The Beginning (Jessica Christ Book 1)

by H. Claire Taylor

  “It means having adult … um, what’s the word? Adult … ? Shit, my brain is lagging right now. It means fuckin’. Where’d you hear that? Your Daddy teach you that?”

  While she only had a general idea of what fucking meant—mostly gathered from comments she overheard her mother make to friends over the phone about people they knew—Jess had a pretty good feeling about this. She held back a smile but nodded enthusiastically. “Yep. He may’ve mentioned that Mrs. Wurst and Jimmy Dean had been knocking boots for a few years.”

  Destinee cackled and slapped her knee. “Ha!” She stared ahead at the garage door, a plan clearly formulating. “Ha!” She slapped the steering wheel with both hands. “You’re a smart one, Jess. Plotting, but smart.” She hurriedly tossed her phone and wallet into her purse. “I have a phone call to make, and thankfully not to your cranky old grandma.”

  “Mrs. Wurst?”

  Destinee nodded and stepped out of the car. Jess grabbed her backpack and followed. Pausing at the front door, Destinee turned to her daughter. “How do you feel about pizza for dinner?”

  “Hell yes!” Jess couldn’t remember the last time they’d ordered pizza on a Monday.

  * * *

  When Jess woke the next morning, the events of the afternoon before didn’t seem so grand. The shine had worn off, and now she knew she might have even bigger problems. Would Trent and Courtney’s teasing just double? There was no way of knowing, so Jess resigned herself to having to find out the hard way. With any luck, she could use the pointers she picked up from her mom’s fight to help her through the day, if need be.

  At least Mom won the fight. Jess could feel some pride in that, she supposed. Every time she thought back to the way Destinee had pulled Mrs. Wurst from her minivan bun-first, a strange swell of pride expanded in Jess’s chest. Maybe someday she would have the courage to do something like that to someone who deserved it. It seemed like a better option than smiting, anyway.

  As she stepped into the classroom, her eyes automatically searched for the Wurst twins. But they weren’t there yet. Miranda was, though, and greeted her friend the same as always, with a smile and a small wave. Jess couldn’t wait to tell her about the fight.

  She got two steps into the room before Mrs. Thomas looked up from her seat at the desk, stood, and hurried over, catching Jessica before she made it even halfway to Miranda. Jess let the teacher gently guide her back toward the door, out of earshot of the other students. “Are you okay?” she asked with a calm intensity, resting a hand on Jess’s shoulder.

  Why was she asking that? Did she know about the fight?

  Please, of course she did. This was Mooretown. Everyone knew everyone else’s business. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “You know your mother shouldn’t have done that, right?”

  Her condemnation sent ice water down through Jess’s spine. Any argument that Destinee shouldn’t have beat the ever-living crap out of Mrs. Wurst had to be fundamentally flawed. Sure, fighting could’ve gotten Destinee in trouble with the police if Jess hadn’t provided useful blackmail, but even God had been all for the violent confrontation, and it did seem only fair.

  But here was Mrs. Thomas, whose opinion Jess valued above all others’, maybe even God’s, acting as if pummeling Trent and Courtney’s mom was anything other than the best course of action. Shame and anger mingled in her chest, but she wasn’t sure why she was ashamed or with whom she was angry.

  “Violence is not the way to solve problems,” Mrs. Thomas added.

  Jess shrugged her teacher’s hand off of her shoulder. “Sometimes it is.”

  Mrs. Thomas smiled kindly, in a way that told Jess she was not being taken seriously. “It’s not the best way.”

  “Sometimes it is,” Jess repeated, feeling herself grow angrier. “Even God uses violence to get his point across. Mrs. Wurst deserved what she got. You should’ve seen the smug look on her face—at the White Light Church and when she was sitting in her stupid minivan. She’s worse than her stupid kids.”

  Jess wondered for a moment if she’d pushed her favorite teacher too far, if Mrs. Thomas might finally get mad at her after all these years. But she didn’t. Rather than becoming angry, Mrs. Thomas chewed her top lip and shook her head slowly. “Jess, this isn’t like you. It doesn’t surprise me that your mother resorted to fighting, but I know you, and I know you’re above it.”

