“Yes, sir. See you then. Kennedy, thanks.”
She smiles, the tops of her cheeks still pink. “You’re welcome. For kicking your butt, too.” She winks and I stick out my tongue.
Slipping by Roland, I exit as quickly and gracefully as possible before jogging back to campus. I have to get my clothes and head to the gym to ward off the impending massive Kennedy hangover.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jesus Freaks
Kennedy
By the time everyone starts trickling into the house around seven o’clock, I feel like I’ve fully recovered from the bizarre afternoon with Matt. And, it wasn’t just about the weird tickling fight—which was fun, but… weird. It’s how invigorated I felt using biblical text to show Matt why, my feelings aside, the Bible doesn’t, in fact, say that homosexuality is a sin. Studying and then presenting that information gave me the confidence I’ll need heading into election season dealing with my mother. She’s still in a very “those people” sort of place regarding Christians—evangelical ones particularly—and when the time’s right, and when I feel she won’t misuse the information, I’ll show her exactly what the Bible really has to say on the issue. Or not say at all, as the case may be.
Of course I don’t know everything, and I need to pay attention to how the opposition uses the text for their gain. And vice versa. On more than just this issue.
God, how complicated can humans make things?
From what I’ve read and heard for the last year, Jesus came with a simple, but not easy, message. For us to love one another as he so loved us to give his life for our salvation. No, it’s not easy to love them with the same love of someone who would die for us. But, I feel like maybe, just maybe, everyone has it a little wrong.
And, this isn’t a new problem, either. For centuries wars have been fought, governments have been built and destroyed, and countless lives have been lost in the name of two sides claiming they know exactly what the text means.
“Do you ever think,” I say to Eden in the privacy of my room before heading downstairs to join everyone else, “that things wouldn’t get so awful if we really could just love each other the way Jesus loved us?”
“Wow.” She giggles, “You really don’t want to talk about your date with Jonah, do you?”
Rolling my eyes, I give her a teasing smile. “A girl’s gotta keep some things private.”
“Did you two kiss?” she doesn’t hesitate to ask.
My cheeks flush before I can even answer.
“You did!” she shrieks.
“Shh!” I beg, pointing to the door. “I promise to tell you all about it. Later.”
“Fine.” She sighs and heads to the door.
Before she makes it through, and against my better judgment, I stop her. “Eden, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
Taking a deep breath, I give myself one more chance to back out of talking about it.
No dice.
“Matt came over this afternoon.”
Studying my face, Eden slowly closes the door and sits in my desk chair. “Okay,” she says slowly, proving she’s read my face correctly. “And?”
I tell her about the whole visit from beginning to end. Every detail without missing a minute. From going through the Bible to my dad walking in. She’s quiet for a while, taking several deep, pensive breaths before looking up at me. To my relief, her gaze isn’t one of judgment or disappointment. It’s a calm resolve.
“Well,” she says as if she’s been waiting years to have this conversation, “I guess it’s time for you to set some of your own boundaries with Matt.”
“Meaning?”
She shrugs. “He’s set some with you, although they’re admittedly sloppy. I know you said it was like brother and sister, but you guys aren’t brother and sister, which means there is always a chance for that line to be crossed. Or erased and redrawn somewhere you don’t mean for it to.” She rises and steps toward me, placing her hands on my arms. “You need to take time to pray about your relationship with him. If his friendship is that important to you, you need to set clear and defined boundaries, or you’ll risk losing him one way or another. And hurting other people, besides yourself.”
“Jonah,” I say inside a breath.
She nods. “Or anyone you might be dating. I personally don’t have a problem with guys and girls being besties. But it always has to be different than two girls or two guys. And, to be honest, there are a lot of guys on this campus for whom your relationship with Matt would present a huge problem.”
“Do you think it would with Jonah?”
“I don’t know,” Eden whispers. “If you feel convicted about it, talk about it with him. If not, let it go.”
“Do you think it’s a problem?”
She twists her lips, flicking her eyes away from me once or twice before answering. “I don’t know. I mean, my first reaction is, yes, it’s weird. But I don’t know if it’s actually weird, or just what I’ve been trained to believe is weird.”
I can’t stop myself. I step forward and wrap her in the tightest hug I can. “Thank you,” I whisper. “This is why you’re my best friend. We don’t know anything, do we?”
“No,” she whispers back. “Not a thing. Now, let’s go get awkward and watch ourselves on TV.”
Stepping back, I roll my eyes. “Do we have to?”
She nods. “‘Fraid so.”
We arrive at the bottom of the stairs at the same time Roland closes the door with three pizzas in his hand, next to Matt and Jonah who are hoisting chips and soda in plastic bags.
“Hey,” Jonah greets me with a toe-tingling grin.
“Hey,” I whisper, trying not to focus on the fact that everyone’s attention is now on me and Jonah. Including Silas and Bridgette, who have made themselves at home in the living room. “I’ll go get glasses and plates and stuff.”
Eden follows me in to the kitchen, and I’m surprised when Bridgette joins us.
“Hey Bridge,” I say as cordially as I can. “Glad you could make it. I’ve… I’ve kinda missed you.”
