“The governor’s race heats up as Texas Attorney General Grant investigates both candidates on charges of bribery, libel, and misappropriation of funds. More sunshine in the forecast this week, and beginning tonight, our six-part special: you trust the water you drink, clean your food with, and bathe your children in to be safe, but do you really know what you’re pouring over your skin and putting in your body? New shocking details about what’s in our water supply may have you considering alternatives to tap-water bathing. And lastly, we check in with our affiliate out of Odessa for a shocking update about Texas’s most well-known reverend.”
A picture of Jimmy was only on the screen for half a second before Jess shut off the TV. She remained staring at the black set, though, letting this new information set in. Not the aquaphobia, but the more important bit: She was four hours from home, and it still wasn’t far enough away to forget about Jimmy. Reverend Dean mania wasn’t a localized sickness. That was unfortunate. Maybe she’d brought it with her to central Texas. Who was she kidding? Of course she did. She was patient zero in that regard. A Jimmy-shaped cloud hovered over her wherever she went, now that he’d so firmly established himself in the public eye as her caretaker and she his divine ward.
A peach pit of loneliness that had been waiting dormant in her chest began to dissolve into her blood stream and spread throughout the rest of her. She supposed people made friends when they were lonely, but she’d never learned how to do that. All her relationships—both good and bad—had been forged as a result of the pressure-cooker of a tiny town she’d grown up in. Force two people to be in close proximity long enough and they bond in one way or another. But that wasn’t the set-up at a school with tens of thousands of students. The only person in close proximity would be Leslie, and Jessica hoped to avoid too much on the bonding front with that one.
God? You there?
Nothing.
Well shit, she really was alone.
She pulled out the old Dell laptop Destinee and Coach Rex had given to her the week before and started it up. She needed someone to talk to, and she already knew who it would be, who would listen to her woes, provide reassurance, and not overreact to Jessica’s complaints.
She pulled up her email and began typing in the address dthomas@
Her computer did the rest, and she moved to the subject line: Made it!
She rolled her shoulders to release the tension, and then let herself be honest. Her former teacher would understand …
* * *
Click here to keep reading Nu Alpha Omega (Jessica Christ, Book 4)
H. Claire Taylor has lived in Austin, Texas, since the eighties, and now there’s really no reason to leave. She started writing her first novel at age ten and has been making things up ever since. Nowadays, she shares a home with her husband and two black-and-white mutts and suffers from an unhealthy dependency on Post-It Notes. When she’s not working on her novels, she’s blogging and recording comedy podcasts.
You can stalk her at www.hclairetaylor.com
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