Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Danny
It’s like I’m a fish and she cast the most delectable bait on earth. The investigator in me, the storyteller, is eyeing that bait like it’s the only meal I’ll ever be offered—sharp hook or no.
A Hilltop student at a pagan festival? A Hilltop student with some irreverent list? Christina Edmondson has a story that needs my camera to be told—I can feel it.
And if I don’t tell these stories, who will?
Sure, I’ve had plenty of church doors slammed in my face, and I’ve had plenty of religious leaders fruitlessly demand I take down their interview—for which they’d signed a release—once critiques begin pouring in online. I’m never trying to make anyone look bad; I’m trying to tell the truth.
Even in a Waffle House.
Christina gracefully slides into the booth across from me. “Apologies if my phone goes off,” she says without preamble. “My roommate isn’t convinced you aren’t a serial killer, so I have to text him previously agreed-upon code words every twenty minutes.”
I would possibly laugh if I weren’t caught off guard by her all over again.
There’s no way around it: She’s pretty. Very pretty. Creamy fair skin framed by long black hair and dark eyelashes. A round face and small nose with the slightest upturn. Full lips.
Yet it was the warmth of her voice that initially drew me to that vendor table at the pagan festival. I wouldn’t say there’s a shyness to it, but it’s sweet. Soft. Just the lightest twist of Southern twang.
“What happens if you miss a text?” I ask, even as my chest eases to hear someone is looking out for her in that way. Statistically speaking, it’s downright reckless on her part to meet some guy alone at a second location.
She leans in. “Every police officer and firefighter in the state sets up blockades while they resurrect the Tennessee cavalry to find me.”
My lips twitch. “The cavalry, huh?”
“And that’s nothing compared to what my roommate will do to you himself.” She narrows her eyes in mock seriousness. “He seems docile, but I think he would strip someone’s skin off their bones if they hurt me.”
The “he” catches my attention because I’m quite certain mixed-gender cohabitation is disallowed at Hilltop. There’s no other logical reason for me to get stuck on that detail.
I lift my hands in surrender. “I’ve been forewarned. Please set alarms so you don’t miss getting those codes in.”
She laughs, bright and free.
Intrigued. I’m intrigued by her. That’s what it is.
A waitress thankfully appears, calling me “hon” and Christina “sweetheart,” and Christina’s accent thickens slightly to match as she orders a decaf coffee and a waffle. I order the same.
I crack my neck to reset a bit and pull for my interview persona.
I learned long ago that my … intensity, in my brother Charlie’s words, can put people off.
While Charlie is often instantly at home in a place like a crowded pagan festival, I’m more at home tucked behind my camera or hunched over my computer, editing footage until dawn.
But I can’t just hide behind my camera, taking the world in, finding narratives, reporting truths. I need to talk to people. I need them to trust me to tell their stories. So I’ve learned to channel my younger brother to get the stories I need.
Even if it is exhausting.
Just as I roll my shoulders back and open my mouth with a roguish grin, Christina draws me up short.
“So which of us is going to be the brave one?”
“What?” I say dumbly.
She pulls at the tie of her purple peacoat to let it fall open, revealing a soft gray sweater underneath. “Which of us is going to be the brave one?”
“I don’t—”
“Brave enough to take our hat off first and reveal the mess underneath?”
I have no idea how I’m going to get through this interview when she’s disarming me at every turn.
Back in the field, I kept trying to make her comfortable like I do with everyone else.
I turned it on and channeled Charlie like usual, but I couldn’t seem to hold it.
Not with her. I’m too curious, too drawn.
I’m even too amused. I couldn’t hide the intensity.
“Is it a requirement to remove our hats?” I ask.
She gasps and throws a delicate hand over her heart. “Where are your Southern manners? You can’t wear hats at the dinner table!”
I examine the sticky tabletop and laminated menus propped against the basket of hot sauces. “Is this the dinner table?”
She snickers, unable to hold her feigned outrage. “It’s a dinner table.”
I nod in concession. “Then I guess I have no choice but to be a gentleman.” I reach for my beanie, but she pauses me with a light hand on my raised forearm.
