The Broken Ones (Jesus Freaks #3) Page 12

  “What?”

  He eyes me seriously but with a far away look dancing across his face. “A few weeks before I turned eighteen, I ran away.”

  My jaw drops and my eyes bulge. “You… y… you—”

  “I ran away, moved in with a friend of mine, who also used to live in the community, and I worked for him at his welding shop for several months. After some research we traveled to North Carolina, rented a tiny apartment, and set our sights on Carter. Our history proved persuasive with the administration. They offered us nearly full scholarships, which included a room and board stipend.”

  My mind is racing as every assumption I’ve had of Asher—good and bad—is dismantled in one fell swoop. I’m suddenly reminded of something Matt said last year that I’d completely forgotten— Asher’s the kind of guy that likes to challenge people’s perceptions. Like he’ll sit back and wait for you to have everything figured out then—Bam! He shows up with how it really is. While the context of our conversation at the time was different, and about my attitudes toward other people, it leaves me wondering how much of Asher’s story Matt knows. He knew about the prison ministry long before I did, after all.

  “Kennedy.” Asher snaps his fingers in front of my face, startling my attention back to him. “Have you had enough for today?” he says, almost like the family counselor my mom dragged me to for a year after I started actively seeking out more information about—and time with—Roland.

  “We’ll come back to this. I’m not kidding. But go on.”

  “Let’s walk now.” He stands and extends his hand to me. I take it, noting its sticky heat. Asher’s nervous, and that makes me nervous.

  Giving his hand a slight squeeze, I find his eyes as he looks toward me. “It’s okay,” I say softly. “Whatever it is, Asher.”

  He pulls his hand away from mine and shoves it in his pocket with a heavy sigh. “I don’t talk about it much. Not to people out in the regular public anyway.”

  “You don’t say.” I chuckle, hoping some sarcasm will lighten the mood.

  “I meant to do well… when I started at CU. I really did. I meant to comply with the guidelines and go to church and just keep my nose clean so I could graduate and get a job that would finally free me from a community I did not want to go back to.” He’s talking faster than usual, but instead of pointing that out, I let it go.

  “Meant to? What happened?”

  “People. Me. Excitement.” Asher shrugs with each new word that passes his lips, as if he’s watching the past flash before his eyes and he still can’t believe it. “All those parties freshman year were so enticing.”

  I shake my head. “I thought those were just, like, the football team and stuff.”

  Asher grins the familiar cat-like grin I’ve come to find comfort in. “You mean to tell me you really haven’t been to a single party here?”

  I smirk. “Your obvious judgment aside, no. I stayed under the radar as much as possible the first several weeks here, and then after that… well… I guess my social pariah theory has finally been proven.”

  “Huh. I’d have thought people would intentionally invite the prodigal daughter out for some beers.”

  I shake my head. “I come from a wicked place.” I arch an eyebrow. “Maybe they thought I’d cast a spell on them or something. Or tattle. Anyway,” I lead Asher to continue, waving my hand.

  He resumes his walk and I fall into stride next to him. We seem to be winding around the outskirts of campus. CU is in a pretty thickly wooded area of town, and I can say with some certainty that—guidelines aside—I’ll never wander around out here alone after dark. I’ve never been able to trust the forest at night.

  “I loved the parties,” he admits. “I didn’t even drink at them right away. I just loved being around so many people my age who seemed so relaxed in their language and clothing. The pretty girls didn’t hurt, either.”

  “We never do,” I cut in.

  He laughs. “But of course I eventually took that first drink. I remember it like it was minutes ago,” he says with a tone of dark nostalgia. Fear mixed with anger. “It was crazy. As soon as I drank that first beer I knew I’d made a fatal error.”

  “That’s strong language,” I say. “Sounds like something my dad would say, and he’s an alcoholic.”

