In real-time, I look over to Matt, who locks eyes with me. His eyes fall to my lap, where my hands are locked with Jonah’s. He shoots me a wink before looking back to the TV.
“Turns out it’s a lot harder than I thought it would be,” Matt answers as Jonah looks on sympathetically, and, out of the corner of my eye, I catch him shoot Matt the same glance in Roland’s living room as the volume around us dials down to near silence. “I’m lucky to have friends who are helping point me back to God.”
“Back to God,” Announcer-Man says, “is the whole focus of the student body here at Carter University.”
Nausea fills my stomach when Dean Baker fills the screen. Quite literally. “It’s not uncommon for young people to slip and slide. We’re not expecting perfection in performance here at Carter. What we do expect, is for these students to fight for God in their lives, and for their salvation. The administration, staff, and everyone else here at Carter are in place as guardrails and lifelines for these kids. To help them transition from home life to real life.”
My mouth drops as I listen to the complete bull falling from his putrid mouth. I cast a quick glance at Jonah, and another at Matt, who are looking as skeptically at him as I am, while Bridgette beams as if Christ himself is giving an interview.
After a few more snapshots of life at CU, the announcer says, “Join us as we take an in-depth look at a side of America most Americans don’t know. A side, they say, is the foundation for America as we know it—one where God is the center of everything.”
“I’m a Jesus freak,” Jonah says proudly as the long intro begins to wrap up. “And I want to make my life about serving Him.” Then, much to my own dismay and eye-rolling, the camera cuts back to me. “I mean, when I first got here, I wondered how I’d survive around all of these FREAKS.”
Jesus Freaks, the screen shows as it fades to commercial, and the room buzzes with chatter and giggles about how everyone looked on TV, and how they felt about it.
“Well,” I whisper to Jonah. “I think it’s safe to say that they’re going to cover our date in this episode with that nice little set up.”
“Really?”
I nod and excuse myself to the kitchen for more root beer.
“You okay?” Matt follows behind me, holding out his cup.
“Are you really thinking of leaving CU if you get a football scholarship somewhere?” I blurt out as if this root beer is less root and more beer.
Matt gives an impish grin, holding out his hands. “And miss all this?”
Tilting my head to the side, I sound impatient. “I’m serious.”
He shrugs. “It’s such a minute possibility that it’s not even worth thinking about.”
“Not minute,” I respond. “You guys are good. You’re good,” I say, immediately trying to figure out how to explain sneakily watching a couple of their practices. “And I know you’ve thought about it. You’re a guy, and an athlete. There’s always that goal.”
“I don’t know,” he sighs. “We’ll deal with that when the time comes. But, are you okay? You’re weird.”
“I should be asking the same of you,” I ask, the hiss of the root beer filling his cup and the silence between us.
He shrugs. “I was there for the interviews. I knew they’d use a bunch of it. That’s my angle, remember? The broken kid clawing his way back to God.”
I eye him curiously. “Are you comfortable with that? It’s intensely personal.”
“Are you comfortable being the cynic?”
“I am,” I answer quickly. “With them portraying me as that.”
“Are you?”
I swallow hard. “I believe in God. And Jesus. And the crucifixion and rising from the dead. And that Jesus did that for us. The ultimate sacrificial lamb.”
Matt tilts his head. “Do you believe Jesus is the way to God? Like those I Am statements we’re studying in your dad’s class. I am The Way, Jesus said. Do you believe that?”
My pulse pounds through my neck. I put my hand there, begging it to calm down. “I don’t know,” I admit in a whisper. “Please don’t tell anyone. I just don’t know if there’s one way.” I think about my Jewish friends, and the ones I made at the temple this summer. Rao, especially. One of the best people I’ve met in all my life.
If they don’t believe, then what becomes of them?
Matt makes a claw with one of his hands. “It’s life or death for me, Kennedy.”
