Rugged Handsome in a Cult: a New Year’s Heartbreak

“Old Home Place” by Kansas Poetry (Patrick) is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

“Are you going to watch the ball drop?” Steve called out to me jovially from the other end of the long basement hallway between the boys’ and girls’ cafeterias.

This story takes place mid-way through my cult years in Saint Marys, Kansas, a day or two before the New Year’s Eve that would ring in 1996. I was 18, having just graduated from the cult’s high school in May. In…