Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Christina
“You’re sure you won’t be too distracted to drive?”
Danny’s camera is ready and pointed straight at me from where he sits in the passenger’s seat, the chair cranked all the way back to accommodate his long legs. I sneak a glance at him as I merge onto the highway.
My friends officially know me too well. Because yeah, I think he’s hot. And he’s at his hottest when he’s looking at me like he is now: tense lines and burning eyes.
“My mother used to put on her entire face of makeup while driving.” I wave a casual hand. “I can handle an interview.”
“Okay, I don’t mean any disrespect, but between that and your Waffle House story, I’m not sure your mother is a bastion of sound decision-making.”
I burst out laughing. “You are correct for so many reasons you don’t even know.”
“Give me one more hit.”
I tap the steering wheel with my thumb in thought. “Okay, here’s one. I went through this crafting and sewing phase in middle school. You know, turning my old jeans into purses, that kind of thing.”
“Cool kid stuff.”
I snort a laugh. “Exactly. My mom was so upset that we didn’t have enough money at the time to buy this little sewing machine I had my heart set on. But then I won a reading competition at school and was awarded a shiny one-hundred-dollar bill, just enough to buy the sewing machine.”
“That’s really fucking cute.”
My heart flutters. “Just wait, it gets less cute. Before my mom could take me to buy the sewing machine, we were in a church service—because we were always in a church service—where the minister gave this big speech about how God required a ‘back-breaking’ offering.”
He snorts. “Nothing to unpack there.”
“He said we needed to empty our wallets on the altar, even if it was painful.”
I feel the shift in Danny’s energy. “How old were you again?”
“Twelve.”
“And you laid the hundred-dollar bill on the altar?”
“Of course. My parents always said all our money belonged to God anyway. So you can imagine what a shock it was that when I told my mother, she freaked out—at me. She found every scripture about ‘stewardship over our resources’ and pinned them to the refrigerator. Apparently I hadn’t actually followed God’s will by giving all my money at the service she’d taken me to in the first place, even though she also goes on regular rampages about how everyone is supposed to ‘bring tithes into the storehouse.’ The truth is she was embarrassed she couldn’t buy me that sewing machine.
There’s no winning with these people; they use scripture to support whatever their position is at any given time. ”
A beat. “I wish I could say that level of cognitive dissonance surprises me.”
“I think that’s why I like telling you this stuff.”
“Because I’m not surprised?”
“Yes. When people are shocked or flabbergasted, it can make me feel really lonely. I think my particular brand of religious trauma is a little less widespread, or at least less openly discussed, so it seems worse to people because it’s less familiar?”
“Do your friends at Hilltop have similar religious traumas?”
“Surprisingly, no. Like I said, there are plenty of people at Hilltop you would not expect.”
“Right,” he says evenly. “Hilltop may be on the extreme side of things, but a lot of my high school graduating class went on to slightly-less-extreme religious universities too, even if they were only casual believers. It’s like all the religiosity is so pervasive here that most Southerners are desensitized to it. ”
“You went to high school in Chattanooga, right?” He doesn’t reveal much about his personal life in his documentaries, especially since he stays off camera, but that first doc he made as a teenager about poor science education mostly focused on a public school in Chatt.
He shifts in his seat, like he’s not quite comfortable with a question in his direction. “Yes, I grew up in Chattanooga, but I wasn’t raised in any religious tradition. Kind of an oddity.”
I hum. “And we know more than most how much Southern culture likes to flatten oddities. But we’re all human, and we’re all here. Even in fundamentalist spaces. Even if unacknowledged or unaccepted. Since day one of history.”
He doesn’t speak for a long moment, and when I glance at him, his fervent eyes are boring into me. “Okay,” he finally mutters, fiddling with the camera in his lap. “I have to turn this on now. I can’t miss any more of the insightful things you say.”
I fidget in my seat when my skin flushes hot at the low words.
He stops moving—the camera and little attached boom mic are set—but I catch him tucking his hair behind his ear, brow furrowed. That’s definitely a nervous tell. When he doesn’t speak for another long moment, I gently nudge, “Danny?”
“Sorry.” He drops his hand from his ear. “I don’t think I’ve ever done an interview as …”
“As the real you?” I venture.
I can feel those big eyes on me again. “Right.”
That’s a feeling I may know better than anyone—learning to keep the real you hidden away because it couldn’t possibly be what people want. And when you’re forced to perform all the time, you eventually forget who you are underneath. It takes practice to let the real person out.
“It’s just me,” I assure him.
A long pause. “Just you,” he echoes, not quite a statement and not quite a question.
“We can keep talking just like we were, yeah? Before the camera was on?”
