The Broken Ones (Jesus Freaks #3)

by Andrea Randall

  The difference is, my dad wasn’t born to cheat on his wife or feel up call girls. It wasn’t part of his makeup. It was a clear choice bred from discontentment and sin. One that blew apart my family.

  “You’re not an abomination, man. This is different.”

  This is different. But I don’t know how. No one’s taught me that it’s different, but so many of us here on campus know it is. Not all of us, of course. And most of us won’t be heading to any marriage equality rallies any time soon, but a lot of us just don’t care. Ask some of our families and they’ll say it’s because we’ve been numbed by a culture of sin. Which is why so many of us had restricted access to TV and the Internet. Well, what they thought was restricted access. There are always ways around everything.

  “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” he asks. Begs.

  I shake my head. “I won’t. Again, it was just Jonah-”

  “Don’t tell Kennedy I mean.”

  I swallow hard. “Okay. Why her specifically, if you don’t mind my asking? She’d be the absolute last one on this campus I’d worry about.”

  “I can’t risk my sister finding out,” Silas answers flatly. “She’ll go insane.”

  “Seriously?” I’m not wondering if Bridgette will go insane; I’d say that’s pretty likely. But I’m surprised she doesn’t know.

  “She suspects,” Silas sort of answers my unasked question. “But any time she’s brought it up I’ve just talked about struggling. And for a while I think she thought what I wanted her to—that it was with girls.”

  “What makes you think she doesn’t?”

  He shakes his head, standing and stretching his arms overhead. “Paranoia,” he answers honestly. “There’s nothing she’s said or done to make me think that. And it’s not like free-range dating before marriage is allowed in my family anyway, so she can’t gauge my interest in girls by how many I date…”

  “How do you know, then?” I ask with trepidation. “That you’re… gay?”

  Silas turns to face me, a bemused grin on his face. “How do you know that you’re not?”

  “Fair enough,” I say, though I’m fighting through almost two decades of scripture jungle to see his point. “If so, then why… why worry about changing yourself?”

  “Don’t you think it’s a sin? The Bible says it everywhere.”

  Brett walks back in, giving me a chance to escape a conversation I can’t finish. One I don’t have any answers to. “Come to Roland’s tonight,” I say, talking mostly to Silas. “We’re all going to watch the show together.

  Silas looks at Brett, who holds out his hands. “I’ve gotta work tonight anyway. You might as well.”

  “Seven.” I nod to punctuate. “We’re gonna order pizza first and stuff. Show’s on at eight.”

  He smiles for the first time since I walked in on them. “Eight o’clock on a Friday night. How’d we get that lucky with a time slot? That’s huge!”

  “Yeah. Luck.” I roll my eyes and head out of their room.

  I make it a few steps before Silas sticks his head out. “Matt?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’ll talk more later, okay?”

  I nod, walking back toward him. “Look,” I say quietly. “I don’t have all the answers. Or any, really. But I know you’re not a bad guy. I know you’re a guy I look up to and one who’s been helping me crawl out of the hell that is my own head. Whatever you are… it’s not an abomination, okay?”

  Tears well on the edges of his eyes before he takes an exaggerated deep breath and clears his throat. “Thanks.”

  What the hell now?

  ***

  “Matt… you’re early.” Kennedy steps aside as I push through the front door. “I know you love pizza from Tony’s but three hours is a bit excessive, no?” She giggles, following behind me as I pace into her kitchen and around the island.

  I left the dorm and came straight here. With no plan.

  “Oh, and you’re being weird,” she says, standing in the broad doorway to the kitchen, staring at me. “How new and exciting for us.”

  Setting my hands on the island, I lower my head and take a deep breath before facing her with my question. “Why don’t you think homosexuality is wrong?”

  She stares at me. Wide eyed and blinking like a startled owl for several seconds before replying. “Why do you think it is?” She places her hands on her hips as if ready for battle.