I feel sucked into a vacuum—as if I’m really seeing Matt for the first time this year. His eyes are the same—vulnerable and pleading. But there’s a fight in them that I don’t quite recognize. Before it was against himself. Fighting who he was and where he came from. Now, it really seems like he’s fighting for his relationship with God, just like he stated on TV. In front of the whole nation.
Why does it make me uncomfortable?
Why is he asking me about my salvation beliefs?
“I’m proud of you,” I force myself to say, extending my arms for a hug. “This takes a lot of guts. Admitting it. Doing it. Letting cameras film it.”
“Thanks,” he says, pulling me in for a hug.
One…
Just one. Then he lets go.
Pulling back, I catch Jonah sauntering into the kitchen with his hands in his pockets. “Hey guys.” He smiles, eyes scanning between Matt and me.
If you feel convicted about it… I replay my earlier conversation with Eden.
Casting a quick glance into the living room, I let my eyes fall for a second on each of my friends, and on my dad. Are they all as sure as they seem? As sure as this show has so far portrayed them to be, regardless of what struggles and poor decisions they find themselves in?
Am I really the cynic? Not just made-for-TV, but in the flesh?
Grabbing Jonah’s arm, I eye him, panicked. “I need to talk to you,” I whisper, whisking us past Matt and into the hallway between my dad’s office and the front door.
My heart is still bass-drumming my pulse through my body, and I’m starting to get dizzy.
“Are you okay?” Jonah asks, seeming to accurately assess my mental state by my physical appearance.
“Are you?” I ask in earnest. “With my friendship with Matt.”
He pulls his head back, eyebrows drawn in. “Where’d that come from?”
“The hug,” I spit out. “The one you walked in on. It was just a second—”
One second.
Jonah cuts me off. “Hey,” he says softly. “It’s fine. I know you guys are friends.”
“He’s one of my best friends, Jonah. If not the best. Also, I don’t know if I believe Jesus is the only way to God.”
“What? What… what are you doing? Who brought that up?” He looks around as if searching for a third party pulling the strings on this conversation. “Where’s this coming from?”
This must be what a mental breakdown feels like.
I point to the living room. “The show. It’s a bad idea. They’re going to do the thing I knew they would. Make me the doubt-filled heathen. But I can’t prove them wrong… because I have so many questions, Jonah. I’m not like you. I’m not like my dad, or Eden, or even Matt.” I shake my hands in a futile attempt to return feeling to my fingers.
“You think I don’t have questions?” Jonah’s tone is borderline uninterested. “We all have questions.”
“What about Jesus being The Way? Capital T, capital W? That’s a definitive statement.”
He nods. “And, one under which I’m currently operating. Because it works. And because I believe what the Bible says. I believe God left it for us, through the men he used to write it.”
Leaning against the wall, my brain is sucked straight into the black hole it’s apparently been fighting against for the last year I’ve been in this land. “It’s all chicken and egg, isn’t it?”
Before Jonah can speak, Roland ducks his head into the hallway. “Everything all right? Show’s starting.”
With my mouth hanging o
pen, and eyes wide, I address him. “In order to believe what the Bible says is truth, I have to believe that God wrote it through those men. They’re just words on a page until someone believes, right? The Bible in and of itself can’t prove itself, can it…” I trail off, my eyes floating to the ceiling. “It means nothing unless someone can believe God meant for those words to be written.”
“Kennedy…” Roland says with the kind of caution I’d imagine he’d use to talk someone out of jumping from a seventeenth-story window. “This is kind of a lot for the hallway on a Friday night, don’t you think? Why don’t you come back in the living room—with your caffeine-free root beer—and just watch the rest of the show?”
“You’re making fun of me,” I pant.
Roland scans my face, then glances at Jonah. “Jonah? Can you excuse us for a moment?”
With a silent nod and a slight brush of his hand against my shoulder, Jonah retreats to the living room. Before I lose all control of my senses, I can make out that the show’s restarted and seems to be focusing on faculty, and the history of CU.
