Nu Alpha Omega

by H. Claire Taylor

  Whether it was because everyone in the sunny sea of people was wide-eyed and wading through a haze of social survival adrenaline or simply because all of Jessica’s wildest dreams were coming true and she’d finally found a place where no one knew who she was, she couldn’t be certain. But she was able to pass through the crowd, her hand clutching Chris’s so they didn’t get separated, completely unharassed.

  The crowd inside the student center was even more jam-packed than the one outside. Chris, Leslie, and Jessica followed along with the flow of freshmen as they made their way toward the main auditorium for check-in.

  Before long, the only two people Jessica knew became lost in the fray, with Chris heading over to check in at the R-Z table and Leslie lining up for the A-H sign-in, leaving Jessica in a long line for the I-Q last names.

  When she finally made it to the front of the line, a thoroughly makeuped brunette in a pink shirt adorned with glittery Greek letters awaited Jess at the registration table. “Hi! Last name?” the girl said without looking up.

  “McCloud.”

  “Mc…Cloud,” the girl repeated back to herself as she flipped through the roster. When her mechanical pencil hitched above the paper for a split second, Jessica knew she was outed.

  The girl looked up at her and grinned. “Hm,” she remarked, and then crossed off McCloud, Jessica from the roster. She reached beneath the table, grabbed a maroon bag with a gold bobcat head on the side, and offered it.

  But when Jessica grabbed the handle, the girl didn’t immediately let go. “You ever thought about going Greek?”

  “Uh, no, I hadn’t thought about it.”

  It was a lie, of course. Over the summer, going Greek was most of what she overheard her fellow graduates talking about at Gordon’s. From her understanding, going Greek involved a social approval process that she was not likely to get through. It also involved physical violence? That part was still a bit unclear.

  The brunette at the table chuckled. “Well, you’d be a shoo-in if you decided to pledge. Obviously the zetas are the best.” The girl pointed down to her shirt as definitive proof, and when Jess let her eyes follow the girl’s gesture, she noted ZTA stretched tightly across a large, round, high set of knockers.

  “Zetas?” Jessica echoed back.

  “Yep! Just like the cartel.” She giggled, like it was something to be proud of, but Jessica’s mind flashed an image of the bullet-riddled body flailing around on the cracked cement of the McCloud driveway. She pushed the garbled memory of Spanish pleas from her brain and did the normal thing: she grinned widely at the girl and said, “Oh, okay.”

  “A lot less drugs, though. Ha!”

  “Heh.”

  “I’m the pledge mistress, so if you decide to go Greek, I’ll totally vouch for you. Name’s Danielle.” She finally let go of the bag once Jessica smiled and put a sufficient amount of energy—which she’d been hoping to save for other more important interactions—into convincingly assuring Danielle that, yes, desperately begging to be part of a prissy cartel sounded like great fun.

  “You’re in Dr. Bell’s seminar group,” Danielle concluded. “I think she’s over there. She’s holding up the sign that says Bell.”

  “That makes sense. Thanks.”

  “See ya soon, Jessy!”

  Jessica quickly turned her back to Danielle so she wouldn’t glimpse Jessica’s irritation at the gross liberty Danielle had taken with her name.

  She headed into the crowd and couldn’t put eyes on Chris between when she left the table and when she found the sign with Bell in bold letters. Holding the sign up above the crowd was an incredibly muscular woman who wore a green cardigan like she’d just hunted it and skinned it that morning.

  “Ms. McCloud,” the woman said, still holding the sign in the air. “You’re in my group today. I’m Dr. Bell.”

  “Jessica,” she replied before realizing that it was unnecessary.

  “Just waiting for one more person in our small group, then we can break off.”

  Jessica clutched her reusable Bobcat bag to her chest and tried to stay out of the way, which was pointless, since everywhere in the crowd was in the way.

  While she was trying not to stare at Dr. Bell’s incredibly muscular forearm that jutted out from her rolled up sleeve, a voice startled her by speaking very close to her ear. “Hi.”

  She whirled around to find a round-faced girl staring back at her. “Whoa. Uh, hi.”

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. I just didn’t know if you’d hear me in all this noise.”

