The Beginning (Jessica Christ Book 1)

by H. Claire Taylor

  “Sweet!” Sandra stood and slipped her new shirt on over her head. “My mom bakes the best cake, you guys. Like, seriously.”

  They followed Sandra out into the kitchen where her ten-year-old brother, Fischer, was sitting at the table, kicking his legs back and forth under his chair. Fischer, in general, reminded Jess of a ticking time bomb. He regularly made Sandra look well-mannered and charitable by comparison. Jess couldn’t stand him and, for whatever reason, he also couldn’t stand her. It was like he bristled up every time she got near him, and sometimes he even went as far as to single her out from the group as a target for his annoying behavior.

  “Mom! Fischer just stuck his finger in the icing!” Sandra smacked him, and he tried to hit her back, but she moved out of the way.

  “Fischer,” Mrs. Thomas said, sounding irritated like she usually did with him. “Go away. Get out of here. Go play video games or something.”

  “Mom …” he whined.

  “No. It’s your sister’s party. Get out of here.”

  Jessica admired Mrs. Thomas for her direct approach with the brat of a child, even if he was her own. It was like he wasn’t even trying to be loved. Nothing about that mentality made any sense to her.

  The guests circled around the table and Mrs. Thomas lit all thirteen candles with a Bic lighter.

  “Mom, do you like my new shirt?” Sandra pulled on the bottom of it so that the whole text and picture were flat and visible.

  Mrs. Thomas looked over at it once the candles were lit. “Ooo. Sexy!” she said, wiggling her hips playfully. That made everyone giggle, including Mrs. Thomas herself, which was startling. Jess couldn’t remember seeing or hearing her former teacher giggle.

  It made Jess love her even more than she already did, and Emma even whispered, “Her mom’s so cool,” to Courtney, who smiled but looked to be in the throes of extreme mental conflict.

  Sandra made a wish and blew out all but three of the candles on her first try, leaving a perfect little triangle in the center of the cake.

  “Guess you were only supposed to be ten this year,” Mrs. Thomas joked. When Jessica looked at her, she was smiling, but it looked a little forced.

  Maybe Mrs. Thomas doesn’t even like Sandra that much.

  It was a comforting thought, that someone as cool and popular as Mrs. Thomas might like Jess more than her own daughter.

  Mrs. Thomas cut into the cake and began plating the pieces and passing them around in a circle until each guest had the slice she wanted.

  Sandra hadn’t been exaggerating; Mrs. Thomas baked one heck of a cake. This one in particular was a masterpiece. Butter cream frosting with green icing flowers in small bunches, over what seemed to be alternating layers of angel food cake, more butter cream, and blueberry jam. Was there lemon too? Jess had never tasted cake this good, and she’d definitely never found a cake interesting before.

  Even Mrs. Thomas couldn’t refuse it, and served herself a large piece that she devoured quickly. After licking some rogue icing off her thumb and then wiping her hands off on a stiff pink party napkin, Mrs. Thomas perked up as she addressed the partygoers with, “You want me to start the movie?”

  The reply was a resounding yes.

  All nine girls managed to fit onto the white leather sectional sofa, cake in lap, to watch the movie. Jess hadn’t the slightest idea what Cutthroat Times was about, and halfway through it, she still wasn’t entirely sure. She did, however, understand two things: First, Cutthroat Times was the most violent movie she’d ever seen. Second, Jameson Fractal was without a doubt the hottest man on earth. She got it now. The pictures on the internet didn’t do him justice, not even a little bit.

  She came to the second realization about two seconds into his first sex scene with his love interest, who was supposed to be a singer or a dancer or maybe a spy?—that part of the plot was still unclear. Dr. Fractal’s technical explanations had made the act of sex seem like a joyless medical experiment requiring focus and precision.

  But that wasn’t what this scene with Dr. Fractal’s little brother felt like by any means. This sex scene was recklessness, passion, some slapping—which seemed odd—shirt-tearing, but mostly thrusting. So much thrusting. So many different angles of it, too. There was sweat, as well. Not as much use of a bed as Jess had expected, either.

