How had she managed to get branded as a slut by not having sex with anyone? Did Emma and Drew and Jane actually believe what Greg was saying? How could he just lie like that?
So Sandra told everyone that Jess was a prude, and Greg told everyone Jess was a slut. It seemed that no matter what Jess actually did, she couldn’t win.
Her mind recalled a phrase she’d heard once, which, at the time, she’d immediate dismissed as not relating to herself in any possible way, shape, or form. She still didn’t believe it literally applied, but she at least understood the sentiment behind it now:
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
The atmosphere on the bus out to Midland felt jittery and electric in the short hours leading up to the state championship. After all that had happened in the preceding months with football, the media, the racist protestors, her messy breakup, her lack of downtime with Miranda, and the post-season build, bus rides had become her favorite way to pass the time. It was no small comfort knowing that her teammates and coaches had her back no matter what.
The only problem with the bus rides to away games was keeping her hands to herself when Chris was sitting next to her. While everyone on the team seemed to be aware that something was going on between the starting quarterback and the kicker, neither she nor Chris was in a hurry to come right out and say they were together. Maybe it was for the sake of the team, but probably it was because sneaking around was exciting.
Her self-restraint was spared too much strain against the temptation of sliding her hands over Chris’s muscled chest, or maybe brushing a few suggestive fingertips over his thigh, by the Almighty Interrupter.
THE FATE OF THE GAME IS ENTIRELY UP TO YOU.
No pressure, though.
UH, NO. ABSOLUTE PRESSURE. DID YOU NOT HEAR WHAT I SAID? THE FATE OF THE GAME IS—
I was being sarcastic.
OH. UM. WELL, OKAY. BUT THE BOTTOM LINE IS, IF YOU WANT TO WIN, IT WILL BE SO.
Stop spoiling the ending!
I JUST WANT YOU TO ENJOY IT AND NOT WORRY.
Yeah, but a little tension can be fun.
I DISAGREE. SPOILING THE ENDING IS FUN. ONCE THE SECOND EDITION COMES OUT, I COMMAND YOU READ THE BIBLE. I SPOIL THE ENDING BIG TIME IN THAT. AND IT IS THE GREATEST SPOILER EVER WRITTEN.
Stop. I don’t want to know.
DON’T WORRY. YOU WILL BE LONG DEAD BY THE TIME IT COMES TO PASS.
Stop. Stop talking. I need to focus on the game.
NO, YOU DON’T. THAT’S WHAT I’M SAYING. ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS DECIDE YOU WANT TO WIN. AND THEN YOUR TEAM WILL WIN.
What happens if I decide I want to lose?
THEN THE TEAM WILL LOSE. BUT WHY IN MY NAME WOULDN’T YOU WANT TO WIN STATE?
I’m just asking. Sheesh.
“Jess?” Chris’s voice tugged her gently from her metaphysical conversation.
“Huh?” She refocused on him.
“We’re here.”
She glanced around to find the bus empty except for her and Chris. She sighed and looked out the window. The game wasn’t for another couple hours, but already the media were setting up—and some were already set up—waiting for the teams to arrive for pre-game coverage.
“This is crazy,” she said, more to herself than to Chris.
He stood in the aisle and nodded. “It really is. Texas football, huh?”
She shrugged. “Is it not this big other places?”
He thought about that, biting his lip for concentration. “I don’t know. I’ve never been other places.”
She sighed and grabbed her bag from underneath the seat in front of hers. “Yeah, me neither. Let’s get this over with.”
“Hey.” He held out his arm to stop her as she tried to follow him out into the aisle. For a moment she was worried he was about to kiss her in clear view of cameras. But instead he said, “What’s up? That’s not the attitude we need going into the championship.”
Oh. He was being the quarterback, not her boyfriend. “Sorry. It’s just …” No, she couldn’t tell him what she’d just learned. She wouldn’t ruin the fun for him like God had for her. “I guess I just get a little sour when I see Eugene.”