  “So am I,” Asher blurts out. “Only, I didn’t know it then. But, looking back, it’s so obviously clear. Since there’s no alcohol where I came from—at least none I was ever aware of—I don’t know if anyone else in my family is. Maybe they know, but I doubt if I’ll ever ask. And,” he takes a deep breath before continuing, “if the physical reaction wasn’t enough, the social assistance it provided me sealed the deal. Everyone liked me.”

  “Everyone likes you now,” I point out.

  “It was different then,” he says, seeming impatient with himself. “It was so stereotypical of everything you’ve probably seen on TV or movies about kids in Amish or Mormon or some other community like that when they go into the ‘real world.’” He puts air quotes around the last words and I point to a bench that’s dusted with fallen magenta petals from an enormous tree that promises to hug us with its shade.

  “Let’s sit.”

  He complies, and hangs his head for a minute, taking a long breath.

  “Asher,” I say, putting my hand in the center of his back. Even his shirt is hot. “I’m not going to judge you.”

  “You can’t promise that,” he says roughly, his head still down.

  “I… okay you’re right. I can’t. But I don’t want to. That I can promise. Did you, like, set an orphanage on fire or something?”

  He lifts his head, a melancholy grin on his face. “No.”

  I hold out my hands. “Great, then we should be okay.” I press my hand against his back again. “Please don’t forget that I know exactly how it feels to be unfairly judged. I know too much about humans in general to judge them anymore anyway—as weird as that sounds.”

  Asher sits up, leans against the bench, and looks at me curiously. “How do you mean?”

  “Everyone is so friggen broken, Asher. I think we better be grateful we can’t eternally judge each other, or none of us would stand a chance.”

  He nods slowly, saying nothing.

  I lean against his shoulder, resting my back against the bench as he is. “So,” I whisper. “What brings you here?” I say in a gentle voice.

  “Courtney Matthews,” he says, much to my surprise.

  “A girl,” I observe.

  He nods. “A sophomore girl who attended the same parties I did with the same regularity. We fell in crazy lust with each other. Fast.”

  I keep my mouth shut. I’ve heard enough of the girls around me talk for the last year, and thumbed through plenty of Eden’s dating books and even some interesting reads on Roland’s bookshelf to know that this is heavy. Serious. For society, for sure, but not everyone recognizes it. In Christian circles, though? Lust is a big deal. An emotional gateway drug.

  “We kissed at every party, but as quick as it happened, soon enough we wanted more. Needed more, we thought. I’ll spare you the play-by-play, but it very quickly became a game of seeing how far we could go without… going all the way.”

  I nod. “I’ve played that game, too,” I whisper, speaking to no one in particular despite my present company.

  “Then, it finally happened. It was inevitable, really, given how completely careless we’d been up to that point. But at one party during a long weekend, we’d both had far more to drink than usual, and we had sex.”

  Despite suspecting where he was headed with this story, Asher’s honesty drops my jaw. It was only relatively recently that I discovered his core values, anyway, but given those, and the family he told me he grew up in, and just the kind of guy I know him to be, the thought of him having had sex before marriage makes me sad for him more than it shocks me.

  “A lot at first, then we tried to stop. To space ourselves out. We tried to avoid going to the
same parties because we knew the temptation was strong. We’d go weeks and months without seeing each other sometimes. Sometimes actively avoiding each other. It went on for almost two years. But… the temptation was stronger than my own resolve. And when she was a senior, and I was a junior… she got pregnant.”

  I fall forward a little, catching my elbows on my knees as I rake my fingers through my hair, giving it a little tug to make sure I’m awake. “Jesus,” I whisper slowly. “Are you serious?”

  He nods, clenching his jaw. “It gets worse.”

  Of course it does, I realize. Asher’s never worn a wedding ring, has never mentioned a wife, child, or girlfriend. Of course it gets worse.

  But, how much worse?

  “I’m listening,” I say, sitting up and taking his hand briefly, giving it a squeeze.

