
been holier than thou since we first moved in together.” She crossed her arms.
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“Oh please. You treat me like your errand boy. You made me take Jameson off my wall just because you didn’t want to look at him.”
Jessica felt her mouth drop open, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. “Yeah. Because I saw his jaw explode. Do you not understand trauma or—no, it doesn’t matter. What did he promise you?”
“Satisfaction.”
Jess’s mind flashed a picture of Leslie and Eugene with hands and mouths intertwined and her gag reflex got the best of her.
“No, not like that,” Leslie corrected. “The personal satisfaction of letting the rest of the world in on my own disappointment, letting them know you’re not perfect and you’re actually not even that good.”
“I never claimed to be perfect!” Jessica protested.
Wendy remained a silent observer throughout, even taking a step back from Leslie to watch the thing play out.
“But you sure didn’t try very hard to correct other people when they said you were perfect,” Leslie countered.
Jessica stood up, all her blood cycling torrentially in her veins. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You don’t know anything.” She shut her eyes to collect herself and when she opened them again she laughed dryly. “You know what? You’re fucked. Because I’m not giving you another scrap of information about me, and when Eugene realizes you can’t be his loyal source anymore, you’d be lucky if he just forgot about you. But more likely, he’ll expose you as his source, because he’s a human piece of trash, and no one will ever trust you again.”
It seemed like a stretch, but it broke through Leslie’s smugness, which was the whole point. The girl’s nostrils flared and her already thin lips became two short, white lines.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, you … sinner!” She pointed her finger at Jessica, who felt like a small dagger had been thrown from the end of it and stuck in her throat.
Wendy chuckled amusedly before her mirth ended abruptly. “Okay. Get gone.” She chased Leslie toward the door, and once it was shut behind her, the PR rep leaned with her back against it, giving Jessica the silence and space she needed to breathe.
I miss Miranda. I miss Chris.
“Well,” Wendy said after a few minutes of silence, “at least you’re out of bed. Thank God for wrath, I guess.”
The rage sustained her for two solid days before panic started to set in at how far behind she was in all her classes from missing a single week. Panic, it turned out, was just as invigorating, if not more, than her desire to smite Leslie every time the girl had the balls to inhabit their shared room.
Jess had requested an emergency relocation for Leslie with the fine, lazy student workers at the campus housing office, but they’d informed her that she couldn’t request it for another student. She could only request that she be moved. But when they’d mentioned an online form, Jess had happily left and hurried to the dining hall with her laptop to fill out a request to move on Leslie’s behalf. That was ten days ago and the application was still pending.
That was fine, though, because Jessica hadn’t spent much time at her dorm lately anyway. The library was her new home. And when she wasn’t at the library, she was either sneaking into the honors building to steal coffee from those entitled snobs or simply buying herself a Starbucks at the student center. Of course that option required a walk down to the corner store and a scratch off. She sure had good luck. Inexplicably good luck. The kind of luck that created a palpable cognitive dissonance with her lack of belief in God. The kind of luck that made the stoner clerk eye her suspiciously and switch up his routine each time she came to purchase her ticket, as if she were pulling a fast one on him. One time the clerk even went so far as to not let her touch the scratch off, revealing the $10 prize himself before he shelled out the cash. Her luck was also the kind that made the voice in her head chatter with, CONVINCED YET? And I’M ALREADY FINANCING YOUR EDUCATION WITH THESE THINGS. GREED IS A DEADLY SIN, YOU KNOW.
But it was worth it for a Venti White Chocolate Mocha when she most needed it, which was all the time lately.
She tuned in and out of what Ms. Gershwin was saying about some dead white male philosopher, and focused most of her mental energy on her laptop instead, as she powered through the conclusion of her psychology paper on experimental treatments for schizophrenia. Her conclusion was thus: none of it conclusively worked. But plenty of trials hinted that various methods could work in certain patients and given the right environment. She planned on trying all of the methods, though she didn’t include that in her essay.
If there was any silver lining from Leslie’s betrayal and Jessica’s self-discovery of being an insane person, it was that she’d reconnected with Miranda. Miranda never hesitated to pass judgement on just the people Jessica wanted her to judge. While most of the week had been spent in scramble-to-catch-up mode, what few mental breaks Jessica allowed herself had been occupied by phone calls with her best friend. The calls were therapy in and of themselves.
