I don’t blame Molly for choking me with a branch. My out-of-the-blue Nightlight warning scared her. “Tell me who they are.” I have no idea, but the little voice in my head whispers: Nobody good.

“New recruits are here!” a woman’s voice beckons from the lobby hallway.

New recruits? Recruited into what? Is this a cult?

“Quickly, Ramona,” Briggs calls. “We’ve been traveling all day. The lodge beds are calling.”

“I heard you come in,” her voice returns, steadfastly gentle. Heels click closer as Ramona emerges lugging a leather doctor’s bag, her smile bursting with capped white teeth. She sports a full face of makeup, and bouncy, fake hair tumbles to her shoulders; she could be the judge of a Lil’ Miss beauty pageant—gorgeous but grotesque. Strangest of all, her butter-yellow sundress is patterned with rows of bright lemons…yet the hem is tattered and black with filth. Ramona doesn’t mind wearing a ratty dress, but apparently, shabbiness in others bothers her: she stares disapprovingly at the dark mud caking my feet. “You didn’t give this boy shoes?” she asks in her plantation lilt. Her attention darts toward Molly’s similarly stained feet. “Ben, these children have no shoes. You marched them in the jungle half a mile.”

Briggs snorts. “Oh, they had shoes, but they lost them in the bay. These two are runaways. Jumped ship a meter from shore.”

“Most of them run. You have backup shoes.” Ramona shakes her head as she turns to us. “Good evening. I’m Ramona Hayward, your nurse and sometimes-teacher during your stay at Nightlight. Before we send you into camp, there are a few tests I have to perform. I wish I could let you scrub up and send y’all to bed”—her heavily lashed eyes linger again on my muddy clompers—“because you really need it, but I can’t. Not yet. Let’s start by refreshing my memory: tell me your names, ages, and where you hail from.” She clicks open her pen and smiles me down first. Cotton mouth is all that comes to me. “All right, don’t let Mr. Briggs’s temper lead you on. No one’s here to hurt you.”

“…I’m Connor Major. Seventeen years old, from Ambrose, Illinois.”

“Excellent, Connor. We’ll be counting sheep before you know it.”

Ramona pivots to Molly, but my new friend weighs giving out her name like it’s a government secret. Finally, she sighs: “I’m Molly Partridge. Sixteen. From Tucson, Arizona.”

“Give your phones to me.” Ramona reaches an open palm to Molly, and she gives up hers without hesitation. Ugh, we just got these back. I wipe a finger across my phone’s rainy display before begrudgingly handing it over. I’ve been through a lot to get that damn thing back in my hand, and now it’s gone again. “This would go much faster if I could do it for you, but unfortunately, Nightlight insists you take this first step in the recovery process yourself.” Ramona swipes to unlock both phones, holds them out to us, and Molly and I tap in our passwords. With a tap-tap-tap, Ramona opens my camera roll. “Connor, delete every picture you have of the shirtless boy from your lock screen.”