Jesus Freaks: Sins of the Father(54)

“Surprise!” She echoes my pitch as we crash into a tizzy of a hug.

“What? What are you doing here?” Tears fill my eyes and I take a step back, examining my best friend since fourth grade.

She squeezes my hands, her eyes pinching out a few tears as she smiles. “Your parents let me tag along!”

Mollie is the kind of girl everyone truly needs as a best friend. Since before puberty and boys, we were making pinky promises and planning our weddings. We always got each other the best birthday presents because we were the only ones who knew each other well enough to get the thing no one else would think of. At times it made our other friends jealous, but that wasn’t intentional. She’s an only child, and my stepsister didn’t live with us, so we pieced together a sisterhood and clung to it for dear life.

And now I feel like a massive jerk.

Since coming to CU, my contact with Mollie has been slim. She’s been respectful of the rules and my concerns about internet chatting, etc., but really, the evasion extends to Roland. Sure, she knows my birth father has made a few cameo appearances in my life since high school, but I’ve never given her much information about him.

Feigning “not wanting to talk about it much because he’s not that big of a deal,” I’ve managed to keep his profession a secret. It started out with me being embarrassed and ashamed at having a birth-father-turned-pastor who had shooed me out of his life before mine even began. Then it became one of those things that the longer I went without talking about it, the more I couldn’t talk about it. She knows my birth father works at CU, but that’s it. I’ve never given her his last name. I told her that was because I didn’t want her to imagine me with a different last name. That he was no more my father than the bum under the bridge by 6th Street who pushes a dirty stuffed panda bear in a stroller.

And, being the absolute best friend she’s always been, she respected my wishes.

“Kennedy? Hello? Where’d you go?” Mollie snaps her fingers as she bounces on her manicured toes.

I shake my head to pull my attention back to her. “You cut your hair!” I reach for her once shoulder-length golden hair and find a pixie cut that truly makes her a Tinkerbell understudy. “And bleached it?”

She nods and poses with her hands on her tiny hips. “You like?”

“I love.” We hug again and I suddenly remember I walked in with my parents. Turning to them, I playfully smack Dan on the arm. “Sneak!”

“Hey!” He rubs his arm to make me feel strong. “She wanted to surprise you.”

“We’ll leave you girls to chat,” Mom says, linking her arm through Dan’s. “We’re going to look at the shops down the street and you can show us around here when we come back, k?”

I nod and give them each a kiss on the cheek before sending them on their way.

After getting my latte from Chelsea, who already talked up Mollie during the time she was waiting for me, my best friend and I settle into the corner booth that I “normally” sit in with Roland. It’s only been a couple of times, but it seems to work for both of us. Workspace for him, privacy for me.

“So, how’s Yale?” I ask as we settle in.

Everyone—our teachers included—assumed that we’d end up at Yale or some other high-level institution together, what with me being the valedictorian and her the salutatorian, plus our friendship. Mollie was confused and seemingly heartbroken when I told her I’d be going to Carter. However, when I explained (in slim detail) that my birth father worked there and I needed to do this, she, of course, was supportive.

Mollie leans her head back and growls to the ceiling. “Everyone is so f*cking stuck up.”

Internally, I wince at the f-word. My reaction annoys me, of course, but it’s been months since I’ve heard the word anywhere except my own thoughts. And even then, I push it down out of fear that it’ll fly out of my mouth.

“I’m serious,” she continues, looking cynically amused. “Congradu-f*cking-lations that you were in the top ten of your class,” she says to her imaginary Yale peers. “Look around, we all were.”

I laugh, realizing I’ve never once said to anyone at Carter that I was number one in my class. No one has asked and I haven’t felt the need to share it. It hasn’t come up, and I know that has to be CU specific, because I have a lot of friends at competitive universities who’ve shared the same annoyance Mollie is presenting now.

Mollie grins and sips her espresso. “So,” she shrugs, “you? How is…this?”

I suck in my bottom lip and look down for a moment, trying to come to terms with the words I’ll say next, and the looks they will likely put on my best friend’s face.

“I have to tell you something,” I start while spinning the cardboard sleeve around my cup. “A lot of somethings, actually…”

Mollie leans forward and folds her arms on the table. “You’re going to become a nun?”

I laugh, hard, but nervously, not having the time to explain that the kids who go here don’t generally become nuns. Just because I now hold that information doesn’t mean I have to spew it. It takes lots of context, and church history, and things I don’t actually have enough information on yet.

Taking a cleansing breath, I maintain eye contact with Mollie as I tell her everything about Roland. Well, everything that I know about him. Including his profession, last name, and the fact that this is all still a secret to my CU friends. Of course I include stories about all of them, too. My friends. Their language and behavior and beliefs are things I’ve shared with her in snippet form here and there, but once I’m on a roll I can’t stop. I don’t leave out my uneasiness about Joy or my love for Maggie, my RA. I spill every tiny detail into my declaration of I’m a Crappy Friend. I don’t know what is gossip or boarders on gossip, but it feels like the world’s longest exhale to tell Mollie every single thought and feeling I’ve had since stepping on campus.