Reverend, orientation night was all about the promo pieces he makes—the commercials like the ones they’ve been showing of us on cable news. Plus, we paid—well, our fathers paid—a premium for having Jonze host the whole shitty fucking thing, and that night we got to hear his personal story—not like we didn’t know most of it because Internet, but still.
Tables and chairs had been set up in the ballroom on the far side of our massive school campus, but the rehearsal was pretty casual. No flowers or fairy lights. No candles. Chick-fil-A for dinner, though the AVB charged a grand a head for the orientation part. Quite a markup.
The night was one disappointment after another. We’d already picked out cute dresses and shoes and then we get this AVB bulletin telling us we gotta wear our school uniforms. Seriously? We all felt ugly in our tartans.
But when I laid eyes on Jonze from across the room, in his tight white Armani T-shirt under a blue cashmere blazer and Cavalli jeans that totally showcased his package? As hot as he was, my vadge clenched and my nips inversed and my whole body just went, No.
When Jinny dragged him over to meet us, I was already holding back. A “specimen” is what Brook called him. And he was. But you could see, or I could see, something feral about him. He didn’t even look at us as Jinny introduced Feliza, and Brook, and Zara, and Delaney, because his eyes were darting around the room, like he was scanning for prey. He only turned his attention to our little group when Jinny said, “And this is Rory Miller.”
I knew by the way he looked at me that he’d been told I was a Jew. Or a heathen. Or both. I could smell his distaste.
“Shalom,” he said, making prayer hands at me.
What the actual fuck?
“I told the Reverend about all my new friends,” Jinny explained, staring up at him with reverence—and what I realized later was actual lust.
The other girls stood knock-kneed and watched as he put a hand on my shoulder. “All are welcome,” he said with his mouth, but not his eyes. Definitely not with his eyes.
Nothing about orientation night went the way I thought it would. I’d been looking forward to taking some celebrity selfies, but after meeting him there was no chance I was gonna promote that anti-Semitic miscreant. When Zara asked to take a pic and he sternly reminded us that phones had to be checked at the door, I didn’t even care.
Before he moved on, the Reverend told us he was really looking forward to getting to know us later at the Hutsalls’, where he promised we’d have a great rap sesh—that’s what he called it—about the pledge and all. He also said we should go get in line for our filmed AVB interviews. I nodded enthusiastically, along with my friends, afraid he’d hear my thoughts. When Jonze walked away, the girls circled me, crying no-fair that I’d gotten special attention. Oh my God.
After we did the brief on-camera interviews, the dads segregated themselves at tables on one side of the room and we girls sat in our cliques on the other as the Reverend took the stage. First he sent the younger girls, eighth grade and below, out of the room to watch a movie with Mrs. Piggott. Then he said, into the microphone, “Dads. Papas. Fathers. Daddies. And young ladies. This is my story. It’s real. It’s uncensored. It’s the story of what brought me to Jesus and how I came to stand before you today. It’s a cautionary tale, and an important one for you and your daughters to hear. May the Lord Our God be our guide tonight.”
I bet half the dads there were going, Wait? What?
“Amen,” we all said.
We knew his story. I mean, everyone knows his redemption story—reprobate from the streets of Chicago finds Jesus blah blah—but hearing it from him was still pretty powerful. He could sell anything to anyone with that million-dollar mouth.
“My mother was a homeless teen drug addict who left me in a bar called Jonze’s Joint in Cabrini Green when I was barely a week old.” A pretty good opener.
“The only thing anyone could ever tell me about her was that she looked to be about fifteen years old and was wearing a Rolling Stones T-shirt when she said she needed to use the bathroom, passed me over to a waitress and disappeared forever.”