Chris’s sternness softened. “Yeah, I totally get that. But fuck him. Let’s just go play, enjoy the last game of this season, and then afterward we can … you know, have a little time to ourselves.”
She stifled a smile. “Yeah, okay. I think that could work.”
There was that telltale squint of his eyes that she usually only saw right before he kissed her, but this time he resisted, nodded, and then walked up toward the doors of the bus. Jess followed and wondered if them winning the championship meant Christ would expect to get victory laid.
If everyone already thinks I’m a slut, I guess there’s no point in holding back anymore. Might as well try …
Nope. That rationale didn’t quite land for her. The reason she didn’t want to have sex had nothing to do with her reputation and everything to do with how terrifying sex seemed.
Period.
Using Chris’s body as a shield, she almost managed to slip past the busy reporters all the way to the front gates of the colossal stadium before she heard Eugene shouting after her. “Ms. McCloud! Some claim your interracial relationship is direct proof that you are, in fact, the Antichrist as Reverend Dean has claimed more than once. Your response?”
Prude, slut, Antichrist—any other labels people wanted to brand her with?
Her patience snapped. She hadn’t expected it to, but it did, just like the flick of a switch. She whirled around and met Eugene Thornton’s eyes. “Is there a single thing I could say to change people’s mind about that?”
She felt Chris’s hand on her arm, trying to get her to turn back around and walk away, but she shook him off.
Whether Eugene was speechless because he hadn’t expected her to respond or because a strange and sudden change of weather was occurring above their heads, with clouds appearing out of the clear blue to block the afternoon sun, Jess would never be sure. At the time, however, she was only vaguely aware of the rapidly darkening sky as she focused all her pent-up wrath through her gaze, squarely at Eugene.
THOU SHALT NOT SMITE!
I’ll do my best.
NOT REASSURING.
Don’t care.
“Well,” Eugene croaked, “I guess you could say that you’re not the Antichrist.”
Jess chuckled dryly. “Fine, I’m not the Antichrist!” She narrowed her eyes as she added, “But isn’t that exactly what the Antichrist would say?”
It was a knee-jerk reaction born from a simmering rage that had been building all week, the same rage that had boiled over and resulted in the obliteration of Greg’s water bottle earlier that afternoon. And sure, it obviously wasn’t the best choice of words, but someone would have raised that point before long anyway.
Because as she’d learned during her single visit to White Light Church, no matter what, people would believe what they wanted to believe, even if it didn’t make any goddamn sense at all.
A sudden ache in her lower abdomen yanked her from her nihilism just before Eugene’s follow up question was drowned out by the deafening crack of thunder originating from the dark clouds converging above the stadium. But while the cramping suddenly helped make sense of the abrupt appearance of bad weather, it did nothing to mitigate her burning desire to watch Eugene Thornton inflate and then pop in an explosion of guts, cheap tweed, and eyebrows.
And then, as she caught sight of Maria Flores a few yards behind him and registered the woman’s grimace, she was forced to admit that, firstly, she’d just made one monster of a PR blunder with her response to Eugene. Secondly—and this had nothing to do with Maria and everything to do with the menacing thunder—she needed to hurry to the locker room and hope to her Father that she had a spare tampon somewhere in her equipment bag.
She felt Chris’s hand on her arm again and this time turned to look up at him. Wow. He even looked pretty when he
was frantic. “What are you doing?” he hissed urgently, pulling her after him and away from the media. She let him lead her for a few steps before she shook her arm free and followed him through the gate into the stadium.
By the time they’d crossed in front of the long rows of seats to the locker rooms on the other end, the clouds had almost completely vanished, taking the thunder and lightning with them. In the meantime, Chris didn’t say anything to her, and she was able to head into the woman’s locker room without having to broach the subject of menstruation.
She dug through her bag and found two tampons in a side pocket.
Thank you, God!
WASN’T ME. YOU KNOW I DON’T DEAL IN LADY STUFF.
Then thank me, I guess.
