The Beginning (Jessica Christ Book 1)

by H. Claire Taylor

  And Jess was back on her period. If she’d thought the lightning storm at Sandra’s house had been bad, it was nothing compared to the chaos that had torn through Mooretown and the surrounding counties two nights before.

  She ladled a large spoonful of oatmeal into her mouth, adjusted in her seat in a futile attempt to make the pad more comfortable, and hoped that Destinee would stop staring soon.

  “You heard from him lately?” her mother asked.

  “No. Not directly.”

  Destinee nodded, but didn’t seem satisfied. “It just seems like he’d make an appearance after … you know.”

  Jessica did indeed know, thanks to News 9 out of Midland, whose Sunday coverage included the strange string of weather events that began roughly to the minute of Jess beginning her period and lasted into the night, ending around the time Jess’s cramping ceased at four in the morning. Though a small twister had touched down just west of Big Spring, yet again it was the lightning that caused most of the chaos. Thirteen head of cattle had dropped over dead when a bolt struck the ground near them—a bit of bad luck that was made extra noteworthy by the fact that the cows were standing next to a large metal tower with a lightning rod extending upward from it. Andrews had even suffered three human fatalities from lightning strikes, though once it was revealed that all three men had been serial sex offenders, everyone came to terms with it almost immediately, and even the non-religious seemed happy with classifying that, at least, as a useful act of God.

  When the news anchor had introduced his special guest, Reverend Dean, on the six o’clock news, Jess asked Destinee to turn off the TV. The last person she wanted providing color commentary for events related to her period was Jimmy, that backstabbing fraud.

  But Destinee had refused, saying, “The devil you know …”

  Jess assumed it was a figure of speech because she was fairly certain that Jimmy Dean was not the Devil. It was a conclusion so obvious that she couldn’t believe it’d taken so long for her to arrive at it. Why would God enlist the help of His adversary to find His daughter on the night of her birth? Duh, He wouldn’t.

  On the TV, Jimmy stood under the White Light archway, dressed to the nines in his white suit and pig-hoof stole. He nodded along with the reporter on scene as she introduced him and mentioned a few of the strange events that had happened. Jimmy just did Jimmy. Sin! Lowly animals! Punishment! And then he said one word that hadn’t yet crossed Jessica’s mind: Apocalypse. Thanks to a special she’d watched on the wildlife of ancient Mesoamerica, she’d picked up a few things about Mayans, the main takeaway being how obsessed they were with the end of the world. It seemed like a strange thing to be obsessed with. But regardless of what Jimmy might claim, she felt pretty sure this wasn’t the end of days. God would have told her, wouldn’t He?

  As she’d watched Jimmy on the news the night before, she’d decided that this was just the worst possible way for anyone to be welcomed into womanhood. That’s all it was. She felt more certain about that than she did about most things …

  She hurried and finished her breakfast so that she could escape her mother’s intense stare and then ran to her bedroom to finish getting ready for school. She tried to keep from imagining the million possible scenarios resulting from someone at the party spreading word around school that Jess had bled on Sandra’s couch.

  It’d been just over a month since that incident, so maybe there was a chance the girls at the party had done so many other fun things they’d forgotten all about Jess’s incident.

  She grabbed her backpack off the bed, checked to make sure she had enough pads tucked into the front pocket, and then heaved the bag over her shoulder and took a deep breath to try to relax. Having a period was supposed to be such a natural thing—so why did it feel so shameful and disgusting? She would have asked God about that, but He hadn’t shown His face since she’d officially entered womanhood, and she suspected He would find an excuse to avoid talking about it even if He did decide to show up.

  The walk from her house to Marymoore Junior High was just shy of fifteen minutes, and she never minded it. She left early this morning, though, to make sure she gave herself a cushion, just in case Saturday night’s storms had caused any damage on her route that might make it slow going. Since most of her journey was along dirt roads until she reached the square, it seemed likely.

  But the August sun had dried up most of the mud, and she managed to avoid the worst of it, sparing her white sneakers until she was finally home-free on the concrete sidewalks of Mooretown’s small downtown.

  The square functioned as her social warm-up before she hit the rowdy halls of Marymoore. She knew each of the adults who owned the small shops—most of them she’d known since she was a baby, with only a couple newcomers to the town—and most of them didn’t think she was the Antichrist. Some were even friendly and waved or said good morning to her as she passed.

  Mrs. Mathers, a lady in perhaps her early fifties who owned a small bakery just off the square, had a special motherly kind of affection for Jess and snuck her warm yeast rolls on the way to school each morning. It was one of the few things that excited Jess about starting school again after the summer, and it was an unnecessary act of kindness that had helped her slog through her seventh grade year. When Jess had mentioned Mrs. Mathers’s generosity to her mother toward the end of the previous school year, Destinee had informed her that she and Mrs. Mathers’s son Denton had hooked up a handful of times their junior year of high school and Mrs. Mathers had disapproved passionately.

  “I’m glad to hear she’s come around, though,” Destinee had added.