  Even as she sat motionless on the couch, her heart raced, threatening to spring free of her ribcage. Because she was absolutely terrified. That was sex? That seemed like something that could easily result in an accidental death. But, based on the sounds Jameson’s singer-or-dancer-or-maybe-spy love interest was making, sex also seemed like it could result in the most amazing feeling that could happen to anyone ever.

  She tried to imagine herself in place of the brunette actress, but her mind shied away from that; the idea of being manhandled by someone as gorgeous as Jameson Fractal was too much. She wondered briefly if his big sister had ever watched this film, but judging from Dr. Fractal’s dry approach to sex, that seemed unlikely.

  All cake eating had ceased on the sectional sofa, all movement, as well. A tingling began to gather in her lower abdomen, just above her lady bits, and she wondered if this was what an orgasm was. Probably not. The intensity of it didn’t match what she knew of the concept. And when she saw the writhing brunette presumably experience an on-screen orgasm while being pinned between Jameson Fractal and a brick wall as she huffed and puffed and moaned and yelled, Jess decided that she hadn’t just had one herself. The tightening in her lower abdomen must be something else. It was intensifying, but when she tuned into it, she decided it wasn’t intensifying in a particularly pleasant way.

  Finally the scene ended and the movie carried on with whatever sinewy plot it pretended to have. Jess didn’t bother trying to follow it anymore. She just wanted to watch the sex scene over and over again. She grappled with whether she would ever feel comfortable doing that with someone, despite how part of her actively wanted to do that with Jameson Fractal himself.

  In the end, she decided that she couldn’t imagine ever being that woman. She would feel silly doing that. She didn’t like being loud, for one. But at the same time, she wished she was a person who could do that without feeling silly. A sexy person.

  If she ever were to get herself into a situation like the one she’d just seen on the screen, though, God would most likely interrupt anyway and ruin everything, as he was known to do whenever she was particularly enjoying herself, so there was that.

  Jess continued her struggle to follow along with the on-screen action as Jameson orchestrated a heist—or maybe a rescue or a party or something. But suddenly she was hit out of nowhere with a wave of lightheadedness. Then the tingling in her brain turned into pressure behind her eyes, and the place in her belly where she’d felt her passion start to amass only minutes before started to genuinely hurt. She wondered if the cake wasn’t sitting well with her, but she’d had food not sit well with her before, and it’d never left her cramping quite like this.

  While she ran through a list of possible diagnoses for her sudden symptoms, rain began to fall outside the living room window. It was a moment before her mind officially recognized it, and by that time, the wind was already blowing torrentially, causing large drops to beat against the pane like they were frantically begging for entry.

  She felt something stab her temple so hard, she actually jerked her head toward Miranda, thinking her friend had jabbed her with a finger. But Miranda was still glued to the movie, her focused expression suggesting that she was struggling as much as Jess had been to follow the convoluted plotline. The look on Miranda’s face was the same one she wore whenever a new concept was explained in math—her eyes squinted to slits, her nose crinkled around the edges, her upper lip raised to reveal her two large front teeth. So clearly it hadn’t been Miranda who’d caused the pain in her temple. Maybe Jess was really sick. Maybe she should call up her mom and go home.

  No. This was an important sleepover. God wouldn’t allow
her to suffer a stroke and keel over. She would just work through it.

  Midway through some strange, bloody fight scene, where Jess couldn’t tell who was punching whom, lightning lit up the living room through the window before knocking the power out completely. The girls were pulled from their fantasy with a jolt, and Courtney screamed beside her.

  “I’m scared of the dark!” she proclaimed, and Jess hoped that admission would spell some sort of social destruction for the girl once the chaos had a chance to settle. It was only a few moments before Mrs. Thomas arrived with flashlights and a battery-powered lantern, and then things started to settle down.

  “It’ll come back on in a second,” she assured them, “and then you can finish your movie.”

  But almost immediately after she left the room to find more flashlights, hail started pounding on the window. No one would be out fixing any power lines so long as Texas hail was in the mix. Even Jess knew hail could jump in size from that of a high-velocity marble to a lethal grapefruit in a snap.