I absently reach across the center console to lay a comforting hand on his thigh—and seem to clunk back into my body a full three seconds later.
I’ve always been a physical touch person. A light hand on someone helps me feel like I’m communicating and connecting with them. There’s usually a sense of clarity when I touch someone, like we’re on the same page.
What I’m not used to is a simple touch lighting me up like an electric current. I’m suddenly aware of my entire body, and heat steals across my chest and throat. I still sense the clarity and comfort like I intended, but there’s more.
Layers.
He hasn’t moved. Possibly hasn’t breathed.
I recall that he had a similar reaction when I touched his arm at Waffle House.
Maybe he’s someone who doesn’t like to be touched.
Am I crossing a boundary with him? He would surely think I’m crossing a boundary if he knew what was going on in my head and in my body when I touch him.
I force myself to withdraw my hand slowly so I don’t make things awkward—even though the shock of electricity is urging me to snatch it back.
Danny inhales deeply once my arm is out of his space. “Okay, my muse,” he says on the exhale, whiskey voice extra crackly, and something grips me right in the chest. “We’re rolling. Tell me about Exit 11.”
I flash him and the camera a big smile. “Well now, I’m so glad you asked.” I glimpse that quiet edge of a smile on him as he stares down into the little version of me in the camera.
“Branch County—the home county of our dear Hilltop—is known as a dry county. Meaning there can be no alcohol sales in the entire county. Some restaurants have licenses, but any kind of liquor store is illegal.”
I wait for Danny to respond with one of his dry quips or additional commentary, but he says nothing. Oh, right. This is an interview now, not a conversation.
I plow on. “The closest liquor store outside of county lines is at—bum da da duh!—Exit 11! It’s become a kind of code among Hilltop students, who have to live a lot of their lives in code to outwardly abide by the Community Covenant.
‘Exit 11 tonight?’ is code for a house party with plenty of alcohol to go around. ”
I pause again. Damn, I really want Danny’s reaction. He’s still staring at me in the camera screen. When I’m silent another moment, he glances up at the real me and prompts, “You’ve never been to Exit 11?”
At least it’s still him and not the masked version.
“I’ve ridden with friends to Exit 11 several times, and I do socially drink if the occasion calls for it.
But I’ve never actually been inside a liquor store or purchased alcohol myself.
A lot of Hilltop students make a big deal of driving to Exit 11 on their twenty-first birthdays and buying something. But I …”
This is where we get to the hard personal stuff about who I was and how internalized the shame and self-hate was. I knew the documentary would go there—it’s the heart of the Jezebel List. All the silly items only matter because of the trauma I’ve endured.
“Trial run,” he murmurs. The reminder of my right to withdraw, to test this out and see how it feels to expose myself, steels me with the assurance I need to continue.
I swallow. “I was in the middle of a catastrophic identity crisis on my twenty-first birthday. And I haven’t felt like this is something I could do, much less enjoy, until I made the Jezebel List about a month ago.”
I glance at Danny, and he silently nods at me in encouragement.
I continue: “In my world, alcohol was painted as a great evil, especially for young people. All my older brothers’ weddings were dry.
One of my brothers once went around offering to pray with people who were drinking at the bars on a cruise.
” I can’t help but roll my eyes at the memory, although at the time I thought him so admirable.
“My church would put on these skits of teenagers falling to the dark side, and the big sins were always drinking, smoking, and having sex. And at some point they added cutting. As if responsibly drinking alcohol and self-harm are in the same category.”
I hear him hum in his throat, as if he couldn’t help it.
“Can you please tell me what you’re thinking?” I burst out. “I hate this interview feeling so one-sided.” And I just need to get his thoughts and reactions. I need to experience how he sees things.
“I’m thinking …” he starts, cutting off the camera and resting it back in his lap.
“That the culture of shame—not to mention conflating preferential spiritual practices with actual psychological disorders—is heartbreaking and only leads to secrecy and the development of even more serious disorders later on.”
He shifts and I can feel the heat of his eyes singeing into my skin. “I’m also thinking that it may be the greatest honor of my life to witness your Exit 11 debut.”
I can’t help it—the need to connect with him after that statement is too strong. In the spirit of emotions that I can’t really name and thus have to convey through touch, I swiftly squeeze his thigh in the same place I rested my hand before.
I go to withdraw, but that’s when his hand slides over the top of mine. He keeps a gentle pressure on me for a long moment, then swipes his thumb twice across the back of my hand.
Maybe he doesn’t dislike touch after all.
We part at the same time. My eyes are glued to the road, and I grip the steering wheel with both hands. But the hand he touched tingles the rest of the way to Exit 11.