  Was that supposed to be a compliment? Her arms shook with adrenaline. “Maybe you don’t know me, then.”

  Jess walked past Mrs. Thomas and found a seat at the back of the classroom where she set down her backpack, took out her notebook, and waited for Miranda to join her.

  Her friend took it in stride, collecting her own notebook and backpack, and relocating without any direct prompting.

  “What was that about?” Miranda whispered as she lowered herself into a desk next to Jess.

  Mrs. Thomas returned to her desk like nothing had happened and set in on correcting papers.

  Jess kept her eyes on the woman, though, because rebellion was new territory, and she needed to be prepared for whatever came next. “My mom beat up Mrs. Wurst yesterday after school.”

  The look on Miranda’s face was priceless. Her eyes jolted wide, her mouth opened, frozen for a moment before a huge grin spread over it, then she snapped it shut to hold back her excitement. “And you didn’t call me right away? I need to know everything! Now!”

  That was more in line with the reaction Jess had hoped for from anyone who heard about the incident.

  Jessica was listing the toppings on the double supreme pizza when Trent and Courtney slunk into the classroom and took their places in the seats farthest away from Miranda and herself. She could’ve sworn she saw Trent limping slightly. Courtney definitely winced when she tried to sit.

  Mrs. Thomas noticed the abnormalities too, and caught Jessica’s eye, giving her a don’t-you-feel-bad look. With an unexpected pang of guilt stabbing her in the sternum, Jess was forced to admit that maybe, just possibly, Mrs. Thomas had a point.

  Why do I feel bad for them? They deserved it.

  She’d posed the question to herself, not expecting a reply, but she got one anyway.

  THEY DID.

  Then why do I feel bad?

  BECAUSE YOU CAN FEEL BAD FOR PEOPLE WHO GET WHAT THEY DESERVE.

  So was it wrong for Mom to beat up Mrs. Wurst?

  There was stillness in her mind, and Jessica wondered if God had vanished on her again.

  Then: IF IT WAS WRONG, I DON’T WANT TO BE RIGHT.

  Ugh. She wished he had vanished.

  So maybe she could feel sorry Trent and Courtney and still kind of hate them. Maybe those emotions could go together somehow.

  Either way, she didn’t have to relate to the Wurst twins in class, and with both in lunch detention for the week, she got to enjoy her food without having to worry about accidentally feeling sorry for them.

  During math class that afternoon, they practiced multiplying three-digit numbers. Jess found it frustratingly easy, like most math, and was forced to find ways to keep herself preoccupied if not entertained once she’d finished her worksheet. She started by calculating the number of days until her twelfth birthday. One hundred and fifty. Then she worked out an equation.

  (33 – 12) x 365 = 7,665

  Then she counted the leap days in the next twenty-one years and built a more complete equation.

  7,665 + 5 + 150 = 7,820

  She sighed. Fewer than eight thousand days, unless she could find a way to make herself much less killable or much more likable. She wasn’t sure which one seemed like more of an impossible task.

  12 A.G.C.

  Seven thousand four hundred and eighteen days left. Jessica scribbled it down in her notebook next to the date and her name. Twelve years old was a little soon to start worrying about death, but she took that fear and slipped it in the massive mental filing cabinet labeled “weird things in my life.” She was closer to seven thousand days than she was
eight thousand, now, and she couldn’t believe how time had snuck by.

  Without realizing it, she’d almost completed her first school year at Marymoore Junior High without anything too terrible happening.

  While she hadn’t found ways to be less killable, she’d learned a few tricks to be more likable—laughing at other people’s jokes, complimenting her cooler classmates’ clothes and hair, and hiding her grades from everyone but Miranda, who had promised to be better about not blurting them out. But most of all, Jess had learned that the key to being liked was to never say anything about herself.

  It’d gotten her through three-quarters of the year with minimal grief, so she intended to do it for the remaining 7,418 days of her life.

  Mr. Foster, her seventh-grade science teacher, waved at the students from the front of the classroom to get their attention one last time before the end of the school day. The room was by no means quiet or focused, but he dove into his announcement anyway. “Now before you leave for the weekend, I need all of you to listen closely. I need each of you to take one of these permission slips home to get your parent or guardian to sign it. You need to bring this back signed Monday morning. I cannot stress that enough. You need to get this signed. Write it on your hand if you have to, just do it.”

