“Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your heart as your Lord, savior and friend?”

Ana Molina handed out the pamphlets to everyone who walked the path where she and the rest of the Zacchaeus Tree small group had gathered for their weekly evangelism push. She knew most of the pamphlets would end up farther down the path—in the trash or, for the more eco-conscious, in paper-recycling bins—but she’d stopped being discouraged by people’s indifference late in her freshman year.

If Zacchaeus handed out a hundred flyers and even one inspired someone to join their group or one of the dozens available through the interdenominational department, that made every eyeroll and sneer of disdain worth the thorn prick in her chest and behind her eyes. As Jesus had said in Luke, angels rejoiced if even one sinner repented…and so did she. It wasn’t Zacchaeus’ job to change minds or souls, merely to plant seeds that God could tend and grow according to His will.

Ana was a student, too—one of them. She knew how easy it was to believe that nothing bad could ever happen to them, that the cradle of University of Texas-Meridian was a mini-Mount Olympus of bacchanalian gods.

That’s why she didn’t take it personally that most people didn’t accept a pamphlet or even acknowledge their existence with basic eye contact. Nor did she take it personally when a Cro-Magnon with his other dudebros spat something that smelled suspiciously alcoholic on her shirt when she tried to hand him a pamphlet, as well. The boy laughed and slapped his bros’ backs as they headed down the path, while Ana wrung her shirt and tried not to think about where his mouth had been.

Freddie came up from behind her and kissed the crown of her head near where her ponytail began. “Are you okay?”

“He won’t remember it five minutes from now. Neither should I.” Ana continued to hold out pamphlets without hesitation.

Some in Zacchaeus claimed she was fearless. They thought she couldn’t hear them whisper about how easy it seemed for her to stand in the middle of university grounds in one of the most selfish cities in the country, speaking the Lord’s truth to people who dismissed her like any street-corner soapbox preacher when there were much more interesting prostitutes on the other side of the street.

But Freddie knew better than anyone where her conviction came from.

“I know it seems easy and fun to go to these parties and fraternities, but I promise you, you may not live to regret it, but you’ll die with that regret like ash on your lips,” Ana said as more groups passed by—women wearing short skirts and midriff tops, sometimes little more than bras, and guys in shirts and jeans designed to display lanky length of limb or curve of carefully cultivated muscle. Courting like birds of paradise, beautiful and flashy, but birds didn’t have marriage or strictures about how courtship should reach its inevitable conclusion.

“Go get fucked,” some guy yelled from within one of the groups. “No, really, get fucked. Sounds like you need it.”

“It’s not sin that will be your downfall. All of us sin, every one of us, including me,” Ana said, barely blinking. It helped to stare into the darkness rather than focus on any one face. That way, everyone thought she was talking to them, and she didn’t have to see their contempt too clearly.

“I’ll bet you do.” It could have been the same guy. She couldn’t tell.

“There’s not one on Earth who does not sin. There was only Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to save you from those sins. I’m not saying that if you sin, you go to hell. I’m not the person to tell you that. But without Jesus…that’s hell and the handbasket that takes you there.”

“Which direction is that going now? Could that be ‘going down’, maybe?”

Snickering surrounded her like hallucinations, but she forced herself to continue. She usually didn’t get this kind of attention, but when she did, it went little worse than beer spit on her shirt.

“If you accept Jesus and His truth, you won’t need the sin like you think you do, like the world tells you that you do—the ‘college experience’, just young people having fun, getting their wild out. They lie to you. They say that so they don’t have to blame themselves for their failure, so they can turn a blind eye to the terrible things you’re doing to yourself, because that’s easier than trying to save you from the same mistakes they made.”

“Oh my God, get a hobby…or a job. Don’t you have anything better to do?” An eyeroll strode by her with two textbooks under her arm. “Like an actual Religious Studies class?”

“The danger here isn’t the devil. It isn’t sex, drugs or rock ’n’ roll. It’s moral relativity. Do you know the humanities produce more atheists than STEM majors?” Ana shouted after the girl to be heard over the crush of the last evening classes headed toward the Student Center. “But none of them teach you the truth. They teach you theories that they call facts, as though something ancient and rich and magical has to be wrong.”

“If I’d wanted to go to school in seventeenth-century Salem, I would have sent my application somewhere that has actual autumn,” the girl replied without looking over her shoulder.

Sometimes, any response at all meant that she’d strummed someone’s soul, thrown a pebble in their pond for a round of ripples to spread. If they weren’t just flinging sexual innuendos at her, she’d caught their attention, and if she’d caught their attention, the words that God gave her to reach them wouldn’t be so easily forgotten. Even an antagonistic response was an acknowledgment of the conversation.