  I shake my head. “I don’t know if I do. I’m… collecting research. Opinions. Everyone around here is going to get crazy with the election next year and… just… I want to know. I know we said no politics but this isn’t really us talking about it. I’m just curious.”

  She folds her arms across her middle and gives a heavy sigh. “I don’t know, Matt. I don’t know if we should even talk about this. I’d hate to have to hate you.” I can’t tell if she’s joking. I can never freaking tell with her. It’s maddening.

  “Please.” I cross in front of the island and approach her holding out my hands. Setting them on her shoulders, I ask again. “Just… come on. Please?”

  With her mouth still closed, she runs her tongue across the front of her teeth. “Promise not to talk?” I nod. “Promise to let me just tell you what I think and know before you say a thing?” I nod again, grateful that the election rouse is working. “Fine,” she concedes. “I’ll get my laptop and be right back down.” She grins before turning for the stairs. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  A minute later she plunks down next to me and I can almost feel the electricity coming off her. I take a deep breath and remind myself to calm down, though, because this might be our only chance to make this a discussion if one of us gets heated.

  Tread lightly.

  “Perfect timing,” she starts with. “I’m going to a women’s rights rally in DC with my mom in a couple of weeks.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Really? How you gonna get away with that?”

  Kennedy waves her hand in the air as if shooing a fly. “It’ll be fine. I’ll ask for pamphlets to bring, or whatever. I’m just going to lie.”

  “Casual.” I chuckle. “But I’m asking about gay stuff.”

  “Oh, right. Well at these things there’s typically representation from all sides. It’s Liz Baldwin’s event and she has support from everyone and there are gay women, you know,” she teases and I let it slide. “I figured if people on any side questioned why I’m there, I’d need to be able to defend myself at least somewhat Biblically. Where do you want me to start?”

  I rub my hands on my jeans. “I don’t even know.”

  She tilts her head to the side. “Let’s start with the verses thrown around talking about homosexuality as a sin?”

  “If you think… that’ll help.”

  She nods quite seriously as she navigates to a document she seems to have been working on. “Let’s start with good ole Sodom and Gomorrah. Right in Genesis. I’ll never forget when I pieced together where the word sodomy came from. Real clever…”

  I shift nervously in my seat as she pulls up the story in another window.

  “Read the story,” she says of Genesis nineteen.

  “I’ve read it. Over and over.” I don’t want to get into detail with her about what I’ve been fed. I’m interested in her biblical diet at the moment.

  “All right. Verses four and five show a group of men showing up at Lot’s house, demanding he turn the two men loose so they can have sex with them. Look how angry they were.”

  “Yeah… and?”

  Kennedy huffs. “Nowhere in this verse does it talk about homosexual attraction or relationships. This is about rape. A gang rape. When I read this, I think, Good. God is against gang rape. Not that gay men should be burned in their city. These were bad men because they were propagating sexual violence, Matt.”

  Holy…

  I take a minute to let my eyes scroll through the story that’s typically used more than any other one to illustrate the consequences of homosexuality.
<
br />   “Oh,” she cuts off the thoughts she can’t hear. “And for further confirmation, the business with Sodom and Gomorrah was brought up again in Ezekiel. Verse forty-nine says, ‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.’ So,” she says with a frustrated breath, “looks to me like Sodom’s sin was against helping the poor and needy. Spoiler alert: Jesus talks about the same thing when he busts onto the scene.”

  “What about Leviticus,” I spit out. “That calls homosexuality an abomination.” It killed me to hear Silas use that word on himself.

  Kennedy’s face falls as she navigates to that verse. “Yeah,” she says solemnly. “Leviticus is a real pain. It says homosexuals should even be put to death.”

  I nod. “What do we do about that?”

  She scrolls through the online menu and pulls up Leviticus twenty, which is the verse containing the punishment for homosexuality.

