The Beginning (Jessica Christ Book 1) Read online

  “Listen, baby, this was your idea.”

  “I changed my mind. I don’t want to go anymore.” Anxiety had kept Jess awake until nearly three in the morning, and now her body was so tired it felt like her organs weighed a hundred pounds each.

  “Too late. We’re committed. If we don’t show, that grifter of a clergyman won’t give me no peace about it. And I swear to God that if I get one more voicemail from Jimmy, I’m just going to have to kill him. We either got to go, or I got to kill him. One of those will land you living with grandma.”

  “Ugh.” The prospect of living with crabby Granny McCloud out in her El Paso trailer park was enough to get Jess out of bed any day, because while she doubted that Destinee would actually kill Jimmy Dean, she didn’t doubt it completely.

  “Hurry now. We got to leave in thirty minutes. Don’t spend all of it on your hair.”

  Having made herself clear, Destinee shut the bedroom door behind her and Jess slowly pulled herself from her bed. There’d been a documentary on Bengal tigers that had started after Jess should have already been asleep and lasted much longer than a normal person would want a Bengal tiger documentary to last. But not Jess. Tigers were no giraffes, but they were still interesting enough to keep her mind off her anxious thoughts long enough to give her racing heart a break. Why was she so nervous about seeing Jimmy’s church? They’d gone out to ice cream together a handful of times since he’d first started coming around two years before, and she’d begun to feel comfortable with him, even daring to indulge him with a little inside information from God Himself. Nothing too important. Just things like whether it was okay to eat pigs now, why it still wasn’t okay to eat pigs, why pigs are so dirty when they’re actually more intelligent than dogs, whether pigs feel pain, etc. So mostly just pig stuff. The first time pigs entered into the conversation, God had gladly provided the information, but each time they came up after that, God would start ranting about smiting and “grand” plans that kept Him from smiting. So Jess was forced to pretend He wasn’t around. Eventually He stopped coming around, and Jess was left to study pigs on the internet before each ice cream date with Jimmy so that she could answer his questions herself. She’d become quite the swine expert.

  She’d also learned a little about Jimmy’s past. He’d grown up on a farm then hopped a train and hit the road when he was only twelve because his mother married his pastor, which was, for some unnamed reason, not okay with Jimmy.

  But that was Ice Cream Jimmy. Having glimpsed Reverend Dean when the Wursts had shown up on their first outing, Jess already knew that Church Jimmy wasn’t the same as Ice Cream Jimmy.

  But Ice Cream Jimmy was persuasive, and it was that man who’d persuaded Jess to convince her mother that they should go visit Church Jimmy.

  Jessica groaned and stared helplessly at her closet, wondering what on earth one was expected to wear to a church, let alone one who happened to be the daughter of the deity everyone was there to worship.

  Probably something nice. That narrowed it down quite a bit, considering she only had two dresses and one had stopped fitting her properly about six months before.

  The red cotton dress it was. Thankfully it had been a warm February so far, because the sleeveless dress wouldn’t have worked otherwise, and she’d be faced with a problem much too tricky for how tired she was.

  They were ten minutes late getting out the door. Destinee wasn’t happy about it, but she could easily make it up on the drive from Mooretown to Midland. Jess stared out the window and called to God to come talk, but he wasn’t anywhere to be found. Typical. She’d watched shows late at night (once Destinee was already asleep and Animal Planet was showing some dumb thing on bugs or humans) where terrible things would happen and people would ask questions like, “Where is God now?” or “How could God let this happen?” Jess knew the feeling all too well. She was the daughter of God, for His sake, and in times like these, when she was at her most desperate, He was almost never anywhere to be found. She wanted to pin Him down on it, really interrogate Him, but every time she grilled Him on topics like that, He would say, OH HEY, I NEED TO GO DEAL WITH A TSUNAMI, or something along those lines, and then there would actually be one. Jess was never certain if she had terrible timing or if God actually created disasters as an excuse to get out from under her thumb, but the whole set of coincidences left her hesitant to ask Him tough questions.