  Sandra’s cousins, the neighbor, and Stephanie whimpered softly, and Courtney, Emma, and Sandra took turns proclaiming how each was the most scared of hail out of the bunch.

  The lightning that struck the tree in the backyard put a quick stop to all the blubbering, though. Through the window, Jess saw its jagged flash clearly a split second before the deafening crack of thunder caused her to jump in her seat. And when she did, she felt something wet in her pajama shorts. Had she wet herself? Surely not.

  “Oh my god! It’s on fire!” Emma yelled, pointing at something outside.

  Jess turned her attention back to the window to see that a large oak in the backyard had been split in two and was burning between the halves, though the rain was containing the flames and even seemed to be extinguishing them slowly.

  “Oh my god! Why is this happening to me?” Sandra yelled through tears.

  At the mention of her father, Jess couldn’t help but wonder if all this—the cramping and the sudden extreme weather conditions—had something to do with Him. Wrath? Was this punishment for lust? That didn’t sound like Him. That didn’t sound like Him at all.

  God … God!

  No reply.

  Ugh. Typical.

  Jess made to stand up, but as soon as she shifted, she was reminded of the moisture from before, which was still pressed against her. Had she peed her pants? She hadn’t felt all that scared by the strange weather …

  With only cheap flashlights (which no one could seem to hold steady) and a dim lantern illuminating the room, and with all the girls’ attention focused out the window, maybe she could sneak to the bathroom without anyone noticing anything on the back of her pajama shorts. Maybe no one would even realize she was gone.

  She stood slowly, clenching to make sure she didn’t accidentally pee anymore, and then turned to see if she’d left anything behind on the sectional. Her mind hardly had any time to reconcile what she’d expected to see with what was actually there before Sandra’s eyes landed upon it too, and she squealed, “Oh my god! Blood! Ewww!”

  Blood? Why was she … ? Oh.

  Maybe it was because Dr. Fractal had so recently occupied real estate in her brain, but Jess put the pieces together almost immediately.

  But really? At a sleepover? On her birthday? In front of everyone else?

  Well, when she thought about it like that, she probably should have expected this from the get-go.

  She stared at the small pool of blood on the leather cushion and watched resignedly as the liquid fanned out to cover more surface area.

  She was so preoccupied with watching the slow progress of it that she overlooked an important logical conclusion: if she bled onto the couch, the blood had passed through the cloth of her shorts, leaving visible evidence there as well. Courtney didn’t overlook that, though, and she leaned at a severe angle to get a glimpse of Jess’s butt before loudly drawing everyone’s attention to it. Just as the rain quenched the last of the tree fire, the commotion outside was forgotten, lost in a cacophony of squeals, laughter, and chatter.

  Jess felt her face flush crimson. Where to go from there? Should she sit back down? Should she embrace it and laugh along with them? Should she go sprinting for the bathroom to wait things out until she could come up with a better plan?

  Yeah, that would have to do.

  She tried to snatch the flashlight from Emma’s hand, but the girl’s grip was surprisingly strong, and Jess ended up in a struggle with her for control of it.

  “Hey! Hey!” Mrs. Thomas was back in the living room. “Everybody calm down! What’s going on here?”

  “Jessica bled on the sofa,” Sandra said, pointing at the spot.

  Jess let go of the flashlight as strength drained from her muscles and she felt like someone had draped a dozen wet blankets over her head and shoulders.

  Everybody knew.

  Maybe they hadn’t made the leap between connecting the start of her period to the freak weather, but they all knew that she had started her period, and that was humiliating enough.

  Mrs. Thomas looked at where her daughter pointed, frowned for a moment, then looked back up at Sandra. “So? I don’t get why that’s something to make such a big deal about. Every woman gets her period, and every woman, at some point or another wasn’t expecting it.”

  She turned to Miranda. “Would you grab a wet paper towel from the kitchen?” Miranda nodded and ran out. “The rest of you—it’s time for bed. The electricity might not be back on for a while, so it looks like we’ll have to finish the rest of the movie in the morning.”

