“Can I say something?” Chris asked.
Wendy cocked a curious eyebrow at him. “Sure.”
“You sound a little panicked.”
Wendy laughed warmly, her voice like rolling ocean waves. “I don’t get panicked.”
“But you seem a little panicked.”
Her nostrils flared almost imperceptibly. “I don’t get panicked. I get intense. There’s a difference.”
He nodded. “Okay, fine.” He pointed toward the tray at the center of the table, which had a single burger left. “Anyone have dibs on that?” Each person shook their heads. “Great.”
As he grabbed it and dug in, Wendy stood. “Jess, we should get out there. Chris, you may want to eat that in your truck.”
So it was happening. Jess sighed. Here went nothing.
She glanced out of the large windows overlooking the parking lot. The media was already waiting. Maria Flores and her camerawoman, Gabrielle, were set up, and when Jess locked eyes with the former, she waved and Jess waved back.
Wendy thought it best if they waited just out of sight until it was actually go time, but that meant Jessica’s nerves had more opportunity to tie themselves in knots. She peeked out around the corner of the building to see which news teams had shown up on such short notice. Maria and Gabrielle from Channel Twenty-Four, the Channel Thirty-Six news team, who Jessica had gotten to know by name and face after three years of them being the last on every important story in her life. Spanky King was the sports correspondent for Channel Thirty-Six, but she supposed he’d managed to climb the ladder into the coveted position of Jessica correspondent as well. Good for him.
Two student reporters from the Mooremont Mundo were there, too. Harris, a slightly jaundiced looking sophomore had spent the year trying to get an exclusive with Chris about Jessica—an interview Chris had refused time and time again on principle, since he’d once heard Harris mention that real men didn’t feel the need to compete in sports to find self-worth. Along with Harris was the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Stephanie Lee, who’d never personally pried into Jessica’s life, but, Jess suspected, regularly sent others from the Mundo on reconnaissance missions to mine for dirt. Sneaky Stephanie. She wondered if the girl knew Chris had nearly run her over with his truck.
Then there were all the others, to whom Jessica had assigned nicknames to keep them straight. Sterling “Scrunchface” DiMaggio, Bret “Blue Eyes” Rosario, Latricia “Tight Lips” French, Monica “Big Britches” Fields—and those were just the local correspondents.
From out of town was Heath “Wink Monster” McGovern, Julie “Weasel” Chen, and “Stone Cold” Kevin Kelley. A handful of amateurs were there too, of course, but conspicuously absent from the bunch was Eugene “Punchable Face” Thornton. Did no one tell him about it? It seemed strange that he wouldn’t have gotten word somehow, or if he did hear about it, that he wouldn’t do whatever he could to be there for an easily twisted sound bite or sixteen.
Maybe he was dead. The thought brought a small smile to Jessica’s worried face, but she knew better than to actually hope for that. Considering God shared a similar disdain for the reporter, it would be safe to assume Eugene’s untimely (but not unwelcome) demise would be accompanied by an unexpected sun shower of butterscotch or perhaps a triple rainbow or maybe even an instantaneous mass extinction of mosquitoes.
But since none of that had happened, Eugene Thornton was very likely still kicking. He just isn’t here.
That couldn’t be good.
She shut her eyes. Please don’t let me or anyone I love get murdered by a sniper today.
DON’T WORRY. NOT IN THE PLANS.
You’re actually listening. Where’s Eugene?
HE’S WITH JIMMY.
And what are they doing?
PLOTTING, OBVIOUSLY.
That doesn’t sound good.
IT’S NOT.
“Ready?”
Jess opened her eyes and looked at Wendy. “Yes.”
“Were you praying?”
“No. Well, actually. Yeah? I guess?”
Wendy nodded approvingly. “Great. Let’s hope He answers your prayers.” She guided Jess forward, out from the cover of the building, just as Jess replied with, “He did, but—”
Wendy leaned into her ear. “Smile on, but not too big. Read the cards, then split.”