  “Look,” she whispers, pointing to the very first verse in chapter twenty and running her finger down the screen. “Anyone who curses their mother and father should be put to death. Adulterers and adulteresses. Death. If a man marries both his wife and her mother he should be burned. Or if he has sex with an animal. But look at this.” She scrolls back to chapter nineteen. “Don’t plant two kinds of seeds in a field or wear clothes of two kinds of material. Don’t eat fruit for three years after planting a tree? Seriously? Don’t eat any animal with blood still in it? Jewish custom, Matt. I’ve got tons of kosher friends. Don’t cut your hair,” she continues with the list of commands. “Don’t tattoo yourself…”

  “Okay,” I say slowly.

  Kennedy looks down for a moment, thoughtful. “Didn’t Jesus come,” she says, staring at her keyboard, “to complete the prophecy of himself and abolish the law? In at least Romans and Hebrews it is said that Christ came to end the law and that the old law is dead or obsolete, or something.”

  “I…” I start but have nothing to say.

  Kennedy closes her laptop and turns, facing me on the couch. “I could go on,” she says. “There are more verses I could pick apart, but when it comes right down to it there’s one thing I know for certain.”

  “What’s that?” I say in a near whisper as the light from the front bay window highlights her face.

  “You trust my dad, right?” I nod. “And his sermons lately have been about following Jesus. The man. The Divine. Doing as he did and loving as he loved, right?”

  “Yeah.” Roland’s sermons have been tying in nicely to our New Testament class. I don’t think that’s an accident. Focusing on the “I Am” statements Jesus made, and walking those out.

  Kennedy leans in close as if we’re in a crowded room and she doesn’t want anyone else to hear this but me. “Jesus never once spoke against homosexuality. He did speak about a whole lot of other things that are really hard, and things I still don’t know how I feel about, but there is that piece that I know. He talked about sexual immorality, yes. But he talked about it in the form of prostitution and adultery. In fact, even the barest mentions of homosexuality occur less than ten times in the Bible, while there are hundreds of verses regarding how to treat the poor. And look what Howard White focuses on—the impeccable Christian that he is. Is it feeding the poor? No, it’s taking away food stamps and abolishing gay marriage. Jesus, the man and the Divine, never talked about homosexual relationships. What then, are we to do about that?”

  My mouth opens with no words ready to speak. Her eyes are sad as if she’s seen some of the effects of those scriptures thrown at friends. I bet she has; she’s mentioned a gay neighbor once or twice, I think. I can’t for the life of me figure out why Silas doesn’t want Kennedy to know. If I were in his shoes, she’d be the one person I’d beg to be in my corner.

  “Why did you want to talk about this now, anyway?”

  Her question startles me. “I told you—”

  “I know you told me what you wanted me to believe, but not what the truth is. And, I know you’re not gay… right?”

  “No!” I shout with an uncomfortable laugh.

  She puts up her hands. “Chill, I didn’t ask if you made out with cats.”

  I feel bad for my indoctrinated reaction, but it is what it is. Luckily, Kennedy is the forgiving type. After all, she still wants to be my friend after all the crap I’ve put her through.

  “Sorry,” I say, standing and walking to the kitchen to help myself to a soda. She’s told me for weeks that Roland’s house has an open door and open fridge policy. And, I’m grateful for the brief, sugary distraction.

  “Did someone put you up to this?” she asks, holding out her hand and silently asking for a soda. Which I should have offered her anyway.

  I shake my head. “No. And I’d never do that to you even if they did.”

  “So… this was just a general fact-finding mission?”

  I tilt my head side to side and give her a mischievous grin. “Information collecting. Let’s not go calling things facts just yet.”

  “Fine.” She huffs. “So, what are you going to just loaf around here for the next three hours and not ask me at all about how my date went last night? It was wonderful, by the way, thank you for asking.”

  Internally I roll my eyes, but plaster on a grin for her. “I wasn’t going to ask. Didn’t need to. Jonah gushed all about it during floor prayer last night.”

  Her face flushes. “What?” I can’t keep a straight face, and she punches me in the shoulder. “Jerk!”

  “Ow! Psycho! I have a game Sunday.”