“It’s been a crazy start to the school year,” she says as if she hasn’t been actively avoiding me.
“Yeah,” I agree, deciding to let it go for now. “This whole TV thing is crazy, isn’t it?”
Bridgette smiles. “Yeah, but it’s kind of exciting to be able to be part of some wholesome Friday night TV on a major network. I know my family will be watching, and normally it’s really hard to find something to watch that’s not, well, you know…”
Eden agrees with a sympathetic “mhmm,” while I just nod because I disagree, but am not in the mood to go any number of rounds with her tonight.
“I heard you and Jonah had a date,” she says.
Of course she did. Silas was our chaperone.
I nod. “We did. We went to Fromage. It was delicious.”
“Is dating like this weird for you?”
“Like what?” I ask, sensing Eden tense a bit by my side.
Bridgette shrugs. “I don’t know. Slow—”
“With chaperones? That’s weird. I don’t know what’s slower or faster about it because I didn’t really date much before. Trent and I went to dinner and movies and stuff, but it wasn’t formal. We just hung around each other and made out a lot. Grab the napkins?” I say, walking to the living room with a heated face and a stack of paper plates.”
“That went smoothly,” Eden says under her breath.
“Maybe I should go,” Bridgette announces, setting the napkins down on the coffee table.
With an eye-roll so deep I can almost see my brain, I grab her hand and take her to my dad’s office for relative privacy. The room behind us goes silent as our friends and my dad undoubtedly try to eavesdrop.
“Stop it,” I snap, shutting the door behind us most of the way.
Her eyes widen like a baby deer. “Stop what?”
I point between us. “This stuff. The getting offended and poking m
e first to ensure it happens. Stop. You know I’ve never dated like this before because we’ve talked about it before, back when we were roommates before you and your family decided I was too-risky of an influence for you to live with.”
She opens her mouth, but I cut her off gently. “I know you don’t like me, and that’s okay. But we need to figure out a way to get along, okay? We have mutual friends and with this TV show thing, we’re probably going to end up around each other even more.”
She puts her hands on her hips and huffs. “How self-righteous of you.”
“Try again.” My ears are on fire.
Bridgette grins. A cocky, mocking grin. “Not everything is about you Kennedy. I know that might be hard for you to believe, but even this show isn’t about you.”
“I suspect not since I’ve avoided being on camera as much as possible.”
“Even if the network was first interested in it because of your story it’s not about the poor liberal, unchurched girl from Connecticut. It’s about all of us, and how God works through us and our families. I asked if it was weird to date like this for you because I did pay attention to you in the past and I was curious as to how you were adjusting to a different way of doing things. I’m not out to get you, for goodness sake.”
“Unchurched?” I barely heard anything else she just said.
She huffs again. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” I huff. It’s my turn to huff. “I guess I do. A self-righteous, unchurched girl…”
“Maybe I should go.”
I point my finger inches from her face. “No. You’re staying as we planned and we’ll just keep our distance, okay? If I’m not allowed to run away from my discomfort here, then neither are you.”
Her impossibly blue eyes gaze into the distance. I hate how pretty she is. Because she’ll probably get a load of airtime from NBC and people will fall in love with the innocent, Jesus-loving girl when, in actuality, I think there’s something way darker beneath it all.
God, please help me not judge her like this.
“Fine,” she agrees. “Let’s go watch the show.”
I follow her out of Roland’s office where we walk into a living room full of people pretending to not have just strained their ears.
“Everyone good?” Roland asks as diplomatically as possible.
“Yep,” I say at the same time as Bridgette chirps an airy yes that makes me want to choke her.
Okay. It’s clear she gets under my skin. Let’s admit that and move on.
Jonah slides over on the couch and pats the seat next to him. “Here,” he says, handing me a pizza and chip-filled plate.
“Thanks,” I half-whisper, feeling quite on display in the middle of my dad’s living room.
“Is everything okay?” he whispers.
I nod, waving my hand dismissively. “Yeah,” I whisper back amidst lots of side chatter in the room. “She thinks I’m self-righteous and I think she’s fake.”
Jonah’s eyes double in size. “Did you guys really say that?”
“She did,” I say, taking a bite of thin-crust Greek pizza. “I didn’t. In so many words anyway.”
He puffs out his cheeks. “What are you gonna do?”
I shrug. “There’s nothing to really do. I’m just going to avoid her as much as possible, I think. She hates me.”
“I don’t know if she ha—” he starts, but I cut him off.
“She does. Trust me. I’m a girl. We have all kinds of silent, and not so silent, ways of letting another hen in the henhouse know that we’re less than thrilled by her presence.”
Eden plunks on the arm of the couch on the other side of me. “Was there bloodshed?” she whispers.
“No. I’ll tell you about it later.”
Just before eight o’clock, my phone buzzes with a text.
Matt: You gonna kill her?
It makes me laugh out loud as I’m texting back.
Me: Not today. That’s all I can promise.
Matt: Good. It’d be awkward to be serving you at the prison ministry.
Me: It’s a men’s prison only, remember?
Matt: Oh, that would be even more upsetting then, wouldn’t it?
I cast him a smirky glance and slide my phone onto the couch next to me.