Once she was dressed, she allowed herself a few more minutes of solitude in the girls’ locker room, partly because some deep breathing might help with the jitters and anxiety of unnamed things crawling the walls of her mind, but mostly because it might allow her teammates plenty of time to put on their pants before she went in, hopefully sparing her an eyeful of the usual unsavory penis buffet.
But no amount of waiting was long enough to save her from that, it seemed, and Jess sighed and felt that familiar shiver run down her back when she was greeted by the unspectacular sight of her teammates’ flaccid genitals.
“Come on, Colton, really?” she scolded, as he stared down at his cell phone, casually texting while his junk swung free.
He looked up from his phone. “Oh, my bad, Jess. One sec.” As he finished composing his message, Jess walked over to the benches at the center of the lockers, where the coaches huddled together to finish discussing their strategy. When Coach Patterson, the special teams coach, spotted her, he perked up. “Oh hey. Um, so that change of weather … Should we expect a rain delay or cancelation?”
She set her jaw and felt her shoulders sag at the reminder. That really was unfortunate timing to start her period. No doubt the video of her comment with dark clouds forming overhead would be used against her in the Antichrist debate. “No,” she said. “It passed. Game should be on, and we’ll win.”
Coach Patterson nodded firmly. “That’s the right attitude there! Hell yes we’re going to win!”
Then he went back into his closed conversation with the other coaches.
She kept her eyes focused on the floor to avoid seeing any other surprise penises until she felt the bench shake under the weight of someone sitting next to her. She looked up and saw Chris. He appeared to be somewhere in between game focus and boyfriend focus, leaving him staring at her intensely in a way that made her wonder if he even realized who she was. “Don’t talk to the reporters anymore,” he said.
“What about Maria?”
He paused but showed no other outward signs of thinking. “Yeah, I guess she’s okay. But Jess, that cloud thing …”
“I know. Just bad timing.”
“Why’d that happen?”
She opened her mouth to be honest, then she remembered who she was talking to. Chris didn’t want to know what happened every time she had her period. No guy did. “I don’t know. I guess I just got angry?”
The corner of his mouth turned down in the slightest sign of concern. “Does that happen a lot?”
“No. This is the first time.”
He nodded, sighed, and gazed over her shoulder at something behind her. “Well, I guess that makes sense. No one wants to be called the Antichrist.”
“No shit,” she said.
That yanked him entirely into boyfriend brain. “Are you mad at me?”
“No. Can we not talk about it anymore, though?”
“Yeah, yeah. Good idea. Head in the game.”
Coach Rex’s speech quickly breezed through any hint of actual strategy and homed in on legacy.
Will my legacy be that I was the Antichrist?
Jess wasn’t sure how she was expected to focus on football when all Rex talked about was the way people are remembered once they’re gone. She looked around the room at her teammates and, while she spotted a few whose lives were probably peaking as of the start of this championship game, most of them would obviously go on to do more important things. Would those things be remembered? If she quit football, would anything she did after high school be viewed favorably? Was her ability to kick field goals the last cord that kept anyone loyal to her?
“… And sure, part of your legacy might be making an honest woman out of someone, even if she already has a kid and maybe she doesn’t want to ever get married, or maybe she has a jealous ex,” he paused pensively, and the horrifying recognition of what might really be at the root of this speech hit Jess just before he continued. “But no matter where life takes you, this is where your legacy starts.”
From behind her, Jess heard someone mumble, “Jesus fucking Christ,” and when she turned to see who it was, she saw Eddie standing just behind her, looking petrified. He caught her eye and blanched. “Oh, sorry.”
“No, I get it. Believe me,” she whispered back.
By the time they left the locker room for the pregame warmup, the stands were already starting to fill in with spectators. She didn’t recognize the vast majority, but she supposed since Hillcrest was closer to Midland, these could be mostly their fans. Her suspicions were confirmed when a handful of spectators spotted her jogging out onto the field and started hollering and holding up their signs:
Hillcrest doesn’t need a miracle to win
Football is a MAN’S game
Kick the kicker’s ass
That seemed unnecessary. What had she done to them? Nothing yet. But if the Mexicans won, what then? She’d unleash a shitstorm on herself, most likely.