Jess sighed deeply and approached the microphones just as the avid crowd began to lose interest. It started with the Wink Monster himself, who seemed to hear something in his ear piece that drew his attention away from the main attraction. When he glanced back up at Jess, whose focus was squarely on him, he tossed her a smile and a wink, like she was supposed to understand what in the hell that meant.
Next to lose focus was Scrunchface DiMaggio, whose face scrunched together in panic a moment before he turned his back to Jess and started hissing directions at his camerawoman.
Then the dominos began to fall, with Weasel, Tight Lips, Blue Eyes and Stone Cold becoming distracted, presumably by breaking news piping into their earpieces.
Something was happening.
It’s Jimmy and Eugene.
Maybe because there was no question in her mind about it, God didn’t bother responding. Or maybe he was preoccupied with Asia again.
She looked to the sky, didn’t spot a triple rainbow or anything, really, other than a few clouds that had survived the heat of the day, and knew that it was too much to hope for.
Maria appeared by her side. “That puto beat us to it.”
Was that Spanish for reporter? Man, I should’ve paid more attention in class.
“What’s happening?” Wendy asked. For someone who said she didn’t get panicked, she sure sounded panicked.
Maria listened to her ear bud for a moment, then said, “Here, follow me. Gabby has it cued up in the van.”
It seemed that every van had it cued up, but Jessica followed Maria Flores to hers. On the way, Destinee, Coach Rex, and Miranda intercepted them. “What’s going on?” Destinee demanded.
“Not sure yet,” Wendy said. “We’re about to find out.”
They huddled around the open door of the van, where Gabby had turned a large computer screen so that everyone could see it. There was a live stream on Eugene Thornton’s news site.
For the moment, the shot was of Eugene standing in a place Jessica had visited only once, but she recognized the silver troughs behind him immediately.
“God dammit,” Destinee breathed. Then much louder, “God dammit!”
SHE AIN’T LYING.
“Hush,” said Wendy. “Can you turn that up at all?”
Gabby did, and they were able to make out what Eugene Thornton was saying into his microphone. “… And he’s claiming that he has a major announcement that is totally unrelated to his mayoral race. Considering the setting he’s chosen—the megachurch he founded over seventeen years ago—as the place at which he will make this announcement, we can only assume that this has some religious ties to the self-proclaimed Mooretown Messiah, better known in the White Light Church as the Embodiment of Original Sin, or simply the Antichrist.”
“Oh boy,” Jess mumbled.
Chris appeared behind her and placed his hands on her waist. “What’s happening?”
“Watch,” she said, pointing.
On the screen, the camera did a three-sixty to reveal packed pews. How had Jimmy gotten so many people together without any other media besides Eugene Thornton knowing? Jimmy must have told them all not to tell anyone outside of the church.
Are all congregations so good at keeping secrets?
YOU KIDDING ME? CONGREGATIONS ARE THE BEST AT KEEPING BIG SECRETS. IT’S THE DAY-TO-DAY SECRETS YOU SHOULD NEVER TRUST THEM WITH. GOSSIP MONGERS.
Sort of the hog calling the mule dirty …
Then Jessica spotted her. She was only visible in frame for a fraction of a second, but her face was unmistakable, seared into Jessica’s mind like a nightmare: Mrs. Wurst.
And she was
smiling.
Oh damn.
When the camera returned to Eugene, he said, “Looks like Reverend Dean is approaching the pulpit. Let’s check in.”
Jimmy was dressed in his Church Jimmy outfit, covered head to toe in white fabric that reflected the light streaming in through the long windows of the cavernous sanctuary. His signature red hog-hoof stole was draped around the back of his neck and down the front of his body. His slender face looked determined, his sculpted jaw set, and as a portion of Jess’s brain still perked up at Jimmy’s good looks each time she saw him, she’d learned just enough about chess in tenth grade and politics this year to know that she’d be facing checkmate as soon as Jimmy opened his mouth.
The room around him was already silent by the time he reached his spot in the middle of the stage. He paused for a moment, feigning solemnity, but Jess had a feeling he was simply trying to prevent his glee from shining through.
“I’m coming to you today with an important confession,” Jimmy said.