  Her mom, though, couldn’t use natural disasters as a diversion tactic, so it was often during times like these, when they were both stuck in the close proximity of the car, that Jess chose to strike.

  Without removing her eyes from the road ahead of them, Jess asked, “Mom, why haven’t we ever been to church?”

  Destinee glanced over dubiously. “Why would we go? You’re the daughter of God. I guess I just figured you’re kind of, I dunno, church wherever you go.”

  “But some of the kids at school say that you have to go to church to get into Heaven.”

  “Those kids are full of shit and need to dislodge the stick from their asshole. Which kids are saying that?”

  Jess knew better than to name names. “Just a few. Doesn’t matter.”

  “Why don’t you ask your father about it?” she replied sardonically.

  Jess shrugged. “He doesn’t like it when I ask tough questions.”

  Destinee scoffed. “Figures. He seems allergic to committing to anything. I should have guessed that the night we met.”

  “Wait, you met God?” Maybe it was because she had never seen the two of them talk, but Jess always assumed that God had never physically introduced Himself to her mother. She’d assumed Jimmy was the only other person she knew who’d met God in the flesh and could talk about it with her. How had she not known this until now?

  Destinee’s brow furrowed and she looked at Jess. “Of course we met. He … got me pregnant. Do you know how people get pregnant, Jess?”

  Jess in fact did not. She knew how a lot of other animals got pregnant, though, but it didn’t seem dignified enough for humans. “Is it the same way that giraffes do it?”

  “Um … yeah, that’s one position. Anyway. It doesn’t matter. All I’m saying is that your father has a problem with commitment. That’s all I’m saying. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  So Jess was left to imagine how humans would make a baby like giraffes do, which wasn’t her favorite mental exercise but was intriguing nonetheless, until on the horizon she caught her first glimpse of the dazzling metropolis that was Midland, Texas.

  Had Dallas been this large and had so many giant, reflective structures? She couldn’t remember. She had likely been too caught up in her zoo to-see list to even look up at the sights outside the school bus windows, and for obvious reasons she hadn’t been paying much attention to anything outside of her head on her way home from the field trip.

  But she suspected not even Dallas was as bustling as Midland on a Sunday morning. How many people lived here?! It must be at least ten thousand!

  Massive shiny buildings spread across the horizon as they approached downtown. What could possibly necessitate so many big buildings all in one place? She’d seen big cities like Los Angeles and Chicago in pictures and movies, but it was a whole different animal to see a place like this in person. What would it be like to live somewhere with this many people? Would she even know all their names? She guessed not. And on the flip side of that, not everyone would know her name. Hope welled up inside her at the prospect of someday living where she could go unnoticed.

  Traffic was at a standstill on the frontage road leading up to White Light Church. The parking lot was the biggest Jess had ever seen, just like most things in Midland. Were all these people really here just to listen to Jimmy speak? She supposed she liked Jimmy pretty well, but she’d never heard him say anything that would draw this big of a crowd. Maybe other important things happened in church, too.

  The anxiety had formed a tight knot in her chest by the time she closed the car door behind her
and started the long trek from the back of the parking lot to the front doors of the church.

  “Oh Jesus fucking Christ,” Destinee said once they had parked and were walking around to the front of the building. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

  A well-dressed family of four walking a few paces ahead gasped and looked back over their shoulders, and Jess wondered what their problem was. Destinee didn’t even seem to notice, though, and when Jess followed her mother’s gaze, she understood immediately what had caused her mother’s exclamation. The statue. It sat atop a massive stone archway that people had to walk underneath to enter the church. The morning sun acted like stage lighting, making each detail visible and casting a long dark shadow behind it that pointed to the glass front doors of White Light. Jess couldn’t pull her eyes from the figure. It was a tall, thin man—perhaps just larger than life-size—his arms outstretched in either direction to form a T with his body. “Is that Jesus?” She wondered aloud. She’d seen her fair share of depictions of her half-brother, and this one didn’t much resemble those in the face. But then she realized who it actually was.

