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Chapter One: The Beginning

    It was 2015. I was almost through with my Sophomore year of college at Wagner University. I was halfway done with my History degree and was anxiously searching for a tinge of excitement in my life. Wagner was a small school of about three hundred residential students. The number of faculty, staff, and students added up to a magnificent total of eleven hundred and ninety-one, astounding, I know.

Situated in the small Appalachian town of Holbrooke, Georgia, Wagner was almost unheard of to those not in the Baptist circles. Our tiny campus' motto was "Biblically Centered, Distinctively Baptist". If that doesn't explain the kind of campus life we had, let me save you some research. On every weekday –besides Wednesdays- we had Bible Studies in our dorms. These were optional Bible Studies lead by our Resident Assistants. Sure, they were optional but with such a small campus, if you didn't attend at least one, everyone knew and they all talked about you. Every weeknight Freshmen had to be in their dorms by midnight. That curfew would be reinstated if you had a GPA below 2.8 or if you were caught doing something you weren't supposed to be doing, no matter what year you were.

Every Tuesday morning, we had a mandatory Chapel service. It began with a time of worship lead by students. After worship, there was a brief message –often given by a guest speaker that none of us had heard of- then announcements. On weekends, the campus was usually dead beside the few RA's and residents who didn't own cars.

 I've always been strong-willed, free-spirited, and stubborn so most weekends, I would drive the two hours it took to get across the North Georgia mountains to get home. My trips home were the things I looked forward to most. There was something about going home that made me feel free after an arduous week of studying and listening to my RA's yell at the girls in my dorm about how they needed to live their lives. "You were bought with a price, you need to act like it," they preached in one hall meeting. A few weeks later, we found out that the RA who said that was caught hooking up with her boyfriend in a hidden gravel parking lot on campus.

Don't get me wrong, I loved my time at Wagner. The longer I was there, the more I appreciated the realness of my friends back at home. There was a whole group of us who spent every second of every weekend together. There was Miles, a tall brunette with a thick build who never knew when to shut up but had a deep devotion to me. Most girls fawned over him, but I always saw him as more of a golden retriever. Miles was my best friend and always encouraged me to stay good. My free spirit had gotten me in trouble a few too many times and he was always by my side to snap me back to reality. When I was depressed or anxious, he was there. When I couldn't stand to be alone, he was there, holding me until I fell asleep.

There was Mia, the baby of the group and also the wildest. She had just graduated high school and was working as a dance teacher. Mia didn't come around much, but when she did, she knew how to start a party wherever we were. There was also Adrian. He was a strange hipster – the beanie wearing, hemp bracelet type of guy- who had been staying at my house with my parents for months because of his own family issues. We met in 2010 through mutual friends. He had started coming to church with them, and before long, we were hanging out without them. By the time I left for college, he wasn't just a friend anymore, he was my brother, and I was glad to finally have a sibling.

Then there's Gabbi. She was the old soul of our group. We had met at church when we were barely old enough to form complete sentences. She'd had an abusive childhood. Her mother was a narcissist and her father was a drunk. There was no real love in their home so right before her seventeenth birthday, she and her sister were adopted by a young childless couple in town. Things were getting better for Gabbi. She deserved the world, and she knew it was hers for the taking.