The counselor’s eyes narrowed at her. Clearly he thought she was screwing with him. “How about I just check Unknown?”
“Yeah, that works.”
By the time they’d made it through the entire form, Jess was thoroughly discouraged about her financial outlook and Mr. Foster was clearly on the verge of a serious existential crisis.
“So you’re not interested in a religious university?” he asked for the second time.
“No, why would I be?”
He cackled, one eye wide, and threw his hands into the air. “Ha! Why would she be?” he asked no one.
The bell echoed in from the hallway, and she thought it best if she left in a hurry. Mr. Foster clearly needed time to regroup. “See you next week,” she said and then rushed out of his office.
Before heading to the cafeteria, she peeked in on Mrs. Thomas, who was busy typing away on her laptop. “Hey, would you maybe check in with Mr. Foster whenever you have a break? He’s a little on edge.”
Mrs. Thomas beamed as if she actually knew what Jess was talking about. “Of course.”
Jessica breathed deep, wondered briefly if she could win enough scratch-offs to pay for her education without anyone growing too suspicious, and then headed to the parking lot to catch up with Chris and Miranda for lunch.
* * *
Chris and Miranda seemed to find the story of Jess’s first college counseling session highly amusing, so there was that, at least.
As seniors, they were allowed to eat off-campus, which meant that lunch had become a glorious succession of Gordon’s burgers as often as they could afford it, which, thanks to the last bit of the child support money Chris’s wealthy father owed, turned out to be more days than not, Chris’s treat.
The heat of the August sun was stifling, and Jess didn’t have much of an appetite, so she’d opted for a single rather than a double today. The three of them had just gotten their food and found an open booth when she heard her name shouted from the front door.
“Hey, McCloud! I got something to say to you.”
“I could never hear his voice again and live a happy life,” she grumbled to Miranda before turning toward the source of the voice.
Trent, Courtney, Sandra, and Drew stood in the entryway of the restaurant, with Trent and Courtney in the lead. The twins stomped over, and Jess prepared herself for whatever heap of bullshit they were about to pile on.
“Don’t worry,” Chris mumbled, “I’ll handle him.”
“Don’t,” Jess replied. “It’s too hot to fight. Just let them get it out of their system and then hopefully they’ll go away.”
The restaurant was packed with seniors, and Jessica found that her anxiety over what accusations might be hurled her way in front of her peers went up like flash paper, burning for only an instant until—poof!—it was gone. What in her Father’s name could Trent possibly say about her that hadn’t already been said a thousand times? If anything, he would just come off as a broken record, which certainly didn’t reflect poorly on her.
Am I becoming immune to insults? It was a nice idea. Without being aware of it, she let a smile turn the corners of her mouth just as Trent paused at the end of the table, his feet planted shoulder width apart, fists braced on his hips.
“What are you smiling about, McCloud?”
Dewy sweat droplets glistened at the ends of his scrappy attempt at a mustache, and she had a hard time taking her eyes off of it.
I wonder if he’s ever even kissed a girl.
DOES HIS SISTER COUNT?
What?!
“McCloud! I’m talking to you!”
“Huh?”
“I said, what are you smiling about? You think this is all some joke?”
Jess didn’t have to look around to know the other restaurant goers had paused in their meal to watch the scene unfold. It was what she would do, if this sort of thing ever happened to anyone else, which it never seemed to.
But she’d been here before, embroiled in a situation that was focused solely on her humiliation. Only, this time she wasn’t in the mood to be humiliated. Maybe she’d simply met her limit of horror for the year.
“Think what is all some joke?” she asked.
“Uh, our lives,” said Courtney as she stepped forward to stand next to her brother. “You’re trying to ruin our lives because we’re holy.”
“I guess I’m confused,” Jess began. “Or maybe we have different understandings of what the word ‘holy’ means. For me, it’s not synonymous with ‘annoying.’” She pressed her lips together, pouting apologetically.
But Trent must have already rehearsed in his mind how this would go, because he ignored her comment and kept forging on. “If you think I’m too afraid to call you out—”
“I never thought that.”
“Then you’re wrong! I’m not scared of you, no matter what people say you can do.” He shot a quick pointed look at Chris before turning back to her. “You’re trying to tear our family apart, aren’t you? You’re jealous of us because our parents are married, unlike these two you hang out with.” He nodded at Miranda and Chris. “So you decided to stick your big, probably Jewish, Antichrist nose into my parents’ marriage to tear us apart.”
Jessica laughed without meaning to. Of all the things she’d been accused of being, Jewish was definitely the best. Jews were the chosen people, after all. But more importantly, this was what he was going on about? He was mad at her for both of his parents cheating on each other for years?
Before she could point that out, Miranda did it for her. “Are you seriously blaming Jessica for your parents fucking around on each other?”
“What my parents do is their business, not yours!” Trent said.
Courtney’s accusatory tone was stymied by her confusion as she spat, “So now you’re trying to slander our father, too?”
The corner of Miranda’s upper lip cinched in confusion and she glanced at Jessica, who shrugged. Maybe Courtney didn’t know about that half of the equation.
