And It Was Good (Jessica Christ Book 2)

by H. Claire Taylor

  “No, I just—”

  “Because let me tell you, Jess. I was beyond willing.”

  “I didn’t want to know that.”

  Destinee’s face relaxed and she stared dreamily over Jess’s shoulder. “He looked like Ross Hawthorn …”

  “Who?”

  Destinee snapped out of her reverie. “Ross Hawthorn. The singer.”

  Jess had no clue. “But wait. He looked like him or he was him?” Did God possess people like demons did?

  “Hell if I know,” Destinee said, dismissing the concern immediately with a flick of her wrist. “Who cares? The point is that he looked and sounded like Ross, which was enough for me. He even told me he was God, and once he started putting his hands on me, you bet I believed him.”

  “Ew. Stop.”

  Destinee shrugged. “Well, anyway. You never know when life will throw a wrench in your plans, baby girl, so you gotta start those plans as soon as you know what they are, not wait until you think you’re ready. That make sense?”

  Jess nodded begrudgingly and stood up from the couch.

  “Hittin’ the hay?” Destinee asked.

  Sighing and feeling a wave of exhaustion roll over her, Jessica did find the idea of bed quite appealing. But it would have to wait a little while longer. “Not yet. Gonna go ahead and get started learning the rules of football.”

  Despite the space restrictions of the El Camino, Jess was able to sit on Greg’s lap, her knees bent, one leg on either side of his waist. He kissed her passionately on the mouth for a while, then peppered kisses down her neck to her collarbone. In one deft move, he turned her and laid her on her back across the bench seat with himself positioned above. All of yesterday’s worries about their future together were banished from her mind. Wherever this went, she would go with it. And with the way Greg’s hands were roaming farther down her torso, she knew what that might mean. And she was actually okay with it.

  He undid the top of her button-down shirt to give his mouth more space to explore, and she closed her eyes to enjoy it.

  Until a knocking sound pulled her from her bliss.

  Nope. She ignored it.

  Greg undid the next button on her shirt, and the knocking happened again, this time louder and more doggedly, coming from somewhere on the driver’s side. She leaned forward to peep over Greg’s head.

  A tan face with thick, dark facial hair was staring back at her.

  “Oh shit! Greg! Get off!”

  Then her mind placed the face and tried to calm herself with a sigh.

  “Jesus.”

  She motioned for him to walk around to the passenger’s side, and as he did, she shoved Greg off, rolled down the window and began buttoning up her shirt.

  “So do you only show up in sex dreams?” she asked, irritated, as he leaned down to peer in, bracing his forearms against the top of the cab.

  “It’s usually when minds are most relaxed, yes.”

  “Who’s that?” Greg asked from next to her.

  “Jesus.”

  “What?”

  “Jesus Christ! Just … give me a second, Greg.” She turned to her half-brother. “What do you want?”

  “First of all, I want to congratulate you on discovering your first miracle.”

  “Yeah, thanks a lot for that,” she said resentfully.

  “But mostly I’m here to encourage you to keep going. You have to continue to discover and develop your miracles if you want to fulfill your destiny.”

  She wished he’d hurry up with all the talking. Now that she knew this was a dream, she had some things to try out with Greg to see if they were really as gross as she imagined them. Fulfilling destiny could come later, once she woke up. “Okay fine.”

  Jesus gave her the side eye. “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously.”

  “Of course I am. I just don’t know what you want me to do about it before I wake up. Meanwhile …” She nodded toward Greg. “Plus, I don’t even know what my destiny is supposed to be.”

  “You could just ask me, genius.”

  “Huh?”

  He arched his eyebrows furtively.

  She held her palm in front of him. “Wait. You would actually give me a hint on this? You’re not going to babble on about that self-discovery nonsense?”

  He wiggled his thick, black eyebrows. “Nope.”

  Suspicion flared inside her, but she tamped it down. “Okay, then … what’s my destiny?”

  “You need to lead the country into a new age of peace.”