How were they so in sync, even after so much time apart? Even as Jessica floundered and Miranda flourished?
Which presented in Jessica’s mind an interesting question: Was Miranda living the life Jessica could have had, if only she weren’t mentally sick? It seemed possible. Incredibly possible. And Jessica added it to her pile of motivation to get healthy again that kept her going through the long days of catch-up and general misery while she waited for Chris to call her up and ask for their break to be over. She hated waiting. But after the way she’d treated him with the cheating and yelling, she simply had no moral ground to stand on when it came to asking for them to get back together; she’d just have to wait for him to initiate it, and so far, he hadn’t.
But that was probably okay, though, because she wasn’t sure what she’d say anyway. She was still mostly convinced she was a schizo, and he wasn’t remotely open to that possibility, outside of having called her crazy during their argument in her room, which she knew, now that she’d had plenty of time to cool down, he hadn’t really meant.
She finished a crap first draft of her essay and tuned back into the class as best she could while Danny’s head remained annoyingly in her periphery. The asshole hadn’t even apologized for trying to slip it in. Her first day back to class, she’d almost bumped right into him coming in through the auditorium doors, and his expression showed immediate signs of warm recognition before his brain seemed to catch up, at which point his eyes darted away and he scrambled to a seat as far away from hers as he could. Not even an apology.
But being in a class she hated with a boy she also hated was still better than what fresh hell awaited her outside the doors of the liberal arts building.
One thing at a time, Jessica.
If only she could convince them that she wasn’t God’s daughter.
She reminisced about the days when they just called her the Antichrist. Somehow, their insistence that she was actually Christ was worse.
As she packed up her laptop and headed out toward the Quad, she set her mind on honors building coffee. It wasn’t like they had bouncers outside the student lounge. No one was going to challenge that she wasn’t an honors student. People assumed she was God’s daughter. Surely they also assumed that meant she was an honors student.
Her new unwanted entourage was sitting on a bench outside the doors when she exited into the sunlight. Dressed from head to toe in white, they grabbed their signs and quickly stood, clearing throats and brushing off grime from the bench. One of them put out her cigarette on the rock wall nearby.
Jessica tried to ignore it all, thinking instead about how much sugar she would put in her coffee. She was thinking along the lines of “a lot” but “a shitload” was also starting to sound good. Those smart assholes better not have drank it all before she got there. She’d be damned if she would be forced to make a ne
w pot herself.
The hollering from the sign-holders began.
“White Light welcomes home the prodigal daughter! Do not turn your back on the Lord, Jessica!”
“Where you walk, so walketh the Lord.”
“Repent your swine-like ways! Return to God, Jessica!”
Her eye began twitching. That was new. Not entirely surprising, but new.
If there were such a thing as fashionable blinders for humans, Jessica would have invested in them in a heartbeat if it saved her from enduring the stares of fellow students as they watched her parade pass. Jessica neared the busiest intersection of the Quad, the one that always left her on edge. It was like passing between two judgmental Gods. On one side, the English building, where professors and grad students stood and smoked because life was awful and meaningless, so why prolong it with healthy lungs? And on the other side, the philosophy building crumbling from the inside out, not unlike philosophy majors themselves. Not as much smoking on the philosophy side, but much more public reading while sitting on the stone wall, book covers held high and at an angle that was not entirely conducive to reading but highly accommodating for others to see what was being read. And in the middle of this competition of which major was the least useful, the life-size statue of alumni Lyndon Baines Johnson, the mutual contempt for which might have been the only thing keeping the philosophers and writers from an all-out war of words with one another.
“Jesus walks beside you through the darkest night, Jessica! Take his hand! Follow him to the clearing!”
She refrained from asking how they knew about her mushroom-induced hallucination.
A shoulder crashed into Jessica’s, coming from the opposite direction, and the pain jolted through her, putting her into the red. Even further into the red than she’d been all week, that is. The flow of traffic carried her on the English side of the statue, and her eyes landed on Professor Stewart, smoking his cigarette as smugly as one could, that bastard. Even though she was now more inclined to agree with his assessment of her personal essay last semester, she still hated the guy for being a dick about it. His gaze rolled over her, eyes not hitching in the slightest as they passed over her, like she was just another face in the crowd of misguided students. What an asshole.
Nu Alpha Omega Page 16