feel, wherever we are, but urged us to turn ourselves in. She believes the truth will prevail. And that no matter what, God is on the side of the truth.
Paula watched the interview with me. “She is beautiful,” she said.
“You’re beautiful too, Paula.”
“Mi mamá say too.”
“You’re mamá’s right.”
“But I like to have long eyelashes.”
I laughed. “Totally feel that.”
“And pretty feets.”
I wish I could take Paula to the ocean to put her big, unpretty feets in the water. But then again, what if we stepped on a stingray? Or a sharp like that little girl? God, I hope it wasn’t a syringe. I mean, there’s so much litter on the beaches these days.
I’m looking out right now watching the sky traffic. There are breaks—moments when the ocean is clear and the sky is clean. Just like with the cops, so many copters and planes had to be diverted to the fires, and a ton of them are hovering over the demonstrations at the Pier. That would actually be a good place to hide. In plain sight.
Sacred Heart does a beach day each year. It’s a charity thing where we invite a bunch of procit kids, or homeless kids, to come hang with us at Zuma. We have a nice catered lunch under a tent and we tsk the shit out of the fact that all these kids live only miles away from the ocean but have never been to the beach. It seems impossible. Yet it’s true. The homeless and procit kids our age hate our fucking guts, for obvious reasons, so we give our attention to the little ones, splash in the surf, Boogieboarding and all. Then we wrap them up like burritos in the huge Sacred Heart High beach towels they’re allowed to take home—even though they’d prolly never get to the ocean again. We pat ourselves on the back pretty hard for our efforts. Pastor Hanson is totally in it for the pics, gathering little brown kids onto his knees and making sure the mommies who volunteered to help that day snapped tons of pics for Sacred’s Insta.
I’m so freaking tired. Yet can’t stop going online.
Authorities have finally released footage of the scene at the school and parking lot from all the security cams. It doesn’t prove or disprove our innocence. Just shows the rest of the world the insanity of yesterday night. Now I understand why we were asked to check our cell phones at the door. Why our purses were searched—I mean, that’s pretty common now because guns. And bombs.
It wasn’t just Jagger controlling his image. It was Jagger controlling the whole show, making sure that two hundred phones couldn’t document what happened. Warren Hutsall is definitely involved. They’re saying that Hutsall is Jonze’s “de facto agent,” taking commission on his earnings as an entertainer and through his AVB franchise. And all of it for what? Money? The righteousness of his cause? Both?
Seems like Mr. Hutsall has been pimping Jinny out, having her recruit for the Crusaders and for the AVB. One of the news reports says Jinny Hutsall is eighteen, not sixteen. They say school records indicate that the Hutsalls moved around a lot and that she repeated eighth grade and frosh. News reports also say that Jinny was involved in a number of episodes at her other schools. The victim of anti-Crusader cyberbullying at one. The victim of a vicious physical attack at another. The fuck? Did Warren Hutsall know about the Reverend’s relationship with his daughter? Somehow I doubted that. But then again.
Has Jinny essentially been working as a spy? Smoking out then discrediting agitators like me? Creating dramatic scenarios to create free publicity for the Cause and feed the propaganda machine, just like my mother always said the Crusaders do? Like the whole Red Market thing. Bombing the AVB.
It’d been Jinny’s suggestion that we lie at security and say we left our phones at home. She said we could tuck them into our bras and bodices and take some fun bathroom selfies after the ceremony. I should’ve wondered why Jinny cared about bathroom selfies, when she only ever posted anti-abortion stuff on Crusader forums, never pics. At that point I think I was relieved at the thought of keeping my phone on my body. Like, it’s my phone. It also occurred to me that I could get some covert photographs for my blog. I wasn’t thinking about outing Jagger Jonze as the total fraud that he is. I was way too afraid