  “God dammit.”

  “No. God blessit.”

  “To be clear, I just need to worry about the country. Not the whole world?”

  Jesus laughed. “Oh Heavens, no. World peace is impossible. Have you been to the Middle East? Of course not. Well, I have, and let me tell you …” He chuckled again. “No, no. Just the United States. That’s a tall enough order.”

  “So how do I do it?”

  Jesus shrugged his shoulders and held up his hands defensively. “Oh, I have no clue. That’s not my destiny, so it’s not my problem. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” He nodded and then vanished, leaving a white, powdery man-shaped cloud swirling around where he had just stood.

  Jess flopped back against the seat.

  “But seriously,” came Greg’s voice from beside her. “Who was that?”

  “Nobody. A terrorist.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Want to keep making out?”

  She thought about it. “Not really.” Learning her destiny had ruined the mood.

  A clap of thunder pulled her from her dream. She opened her eyes to her dark room but remained lying on her back until she heard six more loud thunderclaps right overhead, saw lightning illuminate the sky behind her curtains, and then noticed the warm, sticky moisture pooling just below her butt.

  A new wave of annoyance rolled through her before she whipped the covers off of her, rolled out of bed, and headed to the bathroom to grab a pad.

  The most challenging thing about football, it turned out, was seeing so many teenage boys’ genitals. They looked nothing like the cartoons she’d seen in sex ed. They were complicated, fickle, and intimidating. Jessica did her best to avoid seeing them, but because the team meetings were always in the boys’ locker room, she couldn’t avoid the occasional eyeful. And the worst part was that everyone seemed to assume she’d somehow hit the jackpot in this respect.

  Other girls, especially. And after facing one size inquiry after the next for the first two months of the regular season, Jess had stopped dodging the questions and resorted to a stock answer: “They’re all more or less the same.” It was the truth, or at least it felt like the truth after all the traumatic visuals started to warp together in her memory. She considered telling the White Light Church that what they really needed to do for abstinence sex ed was subject girls to boys’ locker rooms for a couple months, and then all sexual desire would be completely demolished.

  All of this bothered Greg, of course, who only poked at the subject once and then stopped after Jess began explaining, with more than a little horror, the various penis puppets she’d been subjected to since late August and how sometimes when she closed her eyes, she could see the silhouettes of them seared into the back of her eyelids.

  In short, the exposure was not the best thing for her and Greg’s now official relationship. The fact that her football career had made her into somewhat of a local celebrity while Greg’s starring role in Measure for Measure had not granted him the same status was also putting a strain on things between them.

  “I’m not letting it go to my head!” she said.

  Greg looked over at her from the driver’s seat of Janice and took a sip from his fresh Sonic drink while eyeing her incredulously.

  “Don’t give me that look.” She stared out her window at the dessert menu. She was fairly certain that she burned more calories in a single practice than she di
d in all the days leading up to when she first started football combined. Who knew the kicker had to be in shape? It didn’t seem like it should actually matter as long as the ball continued going through the uprights, which it always did.

  “I’m just saying,” Greg began between tater tots, “this is the second interview you’ve had this week. You don’t have to take them.”

  “First of all, I’d hardly call the Mooremont Mundo an interview. Rosa mostly just asked me about what it was like in the boys’ locker room, and I told her it was awful and could we move to her next question. I’m hardly ever asked any questions about me. I’m asked questions about dicks and what my dick-wielding teammates think about having a girl on the team. If I am ever asked about me, it’s asking me if it’s hard for me to get guys because I play football. I try to tell them I already have a guy, and they act like I just spoke in tongues.”

  “So you’re getting more attention than any other person at Mooremont High, but you’re complaining because it’s not precisely the right kind of attention?”

  She was relieved he was finally catching on. “Yes!” Then she realized he was actually taking a jab at her, and a sudden rush of blood pounded behind her eyes. “No, not like that.

  “Then like what?” He chuckled dryly. “I don’t get it. What do you want them to ask you about, being the daughter of God?”