Even though (or maybe because) Jessica felt a delicate, quiet hope that Jimmy might come clean about everything, she felt fairly confident that whatever he was about to say would actually be extra unfortunate for her. Somehow. With Jimmy all things were possible.
“I have not been serving the Lord the way He has wanted me to these many years. The story I told you about young Jessica McCloud and my encounter with the Deus Aper was … unfaithful to the truth in parts. Because the truth of it terrified me. The truth of it was much larger than I was prepared to face, and so I ran. But I’m done running, because God has visited me once more and He was a wrathful God, full of spite, rather than His usual somewhat apathetic disgust.”
Did You—
NOPE. DIDN’T VISIT HIM.
“So, as I proceed onward in my humble pursuit of being the mayor of this great town, I find that I cannot move forward until I confess to all my loyal congregation.
“On that fateful night, seventeen years ago, God found me and led me to Destinee not only to show me that we are all pigs—”
“But God is Hog,” replied the congregation out of habit.
Jimmy nodded. “But because the child that was born that night wasn’t the Antichrist, but in fact His daughter. The daughter of God himself, and the second Christ child.”
The gasp from the crowd was drowned out by the gasps Jessica heard all around her, coming not only from the small group gathered at Maria’s van, but those gathered at all the other vans, some of whom had their cameras pointed and rolling on their monitors, doing what they could to scrounge coverage of the real main event that day.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Destinee breathed from her place at the back of the group.
“No shit,” said Chris.
Jess simply held her breath and waited for the other shoe to drop.
It didn’t take long.
“God bestowed me with a purpose: to relay the message to Destinee and be His mouthpiece for all my years. As you can imagine, such a responsibility is enormous, and I fled like the little piggy I was, running wee-wee-wee all the way home.
“But I can no longer run. God visited me today wearing the flesh of another hog, and he explained to me in His merciful way, that without me, the Christ child’s message cannot be heard, will not be heard. For He hath brought unto this world a daughter in a time when the voices of women are drowned out by the voices of men. And as a man, and God’s chosen messenger, it is my duty to speak on behalf of His second child, the girl named Jessica McCloud, who henceforth shall be known as Jessica Christ.”
Jessica’s heart sank. Jimmy had come clean like she’d always wanted. But he’d also stolen the narrative, her narrative, in the process.
And there was just no way she was down with being called Jessica Christ.
He wasn’t done yet, though. “There was one who recognized this before me, one to whom I owe much of my revelation, outside of God’s influence, obviously. And that is one of our oldest and truest members here at White Light Church, who was willing to tell the truth even if it meant being cast out of the church she loved. I speak, of course, of our own Ruth Wurst. Ruth, would you please stand?” Jimmy led off the applause and the camera rotated to frame up Mrs. Wurst, who clasped her hands in front of her and stared longingly at Jimmy.
It occurred to Jessica that Destinee now had another reason to beat Ruth Wurst’s ass, and that she would very likely take it next chance she got.
She turned to see her mother’s reaction to Mrs. Wurst’s double-crossing only find no one standing in the place where Destinee had been only a moment before.
Her head swiveled around, trying to spot her mother in the crowd. Finally she did.
Destinee had already started the engine of Rex’s Tacoma and was backing out of the parking spot over near the exit of Gordon’s lot.
“Oh no.” This couldn’t be good. “Chris,” she said.
“Are you hearing this?” he asked, not turning away from the screen.
“Chris!”
It wasn’t just Chris who turned around this time. Miranda, Wendy, Maria, Gabrielle, and Rex also stood staring at her. She pointed at Rex’s truck as it pulled out onto the main road. “Uh, someone should stop her.”
“What’s she doing?” Maria asked.
Jess and Chris were already running for his truck, though, with Rex and Miranda not far behind.
“You don’t think she’ll do anything rash, do you?” Chris asked, as his truck lugged and chugged out of the parking lot and onto the main road.
“No,” Jessica said from where she’d climbed into the front passenger’s seat. “I know she’ll do something rash.”
“Like what?”