  “You’re fine,” Jessica assured her. “Are you in this group?”

  The girl nodded. “Yeah. You?”

  “Yep. Jessica.” She shifted her bag and extended her hand.

  The girl’s smile was apologetic, almost embarrassed. “I know.” They shook. “Judith.”

  Small talk. It was something Jessica hadn’t had occasion to practice very often, since most of the people she’d encountered in her life fell into one of two categories: life-long acquaintance or media. The former often didn’t say anything to Jessica when they were in close proximity, because what was there to say? And the latter cut right to the chase. If there was one positive thing about reporters hounding her, it was that at least she never had to think of a conversation starter.

  “So, uh, where are you from?” Jessica asked, hoping that wasn’t prying and feeling for some reason guilty for her lack of knowledge about Judith’s life.

  “Utopia.”

  “Oh cool.”

  Judith pulled her long, black hair around and in front of one of her shoulders, examining the ends quickly before dropping it. “You ever been?”

  “Uh. No.”

  Judith laughed. “Of course you haven’t. It’s boring as shit. No one wants to go there.”

  Jessica laughed too, though more because she hadn’t expected the honesty. “Sounds like Mooretown,” she replied.

  “San Marcos is already more interesting. For one, it has a movie theater.”

  “Really?” Jessica asked earnestly. She hadn’t seen one anywhere yet, but damn it would be nice to live in a town with one.

  Judith was laughing again, and it took a second before Jessica understood why. Then she laughed at herself, too.

  But the chuckles dried up in her throat when her eyes landed on a familiar face and her survival instincts shot a few flares from her chest to her head and then her head shot one right back down into her gut, where it simmered in her stomach acid.

  Courtney Wurst didn’t look away. Clearly she hadn’t left her loathing for Jessica behind in Mooretown. Even from this distance across the auditorium, Jessica was acutely aware of the snarl that turned the corner of Courtney’s lip. She wondered if, at the very same moment, somewhere up in Abilene, Trent was snarling without knowing why.

  Texas State was a big school, though. Not even Courtney could turn the whole student body against Jessica, no matter how much she might try.

  “Alright.” Dr. Bell’s voice cut through Jessica’s silent brooding. “All those with me, let’s go.”

  Jessica caught one last look at Courtney, smiled amicably at the girl—because why the hell not?—and followed Dr. Bell out of the auditorium.

  Jessica stared down in horror at the graded paper as she made her way across campus to the dorm. It was like the adjunct professor’s red pen had ruptured an artery all over her personal essay. Half of the comments made no sense anyway, starting most prominently with the bold lettering across the top, which Professor Stewart had traced over multiple times with his pen, that said, Personal essays should be non-fiction!

  She’d have to redo it and beg for her sixty-four to be raised. Maybe partial credit?

  One more thing to add to her ever-mounting to-do list. And it was only the second week of classes.

  STAND BY YOUR STORY, DAUGHTER.

  And fail the class? Uh, no thanks.

  FINE. SEE IF YOU CAN DENY YOUR TRUE STORY.

  She s
ighed, rolled her eyes, and crammed the essay back in her messenger bag.

  Obviously I can’t. But I can write about things that don’t involve me being your daughter.

  OH YES. HOW VERY INTERESTING. I’M SURE YOUR PROFESSOR WILL LOVE THE STORY OF WHEN YOU MISTOOK A STAFF INFECTION FOR BREAST CANCER.

  How did you—ugh! Stay out of my inner monologue!

  STOP MAKING YOUR INNER MONOLOGUE SO ENTERTAINING.

  Don’t you have a polar ice cap to melt or something?

  NOPE. THOSE PRETTY MUCH MELT ALL ON THEIR OWN NOW.

  For being knowing and all that, you sure don’t take a hint.

  I TAKE IT. I JUST CARE NOT.

  The AC felt like an ice bath after the stale late-August heat as Jessica entered her dormitory and headed toward the elevator. But she paused, changed directions, and headed for the stairs instead. No one took the stairs, and with the dorms now at capacity with students, the prospect of being sardined in an awkward elevator ride, which for some reason necessitated small talk, was about more than she could handle after the first full five-day week of classes.