  The last thing Jessica wanted to do was to be locked away in Sandra’s bedroom with the other girls, but luckily she wouldn’t have to be, because Mrs. Thomas added, “Jessica, you stay with me.” In different circumstances, with a different adult, she would have assumed that meant she was in trouble, but not with Mrs. Thomas.

  Sandra’s mother knelt down and assured Jess that there was nothing to be embarrassed about. “You know,” she said, “the last Wednesday before we went to summer break, I had to leave Marymoore early because I started my period unexpectedly and bled through my khakis.”

  That somehow made Jess feel a little better, even while it grossed her out thinking about Mrs. Thomas on her period.

  “You just have to keep an extra change of underwear and maybe a skirt or shorts in your backpack for when it happens again,” she coached. “Luckily it’s the summer, so you have some time to get a hang of it before you go back to school.”

  It was sound advice. And while Jess had long suspected that Mrs. Thomas was one of her angels, her help in such a horrifying situation as this served as welcome confirmation. The only question was whether the woman knew she was an angel or if she still hadn’t figured it out.

  When Miranda returned, Jess took the paper towels from her and wiped down the leather couch. The blood came off easily, which was a relief. Now all she needed was to get out of these shorts.

  “Come with me,” Mrs. Thomas said. “I’m going to show you how to deal with all this. Miranda, would you go grab Jess a change of pants from her bag?”

  “Yep.” Miranda hurried off to Sandra’s bedroom, and Mrs. Thomas led Jess to the bathroom.

  Mrs. Thomas pulled a brightly colored cardboard box out from under the sink and then pulled out a little wrapped pouch. Once the packaging was off it, Jess recognized it from sex ed. “Sandra still hasn’t started her period. She’s a little bit behind on … well, everything.” Mrs. Thomas chuckled, so Jess chuckled too.

  She held out the box to Jessica and added, “You know, it’s really not the end of the world, even if it feels like it. Just don’t let it get to you. I know you must feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, but that doesn’t mean you have to think about it all day every day. You can still have fun and be a teenager. I promise nothing terrible will happen if you occasionally cut yourself a break and focus on things that make you happy.”

  Jessica wasn’t ex
actly sure what Mrs. Thomas was talking about specifically, but the words struck a chord inside her nonetheless. She sighed and nodded, forcing a smile and hoping it caused her attitude to adjust in kind.

  After a quick refresher on how to actually use a pad, wings and all, Mrs. Thomas left Jess to it, but not before asking, “You want me to call your mom and have her pick you up once the weather lets down a bit?”

  “Yeah, I don’t feel good.”

  Mrs. Thomas nodded. “You should go home and do something that makes you feel better, whatever that is.” She pressed her lips together into a concerned smile and then shut the bathroom door behind her. When Jess heard a small knock on the door a minute later, she opened it to find Miranda standing there, holding Jess’s jeans and a clean pair of underwear. “I started mine last year,” she said.

  “Really?” Jess asked, astounded. How had she not known this about her best friend?

  “Yeah. It’s not that bad. It’s just … a hassle.”

  Jess wasn’t sure what else to say, so she took her clothes from Miranda and thanked her.

  “I told them to cut it out,” Miranda added. “They promised not to say anything to anyone. And I do too.”

  “Thanks.” Jess appreciated the thought, but wondered if it was too much to hope for that Miranda wouldn’t let slip about her birthday or her period.

  She closed the bathroom door and went to work.

  Once she’d carefully stuck the pad to the inside of her underwear, she took two steps forward before the horror sank in. A hassle? This was like wearing a diaper! She closed the toilet lid and sat down on it, putting her head in her hands. She felt like crying, but no tears came. Then she tried to internalize Mrs. Thomas’s advice, but amid the swarm of emotions, that wasn’t happening either. So she distracted herself with mental math, and it was some small comfort: at least she only had to start her period around 240 more times before someone would eventually kill her.

  * * *

  Jess pretended not to notice that Destinee was staring relentlessly across the kitchen table at her. The last month of summer had zoomed by and now there were enough anxieties flopping around in Jess’s mind as it was, considering today was the first day of eighth grade, without having to worry about her mother’s concerns on top of that.