  So did Destinee, apparently. “God dammit, Jimmy.”

  “Why would he make a statue of himself?”

  “More like, how’s he gonna hit me up for money for years, never pay me back, and then make a statue of himself?”

  Jess didn’t have an answer for that.

  Once they were only a few yards away from the arch, Jess noticed words carved into it. She and her mother paused to stare, forcing the sea of traffic to part around them as it flowed by. Carved at the very top of the arch was White Light Church and underneath that, Sumus omnes porcos, sed Deus est Aper. She tried to sound it out, but quickly realized there was no point. It wasn’t English.

  But then she recognized one of the words. Porcos. Where’d she seen that before? Of course! In her swine research for Jimmy. It still didn’t make much sense, though. Who would build a monument to himself and then carve something about pigs into it?

  Jimmy, I guess.

  She was starting to seriously question if she understood what church was actually about.

  After reading the inscription once more, she asked Destinee what it meant.

  Destinee squinted and moved her lips as she tried to read it. “Hell if I know. I dropped out in high school, and I sure as shit never took Spanish.”

  So they gave up guessing and passed on under the arch, and as they did so, Jess’s skin started to tingle. At first she thought she’d managed to walk into a cloud of gnats, but after a few swipes at her arms to no avail and noticing that no one else was swiping at their arms, she realized it might be something else causing the sensation. And as they entered through one of the multiple sets of glass double doors leading inside, the tingling intensified, and her skin felt like it was buzzing. It made her nose itch and her eyes water.

  Or maybe it was how bright everything was that made her eyes water. Inside the foyer she found herself surrounded by glass and white and more glass and sunlight and more white. Jess had never been anywhere like this. It felt like the world was disappearing around her, like God had come in with a big eraser and got to work on everything except the people.

  “This is like walking into a damn hospital,” Destinee whispered to Jess. “What do you reckon their Windex budget is in a place like this?”

  Even the people were all white—not their clothes, but everything else about them. Those in the foyer greeting each member had teeth as shiny and reflective as the walls and seemed to enjoy showing off said teeth in a gesture that Jess knew was intended to show warmth and acceptance but still conjured an image of a timber wolf defending its territory from another alpha.

  A young man and woman approached them, teeth-first. “Welcome! I don’t recognize you two, are you new?” asked the woman, whose blonde hair was slicked back perfectly flat into a tight ponytail.

  “Yeah,” Destinee said curtly.

  “Oh, well that’s no big deal,” the man said. He didn’t seem like any man Jess had ever met. He used his hands a little too much when he was talking—maybe that was it. Or maybe it was how wide he opened his mouth to form each new sound. Or maybe it was the wild look in his eyes that made Jess wonder if he was actually seeing her when he was looking straight at her, and if she was actually seeing him when she stared back into his brown eyes. “We see newcomers all the time, don’t we, Diane?” He laughed, his big, white teeth reflecting sunlight every which way. Jess had no clue what he was laughing about.

  “We sure do! I’m Diane, and this is Bradley. What’re your names?”

  Jess’s skin buzzed too much for her to feel like chatting, but luckily she didn’t have to.

  “Destinee, and this is my daughter Jessica.”

  “Destinee?!” yelled Bradley with a big, stupid grin. “What a wonderful name! Well, it sounds like it was your destiny to end up at White Light, and we’re glad to have you! How did you hear about us?”

  Jess kept her gaze glued to her mom so she didn’t have to look at Bradley’s big, dumb face anymore. It was clear that Destinee was waging a war against rolling her eyes. Jess was actually surprised she hadn’t yet. “We know Jimmy—I mean, Reverend Dean.”

  “Ohhh,” said Diane, looking at Bradley.

  “Ohhh,” said Bradley, looking back at Diane. “Well,” he continued, “that’s certainly … you actually know him?”

  “Yeah, we go back a little ways,” Destinee said, sounding unsure.