Courtney looked at her brother for backup and quickly realized, as he avoided her gaze, that she wouldn’t get any. “Our dad didn’t cheat, Trent.” Perhaps it was supposed to be a correction, but it sounded closer to a question. “It was just our unfaithful Jezebel mother.”
Trent set his jaw, then mumbled toward his shoulder, “No. It was dad, too.”
Jessica laughed, and this time it was very much on purpose. This was too sweet. “You didn’t know?” A sour joy rushed through her. “Your dad’s been cheating for at least”—she did the math—“twelve years.”
TWENTY-TWO.
Courtney’s head jerked around toward her brother, her eyes shooting daggers. “How long have you known?” she demanded softly.
“A while,” he said nonchalantly. “But it doesn’t matter. He’s a man. If he cheated, it’s because our mom wasn’t doing her wifely duties and he had no choice.” Courtney didn’t seem convinced, but Trent had regained his righteous momentum, and there seemed to be no stopping him now. “It’s no wonder she won’t stop talking about you at dinner. A slut like her would naturally be drawn to the daughter of Mooretown’s biggest slut.”
Chris jumped up from the booth, his chest bumping Trent’s and sending the Wurst son back a step to keep his footing. Chris stared down at him. “You shouldn’t talk about your sister that way.”
“Huh?”
It wasn’t quite a hit as far as insults go, but Jess sort of scrapped together the logic of it and appreciated the sentiment.
“Lunchtime’s over,” Chris repeated. “You have three seconds to get out of my sight before I tell everyone what I caught you doing behind the equipment shed last year.”
Trent stepped back immediately.
“What’s he talking about?” Courtney asked.
Trent grabbed her by the wrist. “Doesn’t matter. Come on.”
Courtney sneered at him and jerked her arm free of his grasp, but as he stormed from Gordon’s, she followed him out all th
e same.
Chris sat back down at the booth, and Jess grinned at him. “You didn’t have to.”
He nodded. “I know. But I wanted to.”
Miranda sipped the last of her Dr. Pepper through the straw. “What’d you catch him doing behind the equipment shed?”
Chris shook his head. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
Jessica somehow knew what was about to happen before His voice ever filled her skull:
HE WAS CALLING YOUR NAME WHILE HE SPILLED HIS SEED.
The image of it flashed in her mind and she spit out her partially chewed fry, sending mushed potato bits across the table and onto Miranda’s tray. “Jesus fucking Christ …”
Chris frowned sympathetically. “He told you, didn’t He?”
Jess felt like she was going to be sick. “And showed me.”
Chris gagged. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Do I want to know?” Miranda asked hesitantly.
Jess shook her head quickly then pushed her food away from her when the salty smell of it started to churn her stomach. “That whole family is the worst.”
* * *
“Chris, stop the car.”
Jessica braced a palm on the dashboard as he came to a sudden stop just before the green light at the main intersection of Mooretown.
“Are you kidding me?” she muttered, staring at the object out the window. She opened the passenger-side door of the truck and climbed down just as Chris asked her what was wrong.
She jogged the four steps to the light pole and ripped off the flyer that was glued to it, giving it a close reading. Yep. It was as bad as she thought.
She jumped back in the truck, the paper still clutched in her fist.
“What is it?” Chris asked again. “You scared the shit out of me.”
She held it up for him to see, and he slowly read it, moving his lips as he did so, until he finally finished with, “Well damn.”
“I should’ve expected something like this, with Mrs. Wurst being so silent lately.”
“Maybe it’s not as bad as it seems. I mean, there are probably plenty of people who would love for someone to start a church devoted to them.”
Jess’s mouth hung open as she stared at him incredulously. “Yeah. Psychopaths. No one in their right mind wants to be worshiped with their very own church.”
A car honked behind them, and Chris pulled forward through the light, which had already cycled back through to green.
“What about Jesus?” he asked. “He wanted a church to worship him.”
“I don’t know that it was his end game to have a bunch of people collecting money in his name and twisting his words,” she said bitterly. “Plus, have you met Jesus?”
It was a rhetorical question. Of course he hadn’t met Jesus. Most people hadn’t.
But he said, “Sort of. I mean, I let him into my heart when I was like eight.”
That was a new one. “You let him into your heart?”
Chris shrugged. “Yeah.” He glanced thoughtfully at her. “I forget you don’t know anything about all this. It’s what people do at church and youth group. You say, ‘Jesus, I invite you into my heart. Get in there, please.’ And then Jesus enters your heart.”
“I think you might be confusing him with Dracula,” she said.
“He was in my dream a few months ago.”
“Dracula?”
“No, Jesus. It was weird.”
“Tell me about it. He likes to poke his head into mine, too.” She stared out the window, wondering what it would be like to have a real sex dream without her half-brother showing up. She closed her eyes and tried for the first time to conjure a real sexual fantasy. Maybe if she were awake and built the dream herself, Jesus wouldn’t be able to interlope.
“This was different, though,” Chris said, uncertainty in his voice.
