After I finish my story, Leslie and Katie rest their hands in mine and I lead a clumsy prayer; we bow our heads all together as the tall trees moan like cattle in the breeze behind us. I haven’t found Jesus, but I’ve found fellowship and I believe in it with all my heart. I devote myself to it. I’m not unhappy when I return to LSU, but after fall semester, I transfer to Ole Miss, where Leslie goes to school. I feel called there, like all the answers to my questions about God exist in leafy Oxford, Mississippi. I sink myself deep into college ministry.
* * *
Ole Miss is everything I want it to be, a giant golf course–green space filled with friends to collect, all sprawled out on big blankets watching the sky. It’s warm and wonderful and people love me. It’s high school all over again but with no parents and slightly bigger boobs. I join the Reformed University Fellowship with Leslie: RUF is the cool Christian group on campus. We talk about philosophy and listen to good music and don’t flutter around campus with rubbery WWJD bracelets the way the nerdy “Christian crusaders” do. We sing worship songs, but we sing dirty rap too. Most nineteen-year-olds would feel stifled by conservative Presbyterianism, but I feel liberated, like I’ve finally found my people. Jesus is still missing in action but I claim him as my savior. I yearn for him and search frantically for a sign of him in potholes and bags of potato chips and cloud shapes. After two years of Bible study and RUF, I’m still waiting for my own testimony. I try to be the best Christian I can, to invite Jesus into my life, but I’m not the best Christian. Laura Treppendahl is.
There is a story about Laura Treppendahl that people in Baton Rouge like to tell. In high school speech class, she has to give a presentation on something she’s passionate about and she chooses the dangers of drunk driving. She stands at the podium under a laminated poster of the American flag and delivers her argument beautifully, eloquently, even. Her big, shiny gem eyes glow with truth and she gets a mighty applause afterward that lasts two whole minutes. She begins the walk back to her seat when the teacher announces that for the next assignment, the class will have to present the opposing case to whatever they gave their speech on. The room goes silent.
The very idea of advocating for such a sad and sinful thing breaks poor Laura’s heart and she’s horrified to tell her mother, Coco, after school. Coco listens to her daughter’s worries and smiles, promising her that everything will be fine.
“You’ll figure it out.” She smiles. That’s exactly what Laura does.
The following week, she stands at the podium in speech class once again and tells the story of a wonderful young girl who loved Jesus and everyone and everything with all her heart. Tragically, shockingly, she was killed by a drunk driver leaving a bar in his truck on a Tuesday evening. At the girl’s funeral, Laura says, the gospel was proclaimed and many people came to know and love Jesus, many people were saved. Even in tragedy if you open your heart to the Lord, there can be triumph. Again, she speaks beautifully and eloquently, and again, she gets a hefty applause from the class.
Years later, I will hear the story from Miss Coco herself and I’ll feel the aching love she has for her daughter as she tells it to me. I can’t see past the sadness of it all. I can’t see beyond the girl in her casket who shouldn’t be there. I can’t see what Laura Treppendahl sees, but I want to.
* * *
Laura is a freshman. She arrives at the beginning of my senior year. She walks right up to me after attending her first RUF meeting and knocks me out with her light.
“You’re Ruthie,” she announces before she even thinks to introduce herself.
Katie told me I would fall in love with her and she was right. Years of joy have built a dimple into her right cheek and given her doe eyes little crinkles in the corners. She’s beautiful—gorgeous, actually—but it’s as though she’s never noticed it herself, never even thought to check. She holds my hand gently in hers when she speaks, and even though she is three years younger than I am, she seems older. I let her pull my hand to her heart and she holds it there to rest on top of the gentle patter; it’s like holding on to a rabbit.
“I heard about your accident,” she sings. “You were on our prayer list for almost a year at church but I prayed for you so much longer than that, I was called to, I just knew it. I’m so glad that we’re friends now. God is so good.”
I look at her glowing at me, cheeks lifting up into two pink circles. She’s so loving, so pure. I’ve never met anybody like her. I’ve never met anybody I want to be more like.
As the year chugs along, I watch her shine eclipse my own. People say we are two peas in a pod, that Laura is just like me, but they’re wrong. She lives out of an abundance of love; I live out of a hunger for it. Her goodness flows over campus like hot honey, and for the first time in my life, I’m envious of someone. I watch her sing “Holy, Holy, Holy,” chin tilted toward God, cheeks glowing with joy. I watch her give and give and give with utter selflessness. I try to learn from her, make my own competing version of her specialness, but I can’t. She’s sustained by the love of Jesus. Whatever that love is, whatever it feels like, I can’t imagine it would ever be enough for me.
* * *
When I finish senior year, I get a job in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m going to be an assistant youth group leader at a Presbyterian church near where Leslie’s parents grew up. Laura is ecstatic when I tell her about it. She grabs my hands and holds them at her heart again and says she’ll be praying for me. I know that she will be. I drive up to Tennessee all by myself and think about her on the way. I wonder if someone who doesn’t see Jesus can teach him and I wonder if wanting to know his love is enough to speak of it. When a little girl with a dimple on her cheek waves at me through her car window on the interstate, I see Laura in her and decide it’s a sign. I keep driving and I keep searching.
* * *
One year later, Laura Treppendahl will be killed by a drunk driver. She will only be nineteen years old. Her body won’t look broken on the outside, but her insides will slide into each other. She will die instantly. Her injuries will be far less punishing than mine were on paper, but for some reason, I will be the one to watch them bury her little body not far from the cemetery where they would have buried mine. I will stop trying to find Jesus when I hear the news, but when I go to her visitation in Baton Rouge and see the lines filling the streets and trickling into the sanctuary of the church, I’ll remember the mysterious, breathtaking love that envelops us. I’ll remember the sunlight that poured from her eyes when she prayed. I’ll remember the story she told in speech class. The day of her funeral, the gospel will be proclaimed and so many people will come to know the love God has for them.
I’ll keep searching and searching for truth, for God, and for little bits of Laura in the world.
6 Sex, Drums, and Dido
Jack wears snap-front cowboy shirts and blue jeans that bell out over the top of his New Balance tennis shoes. He has just enough patches of beard across his cheeks and chin to make him look grown-up, but I can tell when he smiles that there are parts of him that are still very young and will probably stay that way forever. I have those parts too. His eyes are two bowls of hot brownie batter and he is gloriously, perfectly, miraculously taller than I am. I know almost right away that I could love him.