Jesus Freaks: The Prodigal (Jesus Freaks #2)(37)

Once she pulls away, I stare at the abandoned-looking train station, admittedly bummed that it looks exactly like the picture the Internet provided me. A quick glance to my left shows a cluster of wildly out-of-place-looking CU students. Curiously, though, there are the girls I showed up with, mixed with some males. They must have left campus earlier, in their own van, of course.

At first glance I’m tempted to just wander by them and find a dark, urine-scented corner to hide in until my train comes. Interestingly, though, the distinct scent of burning tobacco draws my steps in their direction. There’s much giggling and whispering as I approach the group, but the cigarette smell is stronger.

“Oh, hey,” one of the guys in a CU sweatshirt says when he spots me. “Want one?”

“Dude!” another one half-gasps, slapping his shoulder. “That’s Pastor Roland’s kid. What are you doing?”

At this, the first “dude” turns robe-white. His mouth drops open and he stumbles to find his words. I scan the rest of the group, who have all gone silent in my presence. Do they honestly think I’m about to tattle on them?

“She’s not going to say anything,” Danielle from my floor says, barely believing herself with a pleading look in her eyes.

Unbelievable.

First, I’m a social pariah because of where I came from. Now, I’m a social pariah because of, well, where I come from—genetically speaking. Shaking my head, I huff through my nose and pull my lip ring from a Ziploc bag in the pocket of my coat. I maintain borderline uncomfortable eye contact with Dude #1 as I slide the cold ring through my lip. I grin as some people in the group look away.

“Don’t worry,” I assure dryly as I plug my earbuds into my phone, “I won’t tell anyone. I’m just going to be over there in the corner listening to Pitbull and swearing under my breath. Enjoy the cancer … carry on.”

Never has a darkened corner in a public transit station looked so inviting. Maybe the hobos have it right after all. I literally want to go unnoticed until I’m back in the logical, sane air north of the Mason-Dixon line. Where I’m sure to never have to reference that invisible geographical separator.

Once I scope out a corner that doesn’t smell too diseased, I slide my back down the wall and sit on my bag. Leaning my head back, I close my eyes and let Pitbull’s philosophical discussions of booties, and what he’d like to do with them, help transition me away from Carter University.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN





Pause


Kennedy.




Hurry up and wait. I knew there would be other vans from CU shuttling kids to the train station throughout the day, but I took the first one, and that’s left me sitting here in Gastonia, North Carolina in the depressing Amtrak station for the last four hours.

I did fall asleep for a while, and was rather disoriented when I finally came to, but since then I’ve been catching up on Facebook. Finally free of the CU Internet police and nosy busybodies, I’ve spent well over an hour pouring over the college photo albums of my fellow high school graduates.

What I see doesn’t excite me as much as I thought it would. Quite the opposite is happening, actually. Pictures of girls having their hair held back as they empty the contents of their stomachs into bar toilets, and guys with drunken postures pressing their faces into the breasts of girls with less clothes on than I wear to bed leaves me feeling a little sick myself.

And, oddly enough, that makes me angry. I’m trying really hard not to judge the coeds in those pictures, because I know that a single decision separated me from them. Sending the check to Carter University is the only thing preventing my face in those pictures.

Or is it?

I’ve only had a few drinks in my whole life; would admission to any secular university have guaranteed my participation in such lewd acts? And, since when do I use the word lewd?

I exit out of Facebook and shake my head, trying to clear the sights of the last hour from my brain. No, perhaps I wouldn’t have engaged in that kind of behavior, but I didn’t think our Salutatorian would have either, but there she was in all of her glory letting another girl suck liquored Jell-O out of her navel. I wonder, briefly, what would have become of my CU friends, had they gone to secular universities?

Silas and Bridgette would have packed up and left by the end of week one. Eden and Jonah may have struggled it out, and I think done fine, but what about Matt? Matt is the most “like me” in attitude I’ve come across so far on campus. And, though we’ve never had a conversation regarding our sexual experiences—or lack thereof—I’ve wandered around campus with the assumption that he’s done just as much as I have, and maybe more. He has the build and sarcastic grin of many of the guys in my friends’ pictures, but would he do that? Would he press his freshly-shaven, just-come-from-church face into the breasts of a bartender pouring his underage self a shot?

My breath catches as I look around the train station. Looks like I’ll be able to ask him myself, since he appears to be walking right toward me.

“You lost?” I grin, standing to stretch my legs and shake the numbness from my feet.

He shakes his head, smiling. “I thought you left already. Don’t you answer your texts anymore?”

Confused, I pull up my home screen and see, in fact, I’ve missed a few texts while on my Internet search in Sodom.