She pictured her mother’s pale face, her expression earnest and solemn like the statues of saints she’d seen in Taured’s education slideshows about idol worship. But education was for Wednesday nights, she thought. Tonight, they were here for Taured’s amusement: to play his favorite sport and be his favorite sport. She positioned herself over home plate, holding the bat like she’d been taught. She could hold the bat, but she couldn’t hit anything with it, that was the problem. He’d put her up here week after week until she did. People were getting antsy, sensing the tension; they were out here sweating, and they wanted to be paid in drama. Summer braced herself for the imminent show in which she was to star. Taured looked cool as a cucumber. Happy. And why not? He wasn’t the sport.

She glanced around at the faces watching them: the people she’d come to know over the last four years. Some of these people were doctors and nurses. Gary Hoeff sat in the front row of the bleachers, his arm around his wife Paula’s shoulders—they’d been owners of a gymnastics academy in their former life. But then something had happened, and they’d come here. Next to them was a young family: a pretty mother and a baby on her knee, her husband a former marine, discharged—for what, Summer didn’t know. None of these people thought this was strange: a grown man using his power to bully a girl. And if they did, they didn’t let on. Everyone here seemed to enjoy it when someone was being humiliated, so long as it wasn’t them.

Fuck you all, fuck you all, she thought, the sweat running like fingers between her breasts.

“Another week of the rookie show!” Taured declared with charismatic good humor. His hair had been freshly cut, and with his blindingly white teeth, he looked like a TV game show host. There was laughter from the makeshift bleachers; to Summer, it sounded relieved. They weren’t going to care what happened next because it wasn’t happening to them. This was going downhill fast. She shut her eyes. You can do this, she thought. You know how. She could sense the building aggression in his movements; he was fixated on her. It was her newest role in their fucked-up “family”: torture pet. He’d liked her so much at the beginning. But things were so different now.

The sins of the parents. New meat. She couldn’t stop thinking about that, and about how her mother’s entire attitude had changed after a few weeks of being there. Maybe this wasn’t about Summer at all. She saw Feena in her mind’s eye, naked in the photo and lying spread-eagle on a gray bedspread; she saw it as if the photo were in front of her and not buried beneath Charlie Cactus a dozen miles away.