  “We were both scared, ashamed, and devastated. It was a few days before Thanksgiving break that she found out and she was scared to go home and tell her family. I still wasn’t talking to mine, and I’d been so far separated from any morals that I didn’t know what to do. We talked about raising a child, putting it up for adoption, all of those things. But… we didn’t have any counsel. We were scared. Fear is ugly,” he says with a bite of anger. “We didn’t even know if we liked each other, let alone love each other. We never courted, never dated. I barely ever saw her around campus. It was just parties and bedrooms…”

  “Oh Asher, I’m so sorry.”

  He shakes his head. “Save your sympathy,” he says coldly.

  I swallow a boulder-sized lump in my throat. “What was a few days before Thanksgiving break?” I ask, holding onto that detail of the story.

  “The last time I got drunk.”

  My heart skips a beat. I’ve heard Roland’s story. About the last time he got drunk. According to my reading of his AA Big Book, every alcoholic has one. The last one. And they all seem to remember it with vivid clarity.

  “What happened?” My voice shakes, unsure if I really want to know the answer.

  “I crashed my car into a guardrail. Drunker than I’d ever been,” he says flatly.”

  “No…” My stomach lurches, thinking of Courtney and the baby.

  “I was the only one in the car,” he says, seeming to sense my fear. Relief does wash over me… but it’s brief.

  I clear my throat. “What happened before that?”

  “Courtney and I had kept partying even while trying to decide what to do about the baby,” he admits. “I was so screwed up, Kennedy. We both were. We were so stupid. So irresponsible. Maybe somehow we were hoping it would all go away if we ignored it.”

  I can sympathize with this line of thinking. The few girls I’ve known who got pregnant in high school held onto that same magical thinking. I don’t tell Asher this, though. It doesn’t look like he’s seeking camaraderie in this misery.

  “What… happened?” I ask again, slowly. He looks like he’s about to break in two.

  His eyes lift to the sky, the reflection of a warm sun giving away the tears at the corners of his eyes. “A few days before Thanksgiving we arrived at a party separately. Courtney looked… off. Vacant instead of worried. Hollow. Resigned. I… I asked her what was wrong and she—” Asher’s tears cut him off. Tears. He lowers his head and breaks into a sob right here on the bench. Shoulders trembling under his heaving breath.

  “Oh my God. Asher,” I say, swallowing my own unassigned tears. “Asher…” I take a deep breath, brushing my hand back and forth across his shoulders as he gathers his composure.

  Through thick tears and a gravelly voice, Asher lets it out. “She got an abortion that morning, Kennedy!”

  The world falls out from beneath me and I drop to my knees in front of Asher. His hands cradle his head as tears drop to the ground, some landing on his boots, some on my knees. Big, dark splashes of shame and regret. They’ll never dry all the way. Placing my hands over his, I rest my forehead against his.

  “It’s…” I start softly, but he cuts me off.

  “It’s not okay!” he growls. “It’s not.”

  I wasn’t going to say that, I don’t think, but I don’t correct his outburst.

  “She said she couldn’t have a baby with where she was in her life, couldn’t raise one with someone just like her—a drunk—and didn’t know if she could go through with adoption. So she killed it. She killed our baby!” His words are vile but the tears tell another side of the story. “We killed it,” he finally says.

  “We?” I ask, our heads still pressed together.

  “I wasn’t there for her. I ran, emotionally. She couldn’t trust me and I didn’t ever say abortion wasn’t an option. We hadn’t discussed it at all.”

  I take a deep breath. “Asher… breathe.”

  Asher sits up and I can see his face. Red, swollen from the pressure of guilty tears. “The only death that day was that of my unborn child. I wanted to die, too, though. I can’t remember. I blacked out long before I hit the guardrail. I was arrested on the spot and woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed.”

  I rock back slightly, sitting on my heels. “Holy… crap.”

  He finally makes eye contact with me, but it’s still distant and filled with salty regret. “That’s the first day I met your dad.”

