And just like that, it was over. She took a rehearsed step back from the podium to signal to the crowd that she was done, and it felt like a weight lifted from her as the crowd actually applauded.
People were cheering.
For her.
And it wasn’t because she’d just performed a miracle.
Granted, making it through the speech without humiliating herself felt a little like a miracle, but she knew the difference well by now.
It only gets easier from here, she thought. She took another step back and allowed Congressman Thomas to step forward and introduce the next speaker.
She was pleased to find her nerves had settled now that the brunt of her work was complete. And even when she first laid eyes on the beautiful angel of a man who ascended the stairs, her nerves didn’t get the best of her. Then, after a quick scan of her surroundings for Jesus, she determined that this was not in fact a dream; she was about to shake hands with Jameson Fractal.
God, he was tall. And more handsome in real life. How was that possible?
He took his time crossing the stage as he waved and smiled so convincingly that Jess wondered if he didn’t actually love this. She wasn’t sure how anyone could, but Jameson seemed to. He’s an actor, you idiot. Being convincing is his job.
When his soulful eyes found hers, and his large smile grew even wider (that gesture was genuine, she assured herself—no acting there), it became crystal clear that this was the best day of her life.
He’s only eight years older than me. It could happen.
He took his time crossing the stage, owning the space like a powerful god, maybe even an all-powerful one, if such a thing existed. Time seemed to slow down around him as she felt herself pulled under a strange, airy spell.
When he mouthed her name, he used the shorter version like they were old friends—Jess, which rhymes with yes, yes, yes! He continued toward her, his charming smile in place, his kind eyes squinting happily like maybe this was the best day of his life, too. He held out his hand for her, and the natural pull of her body toward his did all the work for her muscles as her hand extended outward. What would happen when her skin brushed his? Would there be a spark of chemistry? Only a few feet separated them now …
The bullet went clear through his temple and out the underside of his jaw.
OH ME DAMN!
The force of it took him to the ground. Jessica grasped helplessly for his hand as he fell and a loud ringing bloomed in her ears.
But even above the ringing she could hear the screams. The volume of them ebbed and flowed with the pulse of her heart beating against her eardrums.
She dropped to her knees and reached down to find his pulse, a skill she couldn’t believe she had reason to use for the second time in only a handful of months.
He still had one.
That’s something.
IF BY SOMETHING YOU MEAN HORRIFYING.
The sight in front of her was so grotesque that it anchored her to the physical world, drawing her focus away from the comments of the Almighty Peanut Gallery.
Jameson’s soulful eyes were wide with shock and blood bubbled from his jaw as he struggled to speak during his final breaths.
“Sh …” she said, mostly for her own sake so that she didn’t have to keep seeing that jagged jawbone shard jut out each time his facial muscles contracted.
Someone dropped down by Jessica’s side, and when she looked up, she spotted Dr. Fractal. Despite advising both Jessica and Jameson against endorsing a candidate, the woman had shown up to support them.
Strong hands tried to pull Jessica away from Jameson, and she swatted them off.
“God dammit,” Dr. Fractal muttered. “No, no, no …”
The doctor applied pressure to the entry and exit points, but outside of that, there wasn’t much else to do except stare down at her little brother as he wheezed agonizingly.
YOU KNOW WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE.
Obviously, but come on! Jameson? You had to drag him into this part of your plan?
FIRSTLY, THIS WAS NOT MY PLAN. BUT IT’S NOT LIKE HE’S GOING TO STAY DEAD. SO WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
What’s the problem? I can see his molars. And his mouth is closed!
Enough. God would never understand.
She placed her hands on Dr. Fractal’s and gently removed them from Jameson’s wounds. “You gotta let him die.”
The doctor whipped her head around to look into Jessica’s eyes, and she noticed for the first time how similar the siblings looked to one another. Well, pre-bullet.
“Trust me,” Jessica said. “You gotta let him die.”
Slowly, Dr. Fractal nodded, took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She clasped her hands together and began praying.
“No no,” Jessica said quickly. “Let’s not bring Him into this.”
“Huh?” The doctor stared helplessly at her.
“The prayer. You don’t need it. God doesn’t do the miracle thing. I do.”
“Oh, okay,” she said flatly, and turned her eyes back to her brother.
How much time had passed? It’d felt like an hour, but Jess suspected it was closer to ten seconds. People began trying to get to him now, lots of people.
Through the chaos, Jessica heard her mother’s voice. “Back up! Back the fuck up!” Jess glanced up to see Wendy, Destinee, and a few men in suits with ear-pieces clearing out the stage around Jameson’s body as Jessica waited patiently for the unfortunate movie star to draw his last breath.
She reached down and there was no pulse.
Ugh. Finally.
She tried to smile reassuringly at Dr. Fractal, but her muscles instead twisted into a grimace that didn’t achieve the desired effect. Screw it. Jess placed her hands on his chest and felt the pull move through her. He lurched and his wide eyes began darting around again.
Dr. Fractal collapsed on him as the frayed and exposed muscles in his jaw began to weave back together, and Jess took that as her cue to get the hell out of Midland.
