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."
Anna had been talking nonstop for a couple hours and while it wasn't exactly lunchtime yet, Bill began looking for some place to grab some food. He was starting to feel a grumbling in his stomach.
They soon came across a nice little roadside diner and Bill pulled in. "You ready to get some food and stretch our legs?" he asked Anna.
"Fine with me if you're ready." she replied as she got out of the car and went into a full body stretch. She'd been cooped up in the car longer than she thought. She stopped mid-stretch as her eyes spotted the motel across the road and she remembered his statement from last night. 'Oh no, is that why he chose to stop here?' she thought to herself as her anxiety level began to rise.
They sat down in opposite sides of a booth and ordered lunch. Each got up to use the restroom just before the food arrived. Anna continued to think about the motel and wondered if Bill would actually demand his payment. If he did, what would happen if she couldn't go through with it? For being so nervous, Anna was surprised she had such a big appetite.
Bill asked her about what happened last night. "So tell me about last night. If you're so desperate for this ride back to school, how did you get home in the first place? And why were you even at the party?"
"After my eyes were opened to things outside the cult, I began to live life more closely to what all the other 'normal' teenagers were doing at school. I wanted to experience all the things that they did. I still held firm to quite a few of my beliefs from before. I had just 'de-radicalized them" for lack of a better term. I socialized. I went to parties and tried alcohol. Not a big fan. I was introduced to and hung out with people I never would have met before. I met a guy named George. He was nice to me and my new group of friends convinced me that he was interested in dating me. Dating wasn't allowed before so I didn't know how to behave. My friends suggested we get together a few times, just to talk and get to know each other. For a 20 year old with no dating history, I was surprisingly comfortable being alone with him. We discovered that most of my new found beliefs were in line with his. We agreed on pretty much everything except one: no physical intimacy before marriage included everything except for kissing. George tried to convince me otherwise. I told him it was deal breaker so he agreed to my definition and we started officially dating. He knew of my history and ongoing feud with my parents. After the final blow up with them a few weeks ago, George agreed to bring me here to get my things."
"I overheard people talking about the party when we got gas after arriving in town. I thought maybe I could see some people and offer some apologies. We went and although most people ignored me, I actually got a few to talk to me. Those were some rough conversations."
"I lost track of George at one point while apologizing to someone so I went to find him. I found him alright. I opened a door and saw him having sex with some woman on a bed while a bunch of other guys stood around naked and cheering him on. One of them looked at me and said 'Alright, one more slut means less waiting for the rest of us. Come on and get naked, bitch!' I ran out of the room towards the door. That was when I ran into you. I'm sorry about knocking you down; I didn't even know you were in town and at the party."
"Anyway, George's apologies and pleas for forgiveness quickly turned angry and mean when I wouldn't give into him. He left me there. I hid in the bushes trying to figure out what I was going to do when I saw you come out of the house. You know the rest because you were there."
Bill downed the last of his drink and wiped his mouth with his napkin. He dropped it to the table and motioned to the waitress for the check.
The moment that Anna had been dreading for the last 12 hours arrived as Bill looked her in the eye and said, "Pay the woman, Anna, and then meet me in the car. The motel across the way work for you or do you want to head down the road a ways and see what we find?"
Anna paid for lunch and slowly made her way to the car. She closed the door and Bill could hear defeat in her voice as she said, "I guess we might as well get this over with. Across the road is fine."
Bill drove across the road and told Anna to go into the motel office and get them a room. She returned a few minutes later and told him the clerk said the room is at the far end of the complex. They drove down and parked in front of room 126.
Anna forced herself to not cry as slid the key card into the lock and opened the door. Bill followed her into the room. Thankfully, it was clean and didn't smell. There was queen sized bed covered with a dark bedspread against the wall to the right of the door with a small table and chairs between it and the window. The television was on the wall across from the foot of the bed. "The clerk said they have free movies if you want to watch something." she said because she couldn't think of anything else.
"We're not here to watch TV, Anna. Do you want me standing up, sitting in the chair, or lying on the bed?" Bill asked her.
Her heart was suddenly racing. She struggled to keep calm. "I don't know; I've never done this before." she managed to say.
"You'll probably be more comfortable on the bed; this carpet looks like it could be pretty rough on your knees. Do you need to use the bathroom before we get started?"
"No." she managed to weakly get out of her mouth.