  He had their attention now. Mr. Foster was a young, clean-cut man with a nest of short blond curls on his crown that Jess always wished he would grow out. He was only a few years out of college and seemed much too tired and apathetic for someone his age. His usual announcements consisted of a monotone explanation ending with, “or whatever,” so the fact that he stressed the importance of this meant it was something big. So big, in fact, that it required a parent signature. Only one other time that year had a permission slip seemed so important, and that was when Ms. Morris wanted to show Lincoln, a PG-13 film, in social studies and compare it to primary source documents. Despite the fact that the movie was about something everyone knew would be dull, the fact that it was PG-13 had caused quite a stir among her classmates. Students became divided into two distinct social groups: those whose parents allowed them to watch PG-13 and those whose parents were real jerks. Jess wasn’t sure where she fell in the groups, because she didn’t watch a lot of movies. But she couldn’t imagine her mother ever telling her not to watch one because she wasn’t old enough.

  Destinee almost never bothered reading the permission slips before signing them, so whatever this one was that Mr. Foster began handing out, Jess was sure it would be no big deal.

  At least Mr. Foster was their science teacher, so Jess felt confident that it wouldn’t be another history movie. Social studies was always Jessica’s least favorite subject, for one main reason: God loved providing commentary.

  ARE YOU KIDDING ME? MENTALLY UNSTABLE? MARY TODD WAS A SAINT. YOU KNOW WHAT I HEARD LINCOLN SAY ABOUT SLAVES ONCE? …

  It usually devolved into gossip that Jess didn’t care much for. Benjamin Franklin had a thing for feet, John D. Rockefeller was known by his closest friends for being able to speak backward in German and so on and so forth, until Jess couldn’t remember any of the important information for her tests, like dates and who killed whom.

  Mr. Foster paced up and down the rows of desks, handing a slip of paper to each student. “Seeing as how you’re now in the Battle Royale we call junior high, your bodies are changing, et cetera, et cetera, and the state of Texas wants you to learn the bare minimum about sex so that you can feel really bad about having it and end up with lots of kids before you’re ready.”

  When Mr. Foster placed the slip of paper face down on her desk, Jess swiped it up, flipped it over, and started reading the information.

  Sex education.

  Finally.

  Now she might actually understand what God was talking about half the time. Chris Riley—he’d dropped the -topher at some point during the previous summer—raised his hand from beside her, and when Mr. Foster finished handing out the papers and looked up, he called on the boy.

  “What does the word ab— ab-stin-ence mean?”

  Mr. Foster leaned back on his desk and sighed heavily. “It means that you shouldn’t have sex until you’re married, at which point I’m sure you can easily flip the off switch on your lifelong shame mechanism and enjoy years of wonderful fulfilling relations with your hetero, God-fearing spouse.”

  Judging by the look on Chris’s face, that didn’t answer his question, but Mr. Foster was clearly done talking about it. “Remember, you have to turn that back in. And make sure your parents know that there’s a screening tomorrow night. Here. At the school. So they can approve all the material you’ll be shown, in case they’re still under the delusion that they can protect you from exposure to what they deem inappropriate while also giving you a smartphone to use at your leisure.”

  Mr. Foster always talked like that. The only time he didn’t seem so tired and agitated was when he was talking about science; everything else in life seemed to drain him, especially anything relating to Texas, education, administration, parents, testing, race relations, religion, and young people.

  He was Jess’s favorite teacher at Marymoore.

  Once he had written their homework for the weekend on the board, he turned to the class and dismissed them with, “Go forth and abstain!”

  She slid her permission slip into her backpack and walked out of the class with Miranda, Sandra, Courtney, and a new girl named Emma who had moved from California at the start of the school year (and whose Unofficial Devil Test results were, of course, inconclusive). She was pretty, blonde (though only through the use of harsh chemicals), and immediately Sandra’s best friend.

  “In Cali, we had sex ed back in third grade,” said Emma. “I’m sure I already know everything.”

