“Well, here’s the thing, Sarah. Your boys have been working hard, but you? You haven’t done shit for me. And I know that’s not who you are. I know you’re special. I can tell. I have a sense for talented people. So here’s what we’re going to do. Sarah. We’re going to have dinner, like a family, real nice. And then you’re going to work for me. Then we’ll see what you can do.”

He pointed his finger at me when he spoke. It seemed like any word, any protest, any answer at all, might enflame him. I concentrated on that finger, red and chapped. I imagined it burning, the skin falling off, the bone breaking. I pictured breaking it myself.

I went back in the shed and closed the door. There was no way to lock it. I kept my hand on the flimsy handle and watched Jake’s shape in the window. He hesitated, maybe listening, maybe watching for me, too. Then he walked away, crunching through the snowy leaves around the shed. I pictured ice clinging to his bare ankles. I hoped it hurt.

None of the women in the shed had moved. Starla pulled off Jamey’s nipple with a pop, and a tear of yellow milk slid down Jamey’s stomach. She brushed it away like a bug.

“I have to get out of here before dinner’s over,” I said.

Jamey started buttoning up her shirt. “They wanted me to siphon the gas from your truck earlier.” Her eyes flicked up. “I just pretended.”

“Don’t you ever want to get high?” Lisbeth asked me.

Behind the Church was a parking lot, an old loading dock with Dumpsters and pallets, and behind that, a hill sloped to a ditch. A field stretched on the other side before the river, brown and unchanging. Later, it would change: white, and white, and white again.

We used to sit on that hill after services. Lisbeth hiked her skirt to her knees. Her leggings beneath were white, the knees already kissed green. Grass was green then.

“No,” I said.

“Not even a little? Not even sometimes?”

“It’s not really my thing. I’ve seen a lot. It can make people stupid. It can make them forget and get paranoid. It can do good things. It’s medicine—I do believe that, and I believe it should be legal, available. But if you smoke every day, every day multiple times...” Every day since you were ten, as Lobo had.

“Well, I wouldn’t do that,” Lisbeth said. “You wouldn’t do that.”

“I don’t know what I would do,” I said.

Lisbeth believed in God and her parents, and that kissing me didn’t count. She also thought she should know, at least a little bit, what she was giving up, what she was sacrificing for the kingdom of forever.