“Kennedy,” Roland says as if he’s calling me again. “What’s going on?”
My eyes flood with tears when I finally manage eye contact with him. “I don’t know if I believe what everyone else does!” I sob, quietly like the good New England Protestant I am, sliding down the wall and drawing my knees to my chest and resting my forehead on them. “I thought,” I say between labored, stuttered breaths, “that if I came here, I’d be able to figure it out. Figure out what changed your life. What turned you around. What thousands of kids my age build their lives around.”
“And?” Roland asks, positioning himself next to me, bringing his knees up, too. “What have you found?” he asks as calmly as if he’s teaching class, not cleaning up his mess of a daughter from the floor.
“That I have more questions than ever. Matt’s really healing, but for some reason I can’t believe it’s just through prayer. And I don’t know why. And,” I admit sheepishly, “I really don’t think I’m good enough for Jonah. He’ll probably have to lie to his parents about dating me.”
Roland leans his shoulder into mine, lowering his voice to ensure we’re the only ones to hear. “There’s no one too good for you, Kennedy. It’s quite the opposite.”
“You have to say that. And that’s not the point, anyway.”
He breathes a heavy breath. “How long have you had all these questions? And why haven’t you talked with me about them? Have you talked to anyone about them?”
I blink away the last of my tears with a growing embarrassment of the scene I must be causing. “All my life. Because you’re my dad. And, no,” I answer his questions in order.
“I’d be happy to walk through this with you, you know. And not just because it’s my job as a pastor. It’s my responsibility as your father.”
It’s the first time he’s been so bold about his role in my life, biological or otherwise. But there’s no hesitation in his voice or on his face this time. He means it. He’s staking his claim in my life.
And I’m paralyzed.
“I need to take a walk. To the coffee shop. Can I?” I take it slow rising to my feet to avoid getting even more lightheaded than I am already.
“Stay,” he commands, soft but firm. “Until the end of the show, and then you can go. You can take my car. I don’t want you wandering around after dark.”
I roll my eyes. “Because I’m a girl?”
“Because you’re my daughter, you’re upset, and I care about you. But I respect you enough to know that when you say you need space you mean it.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, placing my hand into his, calling him to help me stand.
Back in the living room, my overly polite friends try not to pay attention to the fact I just had a crisis in the hall. Jonah squeezes my hand when I take my seat next to him, Eden sends me a text asking if I’m okay, and I reply that everything’s just a bit much but I’ll be fine, and Matt stares at me every few seconds. Stern. Concerned. I shoot him a quick text.
Me: It’s okay. I’m fine. I’m just overwhelmed all of a sudden. TV was probably a bad idea for me.
Matt: Promise? You don’t look good.
Me: Eh. What’s a little existential crisis? And, I look just fine.
He grins and slides his phone back into his pocket when the show comes back on. We don’t see much of the angry kid I saw in the network meeting weeks ago, but the other girl, the freshman, is all wide-eyed and full of hope. She talks about her dreams of being a church worship leader, preferably married to its pastor, whoever and wherever that might be. It fits the stereotype I had of this place before arriving, but this is TV, and they need that.
Within a few minutes, my sense of equilibrium has returned, but, interestingly and maybe a little disturbingly, only because I’ve been focusing my thoughts on the peace and serenity I found when I was at the Buddhist temple this summer. How I had the silence to pray, to develop my spiritual relationship with God. I wasn’t bogged down in rules and theology. I had a few quotes from the Bible taped to my wall, along with some thoughts from C.S. Lewis, but other than that it was just me and the Big Guy. Day after silent day.
Maybe the Buddhists are onto something?
But Jesus said “I am The Way,” didn’t he?
What becomes of them, then?
When my thoughts begin their slippery descent down that path, I quickly refocus my thoughts on the chimes. The incense. The colors, the sunlight, the soft music. And, all at once, I’m okay.
