eve becomes SNAKE -- or snake becomes EVE. whichever way ROUND, she is FREER. hell follows her ‘round, hell called MAN, hell called ADAM, trying to make the CHANGING about him. adam demands of god why he is being PUNISHED like this. eve finds GRACE in the dark cracks between rocks. eve finds god in the SOLITUDE. eve finds ABSOLUTION in the red press of her knees / scales into the dirt. eve, UNBLINKING, watches adam rail. adam demands ANSWERS and eve / snake / eve exits the GARDEN to go and find them for HERSELF.
i do ! i’ll focus on the relationships from bethel for now, though, otherwise this post will get way too long .
one of the biggest, most important relationships in kate’s life back in bethel would be jessica. despite being best friends, kate and jessica always had a very volatile and two-faced relationship. jessica was headstrong and had no problem taking whatever she wanted: which, most of the time, was whatever kate had. she had a poor home life and was always incredibly envious of kate’s happy family. jess moved to bethel during sophomore year of high school, because in her previous town she was bullied badly for having a reputation of sexual promiscuity. she and kate bonded quickly when they first met, but her jealousy of both kate’s home life and preacher’s daughter reputation made their friendship extremely tense at times. she frequently pursued boys that kate expressed interest in, and kyle (second npc) was the only boy kate was ever interested in that wasn’t won over by jessica’s charm and…. cleavage, frankly. that’s not to say that she wasn’t a good friend. kate loved her dearly, and desperately wanted to impress her. kate even had a bit of a crush on her, but was in denial of her bisexuality for the entirety of hertime in bethel. anyway, it’d be a lie to say kate was a perfect friend to her, too, she did her fair share of angry venting (and said some pretty negative things) to her parents and friends from church who didn’t know jessica.
kyle is a fairly important npc as well. he was kate’s first serious boyfriend. she wasn’t allowed to date until she was sixteen years old, but the two had been flirting for a long time before that. he was a perfect gentlemen (to kate’s minor chagrin), and even asked her father for permission to ask her on a date. (her dad said no, but kyle insisted until he was given jacob’s ‘blessing’. kate doesn’t know that this happened.) she didn’t love him, but she told him she did because she thought she could grow to love him. that was the kind of boy she was meant to be with, after all, cookie cutter perfect christian boy who wouldn’t have sex with her even after nearly a year of dating. ultimately, she told him that she loved him in the rv on the way to mexico because he had something she wanted: a way out. she misses him sometimes, but she also knows that she never would’ve been truly happy with him.