Wendy was on the same page. “Okay, he’s back,” she said, grabbing Jessica under her armpits and lifting her with surprising strength onto her feet. “Let’s get gone.”
“I’m sorry,” Jess managed to shout to Dr. Fractal before she was dragged away. Whether the doctor heard her or not, Jess couldn’t be sure, but she needed to apologize all the same.
Because on a core level—call it women’s intuition or divine knowledge—Jessica knew it was all her fault.
“So maybe not political science,” Jessica said as she dragged herself into Mr. Foster’s office first thing Monday morning. Her conversation with Mrs. Thomas about Mr. Foster’s impending departure from Mooremont at the end of the school year had been relegated to the back of her mind by the trauma that had followed it, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been bugging her all weekend.
It had taken a backseat, though, to the obvious career decision she’d reached sometime between when she’d resurrected her celebrity crush and when she’d shouted at Destinee to pull over the car twenty miles outside of Midland and spent a solid ten minutes violently blowing chunks into scrub brush along the highway.
The college counselor cracked an eye open from where he sat in his stuffed rolling chair with headphones on. As soon as he spotted her, he yanked off the headphones and straightened his posture. “Jessica! How are you?”
Ugh. He seemed so nice, but her admiration for him felt dirty and tainted now. She pushed through it. “What are you doing?”
“Huh?”
“What are you doing?”
“Oh this?” He lifted the headphones with a finger. “Just my morning routine of listening to soothing nature sounds and reciting affirmations so the state mandated conformity of this place doesn’t make me want to kill myself before lunch.”
She supposed that was anger, but she couldn’t imagine him aiming it at anyone else. Mr. Foster’s anger was an inward kind. She knew how that worked from personal experience. Of course, when she tried to
keep too much anger inside, things exploded outside.
What happens when people who can’t smite hold in too much anger?
But if anything made sense as a means to calm oneself down, nature sounds would be it. Although she assumed the ones he listened to were more of the beach-at-sunset or late-autumn-forest-sunshower, not the mongoose-versus-rattlesnake or hippo-bulls-fighting-for-dominance that she would prefer. “Does it work?”
He shrugged. “So far, I suppose.”
She sighed and flopped down in the chair facing his desk. “I guess it wouldn’t matter if it failed and you killed yourself. I’d just bring you back.”
He furrowed his brows at her. “Might I humbly request that you don’t?” He paused, grimacing, and considered his words. “I saw the clip on the internet. It’s, um, intense.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“Want to talk about it?”
She did, and if this had been last week, she would have, but she still wasn’t sure what to believe about him. Not that she thought Mrs. Thomas was lying, but people could get the wrong impression of others. As someone who was often accused of being the Antichrist, she understood that better than most. “Not really. But I think I’ve gotten politics out of my system.”
“There’s the silver lining.” He started typing on his laptop, then said, “Okay, so no political science. Anything else interesting you? Maybe something less gruesome. Forensics?”
“I don’t know. Do I have to know before I start college?”
“Oh, not at all. In fact, universities prefer if you come before you’re ready and don’t leave until after your first recommended colonoscopy.”
She thought she knew what a colonoscopy was, but the casualness with which Mr. Foster mentioned it made her wonder if it wasn’t something else. But then again, everything Mr. Foster said seemed casual.
God help me, I want to like him!
THEN LIKE HIM.
I wasn’t talking to you.
SOUNDED LIKE YOU WERE.
“How about this,” he said, turning the laptop toward her so she could see the screen. “Let’s start with picking one of these dates for you to take the SAT, and then we’ll just put off deciding the path for the rest of your life until, say, November.”
“I guess that works.” She stared at the computer screen, but none of the information was actually soaking in. Her eyes started to cross.
“Are you, um. Are you okay?” Mr. Foster stared at her with a soft, pained look she’d never seen him wear before.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
He shook his head minutely. “No. It would be insane if you were fine.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair, bracing heavily on one of his arm rests as his eyes remained glued to her face. “You know, a few of your classmates live in abject poverty where they wouldn’t get breakfast or lunch if they didn’t come to school each day and they go hungry on the weekends. But if I didn’t see from their paperwork that they qualified for free meals and that the only parent who stuck around has been on disability for five years, and if I didn’t have to talk with the kids’ CPS case managers and CASA volunteers, I’d never in a million years have guessed what the home life was like because they wear an expression a lot like the one you put on when you set foot in this building each day.”
When he paused, Jessica wasn’t sure what to say, so she stayed silent and Mr. Foster forged ahead. “Your paperwork doesn’t list your father as God, and it doesn’t mention that you’re a genuine media shit magnet—excuse the language though there’ll probably be more of it—but it doesn’t have to because both of those things are about as public as they come. At least the poor kids can hide their secret behind FERPA.
“What I’m saying is that you have it hard, Jess. For the most part, you handle your business and keep it together. God only knows how—maybe literally. But it’s okay to ask people for help. And that includes me. If there’s anything I can do to take some of the stress and confusion off your plate, you just—“
“Are you the Devil?”
Mr. Foster made a croaking sound in his throat, and she wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or a gag. “The Devil?” He guffawed before reining it in. “No, Jessica, but thanks for asking. My ex-wife just went ahead and assumed.”