  Leslie wasn’t around when Jessica walked into their room and flopped onto the lower bunk. She really didn’t have time to flop, considering how much she needed to do, but it was a Friday afternoon, so she allowed herself a moment to indulge.

  Spanish, world literature, government, calculus, cultural anthropology. And then there was University Seminar with Dr. Bell. But luckily that was more group counseling than academics. It totaled to sixteen hours. Was that really all? Sixteen hours of anything a week should be a breeze. She’d spent more time in class each week at Mooremont, but she’d never felt so overwhelmed.

  Before her conscious brain even caught on, her fingertips glided over her phone until Miranda’s number popped up.

  Jessica hadn’t spoken to her friend in almost two weeks outside of a few texts with hours in between each response. She wasn’t necessarily expecting Miranda to answer the phone, but she did.

  “Hey! I was just about to call you!”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, I”—someone shouted in the background—“Quentin says hi.”

  “Quentin? Quentin Jones?”

  “Yep. We’re in the same dorm. I ran into him on campus yest—”Another holler. “No, I’m not asking her that.”

  “Asking me what?” said Jessica.

  Miranda laughed. “Nothing.”

  “What?” Jess persisted, laughing along without knowing why.

  “He asked if you had any Jesus dreams about him lately.”

  “Oh god.” But she couldn’t keep from giggling.

  “Got plans tonight?”

  Jessica spelled out her name in cursive on the top bunk with the tip of her finger. “No, just a little homework.”

  Miranda guffawed, then, “Oh. No. Nooo … Jess. You are not doing homework on a Friday night.”

  “I have to. I don’t know when else I’ll get it done if I don’t start tonight.”

  Miranda wouldn’t be deterred. “Then don’t get it done.”

  “But—“

  “Come on, Jess. You really think professors expect freshman to be on top of everything their first month in college?”

  “Yes?” Professor Stewart had seemed serious enough with his red pen. “Are you going out?”

  “Of course. Quentin heard of a good party he can get into since he’s, you know, Mr. Goldfinger or whatever.”

  “Mr. Magic Hands!” he corrected loudly enough for Jessica to hear.

  “Whatever,” Miranda continued. “You know, for some reason I thought people might stop caring about football outside of high school. But nope.”

  “Definitely not.” Jessica wasn’t feeling compelled to mention that the Texas State head coach had already tracked her down on campus and practically begged her to come to a practice.

  “Are you at least going to some parties? Meeting new people?”

  Miranda was starting to sound like Destinee now.

  “Of course. I’m meeting all kinds of new people.”

  “Signing autographs doesn’t count,” Miranda teased.

  “You know I wouldn’t sign an autograph even if God himself commanded it.”

  “Yeah. I could see Him doing that, too.” More chatter in the background, this time a female voice. “Hey, we’re gonna go grab dinner. I’ll call you tomorrow and you better have gone and had some fun!”

  Jessica drew her name again on the top bunk, this time with a flourish after the a. “Fine, fine. Be safe. Watch out for guys. So on and so forth.”

  “You kidding me? Quentin’s the biggest cock block in the world. He won’t let another guy within twenty feet of me… yes you are, asshole. Make Chris take you to a party tonight. I mean, what’s the use of having a sexy boyfriend if you don’t enjoy it?”

  “Good point.” No use telling Miranda that Chris had been acting especially weird and distracted lately and was less likely to want to party than she was.

  They said their goodbyes, and Jess sighed as she set the phone down on the bed next to her. She should at least text Chris and see what he was up to.

  Jessica: Hey, what’s the plan tonight?

  Chris: Team meeting.

  Jessica: On a Friday night?

  Chris: Yeah, sorry. I can come by after. Will you be at your dorm?

  Jessica sighed then responded with, Of course.

  Who even knew when “after” would be, though. Ten? Eleven? She’d be asleep by then for sure.

  The door opened and Leslie trotted in, setting her backpack on the desk chair and commencing her already annoying routine of unpacking everything from it and putting it neatly away at the end of each day. Who did that? Why did Leslie have to flaunt her mental energy?

