In May, a tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma, and for forty-five minutes, its winds fluctuated around 301 mph, devastating everything in its thirty-eight-mile path; it killed thirty-six people and injured five hundred more. Taured ushered them into the cafeteria for this, too, and they ate a dinner of sweet potato, watching survivors being pulled from the rubble. Why were these things happening? Both in nature and to the nature of people? America, Taured told them, had become godless, and as a result, the country as a whole was under a spiritual attack. They’d had a hard year money-wise, eating their crops instead of selling them. Even so, Taured sent missionaries out that summer, her mother one of them, and they came back with a widower named Jon Wycliffe and his teenage daughter, Feena. After that, they ate okay again, and they got a couple new TVs for the main building.

The first time Summer saw Feena she was in the cafeteria, standing near the soda fountain, her hands clasped politely at the waistband of her jeans. She was elfin and pretty-faced, with spiral-curled red hair and creamy yogurt skin that the Nevada sky would eat up. Below her neck, she was all woman. None of the other girls had rounded breasts or hips that curved like an S, and because of that, every single one of them was looking at her. She was standing with her father and Taured, and despite that she was the news of the evening, her eyes were watching their exuberant leader, and only him.

Taured wasn’t like the other adults; Summer and Sara agreed on this. He spoke to them with the same respect he used with their parents. There was no difference between young and old, male or female; if anything, he was nicer to women than he was to men. She noticed that they all looked at him in the same hungry way—not just the older girls, but all of them: the men, the women and the children. But who was Taured looking at?

At the moment, he was looking at Feena, and the feelings Summer experienced could only be explained by one very basic word: envy. Her eyes dragged between them as they spoke: Feena polite and nervous, Taured interested. Jon was smiling between them, a content chaperon. The smell of frying onions reached her nose, and remembering that she was here to meet her mother, she dragged her eyes away from the group and began to look for her.