“Well, if we’re lucky, she’ll just beat Mrs. Wurst’s ass for the third time.”
“The third time?” Chris asked, blowing through a stop sign at an empty intersection.
“Yep.”
“As mega hot as that sounds,” Coach Rex spoke up from the back seat, “we can’t let it happen. It’ll all be caught on tape.”
She’s going to White Light, right?
YEP, AND MAN IS YOUR MOTHER HAULING THAT GLORIOUS ASS OF HERS.
“You need to step on it, Chris,” she hollered.
“Bu-but, I’m a teen driver. I’ll get us all killed.”
Miranda huffed. “As much as I appreciate the concern, Chris, think about who’s in the truck with you. We’ll be fine. But if we don’t catch Destinee before she single-handedly whoops every ass in that church, we’ll be in even worse trouble. She might just whoop us too, if she’s got enough momentum.”
“Shit,” breathed Chris. “I don’t want to fight that woman.”
“You absolutely don’t,” Jess agreed. “Trust me. She pulls hair.”
She heard Coach Rex groan lustily from the back seat and wished she’d omitted that detail.
When Chris glanced in his rearview mirror, he sighed. “Looks like we got a tail.”
Jess turned in her seat. Maria and Gabrielle followed in their van, and she could see Wendy’s head sticking up between the two front seats.
“What do I do if we catch up to her?” Chris asked, taking a corner much too fast so that the occupants of the cab had to grab for whatever they could to hold on. “Do I ram her?”
“What the actual fuck?” Miranda said from the back seat.
“No, Chris, you don’t ram my mother off the road!”
“I’ve never done this before!” he yelled defensively, his voice nearing a shriek. “I’ve never been in a high-speed chase! I don’t know how this works.”
“Neither have I,” Miranda said, “but I still know you don’t run a person you like off the road.”
“Just stay behind her,” Jessica said. “She’s out of shape. One of us can catch her between the parking lot and the pulpit.”
That plan only seemed to panic Chris even more. “I only scramble! You know I’m not a sprinter.”
“It’s true,” Coach Rex corroborated from
the backseat. “Best scrambler in the pocket in West Texas, but the boy can’t keep up the speed over distance.”
“I have a pretty decent 90-foot sprint,” Miranda said. “Sometimes I can make it around first base and to second pretty quickly, but I’m not so great at the cuts.”
Jess turned in her seat to look directly at her best friend. “Are you willing to tackle my mother?”
Miranda hesitated, then took a deep breath and nodded. “It has to be done. But you guys better not be far behind, because I don’t want to have to struggle against her on my own.”
“I’ll be right behind you,” Jessica said. “Just don’t hesitate. You have to take her down. Whatever happens, we cannot let her beat the shit out of Mrs. Wurst, Jimmy Dean, Eugene Thornton, or anyone else at White Light. No matter how much we’d love to see it.”
Jessica’s heart fluttered dangerously in her chest. They needed to catch Destinee before she set a single foot inside the church. That was the only way they could avoid making the news.
Was a little bit of luck too much to ask for? Probably, but Jessica hoped for it anyway as the truck sped toward Midland.
They managed to catch up to Destinee about three miles before the Midland City Limits sign and about four miles before the massive billboard of Jimmy Dean’s face that read, Vote God back into this country. Reverend Jimmy Dean for mayor of Midland.
Fortunately for those in Chris’s truck, Destinee wasn’t used to steering the Tacoma, and that slowed her down. But not by much. The Mooretown-to-Midland drive that usually took forty-five minutes had taken just under twenty.
The parking lot of White Light Church was still packed with the vehicles of those who’d turned up to see Jimmy’s big announcement, which meant he was still bullshitting away. For a second, Jess was hopeful that it meant Destinee would be forced to park at the very back of the lot, making it easy for them to cut her off before she even made it through the goliath archway atop which the statue of Jimmy Dean had begun to gather grime in the crevices, but that was only because Jessica’s thoughts were functioning under the assumption that Destinee gave a rat’s ass about fire lanes.
It's a Miracle! Page 16
