I thought I came out because Ario demanded it, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe I did it because the thought of staying closeted and becoming the Reverend someday scared the fingernails off me. The more I learn about Stanley and Ricky, the less I know. Ricky was out and the Reverend wasn’t. Did Stanley attack Ricky because he was jealous that Ricky escaped Nightlight’s mind cult, but he couldn’t?

Whatever happened to Ricky, he spent his dying day writing two messages—one to me (HELP CONNOR) and one to the Reverend (There is still time) that have set the two of us on a collision course with each other.

“Did you ever guess about me?” the Reverend whispers, almost croaking, as our Wrangler hurtles through a tunnel of green.

“Of course,” I reply, never taking my eyes off the twisting path.

“How?” He almost sounds offended, like an expert thief desperate to know how he could’ve been caught with all his genius, careful planning.

“Planet Earth. It’s this really cool nature show. All about how animals behave. People are basically the same.”

“You have my curiosity…how?”

“The wolf and the calf. It’s kind of a sad episode, but really important if you like understanding how people work. The wolf runs at this herd of animals. I can’t remember what kind they are. They get scared and scatter, start running. But the wolf’s not trying to get ’em all…just one. Everything’s so crazy, everybody running, that the calf gets split up from his mother. It’s alone. It runs, but it’s never fast enough. Wolf eats the calf.”

“Ah,” the Reverend says, maneuvering each wild bend in the road with confidence and grace. “So, I’m the wolf and you’re the calf. You think I plan to eat you?”

“No,” I reply. “You’re the calf.”

“Then who’s the wolf?”

“The world.”

“Really?” The Reverend’s breath catches in his throat, as if surprised by an unexpected knot of emotion. I’ve spent the past hour so tense, the truth falls out of my lips faster than I realize I’m thinking it. The Reverend’s response proves my hunch is correct—he has always seen things as him against the world. Him against me, him against Ricky, him against whoever brought him here as a camper. There’s only one good guy in the Reverend’s story. “Very interesting, Mr. Major, but that doesn’t answer how you guessed about me.”

“You’re this big man in town. Always helping everybody. Not just with spiritual stuff—their Meals on Wheels, their car repairs, their jobs, their little dumbass problems, my mom’s damn love life even. I know you. If you make yourself invaluable, get people depending on you for every tiny thing…makes it harder for them to cut you out if they find out you’re queer.”