“I can’t let you fall on your sword like that. We’ll be brave together.”
My eyes are glued to her hand on me, and my heart rate is definitely responding inappropriately to this innocent contact.
She withdraws slowly, and I follow her hand until it grasps the edge of her knitted cap—purple like her coat.
“On three?” she asks quietly, as if she sensed I was in a heavy moment and didn’t want to be too abrupt with me.
I’m powerless to do anything but slide a thumb under my beanie and count, “One …”
She smiles in surprise, but continues with ringing authority, “Two …”
Now I can feel a real smile creeping up on me as we both semi-shout: “Three!” And yank the hats off.
Her black hair goes flying with the hat, and she immediately shakes her head like a wet dog, fluffing it out wide. She scrunches her nose up at me, effectively blinded by the wild hair flung across her face.
I would give anything to be filming right now.
She uses both hands to part the hair over her face like a curtain and peek at me. She laughs.
“See,” she says, smoothing her hair back, “I would rather my hair be over-fluffed than look like yours right now.”
“What does mine look like?”
“Well, you look like you’re still wearing a hat. We’ve got a serious plaster situation. Then whoosh”—she flings her hands out wide—“at the ends.”
I slide my fingers against my scalp, indeed feeling how flat my hair is against my head, and attempt to shake it out the way she did.
Through the hair over my eyes, I see her flip the back of her fingers against her lips on this laugh, palm facing out. Something in my chest expands at the pure gesture.
I’ve got to get a handle on this situation. I need to steer this back to professional waters.
I reach deeply for interviewer mode with this person who has already had to experience far too much of the real me. “I can’t help but notice you referred to your roommate as he. I didn’t think men and women could live together at Hilltop.”
Hilltop University has a national reputation for being one of the most conservative religious universities still in existence.
They have this backward policy called the Community Covenant that every incoming freshman must sign and adhere to, and it reads like a parody of bigoted stances.
The Community Covenant disallows any sexual relations outside of a heterosexual marriage, any alcohol or drug consumption, any “unsavory” media or clothing, and even a range of normal human emotions, like lust and anger.
Christina would be in massive trouble if she had been found at that pagan festival.
Bottom line: Hilltop’s a batshit place that is a culmination of everything I investigate. I have wanted to do a project on Hilltop for years, but as a private university, it’s exceedingly difficult to get permissions.
Her smile drops but she maintains her steady openness.
“Men and women can’t live together. All of the on-campus housing is strictly divided by male and female.
My friend was almost expelled a few semesters ago for being found with her boyfriend in her on-campus apartment.
But I live off campus this year, and what Hilltop doesn’t know about, Hilltop can’t punish. ”
“You’d still be punished if they found out, even though you live off campus?”
“Of course. The Community Covenant applies to every Hilltop affiliate all of the time, regardless of age or location.”
“The Community Covenant,” I repeat in disappointment.
“Oh, sorry, the Community Covenant is this agreement—”
“I know what it is.”
She smiles sweetly, and maybe a little sadly, at me. “Of course you do. I forgot for a moment I was talking to Danny Reeves.”
My stomach flips.
Charlie helps sometimes with additional footage and editing, but this documentarian life is mostly just me and my camera.
For seven years, I’ve been on a constant lookout for that next issue, the next injustice, the next intrigue.
My advertisers and supporters need a steady stream of new content for me to keep this up as my full-time occupation.
It takes months and months to put together even a thirty-minute video, and sometimes over a year to put together a longer documentary.
So I have to have a lot of irons in the fire.
Is it normal to already feel wrung out by age twenty-four?
I keep my face out of my videos as much as possible—partly for privacy, partly because I’m not actually a charismatic leading man, and partly because I want the people I film to be the center of my documentaries.
Yet I’m unafraid to attach my name to my work, so I’ve had people recognize me over the years when they hear my name or see my camera.
But I’ve never heard anyone say my name quite the way she does. In awe. With that sweet voice that conjures honey and butter and syrup soaking into pancakes.
I wonder if she can see the mental crisis I’m having. I wonder if I’m blushing the same way she did when I said her name.
Christina.