“But what if I’m wrong?”
“If you’re wrong about being God’s daughter?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’re only human. Like the rest of us. And we get to be wrong sometimes. Even if you’re right and you’re God’s daughter—which you are—you should get to be wrong sometimes. If you’re pretty sure you’re God’s daughter, just go with it. See what happens. And if it turns out you’re dead wrong, well, that blows, but I’ll still be here. And so will Miranda. And Rex. And probably Chris, too, eventually. But for what it’s worth, I’m sure God’s your daddy. You don’t look anything like Ross Hawthorn. Or Jason or Kyle or Caydon or Garrett or Denton.”
“Wait, who?”
Destinee dug her fingertips underneath Jessica’s shoulder blades. “Just boys. Doesn’t matter.”
The front door slammed and Rex’s heavy footsteps and heavier breathing approached. He stood at the entry to the kitchen, looking mildly deranged, his cheeks red, his thin hair spiked in different directions. “I think they got the point.”
Destinee approached slowly. “Rex, is that blood?” She grabbed a piece of his sleeve and pulled it closer for inspection.
“Most likely,” he said.
Destinee sucked in the corner of her lip and her head rocked back slowly as she stared hungrily at him. “Rex, could I speak with you in the bedroom?”
A dumb grin slipped through his serious facade before he squelched it down again. “Of course, Des.”
Jessica watched the poorly disguised foreplay unfold as her mother headed out of the kitchen toward the bedroom, where there would most definitely be minimal speaking of actual words. Rex cleared his throat and the grin finally surfaced entirely. He wiggled his eyebrows at Jessica, reached in his shirt pocket, and pulled out a packet of Gordon’s ketchup, which he shook demonstratively at Jessica. “Burgers are getting cold,” he said. “Don’t wait on us to get started.” He winked and tossed her the half-used packet, which she caught. She stared morosely down at it, sitting limply in her palm. At least someone was enjoying her birthday.
The syllabus hadn’t specified a professor for macroeconomics, so when Dr. Bell walked in, muscles straining against the sleeves of her light cardigan, just as Jessica remembered her from freshman seminar, it felt like God had smiled upon her. She was so relieved, she actually felt genuine gratitude for her Father, who she was now about ninety percent sure actually existed.
Thank God.
IF I DIDN’T KNOW BETTER, I WOULD SAY HELL HATH FROZEN OVER. EXCEPT I DO KNOW BETTER, AND HELL IS STILL APPROPRIATELY HOT WHERE IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE HOT AND FROZEN WHERE IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE FROZEN.
Huh?
I AM MAKING A JOKE.
I honestly couldn’t tell. You need to work on your timing.
EVERYTHING HAPPENS WHEN IT IS MEANT TO. MY TIMING IS IMPECCABLE.
Dr. Bell greeted the class and began taking roll.
“Here!” hollered Kate Lowe from the desk next to Jessica, once the girl’s name was read. That was another bit of good luck (or divine intervention) in this class. Jessica’s new roommate had not only turned out to be much more balanced than her last, but they had two classes together, one of them being macroeconomics.
Jessica had noted a few important points about Kate as soon as the girls moved into the dorm together. First, Kate didn’t have a juvenile photo collage of her favorite celebrity men anywhere to be found. Instead, her walls had panoramas of wilderness, the likes of which Jessica had only ever seen as a backdrop on her nature shows. She’d always been too busy focusing on the animals to notice the settings, but they really were quite breathtaking, once one paused long enough to appreciate them.
She had also glimpsed, in a stack of Kate’s books, the spine of a Bible, which initially seemed to bode poorly for Jessica and caused her to enter into the relationship hesitantly, expecting judgment to be cast upon her at any moment. But the strangest thing happened: the judgment never came. Almost a week in, and still no judgment. It was enough to make Jess hope that maybe the judgment wouldn’t come, or that (and even she knew this was hoping for a lot) maybe a person could believe in something without condemning those who believed something different. At first that idea seemed ludicrous. But then she realized that she had sort of been doing it off and on all her life. Maybe others could, too.