  But that insight had immediately put things into perspective for Jess, who already knew via the Divine Grapevine, that Denton now had five different children by five different women and was among the most virile human men walking the face of the earth. When the two bits of intel were set next to each other, it became obvious that Mrs. Mathers assumed Jess was her illegitimate granddaughter.

  The rolls were so good, though, Jess never bothered setting the record straight.

  But as she hobbled to school with the pad rubbing her awkwardly each step of the way—Surely everyone has to be able to tell I’m wearing this—even Mrs. Mathers’s warm roll couldn’t lift her spirits. It must have been obvious, because when Jess accepted the roll with a small thank-you, Mrs. Mathers frowned. “Hold on. I know what you need.” She returned with a croissant and handed it to Jess, who smiled, thanked her, and waddled onward.

  Once she’d finished her yeast roll and bit into the croissant a block down from the bakery, she realized that it wasn’t just a croissant. It was a jelly-filled croissant. When she held it at arm’s length to see the strawberry jelly dribbling out of it, her stomach churned and she struggled to swallow down the bite she already had in her mouth before tossing the rest of it into the next trashcan she saw.

  Could Mrs. Mathers be the Devil? she wondered, almost on impulse. No. Stop thinking about the Devil. You have more important things to worry about today.

  Jess waddled into school, hoping her gait didn’t look the way it felt: like she’d been riding a horse around for days. Sleeping in a pad with a heavy flow had left her tossing and turning all night, and she’d woken up in the morning with small bits of chaffing on her inner thighs where the wings had rubbed. She clenched her jaw against the rawness around her panty line as she tried to walk normally for the length of the hallway to her first class. As she hoped to find a friendly face, she realized that she didn’t even know who that might be outside of Miranda. Maybe Emma or Sandra?

  And it became even less likely when she realized that people were staring at her as she passed by them in the hallway, whispering behind their hands and giggling. Really? School hadn’t even started and word had already gotten around? That seemed too unfair.

  Maybe she was just being paranoid. Surely she wasn’t the only girl trying to walk normally with a sandpaper pillow between her legs.

  How long is this freak
ing hallway?

  It seemed to stretch on forever, and the eighth grade hall was at the very back of the school, leaving her an even farther distance to traverse before she could be safely seated in her advanced English class.

  Destinee had assured her that most girls start their period by eighth grade. Whether that was actually true or not was debatable, because Destinee was no Dr. Fractal, but Jess would function off of the assumption for the sake of being able to run some numbers …

  There were about sixty girls in eighth grade at Marymoore. Say seventy percent had already started their period. That was forty-two girls who had probably started their period in eighth grade alone. Now, one week a month meant that at any given time a quarter of those girls were probably on their period. So one quarter of forty-two was about ten. Minus Jess. So about nine other eighth grade girls at Marymoore were probably on their period.

  The mental math carried her over until she was in the eighth grade hallway, at which point she made it her mission to pick out the other nine bleeding girls by the way they were walking and standing. She let herself become obsessed with it, and it went far in helping her continue to put one foot in front of the other all the way to her classroom.

  Hardly any of her friends had qualified for the early start high school classes, but Destinee had pressured Jess into taking the necessary tests at the end of seventh grade, and she’d unfortunately passed them with flying colors. So that meant she had to find new friends or risk being a loner, which, as appealing as it sounded at times, meant that she would find herself bullied by both the kids who didn’t place into the advanced courses and the kids who did. She needed as many allies as she could get if this year was going to be bearable. And things already didn’t look great for her.

  The worst part about it was the Wursts. Both Courtney and Trent had tested into the advanced classes, and while Courtney by herself could sometimes be tolerable, when she was with her twin brother and Emma wasn’t around, the twins were nothing short of monsters. Yet another reason Jess needed to find new allies and quick.

  Greg Burns seemed like as good of an ally as any. He’d only been in Mooretown for a couple years, and while he didn’t run with the popular kids, he was funny, so no one bothered him. He was also able to make the teachers laugh, which kept him out of trouble all of the time. While Jess rarely found herself on the wrong end of a teacher’s glare, she still envied Greg for his talent—making people laugh was a lot more effective in getting one’s point across while remaining likable than smiting would ever be. She’d had language arts with him the previous year, and while they’d never said more than a few words to each other, she’d always suspected he was actually the smartest kid in that class and would therefore be the smartest one in advanced English, too.

  Basically, he was the ideal ally. And he might even make a good friend. She checked in with her new mantra—What would a normal teenager do?—and immediately knew the answer. A normal teenager would stop lurking in the doorway and take the empty desk next to the cute boy.

  Greg gave her a funny look as soon as she sat down next to him, and she knew right away why. She rolled her eyes and stood to move to another desk, but he put a hand on her backpack and stopped her. “What is it?” he asked. His round face stared up at her from underneath this short, curly dark-chocolate hair. She didn’t say anything but shot him a look that she hoped expressed her incredulity.

  “Okay, look,” he said quietly. “Yeah, I heard about it like everyone else did. But don’t worry, I’m not going to be weird about it. I’ve read all about it in books and online forums, and I know it’s normal.”

  She placed her palm not so gently onto her face. He was just making it worse. “I just … Can we not talk about it?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Sure.”