  He still hadn’t come around to believing her on that topic, and each time he brought it up, she felt her shoulders tense. And lately he’d been bringing it up more and more frequently. Why couldn’t he just help her pretend it wasn’t a thing?

  “Of course I don’t want to talk about that. I’m actually relieved everyone in this county is too freaked out by the subject to poke it with a ten-foot pole.”

  Greg cackled. “It is pretty funny, actually. It’s like no one wants to have to decide where they stand in the savior or Antichrist debate, so they just play ignorant. Well, I guess most of them aren’t just playing.”

  She sipped her Dr. Pepper. “I guess that’s better than everyone going ahead and firmly deciding I’m the Antichrist. But you know it’s just a matter of time before someone sacks up enough to ask those kinds of questions.”

  Greg looked at her strangely. “Since when do you say ‘sacks up’?”

  “Huh?”

  He waved it away and his posture relaxed again. “Never mind. You’ve been spending too much time with jocks.”

  That was one thing they agreed on, then.

  Who knew being on the football team took up so much of a person’s life? Today was one of the rare times recently when she actually got to spend alone time with Greg. And Miranda? She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d seen her best friend outside of the classes they shared together. Between Jessica’s football practices and games and interviews (not to mention the mountain of homework from her AP classes) and Miranda’s softball schedule, it was like the two of them now lived in different worlds once school let out.

  “You want any ice cream?” Greg asked.

  She looked at the analog clock on the dash. “No, I gotta get home. I still have to finish that biology project before tomorrow.”

  “Want any help?”

  “No, no. I’m good. Just drop me off.”

  “I’m going to have to meet your mom someday, Jess.”

  She begged to differ. In fact, she had every intention of doing what she could so the two never met. “I know. I’m not worried about that. I just need to get going on stuff.”

  When Greg pulled into her driveway, he put the truck in park and they made out before she slid off the seat and walked up to the front door.

  Destinee wasn’t home, which was always a relief when Jess was trying to sneak around. Her phone buzzed, and she looked at the message: B there n 5

  She hurried into the bedroom to change out of Greg-time clothes and into a T-shirt and athletic shorts. Sneaking was the worst, and every time she did it, she wondered if it wouldn’t make life easier to simply be honest with Greg. But after the bitterness he’d just shown, she knew sneaking and omission would leave everyone happier. At least in the short term.

  And then there was the fact that Greg was developing a growing dislike and mistrust for Christopher Riley, who was presently headed down her street in his massive navy blue F-350 with unnecessary lifts. She could hear its big diesel engine thrumming and growling as soon as it turned onto her street. She grabbed her athletic bag and headed out to the front patio as he pulled into the driveway.

  “What up, Jess?” he shouted out his window.

  She knew it was rhetorical and he wouldn’t have been able to hear her over the engine anyway, so she walked around to the passenger’s side, threw her bag in first, then climbed in.

  Once his window was rolled up, it was quiet enough inside to have a conversation. “What have you been up to today?” he asked as he backed out of the driveway.

  “Just hanging with Greg.”

  Chris stopped the truck, the back half hanging out into the road, and stared over at her. “I seriously don’t understand what you see in him. What do you guys even talk about? He’s not into football.”

  A car trying to get behind Chris honked, and he casually flipped off the driver then finished backing up.

  “There are things other than football to talk about, Chris.”

  He scoffed. “What, theater?”

  “Yes, theater.”

  “Then why don’t you do theater?”

  “Because I can’t do both. I had to pick one, and I chose football.”

  Chris nodded, like she’d just proved his point. “That’s because football is way better than theater.”

  “No, it’s because my miracle is in football and not theater.”

  “Because nobody gives a shit about football. God told you He’d give you a useful miracle, right? Notice that it was not in theater.”

  She regretted having told him about that, because it was a good point. But she still felt like arguing the point. “But acting is more fun, and I’m good at it without God’s help.”

  “Did you ever tell Greg?”