“You’re divorced?”
“Of course I’m divorced.”
She was getting sidetracked. “How do I know you’re not the Devil?” Her new, frank approach was based entirely on a whim, and she wasn’t sure where to go from here.
“Um, well, because I’m too apathetic to be the Devil. Or maybe I’m too nice? No, probably not that one. I’m definitely too low on the totem pole. I can’t imagine the Devil would subject himself to the job duties of a college counselor.”
“Hmm … maybe not. But it could just be an excellent cover. No one expects the Devil to work in a high school.”
“I’d argue with you on that account, but I see what you’re getting at. So what do I need to do to convince you? Be overtly evil?” The faintest hint of a smirk wavered at the corner of his mouth.
She narrowed her eyes at him, feeling on unsteady ground. He raised an interesting point. “Possibly.”
“So let me get this straight. All I have to do to convince you I’m not the Devil is, say, a ritual animal sacrifice. Would that suffice?”
The idea was so absurd, it managed to obliterate her suspicions. This was Mr. Foster. He was too placid to be the Devil but also not friendly enough to be the Devil. “Or maybe bomb an orphanage,” she suggested.
Mr. Foster’s eyes jolted wide and for a moment she thought she’d actually managed to offend him, which she didn’t previously think was possible. But then he guffawed and stared at her wistfully with a small, contented smile lounging across his lips. “I almost can’t believe it. You’re just as dark as me. I mean, not Dark Prince-dark, but you know.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I know. So you’re not the Devil.”
He shook his head. “Afraid not. Did you want me to be?”
“Nope. But if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s that the Devil will be someone I don’t want it to be. Wolf in sheep’s clothing, and all that.”
“Ah yes,” he said thoughtfully, “the old sheep’s clothing thing. Well”—he tugged on his sweater vest demonstratively—“I’m pretty sure this isn’t wool, so”—he craned his neck around and stretched the vest’s tag to where he could see it—“Oh shit. Well, it’s a wool blend.” He turned back toward her and shrugged apologetically. “I guess there’s still room for debate.”
Jessica relaxed the muscles in her shoulders, because she felt like she finally could for a little while, at least while she was in Mr. Foster’s office. “I’m pretty sure wool isn’t going to be the clue that tips me off, so don’t worry. God would never make it that easy for me.”
“And is there a specific reason why you feel the need to sleuth out the Devil?”
“I have to confront him. Maybe fight him.”
“Ah.” Mr. Foster rolled his shoulders and loosened his neck a bit. “All right. That’s unfortunate. Well, first things first. Let’s get you registered for the SAT.”
* * *
Miranda’s arms overflowed with crumpled up flyers as she stepped out of the McCloud house and onto the back porch, still in her sliding pants and T-shirt from softball practice. Jessica and Chris were already posted up in folding chairs, relaxing with a fresh Dos Equis each, courtesy of the woman of the house, and glanced up at the new arrival.
“So Mrs. Wurst has been busy,” said Miranda, dumping the crinkled sheets onto the small patio table.
Jess leaned forward, grabbed one, and smoothed it out. “She really wants to start this church for me, doesn’t she?”
“Of course she does,” said Miranda irritably. “Everyone in this town wants to start their own freaking church.” She plopped down into a chair facing Jess and Chris. He leaned back, reached his hand into the cooler, and pulled out a beer for Miranda, who accepted it gr
atefully. “These are just the flyers I found on the drive over here,” she added.
“Jesus,” Jessica muttered. “I guess some people are just a pain in the ass, no matter whether they’re with you or against you.”
“At least when she was your enemy, you could hate her,” Miranda said. “Now you can’t be too mad at her. I mean, she seems to genuinely believe you’re the messiah.”
Jess sighed. “Yeah, well.”
Football season was officially in full swing, and while she knew on an intellectual level that quitting the team was in everyone’s best interest, maybe it wasn’t that important. Or maybe the opportunity to resign hadn’t presented itself in a pretty enough package yet. Or maybe people avoiding doing what they should all the time, so why should Jessica have to be any different? Plus, she was hard-pressed to think of anything more glorious than a post-conditioning beer, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to lose this small indulgence yet.
Neither she nor Chris had bothered changing out of their practice gear, simply stripping down to their Under Armour shirts and athletic shorts. The weather had begun to shift into fall and cool gusts of air swept through the back covered patio, carrying the teenage sweat-stink out and away, allowing the trio to relax in their mesh fold-out chairs with built-in cup holders and stretch their legs out in front of them without fear of being smelled by the others.
“I think I need to get far away from this town,” Miranda said before taking a swig from her beer.
The idea caught Jessica off balance. Where had that come from?
Chris didn’t seem as put off by it, though. “Like how far? Dallas?”
“Maybe. Maybe farther.”
Chris’s eyebrows shot up. “Like Houston?”
Miranda shrugged. “I dunno. I had a recruiter from LSU come talk to me the other day.”
Chris’s jaw fell open at that. “You want to move out of Texas? All the way to Louisiana?”
It's a Miracle! Page 12