  “How was your day?” Leslie asked.

  “Fine. Long.”

  “Same. I learned so many cool things today, though. Got any fun plans tonight?”

  Jessica felt what little reserve of energy she had left drain from her. “Nope.”

  “Oh great!” Leslie said, turning and walking over to lean on the end of the bunk beds. “Me neither. Wanna do dinner?”

  Great. Everyone’s going out to party and I get to have dinner with Leslie.

  “Maybe … but I have a lot of homework to do.”

  “Psh,” Leslie waved her off then went back to organizing her pens by color. “Only lame-o’s do homework on a Friday.”

  Jessica rolled over onto her stomach, pressing her face into the pillow so she couldn’t respond and wondering how long she could stay this way before she passed out.

  Jessica wasn’t sure which was worse, the nervous glances crawling all over her from the other students in her cultural anthropology class, who undoubtedly wondered if the discussion of polytheistic cultures would cause her to go postal, or the Almighty Peanut Gallery in her skull, who was—surprise surprise—not amused with the professor’s and textbook’s take on the concept.

  IT IS NO FAULT OF MINE THAT HUMANS WERE NOT ABLE TO UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF SUBCONTRACTING.

  Couldn’t you foresee that the angels and demons you contracted out to would be misinterpreted as gods?

  YE OF LITTLE FAITH. OF COURSE I COULD. BUT YOU FORGET ABOUT ORIGINAL MISTAKE. IT’S A CONSTANT WILD CARD. IT’S MY ACHILLES HEAL, AS IT WERE. SPEAKING OF ACHILLES THAT ANGEL JERK PROMISED ME HE’D STOP THE WAR, NOT USE IT AS A RESUME PADDER TO HELP HIM LAY WITH WOMEN.

  “Jess,” Chris whispered from beside her.

  She snapped out of her conversation with her father and looked at her boyfriend.

  “Can’t you ask Him to let you focus?” Chris whispered.

  “Sure. I can ask him anything. He doesn’t care, though.”

  “He does care!” Chris insisted, just above a whisper.

  Her jaw fell open and she didn’t bother shutting it.

  Chris shook his head minutely and breathed deeply. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I guess I’m a little stressed.”

 
From the front of the small classroom, Dr. Garcia paused and her eyes drifted to the back of the classroom where Jessica and Chris sat. “Did you have something to add, Miss… Christ?”

  I’m going to kill Jimmy.

  “McCloud,” she corrected, not for the first time since she’d been on campus. “And um, yes. I was wondering about the connection between the Egypt’s polytheism and the animism of earlier cultures. How exactly did one evolve”—she ignored the audible gasps from a spattering of students—“into the other? What precipitated it?”

  Dr. Garcia’s arched eyebrows gave away her shock that Jessica actually did have something to contribute.

  Yeah, screw you, Professor. Screw all of you for assuming I’m unintelligent.

  Jessica beamed politely.

  I ALREADY TOLD YOU. ANIMISM WAS MERE STUPIDITY, ANTHROPOMORPHIC POLYTHEISM WAS SUBCONTRACTING.

  Nobody asked you.

  But as Dr. Garcia began answering the question, Jessica found that she just couldn’t bring herself to pay attention. She was sure whatever answer Dr. Garcia gave was well thought out and a damn good academic guess, but unfortunately, it would be wrong. No cultural anthropologist would ever land on the real answer, and that was a bummer. Jess wasn’t sure if it was a bummer because she would have liked people who spent their whole lives studying one thing to actually get the answer right or because she wished the right answer had more to do with psychology and survival and less to do with God trying to outsource some of His work for a few millennia.

  As they filed out of the classroom, down the cramped hall and into the sunshine, Chris leaned down and kissed Jess. “Team meeting. Gotta head down to Jowers.”

  “I can’t even imagine what y’all have left to talk about after so many team meetings.”

  Chris shrugged. “You know. It’s football. There’s always something to talk about. Especially with the season opener this weekend.” He made to take a step back and then paused. “I mean, if you’re really curious, you know you can just come with me. Coach Brown would throw a party if I brought you. He might even let me start a game this season.”