“McCloud, Jessica?”
Dr. Bell’s voice cut through Jessica’s spaciness and she looked up from her syllabus, where she busied herself coloring in the o’s. “Here.”
The woman smiled, her pit bull jaw growing even wider with the expression. “Good to have you here, Jessica.”
Not a single snicker from the class followed that pronouncement, and Jessica didn’t realize she’d held that expectation until she noticed the absence. Were students scared of Dr. Bell? Physically, they should be. She may not have been especially tall, but Jess was pretty sure the woman could pulverize any given male athlete in hand-to-hand combat. The professor looked like she might even enjoy taking a punch to the chin, like she might concede one or two of those at the start of the fight just to get herself worked up.
For that reason, among many others, Jessica found it impossible to feel anything but genuine affection for Dr. Bell. She wondered if this class could provide that “safe space” students often demanded exist. Jessica had thought it was just a metaphor for something else, but now that she’d felt it, or something like it, she wondered if it could be a reality, and she understood the impulse of trying to defend it, whatever that required.
The adjournment of class caught Jessica off her guard. She looked up at the clock and saw they’d only been there for thirty minutes. That wasn’t particularly uncommon for a first day of class, but it hadn’t even felt like thirty minutes. Was it because Jessica had been next to a friend? Or was it because no one had tried anything aggressive? She suspected it had more to do with the presence of Dr. Bell than anything else, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Or maybe she was excited about the study of economics, but that seemed the least likely of the possibilities.
“That went by really quick,” Jessica said once she’d stuffed the syllabus into her backpack and stood.
“You think so?” Kate asked, pulling her long auburn hair out of the way of her backpack straps. “It felt like a lot longer than a half hour. I don’t know if I can read the same academic honesty paragraph again without losing my mind.”
“How many more first classes do you have this week?”
Kate sighed and counted silently on her fingers. “Three more.” She rolled her eyes playfully.
“Ha. Well, good luck. Up for lunch?”
“For sure.”
As they headed down the aisle of desks toward the exit, Dr. Bell hollered, “Jessica, a word?”
While this phrase usually meant Jessica had done something wrong, the tone with which her professor had said it avoided any unpleasant stomach clenching on Jessica’s part, and she told Kate she’d meet up with her at the dining hall in a bit. Kate nodded, pulled out her cell phone and continued on with the flow of students, and Jessica walked over to the desk at the front of the room where Dr. Bell stood, staring down at some of her papers as she sorted and stacked them.
“Hi Doctor. What’s up?”
Bell smiled at her, waved goodbye to a student behind her, and then returned her attention to Jessica. “One second. Once everyone’s gone, would you mind heading to my office with me?”
“Uh, sure.” Okay, it seemed like she might be in trouble. But she couldn’t for the life of her guess why, other than simply existing, which she still felt a strong desire to apologize for daily. But she suspected Dr. Bell wasn’t looking for a “sorry I exist.”
“It’s nothing bad, I promise you,” said the professor, only slightly soothing Jessica’s nerves. “You might actually think it’s good. We’ll see.”
Jess followed the woman down the hall and into a small, ascetic office containing no decor, only a desk, a filing
cabinet, and two chairs. Jessica’s initial assessment was that this looked more like an interrogation room until she remembered her one time of being in an interrogation room, which was actually Chief Wurst’s office and much cozier and lived-in than this. Though Jessica was glad that at least Dr. Bell’s sterile office lacked the grinning pictures of Courtney and Trent that had haunted the edges of Chief Wurst’s office like gargoyles tasked with scaring away bratty spirits.
“Have a seat,” Dr. Bell said cheerily, gesturing to the plain wooden chair facing her desk.
As Jessica did so, the professor stored her papers away in the filing cabinet and headed over to her own seat. “How was your summer?” she asked, sitting down.