“Everything okay?” Jonah asks, clearly trying not to ask who I was just texting with.
“Yeah. Just a friend.”
That was a weird non-lie…
At eight on the dot, the credits to Jesus Freaks roll, with an interesting opening montage of scenes from campus, various churches, and a collaboration—collision, really—of dialogue over them all. Voices talking over each other. Scripture, opinions, sound bytes from politicians and movies. All centering around one thing: Jesus.
The voice-over silences us.
“The quaint, quiet campus of Carter University, founded in 1925, has withstood nearly a century’s-worth of trials and change as the Christian landscape of the United States has morphed and shifted.”
Bridgette’s face pops on the screen first. “I think it’s exciting to be part of a university that has remained true to its values—the values of Christ—in the middle of the cultural turmoil of secular America over the last several decades.”
“Bridgette Nelson,” the narrator continues as the camera cuts to a shot of the front of a sprawling homestead, “is one of fourteen children here in this rural Tennessee family. While she and her twin brother, Silas, are the third and fourth oldest in their family, they are the first to go to college.”
It turns out that many of my superficial assumptions of Bridgette’s upbringing are holding up. The girls in her family all have waist-long hair, are dressed in long dresses or skirts, and have meek smiles on their mouths all the time. The boys all look like politicians in training. While Silas clearly belongs with them, as the boys all look alike, and some even have red hair, too, he seems out of place somehow. Like he has this restlessness. I begin to wonder if my assumptions of him were all wrong. Maybe he’ll break free of the family that looks more like a round hole to his square peg charisma.
Charisma is not a word I would have ever thought to use to describe Silas, but watching him interspersed with his family, it’s clear that’s what he possesses. He’s boisterous and smiling for the camera, making frequent eye contact, while the rest of his siblings seem to be exercising excessive restraint.
Look how humble we are…
It’s Silas’ turn for formal introduction. He’s quite photogenic, like his sister. There are giggles throughout the living room as our friends get their screen time. I keep my eyes and ears glued on the set. From the corner of my eye, I can see that Matt and Roland are on my wavelength.
Waiting. For… something.
“It’s a big step for me,” TV-Silas says. “Leaving home for the first time was a big deal. Of course there has been a lot of temptation along the way, but my strong roots in God and my family have helped me avoid disaster.”
Disaster…
At this point, the announcer discusses some of the “disasters” that evangelical Christian kids can often face their first times away from home in a college or missions setting, or the job force. Sex, drugs, and alcohol—in no uncertain terms—are the main concerns highlighted. Then, naturally, the show cuts to my introduction. Because, why wouldn’t I follow all the warnings?
Jonah slides his hand in my direction, shaky as he weaves his fingers through mine and gives it a squeeze. My cheeks flush, and not from seeing my face on TV. I’ve seen it there twice in the last year. They burn with the realization that Jonah has just taken our fledgling relationship rather public. Right in the middle of my father’s living room.
And I’m okay with it.
Looking down for a moment to get my bearings, I take a cleansing breath before returning to the out-of-body experience that is watching myself on TV.
“It’s been a big adjustment,” I say in an interview taped a couple of weeks ago. With Finn, I believe.
“Everyone’s so different than back home.”
“Kennedy Sawyer, formally estranged daughter of beloved and world-renowned pastor Roland Abbott, is no stranger to controversy,” the narrator remarks before showing small clips of each of my Today Show interviews. “Hailing from a liberal, and predominately Jewish community in a wealthy Connecticut suburb, Kennedy might just have the biggest culture shock of all the students here at Carter. For the next couple of months, we’ll get to follow these students as they navigate a post-high school world free from the watchful eyes of their parents. Carter is known across the Internet for their strict guidelines of student behavior, including chaperones for off-campus activities.”
Pieces of the Student Code of Conduct are either shown or spoken. Interestingly enough, this is not something that’s easily accessible to the public. By going on Carter’s main page, one can only access the document, along with other academic-related things, when they’re logged in. Meaning you’ve got to be a student or faculty member to get the whole shebang. Thanks to the Internet, though, enough of it has been leaked in pieces to be stitched back together on various blogs. There are a bevy of anti-Carter blogs floating around the Internet. I haven’t spent a ton of time on them, but thinking back to my conversation with Asher, and the previous meeting with The Resistance, I realize a search of those blogs might provide me and us with exactly what we need to uncover the dark belly of this university—witnesses.
Matt and Jonah fill the screen next, sitting next to each other in their dorm’s lounge.
“The rules aren’t any different than they were for me in high school,” TV-Matt says.
“Does that bother you?” an invisible voice that sounds like Finn’s asks.
Matt shakes his head and shrugs. “It is what it is.”
“Yeah,” Jonah adds on the screen. “It’s just kind of more of the same.”
“And in light of your struggles, Matt?”
The show then cuts to the picture, which I haven’t even seen since it was first smeared across the media many months ago. Me, Matt, and Jonah leaving that strip club. Though, at first, Jonah and I are blurred out of the picture as Matt discusses his struggles when the camera cuts back to his face. His eyes are down.
The Broken Ones (Jesus Freaks #3) Page 20