And there it was. A seed that had been hiding deep inside her this whole time. Had God known when He’d given her the spoiler? He might be knowing and all that, but He wasn’t all knowing, so was He still able to see this dark speck in her soul, this kernel of desire to actually lose the state championship so maybe she could catch a break from the madness?
As she stared out into the crowd, she let her mind play with the possibility, imagined the events unfolding. If the Mooremont Mexicans won, it would draw national media attention, which would, of course, be focused squarely on her, the female phenom, who claimed she was God’s only begotten daughter. She couldn’t imagine that would make her already tricky existence any easier.
But on the other hand, if they lost … sure, the people most loyal to her would be severely disappointed. Maybe some would even lose faith in her. But then she could just be a normal girl. She’d hoped for it when she was younger, but had given up on it somewhere along the way. Maybe it was still possible. God even said that part of growing up was believing in yourself. What if she believed in her ability to simply live a normal life? Maybe she could get married, settle down, convince Mrs. Mathers that she really was Jessica’s grandmother, and then spend a quiet life working at Mrs. Mathers’ bakery, indulging in yeast rolls and warm croissants.
When she weighed the two outcomes together, the latter was definitely the most enticing. But it still didn’t seem like the right choice.
What would Jesus do?
He’d die on the cross after allowing himself to be beaten all the way to Death’s doorstep. No thanks.
A voice from right behind her said, “Aww shit, that’s brutal,” and she looked back to see Romeo reading the signs in the crowd and shaking his head disapprovingly. He slapped her between her shoulder blades. “Looks like you got ’em scared, McCloud. Good. They should be. They damn well should be.”
* * *
As they waited inside the tunnel leading out onto the field, Jess wondered if her heart might explode. She didn’t so much hear the announcer introduce the Mooremont Mexicans as she heard the crowd lose its mind cheering and then felt her teammates behind her start to shove her forward through the tunnel and out toward the massive white sign held taut by the cheerleading squad. Oh no, what if she tripped in front of everyone? What if the sign
didn’t tear and they were all injured?
None of that happened, and she was able to sprint onto the field and over to the bench, where she put her back to the crowd as soon as possible but not before seeing Greg eyeing her menacingly from the stands. How had her eyes found him out of the thousands of people there?
“Hey, boo.”
She turned away from the crowd toward the familiar voice. “Forget about them,” Quentin added. Then he leaned in, and out of habit, she followed her cue and kissed him quickly. She was surprised to find that the act actually did help her nerves and focus, despite the camera flashes that blinded her peripheral vision.
“It’s been fun,” he said as he pulled back slightly.
“Yeah, it actually has.” She felt a small tug inside her chest as he took a single step away.
The corners of his mouth turned down in a sad smile. “Wish you all the best with Chris.”
“Thanks—”
“But if y’all ever break up, and you need to bang it out with a rebound—”
“God dammit, Quentin.” She rolled her eyes and Quentin stole one more kiss from her before he burst out laughing and dodged out of her arm’s reach.
“Jess,” Chris hollered at her.
She turned to look at him and mouthed, “Sorry.” Though he’d never admit it, she knew he hated her charade with Quentin.
He blinked and shook his head slightly. “No, I don’t— Coin toss.”
“Oh right.”
He waved for her to follow him, and the two of them jogged out toward midfield as co-captains.
“Head in the game, Jess,” he said from the corner of his mouth as they ran side by side.
“You’re just jealous,” she teased, trying to break some of the tension she could feel pulsing from him.
He glanced over at her. “Jealous?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I see the way you look at Quentin. You want him bad.”
A grin broke through for only a second before he stuffed it away again.
The Hillcrest captains were already waiting at midfield, and Jess wondered if they’d been juicing consistently for years or if they’d just hit it heavy in the weeks leading up to this game.
And It Was Good (Jessica Christ Book 2) Page 19