  “Oh…”

  “I hadn’t been to his church more than two or three times. But in my drunken rant after the accident I told the officers and anyone who would listen that my non-girlfriend had aborted our baby and I would never stop drinking the pain away. All of this was relayed to a school counselor and my friend, who was listed as my emergency contact since I have no contact with my family. Courtney was removed from school and sent to counseling. They didn’t kick her out though, which I was grateful for, but she left anyway. She couldn’t stand the label of murderer that would have followed her around. That probably still does.”

  I huff. “So much for forgiveness.”

  Asher continues as if he didn’t hear me. “I don’t know what the school would have done with me had I just stayed at that party and out of my car that day. But the sexual misconduct, partying, drunk driving, the accident… not to mention my shaky grades. The school dismissed me almost immediately.”

  “Gracious…” I quip under my breath. I wonder how they would have handled him had he and Courtney gone forward with the pregnancy.

  Asher sighs. “Roland caught wind of it all and was at my bedside when I regretfully regained consciousness.”

  I slowly move from the ground back to the bench. “You don’t still wish you were dead… do you?”

  He shrugs and lowers his head for a second. “Not every day. I can’t say I’d be saying the same if your dad hadn’t brought me to my first AA meeting that weekend.”

  All of Asher’s little clues from earlier in his office fall beautifully into place. I assumed he was in a recovery program, but I couldn’t have imagined the story that led him there.

  “Is he your sponsor or something?” I ask.

  Asher chuckles. Small, but it’ll do. “No. And even if he was I wouldn’t tell you. Anonymous,” he reminds me. But before the conversation gets too light, Asher’s face turns red and he buries it in his hands again, a sudden wave of sobs overtaking him. The remorse is sticky and palpable.

  “No,” I say firmly, once again kneeling in front of him. “Asher, it wasn’t your fault. I don’t even really think it was hers. It was just an awful situation.”

  “I never even gave that baby a chance,” he growls. “Courtney knew she couldn’t count on me. And I never told her not to get an abortion. Maybe somewhere in my soul I was hoping she would.”

  I shake my head. “Not possible. Not you.”

  “And she did it without talking to me about it. Like I had no say in the matter. Like… like she knew I’d tell her to do it or something.” He folds forward and rests his head against mine now, and I’m speechless.

  I’ve never thought the man did have much of a say in matters like this. But this horribly br
oken human in front of me has blown apart my theories and assumptions yet again. I want to help him, but I don’t know how.

  All those protests I’ve been to, and my mother’s career has, from time to time, centered around this very thing. Not Asher crying on a bench, of course, but women being able to just up and walk into a clinic when all other options have dried out. I’ve never once seen this side. The invisible side. It’s not just about moms and babies.

  This is too much right now.

  Do something.

  Help him.

  How?

  “Asher,” I whisper, shakily. “Can I pray with you?”

  “Please,” he begs, wrapping his hands around mine. “Please.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Dad

  Roland

  The knock on the door pulls my attention away from staring at the clock, wondering how long Kennedy will be with Asher talking about her attitude earlier in the week. Wondering if she made plans after that and didn’t tell me. Because she’s not technically required to. The second knock actually gets me to walk to the door, my mind loud with how terrifying teenagers are. I’m not scared of them, just for them. Especially when the them is my daughter.

  “Asher,” I say, slowly, opening the door. My heart sinks, and I pray he’s not coming by to look for Kennedy. Either way, she’s not where I thought she was. Refocusing my attention on Asher, I notice the swelling in his face. Tears. “What’s going on?”

  He shrugs under a black leather coat that must be a thousand degrees to wear. He wears it everyday regardless. “Is Kennedy back yet?” He drags the heel of his hand under his eyes, seeming to wipe away tears.

  Yet.

  I swallow hard, opening the door and stepping back so Asher can come in. “I haven’t heard from her since she left to go meet you. She did meet you, right?”

  I have no reason not to trust Kennedy. Quite the opposite, actually. She’s never given me reason to do anything but trust her. But teenagers are a fickle breed.

  He nods. “Yeah she did. Then we took a walk and she left me like an hour ago.”