She raises her eyebrows. “You are now. You’re all over Facebook.”
My shoulders sink with my exhale and I look at Matt. “Walk it is.” I turn toward the girl and offer a slight wave before following Matt out the door.
CHAPTER SIX
Gold on the Ceiling
Matt.
“That didn’t take long,” Kennedy mumbles as we exit Word and immediately cross the street.
“What, the girl?” I tilt my head toward the coffee shop. She nods and I shrug.
There is definitely some awkward tension between the two of us, and the crappy part is it isn’t even about her. I’m too angry to verbalize that, and I’m resting on my assumption that she doesn’t have a weak stomach in the self-esteem department and, therefore, isn’t internalizing my silence. I keep my head down and she follows my lead as we work our way through the retail district.
“Do you always walk with your head down?” she asks, almost cautiously.
As if on script, I reply, “It’s kind of a habit they drill into us in high school.”
Kennedy zips her denim coat as a cool breeze tears down the sidewalk. “They? Us?”
I wave my hand in the air. “Yeah, sorry. Us as in guys and they as in everyone in our whole life who wants to teach us to remain sexually pure.” My voice is tense with leftover venom from my conversation with my father
“Okaaay,” she draws out quietly. “Here,” she says louder. “Let’s turn up here. There’s a trail.”
I grin, lifting my head. “That’s where I was going.”
“Good.” She skips ahead of me, running across the street to the head of the trail.
I get the first good look at her I’ve had since leaving New Life this morning. She’s still in the same clothes, but something looks different. She’s smiling as she waits for me to catch up, but there’s kind of a grey look in her eyes that isn’t normally there. Her eye color is grey, I’m not blind, but it’s different. A grey emotion, maybe. Typically she’s on—eyes pointing in all directions at one time, focusing like a detective on a mission. Right now, though, her eyes are somewhere else.
Following her into the trailhead, I sit next to her on a long flat boulder. It’s amazing how only a few yards of thick trees can block out most of the noise of the shopping district that sits just on the other side. The only noises here are birds and people walking or running the several miles of trail that winds around the outskirts of Asheville, allowing for stops at CU and New Life along the way.
“Are you doing okay?” I finally manage a polite sentence.
“Are you okay?” She crosses her legs and leans back on her hands, facing me with a grin. The sadness is still evident in her eyes, but her smile is challenging it.
I shrug. “I don’t really want to talk about my dad right now, if that’s okay with you.”
Kennedy pulls her feet up onto the rock and her knees into her chest. “I don’t either.”
“Easier for me than you, I’d say.”
She chuckles. “My stepdad’s the one who sent that picture to Roland. The one when I was five.”
My eyes bulge. “What?”
“The plot thickens,” she draws out with an eye roll.
“Are you okay?” I repeat with more intention.
She shrugs and runs a hand through her hair. “I don’t know. I mean, before I knew about the picture I didn’t have any scenarios in my head. But, once Roland told me that story, I crafted all of this backstory about my mom longing to have him in my life, or feeling eternally bitter about it … I don’t know. It wasn’t true. Now I need a new backstory.”
“We all need a new backstory,” I mumble. Not soft enough, apparently.
Kennedy leans forward, and for a minute I’m nervous she’s going to push me on the issues with my dad. “What would yours be? If you could craft your history at this very minute, what would it be?”
I chuckle. “And it would still have to land me up here at CU?”
She nods. “Just the backstory. The present is fixed.”
Puffing out my cheeks while I exhale, I consider the question. What kind of life could I make up for myself that would still have me come to CU? My real one had me going here, then not going here, then … here I am.
“Come on,” Kennedy encourages with a soft elbow to my ribs. “I’m giving you a chance to change your history!”
I sigh once more. “I guess I’d give my dad a break and my mom a spine. You know, in case giving my dad a break didn’t pan out.”
Her eyes widen for a fraction of a second. “Would you still be a Christian?”
“I’d have to be to end up here, wouldn’t I?”
With a grin, she bites her lip and looks into the distance. “I don’t know … no, I don’t think so. New question. Backstory aside, would you renounce your faith right now if you could?”
I pull my head back. Grateful she’s not probing my backstory change, Kennedy’s new question still offends me. “What do you mean if I could? I could walk away from Christianity anytime I wanted to.”
Sort of. Maybe.
“Do you want to?” she challenges.