“They did,” Bill grunts with a stammering, uncertain laugh. “I told ’em there was nowhere for you to run. The boat isn’t even docked right now; it’s gone to the mainland for mail and supplies. But the Reverend had to whip everyone into a great, big fuss.”

“Well, that sounds like Reverend Packard,” I chuckle along with Bill.

The lie works—Bill’s taser drops to his side. “Let’s get you back, then!” Vaguely agitated, he leads us to the clearing’s edge that routes back to the Coral Road. I don’t regard Marcos, and he knows not to regard me. We’re just two strangers, up to nothing. Wherever Molly went, she’ll have to invent her own excuse.

“Where is everybody?” Molly asks from the gravel courtyard as we return with Bill. She’s alone, signaling to us like she’s spotted friends at a party. Drew must already be back inside the mobile home. The closer we approach, the more visibly Molly’s shoulders pump with exhaustion. She sprinted back, probably arriving only a moment before. “Ramona—Miss Hayward—she told me to hustle back to class, but now I can’t find anyone. I was getting worried.”

“Don’t stress your head, girlie,” Bill says, but his chuckling narrows into suspicion as he scans the cul-de-sac—from the South Pacific Gulch and mobile home to Briggs’s vaulted office and his own watchtower. Marcos, Molly, and I exchange rapid glances but keep our lying smiles about us.

But for Karaoke Bill, things aren’t adding up: “You people…I can’t turn my back on you for a second. I don’t know what it is. All of you, even the little ones. I never hear you coming; you’re always popping out of nowhere. Y’all move like cats, the bunch of you.”

“Don’t like cats?” I ask.

“It’s not about ‘like’…Can’t drop your guard around cats.” Bill shakes the creeps out of his arms, then tips a bent-brimmed hat to Molly. “Get back to class and stay there.”

“You heard the man,” I say, waving Marcos and Molly toward the shaded hollow, but no one needs to be told twice.

We’re already yards ahead when Bill’s dusty voice calls again: “Except you, new kid.” Marcos and Molly face him, but I don’t move. My concrete feet won’t allow it. “I gotta radio the Reverend, let him know I found you.”

“I was just getting…pills for my migraine,” I stammer, finally turning around.