Don’t tell him? The Reverend and I know each other, but I’ve never been a teacher’s pet and—now that he’s ruined my life for the second time—I’m not about to start.

“Wow, Marcos,” I say, “mixing spices into hot cocoa and quoting Wizard of Oz…you’re such a rebel.” He laughs again, so powerfully that it echoes across the lake. I fake-laugh along with him until a darker thought pulls at me. “You quote this to campers when they leave too?”

“Mmhmm.”

“So, how long have you been here?”

“Um…you look really tired. Let’s go in.”

Everyone at Nightlight speaks in creepy non-answers.

Marcos snaps his fingers as he extends a key ring from his shorts by a thin, retractable tether. He unlocks our cabin and holds the screen door open for me. As I stagger across the pitch-black threshold, Marcos opens a Zippo lighter and its little flame guides us inside the barracks. Six rows of bunk beds fill the boys’ lodge, but all of the blankets are tucked in, unoccupied. Everyone is at dinner, which is where I’d love to be, but the power of sleep is taking precedence. I crave the horizontal softness of one of these empty bunks.

“You’ll meet everyone else in the morning,” Marcos whispers as his smooth, cool hand grazes my elbow. I jerk away and am reminded again of Ario. “Sorry, I’m not supposed to touch the other boy campers except for handshakes, but you’re all worn out and, um, I don’t want you to, like, fall over in the dark.” Using the faintest possible touch, he pilots me toward my assigned lower bunk. But before I’m able to crash into this gorgeous bed, dozens of miniature faces smile from the wall. Pictures of teenagers—many, many pictures—stack together in neat rows from floor to ceiling. “I totally forgot! The Winner’s Wall.”

My shoes squish closer to the wall, and Marcos catches up with his lighter. Through the weak flame, a blur of signatures appears next to the photos. It’s too dark to read, but what is clear are the banners of encouragement hanging above:

Each photo is pasted onto a corkboard, which hooks onto the cabin walls themselves. Walls. Plural. The Winner’s Wall of faces wraps this wall, continues around the corner, and ends at the front door. 2017 jumps out from the blur. 2016. 2015. 2014. Each picture has a date and a signature, and as I move left, the dates get older. 2011. 2010. I step backward in time, Marcos following dutifully with his lighter. When we reach the two thousands and then the nineties, the pictures become larger, glossier prints. Frozen in the past, teenage boys in blue Nightlight shirts greet me: some smiling, some sad, and some even twinkle with a sinister glint in their eyes.

Repulsed, I advance. The pictures don’t just have one date—they have two. One reads 1997 to 1998. A year. Some of these boys spent an entire year at Nightlight? I want to claw the flesh off my face. I want to steal Marcos’s lighter and burn this cabin and the chapel and the jungle until everything is fire. Name follows name until the flame reaches the door. The pictures continue on the other side of the doorway, but my attention remains fixed on one in particular: a Polaroid, its colors bleached from decades of humidity and sun. In this picture, a handsome, sandy-haired young man smiles with apple cheeks. Yet the creases under his eyes display a severely depleted child older than his years.