Miss Manners pivots herself sideways to let them through and waves to the gray-shirts to do the same, orders they follow without question. I raise my spear to cover Marcos as he leads Briggs up the clinic stairs. As Briggs passes Miss Manners, she hisses, “I knew you’d flop on us. Your boyfriend’s waiting for you in there. He smells realllllll nice.”

Behind me, several people gasp. As Briggs begins to crumple, I shout, “Marcos, keep him moving!” Marcos abides and hustles Briggs inside, who moans all the way. Ignited and activated, I meet Miss Manners face-to-face again. “What should we talk about while we wait? Whatcha gonna do tomorrow with no campers here?”

“Welp,” she says, not backing down. “You’re taking our only boat off this island, so not a whole lot.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll make sure people know exactly where to find you.”

She grins with perfect lipstick and not a drop of sweat. “I cannot wait for you to try.”

“Eager to get to prison?”

“No, Connor, I mean I can’t wait for you to tell everyone. I want you to tell them everything, as many people as possible. Because I can’t wait for that curtain to fall in your eyes when you realize what I’ve been trying to tell the Reverend for years: no one cares. A cover-up was always the wrong move, I’ve been saying it from the jump. You bring Bill back, somebody’s gonna pay that man’s legal fees. They’ll say, ‘He’s been stuck on that island twenty-two years, no trial, he’s suffered enough.’ And Bill will be out on the street, same as you, free as birds.”

A bone-deep chill erodes my marrow as Miss Manners’s hypothetical invades the darkest corners of my mind.

“Y’all need to understand optics,” she continues. “This is why the Reverend messed up. Why it was a mistake to have Nightlight run by former campers. You’re all queers. And queers think the world runs on their little dramas, those anxieties that mean everything to you and not a darn thing to us.” Behind her, the gray-shirts chuckle cruelly while Archie trembles, as stung as the rest of us. “Bill’s gonna be on TV. I’ll make sure he’s a hero.”

“And I’ll make sure everyone remembers he’s a cop killer,” I say. “How’s that for optics?”

Miss Manners cringes as if she’s just chewed something nasty. “Bill, if you hadn’t killed that patrolman—”

“But he did, Blanche!” Vance shouts triumphantly behind Bill, who’s still swaying and drooling in place. “He did kill the patrolman!”

“My name isn’t Blanche or Carol!” she says in a fit.

“She thinks I actually think her name’s Blanche.” Vance and Alan sputter with private, uncontrolled laughter. “Oh my god, pathetic—”