Jesus Freaks blends a montage of pictures and sound bytes together again as it begins the close of tonight’s episode. My friends stifle chuckles when their faces flash across the screen, and most of them are tapping away on their cell phones, no doubt responding to text messages from friends and family watching across the country. One of the last scenes promises coverage of an important football game taking place this Sunday. A rare Sunday game for CU students, but one for which an exception’s been made due to conference-type issues I can’t begin to understand.
“I’m so stoked,” Matt admits, bright and masculine at the same time. “They’re going to film it Sunday, the world will watch it next Friday, and I’ll be famous by midnight!” He thrusts his fists into the air in preemptive victory as the TV shows the football team working out in the weight room and on the field.
“Sweet. My first football game,” I remark, winking at Matt.
“You’re going to come?” He sounds hopeful, and I instantly feel like dirt for not making attending the first few games this season a priority.
“Of course. Jonah, want to go with me?”
A weird tension flickers between Jonah and Matt as if each of them is holding an empty soup can with a tattered string between it, trying to converse, but no one else seems to see or sense it but me.
Jonah gives my hand a squeeze. “Of course, I’d love to.”
“Count me in,” Silas chimes in, reminding me that this isn’t really a private conversation.
“Oh!” Eden squeaks. “Me, too!”
“Oh I see how it is,” Matt starts, dramatically with a smile on his face. “All I need for an audience of support is for Princess Kennedy to come? Then you all come?”
Everyone laughs, as my cheeks grow hot.
“Shut up.” I try to be light, but I’m really struggling with over the top attention these days. Again confirming this show was a bad idea, and I make a mental note to accost everyone who supported me.
The conversation switches gears on a dime as an image of Jonah and me in a restaurant bleeds across the screen.
“And,” the announcer says. “We’ll get a look into what it means to have a dating life when God is riding shotgun.”
I cover my face with my hands, allowing my fingers to separate some.
I wish I hadn’t.
Because as the final credits roll, the entirety of my father’s living room—never mind the nation—are feasting their eyes on my first
kiss with Jonah.
“Oooooooh!” Silas and Eden giggle with each other.
Bridgette blushes, but her face is approving, somewhat. I can’t for the life of me look at Roland, so I bury my face in Jonah’s shoulder for a few seconds, allowing the attention to ebb and flow throughout the room.
Matt shows up behind me, identifiable by the large, warm hand he places on my shoulder. “Suck it up, K. Sawyer,” he says into my ear. “With a kiss like that, you can guarantee a lot more airtime. You’re a star, baby.”
A muffled growl crawls out of my throat and I look at Jonah. “Everyone saw.”
He looks nervous. Maybe a little nauseated. “Yeah.” He swallows hard.
Then, it hits me.
“Even your parents,” I say. He stays silent, looking to the ground. My stomach sinks. “Who don’t even know you went on a date with me.”
He shakes his head, still looking down. “It’s… it’s not like that.”
I was going to leave for the coffee shop anyway, immediately following the show, but it can’t hurt to have a few more reasons to storm off tucked in my back pocket.
“I’m going to get some coffee. Alone,” I say, slipping away between Matt and Jonah while Eden and Bridgette discuss hair and makeup for the coming week, now that they’ve seen what they look like on camera, and Silas and my dad are holed up in a corner discussing something that looks serious but I don’t care enough to eavesdrop on.
I grab the keys and I pull out of the driveway before Jonah and Matt can even make their way to the front door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Monsters Under the Bed
Kennedy
Five seconds after I leave the driveway, my phone chimes with several incoming text messages. I ignore them all for the time being. I just need to make it to neutral ground. To one of the few places in my life without a camera, or anyone who knows much about my personal life, since they’re all in my dad’s living room. Except Asher, but he’s not there every Friday anyway.
The Broken Ones (Jesus Freaks #3) Page 21