  She sighed and sat down next to him and then they waited in awkward silence for the others to file in, including the teacher, Ms. Cantos, who waited outside the door to greet students as they entered.

  Jess had never talked to a boy about sex stuff. Granted, bleeding from the vagina seemed like the opposite of sex itself, but it was still something involving lady parts, and she’d never thought a boy could talk about it so plainly. Thank God for nerds, she supposed.

  But no calmness or reassurance from Greg could dismiss the fact that someone had told. Not only had they told, but they had told so many people that even Greg, who didn’t seem like the type to be up-to-date on gossip, knew. Miranda had made everyone at the party promise not to tell, but someone still had. Could it have been Miranda? It did sound like something Miranda would accidentally let slip, and it wouldn’t be the first time something like that had happened with her. Jess had long since come to terms with the fact that her best friend was the one who God had foretold would constantly betray her that way, but it didn’t make it sting any less each time it happened. Maybe this time it would be someone else who’d betrayed her, someone who did it on purpose, that way at least Jess could let herself be angry.

  So she decided to ignore the possibility of it being Miranda until she’d ruled out everything else.

  Someone had told Greg about it, anyhow. If she really wanted to get to the bottom of it, she could simply ask him who he’d heard it from. But that would require bringing it up again.

  Or she could hope God would swoop down into her head and enlighten her.

  “Ha!” She didn’t mean to laugh aloud, but the idea of God having timing that worked for her was literally laughable.

  “What is it?” Greg asked.

  Her mind was so set on avoiding the topic of menstruation that it let an equally undesirable topic slip out: “Do you believe in God?” Definitely not ideal, but she couldn’t take it back, and it might actually be helpful to know where she stood with Greg, if they were to become friends. She’d learned the hard way not to function off the assumption that just because God spoke to her meant He made Himself so obvious (and intrusive) in other people’s lives.

  Greg shifted uncomfortably in his seat. If he knew about her period, odds were he’d heard about her divinity. How could anyone in Mooretown not? But that did leave him between a rock and a hard place if he didn’t believe in God.

  Greg scrunched up his nose apologetically. “Um. I mean.”

  “It’s okay if you don’t,” she assured him quickly. “There’s actually no punishment for it as long as you’re not a jerk about it.”

  Greg tilted his head slightly to the side. “I don’t understand why you think that, but okay. No, I don’t believe in God.”

  She grinned and let those words wash over her, pretending for a moment that she believed them, and something about that relaxed her to the point of sighing deeply. “Good. I mean, at least you know what you believe.”

  “Do you believe in God?” The nervousness in his voice was obvious, but he powered through it in a way that earned a little more of her respect.

  “Yeah. Unfortunately. I wish I didn’t.” She sighed, and for a moment the taste of Mrs. Mathers’ warm rolls surfaced in her mouth. “Never mind.” This topic had quickly turned less enjoyable than talking about her period. So, might as well …

  “Who told you about my … about the party?”

  He nodded slightly toward the row of desks two ahead of them, where Courtney and Trent now sat.

  Jess felt like cheering, but she knew that would leave too much to explain to Greg, so she faked outrage and betrayal. But the fact that it was Courtney who had spread it around was actually fantastic for two reasons: First, it meant Miranda could still be her loyal best friend. But mostly, it gave Jessica another substantial reason to hate Courtney, which she’d craved for quite some time now, she realized. Maybe she could even leverage this to convince the rest of the girls who still insisted on being friends with Courtney that the girl was the worst and should be ostracized.

  Ms. Cantos put the daily agenda up on the projector, and the small sense of victory and hope that Jess had felt blossoming in her body vanished almost instant
ly.

  Objective: How can a symbol be used to express multiple viewpoints?

  Review: What is a symbol?

  Warm up: Make a list of things that can be symbolized by blood.

  Lesson: The importance of blood in 17th century texts

  1. Lady Macbeth—“Out, damned spot!”

  2. Dante’s Inferno—Phlegethon, the River of Blood

  3. Machiavelli—Weakness of bloodlines

  Essay topic: Select one of the above examples and compare the notions of blood presented in the work with contemporary opinions and views.

  By the time Jess had read through the entire agenda, she was fairly certain that Ms. Cantos had to be a demon. Maybe not a Randy-level demon, but a demon nonetheless.

  Once the bell rang, signaling the start of class, and students quieted down, Ms. Cantos moved to stand by the whiteboard where the agenda was projected, folded her hands, and smiled. The young, petite Latina teacher was particularly pretty when she smiled, and Jess genuinely wished she wasn’t definitely a demon.

  After Ms. Cantos finished her introduction and a half-hearted apology about actually making them do work on the first day of school, followed by a pep talk about being in advanced classes and the responsibility that goes along with that, she turned her attention to the agenda. “I know how much you guys love a little gore, so I thought I’d throw you a bone on the first day of school.” She wiggled her eyebrows at the class.

  Jessica sighed.

  Courtney raised her hand and Ms. Cantos called on her.

  “Will we be reading any passages where someone bleeds through their pants at a birthday party?”

  Ms. Cantos screwed up her face and cocked her head slightly to the side. “I’m not sure … Would you like to explain why you’re asking?”