are rodents in the trash bags?
Then Fee asked me what I was thinking about and I said, “The fiery deaths of Jinny Hutsall and Jagger Jonze.”
She took the high road again, which is really fucking annoying. “Hating on Jinny and Jagger isn’t gonna change anything. Besides, we don’t have the facts.”
“You’re doing it again. Protecting them. The fuck, Fee?”
“I’m not protecting anybody. I just said I can’t see Jinny and Jagger Jonze doing this to us.”
“Can’t see? You saw. You were there.”
“But what actually happened? We don’t even know. You really think Jinny or Jagger Jonze planted that bomb? And the rest of it? Why would she set us up? We don’t have any proof of anything. Aren’t we doing to them what people are doing to us? You hate conspiracy theory people.”
“What is even happening right now?”
“It just doesn’t make sense, Ror. Why go to all that trouble to frame us? You really think Jinny wanted you to die because she hates Jews?”
“Yeah, Fee—that’s never happened in the history of the world.”
“And you think Jagger Jonze hates Jews so much too? I mean…I’m not Jewish and I’m in this too.”
“It’s not just that, Fee. I’m not sure what all the connections are, but something happened. The night before the ball. I did something.”
“You did something?”
I know I have to tell Fee about spying on Jinny Hutsall and filming her in a very compromising situation the day before the ball. I have to tell her that I think the real reason we’re here is that footage on my palm-cam, on the floor behind my dresser in my room.
Fee knew I’d asked my aunt Lilly for the little long-lens palm-cam for my birthday because I told everybody I was interested in making short films. Not true. I wanted that camera for the sole purpose of filming Jinny Hutsall. I thought if the girls saw how actually flaked she is—how fully insane she looks on her knees on her bed talking to the ceiling fan—we could push her out of the Hive. Ever since I got the camera, I’ve been recording Jinny’s bizarro conversations—no audio—but I couldn’t always get a great angle, or she didn’t look as crazy through the lens as I thought she would. I needed the kind of footage that would persuade my girls to take a step back from her.
Then, the night before yesterday, I looked out my front window and noticed there were a bunch of cars at the Hutsalls’. I figured maybe one of her brothers was home and having friends over or something. I didn’t really expect to find Jinny in her room when I crossed to my other window, but there she was, on her bed, naked as always. Truth? If I had a body like her, I’d be naked as much as possible too. So I grabbed my little video camera, and I’m in position behind my curtains, and there’s Jinny stretched out on her bed. She’s talking, but not to her ceiling fan. She’s looking toward her door. There is definitely someone in her room. Holy fuck.
My hand is shaking, but I keep filming. And then this pair of jeans walks past the bed. I can tell it’s a guy. One of her brothers? I’m freaked that her brother’s in her room when she’s nude. I wait. Jinny stops talking. Then she kneels like she does, ready to pray, and I totally zoom in, and that’s when it happens. She gets down on her hands too, and sticks her perfect ass up in the air, and she turns around to look at the person in her room, and I realize she’s, like, presenting herself. I watch, and I film, and I’m trying not to tremble so my camera work isn’t shaky.
I keep on filming as the guy—which fucking brother?—walks up behind her, naked too. I can’t see his face because I’m in so tight, but I watch as this guy jams himself balls deep into Jinny Hutsall’s butt. Then I tilted the camera up to find the guy’s face. It wasn’t one of her brothers.
And that’s when the Reverend Jagger Jonze looks up, and I feel like he’s looking right down the lens, and I freak. I dropped my camera, and it fell behind my dresser. The thing is, I don’t know for sure if he saw me filming them. I just…But it has to be that. Right? It’s the only thing that makes sense of what happened.
This news, my confession, doesn’t