Her parents looked like two pillars in church clothes, clean and pale. They thought my mama was a drunk. I had heard them whispering about it, years ago. And that Lobo was a saint for taking us in. It was safer to let them think that than to know the truth: we were all growers.

My jeans were clean. I swept a hand around my hair and felt no leaves. I sat down next to Lisbeth’s folks. We faced the stage, a platform shrouded in mist.

“They always have this outside,” Lisbeth’s daddy was saying. “They did last year, even though...”

He didn’t finish. It had no name.

Last year had been a late spring, the slightest thaw, and the coldest summer. It had snowed in September. And kept on snowing. This year, more For Sale signs had appeared in the windows of shops in town. More of the windows of houses were dark or broken: dingy, one-or two-roomed shacks. Plastic sheeting ballooned out of doorways, porches sagged into rot. Every house still occupied had a fire going, smoke chugging from the chimney. There were no children playing in the yards. On my drive to the high school, I had passed another gas station that had wrapped its pumps in tarps, yet another farm with chains across its driveway and a house that looked cold and empty, a greenhouse with windows smashed. Farms were taking the cold the hardest.

Ushers from the student council had wiped the folding chairs with towels, so the seats weren’t damp, but a chill began to seep into my shoes from the ground. I wished I had worn my boots.

“Here, honey.” Lisbeth’s mama pulled two flat, foil-wrapped packages from her purse.

I slipped the hand warmers into my coat pockets, and my fingers closed around them, cracking them.

The choir had prepared for cold. They wore scarves and hats. Some of the girls had fur muffs, maybe from rabbits their daddies had shot. When the singers assembled on the front of the stage, they looked like something out of Charles Dickens, a band of winter ragamuffins. I was almost surprised when they didn’t sing a Christmas carol.

Lisbeth had a great voice: high and true. When Lisbeth sang, people would sit up. People would pay attention. Being part of The Church meant she had to wear shirts that covered her shoulders and arms. It meant that I had never gone over to her house on Saturday night—she had services early the next morning. It meant that we had to meet places in secret like Crossroads.