They grabbed her by the arms, fingers digging into her thin flesh as they pulled her from the back seat of the car. She didn’t cry out in shock or pain but kept her posture rigid as she watched them do the same to her mother. They dragged her through the prison kitchens and toward the courtyard outside. The courtyard was an eight-by-ten concrete block, fenced in on three sides. It had a drain in the center and a waterspout low on the wall. It stood to the side of the prison and ran along a steep gully. Someone had told her that they slaughtered the livestock there.

She didn’t resist when the sisters stripped her, leaving her naked aside from her panties. It was too hot to shiver, too bright to hide. The elders started to arrive, Taured’s most faithful, most likely not to question him. She saw them through the diamonds in the fence: bodies surrounding the cage to witness her shaming. She couldn’t look at their faces; if they wanted her to feel shame, she did. It was so great she touched her chin to the hard bone of her clavicle and let her hair hide what it could. Standing above the drain, Summer knew Taured would appear at any moment. She knew what was about to happen. She’d heard about this punishment, heard about the humiliation that some of the adults had to endure in their path to righteousness. She’d always felt separate, better than those people.

Now, she was displayed like a thing, not a person—Taured’s thing. She couldn’t see Kids’ Camp, but she could hear the younger kids playing on the equipment, their squalling and their laughter making happy noises. She couldn’t see her mother. She imagined they were keeping her in one of the solitary rooms. Until it’s her turn, Summer thought, buckling under the nausea of this thought. She dropped to her knees, her bare skin digging into the grate as she heaved above it. She would rather do this a hundred times over than know her mother had to stand in front of these pigs. But nothing came: no vomit, only contempt. She stood up, hid behind her hair.

Her mother wasn’t here to protect her and neither was her father, who had died and allowed this to happen. But she wasn’t afraid, no. Taured had already pushed the fear out of her, and now there was nothing. She was a void; you couldn’t frighten something that didn’t exist.

Marshall Carruthers, one of Taured’s goons, was attaching the hose to a spout, making sure to keep his eyes on her body. Taured stood in the doorway, filling it up. Marshall handed him the hose and stepped back.