Spittle flies off my lips as he continues to press the taser down like a tongue depressor. “If Drew asks you any follow-up questions,” he says, “about his aunt or her website or any attempts to find this camp, you go stupid. You don’t know what he’s talking about, the stress of your first day is getting to you, blah blah, that sort of thing.” His scowl contorts with a sudden, enormous fear. “Drew stays HERE—you do anything to change that, and I’ll make sure you never leave. Your one week will turn into six months, a year, two years. You’ll be a teacher by the time I’m done with you. I don’t care if your son never sees you again—mine hasn’t, and look how I turned out. We’ll be two deadbeat dads working the Nightlight grind. Is this clear?”

Gagging on his taser, I nod shakily. Finally, Briggs slides the weapon from my mouth, pulling out a string of saliva with it, and I choke on a fresh intake of air. He holsters the weapon—without wiping it clean—as I groan deep, grateful breaths. “Don’t be clever,” he whispers, his boyish cheer returning. “Ricky Hannigan was clever, and look where that got him. Ricky suffered.”

“You didn’t know Ricky. He was happy,” I say, regathering strength. Why I choose now, in this deadly moment, to defend the quality of Ricky Hannigan’s life is beyond me. Maybe I’m just tired of being threatened today. “Ricky was free. The Reverend told me he even married a man.”

Briggs’s dark glare brightens at this information, but it isn’t comforting. “So, the Reverend told you about Rigo?” he asks, his smile twisting with sadistic glee.

“Yeah…”

“Did he tell you how Rigo died?”

“Wh…? Rigo’s dead?” Wind blows into the office, brisk and unpleasant, from between the anti-suicide bars. “It didn’t last long,” the Reverend remarked about Ricky’s marriage.

Someone killed Ricky’s husband…and then tried to kill him too.

Briggs hops out of the classroom with a kick in his step, pausing long enough to order me to pick up the fallen notebooks on my way out. Then, he’s gone. Silently, numbly, I stagger across the office’s filthy barn floor until I reach the diary pile. As I bend down, my back screams where it hit the whiteboard railing. In spite of the pain, I collect the diaries into a neat stack…but my weakened fingers open with a will of their own, dropping them all again.

Alone on my knees, I cry. I don’t care who hears.