  “Tell him what?”

  “The truth about the play. That you got the part.”

  Jess sighed. “No. He doesn’t need to know. He’d just be annoyed that I turned it down.”

  Chris glanced meaningfully at him, and she chose to ignore the valid argument in his eyes. He was kind enough not to push it, and they drove toward the school in silence.

  As much as conversation with Chris could be limited, he was easily her closest friend on the team, and the fact that he’d always been prudent about covering his dong in the locker room was perhaps his most endearing quality. It was chivalrous by comparison. And if she was honest with herself, it left her curious about what might be going on in those briefs of his …

  And she wasn’t the only one. He was almost always the first on girls’ penis inquiry checklists. “Is he big? I bet he’s big.”

  At first she was honest about her lack of knowledge, but when that continued failing to satisfy anyone, eventually she started replying with, “Massive,” because why not? He was nice to her, so she’d throw him a bone.

  They pulled up to the football field, where a few of their teammates were already tossing the ball around, suited up in their practice gear. The camera crew was already there, too, apparently filming some filler of the players doing very basic but football-specific things.

  When Jess finally emerged from the locker room in her practice pads, the reporter from Odessa, who’d requested the interview, was preoccupied on his phone, jabbing impatiently at the screen, his thick, bushy eyebrows furrowed. He had his back to his crew, which was currently shooting footage of Chris running some impromptu passing drills led by Coach Rex.

  The Sunday practice was entirely staged for the news piece, but no one on the Mexicans minded getting together for a mellow practice to end the weekend. An easy away victory the Friday before against the Elbow Eagles had everyo
ne in high spirits.

  Jess jogged out toward the field. When the reporter looked up, his eyes budged out of his head as he spotted her, and he shoved the phone into his back pocket, grabbed the microphone from where he’d stashed it under one armpit, motioned for his crew to follow, and headed toward Jess.

  THIS ASSWIPE.

  Where have you been? I haven’t heard from you in months!

  HAVE YOU WANTED TO?

  Well, no, not really.

  SO MAYBE I KNEW. I AM KNOWING AND ALL THAT.

  You can’t just drop in whenever you want.

  UH, YES. I ABSOLUTELY CAN. AND TRUST ME, YOU WANT ME HERE IF YOU HAVE AN INTERVIEW WITH EUGENE THORNTON.

  Why’s that?

  I DID HIM WRONG YEARS AGO, AND HE HASN’T LET IT GO SINCE. YOU MAY BE IN OVER YOUR HEAD.

  Can’t you just smite him?

  I’VE THOUGHT ABOUT IT, TRUST ME.

  So what do I do?

  BRACE YOURSELF. THIS GUY USED TO BE BIG LEAGUES UP IN LEXINGTON UNTIL HE COMPLETELY BOTCHED A MAJOR STORY. HE’S BEEN LOOKING FOR A BIG BREAK, AND I’D BET HE THINKS YOU’RE IT.

  Should I cancel the interview?

  AND GIVE HIM A BLANK SLATE TO MAKE UP A REASON FOR IT? NO WAY. YOU’LL GET THROUGH IT.

  So what do I do?

  God didn’t respond.

  Eugene intercepted her before she could make it all the way onto the field.

  “Good morning, Miss McCloud. Eugene Thornton, Channel Six News.”

  His eyes were little brown beads underneath his thick, furry eyebrows as he squinted through the sunlight at her.

  After God’s warning (and complete lack of useful advice), Jessica figured she’d just have to do this the old-fashioned way and see if she couldn’t get the reporter to like her. “Hi Eugene! So nice to finally meet—”

  “So here’s how this is going to work,” he said, acting like she hadn’t spoken. “We’ll do the interview first, so that you look fresh and pretty and likable, then we’ll film some footage of you kicking field goals.”

  “Oh … um, okay.”

  She followed him over to the stands to set up the shot.

  Chris jogged up. “Coach wanted me in on this. Said I’m the leader of the team, and I should get in the shot.”