  “Wait.” Revelation swept over Bradley’s face. “Are you the Destinee?”

  “We got to go.” Destinee grabbed Jess’s hand and pulled her forward into the thick crowd that was hurrying into the chapel. “Batshit crazy, all of them,” she mumbled.

  Traffic bottlenecked through the doors leading into the sanctuary, but once they were through, Jess was finally able to take in the sheer size of the place.

  Destinee pulled her to the side and out of the traffic while they assessed where they should sit, and it allowed Jessica a moment to work out some quick multiplication. She counted heads in one of the packed pews. Twelve. She counted the number of pews per row. Twenty. She counted the number of rows. Four. Twelve times twenty was obviously two hundred and forty. Then times four.

  Nine hundred and sixty people could fit in the pews.

  Why in her father’s name would nine hundred and sixty people want to listen to anything Jimmy had to say?

  Before she was able to answer her own question, her mother’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Oh Christ.” Destinee stared straight ahead at the altar.

  “What?” Jess couldn’t see over the heads of the group in front of them. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” Destinee dragged her back into the flow of people before quickly pulling her into one of the pews farthest from the stage. “Let’s just grab a seat and get this over with.”

  But before they could scoot more than a foot away from the aisle, a familiar voice boomed over the crowd, stopping Destinee in her tracks. “Could it be?” It had the omnipresence of God’s voice, but based upon her mother’s reaction to it, Jess was pretty sure it wasn’t in her mind. Destinee’s shoulders slumped, and that’s when it clicked: the voice was coming through giant white speakers hung up around the ceiling.

  “Are my eyes deceiving me?” the voice said again, except this time she heard the man himself more clearly than the speakers.

  Destinee turned toward the voice. “No, Jimmy, they’re not.”

  Reverend Dean didn’t have to snake through the crowds like Destinee and Jess had; instead, the crowds parted for him so that he was able to easily glide over to where they stood toward the edge of the pews.

  He looked much less like a salesman now, having exchanged his usual charcoal-gray suit for one that was as white as everything else in the church. Even the headset he wore hooked over his dome, curving down to hover an inch from his mouth so that not a single crucial word of his went unheard by all, was entirely white. The onl
y exception to his uniform attire was the red cord draped around his neck that hung down his front and had a cloven hoof dangling from each end.

  Onlookers watched in awe as Jimmy directly addressed the newcomers. “I am so excited that you were able to make it today for this joyous anniversary.” He placed his hands on Destinee’s shoulders and smiled kindly at her. “You are an honored guest.” Then he turned to Jessica, who wished she had dressed all in white so that she could blend in with the walls and pews and floor and perhaps escape notice completely. “Child.” He bit his lip and his nostrils flared like he might cry. She really, really hoped he did not. “Words cannot describe what seeing you here, on this momentous occasion, stirs within me. You are a beautiful child of God.”

  While Jess’s brain scrambled to reconcile Ice Cream Jimmy with whoever the heck this guy was, Destinee’s resolve gave out and she rolled her eyes. “Well she is THE child of God, so—”

  “Ha!” Jimmy patted Destinee’s shoulder. “Good one. If you’ll excuse me, I need to start the service.” He breezed past them, and the sea of parishioners parted to allow him easy passage up to the stage.

  As he approached it, the crowd took the hint and quickly filed into the pews. It wasn’t until those in the rows ahead of her sat down that Jess was finally able to get a good glimpse of the altar.

  Two long windows behind the altar let light stream in from outside, reflecting off of all the white surfaces on the stage where Jimmy took his place. It seemed like an awfully big stage for one man.

  There was one object in particular that stood out against the blank palette, though, and Jess had to squint to be sure it was what she thought it was. But no, sure enough, it was exactly what she thought it was.

  On the wall between the two windows, just visible above where Jimmy Dean stood on the pulpit, was a giant, mounted hog’s head.

  And now Jimmy’s pig questions started to gain context, though they were still far from making any real sense in her mind.

  She tugged on Destinee’s dress. “Why’s that up there?”