The Megidda: First Daughter of Heaven

Chapter 2

"Jessica Marie Michael."

Her mother glared at her from the driver's seat of their 13-year-old Nissan, her typically pasty face was now red with anger, her blue eyes narrowed to slits in her usually bland expression.

Jess knew that once her full name was spoken in that particular tone, what followed would be...boring.

She'd heard it all before, more than once, and especially since the beginning of her senior year. She'd spent probably a total of 20 hours in the principal's office, a month's worth of days in detention, and had lost nearly all of her friends. They said her attitude sucked, she'd become a mean, angry harpy, and that she wasn't fun to be around anymore. She'd shrugged it off, wrote them off as girls who'd never been her friends in the first place, and just kept on living.

What else could she do? She didn't want to be a mean, angry harpy, especially not to them, but she couldn't help it. She'd turned 17 and she'd immediately become a jerk. Seriously. The day of her 17th birthday party, she'd seen two girls arguing over the same guy, one called the other one a mean name, and Jess walked over to her, slapped her, and then turned and walked away, like it was a totally normal thing to hit someone in the face and leave.

That's what her life had been like for the last year. And apparently, her mother had reached her limit.

She only hoped her mother's angry rant would be over before the light turned green.

Jess watched the cross-light flick from green to yellow to red, and her mother still hadn't turned to face the road. Jess wanted to stick out her tongue, but she knew that kind of reaction would only push her deeper into hot water.

The light in front of the car turned green, and still her mother glared at her, apparently speechless...or trying to figure out what to say that would "get through" to her rebellious daughter.

Not that anything her mother could say would turn back the clock a whole year and stop Jess from turning into the "other Jess", the Jess that she was now.

Jess knew she wasn't acting herself, that whatever happened on her birthday nearly a year ago had turned her life upside down, and she knew she really couldn't blame all her actions on something she couldn't explain. In other words, she'd become a troubled child overnight, but she couldn't say it was her mom's fault. It was hers alone.

Heck if she knew why.

The car behind them honked and her mother's gaze shot to the road, she hit the gas, and the Nissan flew through the intersection—all the while her jaw was clamped tight around the words Jess knew she'd hear any moment...

"What were you thinking?"

There they were.

"Why would you hurt that girl? What did she do to deserve that?"

Jess sighed and turned from her mom, her own anger boiling low in her belly. As far as she was concerned, her mother didn't actually expect her to answer the questions, she just wanted to recite her part of the "responsible parenting" handbook so she would feel less like the parent of a juvenile delinquent.

She was just going through the motions. She didn't really care that Jess had defended a 15-year-old sophomore from "that girl." Her mother didn't want to hear that "that girl" was the biggest bully in the history of Elmore High, and that she'd set her catty sights on Briana Baylor, one of the quietest, most studious, and therefore most vulnerable girls on campus.

Jess hated that one person could treat another person as less than human, simply because they seemed weaker or chose to look or act differently.

No one deserved to be treated like a piece of garbage—and that was exactly what "that girl", Lindsey Hamilton, was doing to Briana. She'd forced the terrified Briana against a locker and was trying to make her eat her own school work, all while her friends videotaped it, cackling like witches in Louboutins.