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Back Surrender Your Sons Save as PDF
Chapters (43)
  1. Author’s Note with Content Warnings
  2. CHAPTER ONE
  3. CHAPTER TWO
  4. CHAPTER THREE
  5. CHAPTER FOUR
  6. CHAPTER FIVE
  7. CHAPTER SIX
  8. CHAPTER SEVEN
  9. CHAPTER EIGHT
  10. CHAPTER NINE
  11. CHAPTER TEN
  12. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  13. CHAPTER TWELVE
  14. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  15. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  16. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  17. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  18. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  19. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  20. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  21. CHAPTER TWENTY
  22. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  23. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  31. CHAPTER THIRTY
  32. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  33. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  41. CHAPTER FORTY
  42. EPILOGUE
  43. Acknowledgments

“It’s all right.” The Reverend waves me inside his car, forgiving my mistake like the cheerful, vaguely sinister stepdad he’s always been to me. No choice left, I climb into the passenger seat and allow myself to be alone with the Reverend—Ricky’s possible attacker.

“Stick together,” Drew warned. “You’re less of a target if you’re together.”

And now I’m alone.

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY

ONE CAME BACK

We speed out of camp, and I buckle into the Wrangler’s leather seat, which is severely cracked from years of merciless island sun. My brief survey for blunt objects with which I can batter the Reverend’s skull comes up empty. This Jeep isn’t functional for anything but camper transport: no tools or gear, only rows of empty bench seats and a yellow poncho slung over the headrest. The Reverend keeps his space immaculate, as usual.

Deeper down the forest road, we reach the shower by the boys’ cabin…except the Reverend keeps driving. Our hacked-clear trail banks right, away from the untamed grass along the lakeshore, and Nightlight as I know it vanishes into the rearview. Two more cabins zoom past, one of them most likely where the girls sleep. The view from my passenger-side window is obscured as the trail ascends a steep hill, sinking the lakeside cabins beneath us. The silence infecting our road trip has to be deliberate—the Reverend is messing with my nerves. His bulldog grin spreads beneath his sculpted beard as he increases speed, and our vehicle climbs the rest of the way up the incline to a grassy cliff—the island’s highest point I recognized from Briggs’s classroom. Beneath the clifftop, a narrow jungle river coils through a moss-strewn gully and ends at a grand waterfall that spills onto Lake Monteverde. Far below, the river crashes and mists onto a bed of black-green stones, each the size of a car. The drop would be enough to break anyone’s back…

But according to Drew, Ricky was attacked in California, not at Nightlight.

It still doesn’t mean I’m in the clear. A few days ago, I was staring at a soybean field, and now I’m about to be thrown off an island cliff by my reverend. It’s so ludicrous, my panic might turn into laughter.

At the summit, there are no trees. We’re bare to the sun and the vast, churning sea, now visible and stretching for miles toward the horizon. I truly am on an isolated island; the sudden tangibility of this reality strikes my chest like I’ve been walloped with a dodgeball.

I have to get away from the Reverend.