  Jess had enjoyed the fascinating interplay in her new group of friends once Emma had shown up on the first day with her curled hair, golden-tan skin, blue eyes, and—most noteworthy of all—breasts. Everyone had flocked to her, and the fact that she didn’t hate Jess was probably the only reason why Jess was allowed around now. In fact, on two occasions, Emma had actually been nice to Jess, once complimenting the natural highlights in her ash brown hair, and later proclaiming that she wanted to be in Jess’s book group for language arts because Jess was, “the smartest girl in the class.” That last one had clearly left Courtney raw, but the Wurst girl obviously craved nothing more than Emma’s approval, so no retribution had come Jessica’s way because of it.

  “But like, even before third grade I already knew what sex was,” Emma tacked on for good measure.

  “Oh yeah, me too,” Courtney chimed in. “Not that I’ve had sex ed … Although we did have this speaker come talk to us about sex in Youth last year, but I mean, I already knew everything before that.”

  Jess looked at Miranda, who rolled her eyes subtly. Good. She wasn’t the only one who wasn’t buying what Courtney was selling.

  “Sex is so gross, though,” Courtney said. “Like, sooo gross. And it’s basically the biggest sin you can commit. You know who has sex outside of marriage? Animals. Reverend Dean says that if we want to be any better than gross, lowly animals, we need to not have sex until marriage.”

  And there it was.

  Mentioning Jimmy had become Courtney’s only way to take a stab at Jess without Emma catching wind of infighting. The tactic was similarly effective in their classes where Emma wasn’t present, because Courtney knew Mrs. Thomas—now Assistant Principal Thomas—couldn’t discipline her for simply mentioning her reverend’s name.

  “I dunno,” Sandra said. “Sex is pretty gross, but boys aren’t always gross.”

  The girls had congregated around Emma’s locker, which was the established hub where their little clique stopped to reflect on the day after school let out.

  “You know who’s actually pretty cute?” Emma asked, looking like she had a real secret. Not a HITLER ACTUALLY DIED IN 1953 secret, but a secret all the same.

  “Who?” Sandra demanded.

&nb
sp; “Chris Riley.”

  Immediately Jess’s eyes darted to Miranda’s face. Her friend wore an expertly crafted mask of passivity, but she knew Miranda was not all right with sharing her long-time crush with the new popular girl, who apparently also didn’t realize that Sandra and Chris had dated all last year.

  “Oh my gosh, I think so, too!” Courtney said.

  “Hey wait,” Miranda said, squinting at Sandra and tapping her lips with her pointer finger, pretending to recall some faint memory. “Didn’t you and Chris go out most of last year?”

  Emma’s head jerked around toward Sandra. “Wait, really?”

  Sandra shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, and there was a two-second delay between when she opened her mouth and when sound finally came out. “Yeah, I mean, for a little bit. But it’s whatever. I’m so over him. I mean, yeah, he’s cute, but I’m over him.”

  Jess was tempted to point out that it had been Chris who had dumped Sandra, but she didn’t feel like being a pariah, so she stayed quiet.

  Emma tucked in her chin and cocked her head slightly to the side. “Oh, well, um. I mean, I was totally going to go for him, but if you don’t want me to—”

  “No!” Sandra blurted. “No, I mean, yeah, it’s fine if you want to go for him. That’s fine. I don’t even care. Like, seriously. I’m so over him.”

  Emma didn’t need more convincing, and her concern vanished in a puff, leading Jessica to believe that it had been nothing more than an act to begin with. “Okay, cool. Yeah, that’s good, because I’m pretty sure he likes me.”

  In a moment of impeccable timing, Chris walked by, engrossed in conversation with Trent and an eighth grader named Ben—something about football—and the girls erupted in giggles as the boys passed. Jess focused her eyes on Chris, trying to see what it was the other girls and Miranda saw about him. She supposed he did have nice, silky dirty-blond hair, and he somehow managed to keep a dark tan all year round. He was also funny, and even though he wasn’t particularly studious, he was always the team captain in PE and never failed to pick her first out of the girls. Granted, it was obvious from a multitude of his offhanded comments that he still considered himself under imminent threat of smiting, and on more than one occasion in the heat of play he’d jokingly referred to her as his lucky charm, so maybe that had more to do with it than him being nice or her having any athletic talent.