Ouch, Mom.

Honestly, I’m not shocked the Reverend overheard Molly and me whispering. The man knows all—things he should have no way of knowing. Like Ario’s name. Where he lives.

“Welcome to my real church,” the Reverend says with sweeping, carnival barker hand motions. “Nightlight Ministries has succeeded in conversion therapy for almost fifty years. You’re in good hands. Please, take a cup, warm yourselves!” The young woman in the Dreamgirls wig summons a smile and begins doling out cups. “This is Darcy Culpepper, one of your fellow campers. She’s made her famous cocoa for you, isn’t that lovely?”

I take a cup for Molly and one for myself. We both stare into the sweet broth for long, suspicious seconds. They wouldn’t bring us all this way just to poison us…would they? I bring myself to glance again at Sad Puppy Boy for some kind of signal that it’s safe to drink. He must see this hesitation a lot because he nods knowingly, and my cocoa is history in a single gulp. The drink is nothing special, but it does stop my stomach from swimming. Molly, satisfied the cocoa isn’t making me grip my throat in poisoned terror, tosses hers back.

“You change the recipe?” asks Archie, the tattling kidnapper, as he shakes the remaining drops into his open maw. Darcy and Sad Puppy Boy freeze, their legs rumbling like paint-can shakers.

“It tastes spicy, like Halloween,” Briggs agrees, sniffing his empty cup.

The Reverend pivots to the two campers. Dreadful silence follows until Sad Puppy Boy, in a gentle Texan accent, says, “Darcy was sick of the old recipe. I gave her cinnamon to add. Kind of a spice blend…cinnamon and nutmeg, cardamom pods—”

“You were in the kitchen?” the Reverend asks, lunging forward. My heart squeezes for the petrified boy as his relentless finger-snapping quickens.

“Yes, sir…b-but she was having a hard time. The fire wasn’t working right…she can’t boil water, sir. And new folks coulda been in any minute—”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Darcy begs under her breath.

“Marcos, you are not allowed in the kitchen, unless it’s to supervise,” the Reverend interrupts, his tiger’s eyes lingering on the Puppy-Eyed Chef. “You’re her boss. She cooks; you’re her boss. HOW DARE YOU cook for her, especially since you know how much she struggles with the program? Take the wall.”

“Yes, sir,” Marcos says, retreating. As ordered, he presses his nose to the chapel’s back wall, so motionless in the shadows that he might be a sleeping bat. Both his hands ball into fists, probably to prevent any more nervous snapping. Molly squeezes my wrist with little signals of What the hell; did you just catch that?

Of course I caught that. Take the wall? The Reverend is a psycho.

The Reverend returns to us with a friendly grin, as if he didn’t just punish a boy for stirring cinnamon into cocoa. “This is probably a shock for you, Connor,” the Reverend says, but not directly at me—it’s all part of his grand preacher performance. “Being here with me and the wonderful people of Nightlight, you may start to wonder, ‘Why an island? Couldn’t I operate Nightlight somewhere in America?’ The answer is ‘I wish it were so.’ But the world has squeezed me out. They don’t want me talking like this to you. The modern world has created a net of allowances—tolerances—that has, frankly, forced kids like yourself to fall through the cracks into a life that runs nowhere.”