  She shakes her hand. “I’m sure I hurt myself more than you, you brute.”

  “What happened on that date to make you change color like that?”

  “None of your damn business, Wells.”

  I laugh. “Gonna be eventually if a camera crew was there. Might as well spill the beans now.”

  Her face flushes again and it’s clear she’s forgotten until this very moment that she had extra guests at dinner.

  “Dinner was just last night,” she says, color returning to her face. “Nothing will be on tonight anyway. You’ll have to wait to next week to figure out if Jonah proposed.” She winks, clearly trying to deflect attention away from the subject and, honestly, it works.

  I don’t ever want to know what happens between the two of them.

  “You’re probably okay,” I joke. “Jonah’s too ugly to be on screen anyway.”

  “Jerk!” she shrieks again, this time slapping my stomach.

  “Ugh!” I pretend she knocked the wind out of me. “That’s it, Sawyer. You’re dead!”

  As if she spent a life living with brothers, which I know she hasn’t, she skirts to the other side of the island, putting the large slab of granite between us.

  “I don’t know what your game is, Kennedy, but I’m an athlete.”

  “Yeah?” She sticks out her tongue. “I’m an athlete, too. And I’m a girl. What are you going to do about it?”

  Without giving it much thought I press my hands into the counter and swing myself across it like it’s a pommel horse. Kennedy screams in surprise and makes it only as far as the couch before I tackle her against the white cushions and tickle her.

  “Stop!” she squeals. “Not… fair! I hate being—ah!—I hate being tickled.” She laughs harder than I’ve ever heard her laugh in the entire time I’ve known her.

  “Doesn’t sound like you hate it.” I’m out of breath from restraining her wiggling body. “People don’t laugh at something they hate.” I let up for one second and start in again. Her laughter is like music. Why doesn’t she ever laugh like this?

  She growls before contorting herself into the fetal position. “Not fair! You have to laugh when you’re being tickled, freak!” She wriggles a hand free and drives it right into my armpit, giving me a taste of my own medicine.

  “Ah!” I fall back in broken laughter as she gains position over me and strikes the other armpit.r />
  “Oh,” she teases, menacing little thing she is. “Not such a big tough football player after all, are you?”

  Before I can exert any force for defense, the front door swings open, which throws Kennedy off me in one swift motion.

  “Oh,” she says breathlessly. “Hi Dad.”

  “Kennedy,” he starts, scanning the situation. “Matt. Nice to see you…”

  “Don’t worry,” she says passively. “We weren’t making out or having sex. Matt’s a child and thought he could tickle me and win. He underestimated my strength.” She chuckles. “A mistake he’s certain not to make again.”

  I clear my throat and offer Kennedy a handshake from the couch. I can’t stand yet, anyway. “You were a formidable opponent. You should try out for the team,” I tease back.

  She sticks out her tongue and I’m increasingly uncomfortable by Roland’s still presence in the entryway.

  “Matt came over to talk about homosexuality,” Kennedy blurts out. “Is this against the rules? We’re not in dorms. We’re also not freshmen…”

  “I…” Roland starts, his eyes staying on me for longer than on her. “I don’t know. Just… don’t make a habit of it, I guess.”

  Kennedy walks over to her dad and it’s finally safe for me to stand without causing a scene.

  “Sorry,” I hear her whisper. “I didn’t ask if this was okay with your rules.”

  I rarely see them in their father-daughter context, and I still feel a bit like I’m spying even though I knew about their biological ties before anyone else on this campus did.

  Roland puts his hand on her shoulder. “It didn’t occur to me until this moment that we needed to talk about it. Fun! New stuff for us to talk about! Matthew, I trust you were respectful?”

  I nod. “Of course, sir. I didn’t mean any disrespect. I was just asking Kennedy for some scriptural stuff.”

  He lifts his eyebrows. “Okay, then. I see I’ve walked in on something with more layers than I have time to dissect between meetings. You’ll be back tonight for the show, right?” he asks, effectively dismissing me for the next few hours.