Sleep didn’t come easy for either of them that night.
Bill began to think back to how Anna used to be growing up. He’d smile as he remembered her being funny and quite the tomboy. She was his first crush when he first started noticing girls as she began blossoming, at age 13, into the woman he saw earlier tonight. Blue eyes, 5′ 3″, 120 pounds with jet black hair hanging just past her shoulders. He couldn’t be completely sure but she appeared to have smallish but yet still proportionate breasts behind a very conservative button down blouse with wide hips encased in slightly baggy khakis. Then he’d think about the last 5 years and his smile disappeared. He’d remember being ignored when he tried to talk to her after starting their junior year or being lectured on morality all through senior year. Then he’d wonder why he agreed to give her the ride and the circle started all over again.
Anna tossed and turned thinking about Bill. She felt bad about her actions while they had been in school together. Not for the message she was trying to relay, but for the delivery method that had cost her a valued childhood friendship. She’d matured and learned a lot in college but worried that it was too little, too late as far as Bill Thomas was concerned. She owed apologies to a number of people but he was the only one she felt was truly worthy of one. Then there was the promise of a certain form of payment for the ride. Would she go through with it? Could she go through with it?
At 6:50 am, Bill started the car to let it warm up. It was a chilly morning. He left the trunk open so she would be able to put her suitcase inside but he knew she wouldn’t come. He lost the bet he had with himself when she slammed the trunk lid down. Anna climbed into the passenger seat dressed in comfy sweats and buckled her seatbelt at 6:58.
“Didn’t think you’d actually come.” Bill said as he shifted in drive and pulled away from the house.
“Can we swing by a drive thru and get something for breakfast? Mom and Dad didn’t leave any food in the house.” She asked.
Except for ordering a couple of sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits and two coffees, neither of them said a word for the first hour of the trip.
Anna finally broke the silence. “Thanks again for the ride, Bill. Just like when we were kids, I knew I could count on you.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t bring that shit up like the last 5 years didn’t happen. You can’t just pretend that we’re two long lost besties and forget what happened.” Bill snapped at her.
A tear ran down her cheek and she said, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Bill sighed and handed her one the napkins from breakfast. “I apologize for my tone. Last night, you said you would be honest about everything so I made a bet with myself this morning that if you showed, I would be civil and let you explain. Why don’t you start back at the beginning? Why the big change over that summer?”
Anna dried her eyes and began to speak slowly. “Well, I guess, in the simplest terms, I joined a cult.”
“You did what?!” Bill looked at her; his eyes wide with shock.
Anna continued to explain. “You remember about halfway through sophomore year, Mom and Dad started planning to take me away to that summer camp? I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to be away from my friends for that long. You were going to teach me how to work on cars with that old clunker your parents got from your grandpa. I thought I was going to get my first real boyfriend because Michelle told me that Tommy Stevens like me. It should have been the best summer of my life.”
“We left the day after school got out. Turns out it wasn’t really a summer camp like you or envision one. Mom and Dad had been vague on details but they started coming out on the trip down there. It was a bible camp, but not your average run of the mill one. Think something along the lines of those stories you hear about those places that do conversion therapy to supposedly cure kids of being gay.”
“Apparently, once I had started puberty, Dad got really freaked out about boys. He was so worried I was going to wind up pregnant at 13 and ruin my life. He started carefully watching who my friends were; who I was hanging out it with. He was slowly putting up walls around me to keep me safe in his eyes. Looking back, I’m surprised he let you as close as he did.”
“He had started talking to people in our church. Do you remember that we attended a fairly conservative church? Well, apparently there are some radical offshoots here and there in the denomination. One of our deacons had some ties to one of these branches and got Dad in touch with them. Dad ate up everything they told him; hook, line, and sinker. He dragged Mom into it shortly after. Mom was always meek and subservient to Dad, so she went along no problem.”
“Once we got there, the full court press was on to convert me to their ideas. I was initially very hesitant but, surprisingly, it didn’t take long to wear me down and get me to thinking along the same lines as them. Quite a few of the higher ups were quite charismatic.”
Anna continued talking for over an hour describing the various methods used to destroy her resistance and basically brainwash her into compliance. By the end of the summer, she was nothing but a puppet and sent back to preach their version of the gospel to all. She and her parents went back the next summer for more. Her parents were so proud when she left to go to Franklin Christian College. It was there that the group’s hold on her began to break.
“The first year at Franklin was basically the same as high school. We went back to camp again that summer but when I went back to school in the fall, something was different. I think one of the big things that helped opened my eyes was Mom and Dad weren’t constantly around like in high school. I didn’t have the constant reminders and prayer sessions after school each day and weekends. I was exposed to the outside world. I finally had some freedom and started to enjoy it.”
“I tried to convert a young boy that I deemed as a lost soul. It turns out he was part of a campus group that specializes in deprogramming religious cult members. I thought I was getting somewhere with him as we talked every day but he was just digging for information; playing me better than I played him. The group technically kidnapped me one long holiday weekend and started breaking down walls. They showed me that I could still be a disciple of the Lord without the radicalism. The path I was on wasn’t the only path there was to travel.”
“I decided knowledge was power and started studying all of the religions and making my own choices on which was the right path. Needless to say, Mom and Dad weren’t happy. We’ve been fighting the last year and a half. Dad has written me off as his daughter because I’ve rejected their views and started making my own decisions. That’s the only reason I was home this weekend. They are out of town at a retreat. There were a couple small things I wanted to get from the house since I won’t ever be going back there.”