“I’m not judging. I’m begging,” Ana continued.

The girl who’d passed her stopped on the other side of the group, hugging her books. She looked out of patience, but she’d stopped.

“I’ll make you beg,” someone muttered.

Ana ignored him. “I’m begging you to see that you’re not going to find love anywhere here—only lust that leaves you empty.”

“I’ll leave you empty.”

“For God’s sake, shut up,” Freddie snapped.

Ana reached behind her to rest her hand on Freddie’s arm. “You might find success, with accolades or financial compensation, false acrylic idols. Those are the things you think you want, what the world tells you you’re supposed to want. Sex, money and power—the devil’s Trinity.”

“You must be so fun at parties.” The girl shook her head. “Go touch grass or drink a lemonade or something—anything to let the helium out of your head and get you out of heaven back to the ground where the air isn’t as thin. Life’s a lot better when you stop looking at everything like a cosmic battle. Sometimes a Friday night is just a Friday night.”

“And sometimes a Friday night is your last night,” Ana said. “If it is, are you sure where your immortal soul is going? Look… I don’t care if you’re the blackest heart on campus, if you’ve done coke or meth or murdered your mother and got away with it.”

The girl’s eyebrows rose, her lips curving in an involuntary grin.

“Believe in Jesus as God’s Son who died for your sins, and heaven is guaranteed. That’s all. That’s it. It’s really that easy.” Ana wove between the groups, most of whom were finally drifting away since Ana refused to take the lascivious bait. She held out the pamphlet to the girl.

“Yeah. It would be nice if it were that easy.” The girl took the pamphlet. “It’s people that make it so damn hard.”

“I’ll tell you who’s damn hard.” The guy congratulated himself with braying laughter and hand slaps among his friends.

Freddie finally put himself between Ana and their group. If anyone else had taken a more aggressive stand on her behalf, it probably would have prompted a macho, manly man-war among the frontal-lobe-developmentally stunted. But Freddie was a big guy, over six feet and broad as well as heavy, significantly bigger than even the average fit athlete on campus. She’d always called him the Viking, though he wasn’t positive he had any Scandinavian ancestry, much less an impulse to pillage and plunder. Even if someone thought he wasn’t very fast, there was no question that he was a sledgehammer of a person.

“Hey, man, it was just a joke. Fuck, no one can take a joke these days.” The boy backed away with his friends, and he wasn’t so enamored of the subject of his ‘jokes’ that he leered at her as he left.

“If you want to learn more, contact me at that university email,” Ana said to the girl. “Or even better, come to our small group meetings on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. At the very least, it’s one of the few get-togethers that doesn’t expect you to study, get drunk or take your clothes off.”

“More’s the pity.” The girl tucked the pamphlet into one of her textbooks but lifted her face back up with apology in her eyes. “I’m pagan as fuck, though. Other than celebrating the holidays that Christians stole from us first, I don’t really do small groups with people who tend to imagine stoning me to death.”

“We accept everyone, even witches. Everyone is in danger, so everyone has a chance to pull themselves out of the mire.”

“Doesn’t sound very welcoming to me,” the girl said.

“I never said we’d agree with you or not challenge you,” Ana replied in concession. “Just that you’d be welcome. Admit it, though. If you came to an evangelistic small group, you’d probably be disappointed if it was too agreeable. Cookie?”

When in doubt, offer snacks. Free food was irresistible to college students. She was surprised that more unscrupulous characters didn’t swoop into the UTM with canapés. The devil himself could purchase souls wholesale if he gave away cake.

The girl accepted the cookie with a smile that bordered on genuine. “Not supposed to take baked goods from strangers.”

“There’s nothing but strange around here.”

“You’re not wrong.” The girl saluted her with the cookie, then took a bite before leaving the dispersing crowd and the far more persistent Zacchaeus.

Ana thought they might see the girl within a month, although it was hard to anticipate how deeply curiosity would root.

“Never forget that you’re amazing,” Freddie whispered, then gathered her into his heat and encompassing arms. No one made her feel as safe and loved as he did. When he encouraged her, she felt the Spirit’s presence through his words—far more cogent than tongues, but no less powerful.

“Shut the door. Keep out the devil,” she said, not quite under her breath. An old mantra rather than a rebuke.

“Keep the devil in the night,” he finished for her.

But she’d already stepped out of his arms to approach the next wave of people on the path. Her stomach clenched and growled in hunger, especially so close to fresh-baked cookies that drew enough people within their reach. God came first, all other needs second. There was too much at stake. Ana knew better than most what happened when people chose wrong.