“Good,” Jessica answered on reflex.
“Just good?”
Jess thought about it. “No. Some good, some crappy.”
Bell nodded. “Fair enough. Mine was about the same. I can tell you’re wondering why I brought you in here, right?”
Jess nodded.
“Okay, I’ll cut to the chase, then. I’m an angel, Jessica.”
The laugh that escaped Jessica’s lips was accidental and felt more like a hiccup than mirth of any kind. “You’re an angel.”
“Yep. And while I might hide my personal situation from the university for fear of professional retribution, I see no reason to hide it from you. So I wanted to be upfront about it, since you didn’t seem to realize it on your own.”
Huh. So maybe she was totally serious about this. “How would I have realized it?”
Dr. Bell shrugged her bulky shoulders, which looked more like a practiced workout than a human gesture. “I don’t know exactly. I assumed that the daughter of God would, I don’t know, have radar.”
“Angel radar?”
“Well, sure. I mean, you spend an awful lot of time around an angel, so I supposed you knew it. After all, angels can sense other angels, so it would make sense that you would have been bestowed with a similar ability.”
Jessica shut her eyes tight. “Wait, wait. Slow down. Angels can sense other angels?”
“I’m sorry.” Dr. Bell lowered her eyes for a moment and cleared her throat. “I didn’t expect this to be so new to you. Am I the first angel you’ve actually identified?”
This was embarrassing. Unexpected and extraordinarily embarrassing. “I mean, I’m pretty sure my old teacher is an angel, too. But she never confirmed it.”
Bell considered it. “Hmm … well, maybe she didn’t yet realize it. It takes a while for many to learn the nature of their existence. But usually that comes to light before they’re well into adulthood. Or—” She caught herself before continuing.
“Or what?”
She sighed. “They’re diagnosed with mental illness and never figure it out.”
“Wait what?”
Bell nodded sadly. “Yes. They’re told that the things they see on other angels—the auras—and the visions and strange intuition, that it’s a form of hallucination. And then they either learn to ignore it or they end up medicated.”
“That’s horrible,” Jess said.
“Indeed.”
“How did you realize you were an angel then?”
Bell’s jaw tightened briefly. “I don’t take kindly to people calling me crazy. So when I started seeing all the colors around people, I knew that something was—”
Oh. Shit.
“Wait.” Jessica held up a hand. “Colors? You started seeing colors around people?”
A small grin turned the corners of Dr. Bell’s mouth. “Yes.”
“And when did you start seeing these colors?”
“Just after puberty, sometime toward the start of high school.”
Oh boy. This was starting to make sense. Jessica felt her heart racing anxiously as pieces started to fall together.
Dr. Bell continued cautiously. “I assume this is something you’ve experienced as well?”
“Me? Oh, no. Not at all. But one of my friends, yes.”
Bell nodded slowly. “You mean your boyfriend.”
“Ex-boyfriend,” Jess corrected quickly. “And yes.”
“Right. He’s definitely an angel. And a powerful one, too, judging from his aura.”
“Shit.”
“That’s why I assumed you would know. I almost always saw the two of you together on campus, and—”
“I have to tell him,” Jess said, feeling the anxiety in her stomach explode into an audible rumble. “I don’t think he knows yet. I have to tell him.”
That broke through the professor’s composure, and as Jessica stood from her chair, so did Bell. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. No. You can’t tell him.”
“I can’t tell him he’s an angel?! But what if he ends up medicated and thinking he’s crazy like you said?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. But it’s important he discover it for himself. You can help steer him, but I wouldn’t recommend you tell him outright.”
“Okay. Only one problem with that, though. I don’t talk to him anymore. So.”
“Well, there’s a plan for us all,” Bell said, and Jessica struggled not to roll her eyes. “In the meantime, you have plenty of lesser angels around campus who can help you get where you need to go.”
“I do?”