“How so?” It should have been easy to concoct a fantasy with her and Chris in the truck when she was already with Chris in the truck, but maybe the two scenarios were too close for it to work, and her fantasy even included Mrs. Wurst’s shoddy flyer for First Girl Christ Church.
“Well, you and me were … making out in my truck—”
“Mm-hmm?” She let him paint the picture for her.
“And then you took your shirt off, and I was able to undo your bra super quick, which is weird, because I’m not even sure how bras are fastened—”
“Mm-hmm?” It was easy enough to imagine, since it followed along so closely with the narrative of her last sex dream.
“And then Jesus showed up and started talking to you about your miracle.”
Shit. The picture he was painting with broad strokes was not just similar but identical to the last sex dream she’s had. “Hold on. What?” She opened her eyes.
“Yeah, I’m telling you, it was weird.” He laughed. “It was sort of like that one dream you had a while back with Jameson Fractal when Jesus showed up in Germany. So like, you were there and Jesus was talking with you about … God. And then I thanked him, but he didn’t seem too big on it …”
“Uh …”
“I know. Crazy.”
“Yes, but not for the reason you’re thinking.”
He glanced at her. “What do you mean?”
“What night was this, Chris?”
He was still considering it as they pulled into her driveway. “I guess it was that same night of the wreck, actually. Yeah, that was it. I woke up, and then couldn’t go back to sleep because I was anxious and because we have this woodpecker in our back yard that acts like it’s on meth, so I came over to your place.”
It was just too much of a coincidence. But she didn’t know what to make of it.
“What’s so crazy about it?” he asked. “Besides the obvious.”
She sucked in a lungful of air then for some reason she wasn’t quite sure of yet, decided against explaining her theory. “Nothing. Never mind. I had a dream about Jesus last night is all.” She smiled at him, leaned in for a kiss, then opened the truck door, sliding out of the seat and grabbing her backpack as she went. “See you tomorrow.”
“Don’t forget first after-school practice of the season.”
“Yep. Got it.” She pushed the door closed, waved good-bye, and the headed inside.
So Chris had the same dream as her. That was clear enough.
But how? Why?
The Mexicans’ first pre-season game should have come and gone unnoticed. It was just a pre-season game, who cared? Pre-season results didn’t matter and first string almost never played a minute, so really it wasn’t more than a scrimmage. And in the years prior to Jessica’s success as the Mexicans’ star kicker, pre-season had slipped in quietly then pulled the old Irish good-bye without any recognizable spark of excitement. While some things had change since she’d joined the team, one thing was still a guarantee: pre-season games held no intrinsic entertainment, except to the few fans who liked to see one team unequivocally trounce the other, which everyone knew would be the case when Mooremont played Van Dyke, a science and technology magnet school with hardly enough men to put together a first-string offense and defense.
In the days leading up to that showdown, Jessica doubted whether she would even get a chance to play, instead allowing the back-up kicker have his time to shine before he spent the season warming the bench and trying not to brood too hard about being second-string to a girl. But apparently the small chance that something might happen that would require Jessica to take the field was enough to attract a dozen news vans to the Mooremont parking lot early Friday morning, where they double- and triple-parked across the prime spaces outside the stadium, waiting out the heat until it was closer to game time and they had no choice but to crawl out of the air conditioned vehicles and set up.
After dropping off her equipment in the locker rooms to the side of the field, Jessica met up with Chris, who’d just done the same, and they crossed in front of the stands and past the vans on their way back to the glorious air cond
itioning of the school, where they’d wait and hydrate until the last possible moment.
The Channel Six news van was, of course, among the throng. And as they passed by it, Jessica spied Eugene Thornton grazing on a Gordon’s burger in the front seat, his feet up on the dash and so engrossed in his food that he didn’t notice who had stopped to stare.
“Man I hate that guy,” she said.
Chris paused and followed her gaze. “How’s he just gonna eat a Gordon’s burger like that?”
Jess understood. Eugene didn’t deserve a Gordon’s burger.
When the reporter happened to glance up—perhaps because he could sense two teenagers were staring him down from only fifteen feet away—his eyes popped open at the discovery of who he was face to face with.
“You see any cameras rolling?” Chris asked out of the corner of his mouth.
“Nope.”
He grabbed her and pulled her toward him, pressing his lips down on hers, putting on a real show. She cracked open an eye to get a look at Eugene, whose mouth gaped open, exposing his partially masticated food. Then he began bark orders to whoever was in the back of the van. When the frantic reporter turned his attention to the amorous scene again, Chris broke the kiss. Then he turned toward Eugene, a big grin on the his face, and slowly lifted both middle fingers into the air before motioning with a nod for Jess to keep walking.
She laughed and they trotted off before Eugene Thornton could capture even half a second of the moment on camera.
Small victories, she thought. You have to take the small ones, especially when you never get the big ones.
As they entered into the heavenly chill of the main building, Jess split off from her boyfriend to hit the ladies’ room down the hall, telling him she’d meet up with him in Coach Rex’s office.
She was just about to stroll into the ladies’ restroom when someone came out of the men’s room on the other side of the hall dressed head to toe in white, and immediate warning alarms blared in her skull, causing her to pause until her brain could catch up.
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