“Of course.” Dr. Bell motioned to herself.
“And where do I need to go?”
“That’s up to you, but am I correct in assuming that at this current moment you don’t have any particular place in mind?”
Jess nodded sheepishly. “Yeah, you’re correct in assuming that.”
“Then step one is to find your people.”
“Angels?”
“Well, some angels. But surrounding yourself with only those inclined to believe in you isn’t ever going to make an impact on the world. You’ll just be preaching to the choir. You need regular people, too.”
Jess groaned. “Like … friends?”
Bell chuckled. “Yes, like friends. I hope that’s not too much of an imposition.”
“It kind of is. I don’t even know where to start with making friends.”
“Have you never had a community that believed in you?” Her voice sounded sad but determined. Jessica doubted Bell could say anything without a hint of determination seeping through, though.
“Not really.” But the old familiar smell of a boys’ locker room wafted through her memory anyway.
“Hm. Well, this is college, the time when you try a lot of things for the first time. I believe you’re not averse to that.” She raised an eyebrow and then it clicked what she was referencing.
“Yeah, admittedly that night was a mistake. But I don’t expect trying to make friends will be any easier or turn out any better.”
“You have to do it anyway. You have to gather your tribe.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start.” But the deeply ingrained smell of wet grass and moist body heat of a halftime huddle were already fogging her thoughts.
Bell stood from her chair, and Jessica followed her lead, feeling the conversation coming to a close. “Well, I’m glad to help any way I can, but I suspect the girl sitting next to you in class today might be much more of a help.”
“Who, Kate?”
“Yes, I believe that was her name. She’s your friend, right? I mean, you two seemed friendly.”
“Yeah, I guess. She’s my roommate.”
Dr. Bell smiled. “Of course she is.” She chuckled at some joke Jessica wasn’t in on. “I think she might be a great place to begin in gathering friends to you.”
Jessica’s mind traveled back to her last roommate who she’d confided in. “You think I can trust her?”
“Oh yes,” Dr. Bell said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Right. I forget you can’t tell. She’s an angel as well.”
Jess laughed. “Well shit. That’s lucky.”
“Nooo …” Bell said, “it’s not luck at all.”
Jessica turned to look at her before
she left the office. “Oh well, I mean.”
“Clearly your Father thinks you need a little help on your way.”
Jessica couldn’t hold back the dry laugh. “Well, if it’s actually him helping me out, that would be a first.”
Because Coach Brown had been totally unprepared for the situation when Jessica had walked into his office and told him she’d like to join the team if it wasn’t too late, and because Jessica hadn’t thought to bring her custom football pads with her to college, she was stuck with the uncomfortable bulk of men’s pads underneath her practice jersey as she jogged onto the field. The wide shoulders created wings and her breasts, while not notably large, did cause the chest protection to jut out, giving her the overall appearance of a short, stout man. That was actually to her advantage, though, as she hoped she could get through the first part of practice without standing out, kick a few miraculous field goals, and only then reveal herself as a woman. She didn’t know any of the players outside of Chris, hadn’t had a chance to build a rapport with them, and if she was going to make them her friends, she couldn’t have them running her off the field before she’d proven herself.
She assumed most if not all had heard about her success in high school, but there was something about seeing that meant believing, especially for these college folks. Her reputation could precede her all she wanted, but no one seemed to care until they could glimpse it for themselves. It felt more like a greedy need for entertainment than skepticism, though. Either way, it became crystal clear to her the moment she left Dr. Bell’s office that the only tribe she’d ever had was from football, and if she needed to rebuild, this was the place to start.
All she had to do was perform a few miracles, which, lucky for her, was not a big deal.
Coach Brown welcomed her onto the field, where nobody else currently had their helmet on as they ran a few passing drills. When she saw Chris, her heart stopped. It was the first time she’d seen him since she’d discovered his angelic nature only a few days before, and that stirred up emotions inside her she couldn’t even start to name.
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