I can still wake up next to him.

I’ll find my way out of here, and Ario’s family will take me in until I can smooth things over with my mom. I need to hurry though—like I told Mrs. Hannigan, Ario and I are running out of time before he disappears off to college. On the other hand, once he finds out what happened to me—what forcing me to come out too soon did—he’ll feel so bad, he’ll never glance at another boy when he gets to school.

Maybe I can turn this into a win, after all.

Marcos’s eyes remain closed, his glasses still draped over the bedrail. If I leave now, without my backpack, he definitely won’t spot me.

I pull back the cabin door’s rusting handle…and meet a firm deadbolt.

“Rise and shine, Nightlight,” the Reverend’s voice crackles from a speaker above the door. I yelp and topple backward in clumsy jumps. “The time is six-thirty. Breakfast is in one hour.”

Horn music drifts out of a decrepit, gunmetal-gray speaker as five boys leap from their beds and tuck their sheets with energetic, military precision. Before I can summon the will to trudge back to my bunk, my stomach explodes with an electrified thought: they’re children. Marcos is around my age, as is a handsome boy with long, blond surfer hair and obnoxiously clear skin, but the three others are tiny—thirteen at the oldest. Like a prison warden, Marcos addresses each of the young boys by name as he inspects their bed-making. The first boy, Owen Regis, is so dainty he has trouble opening his sheet wide enough to fold it. The next boy, Alan Gardner, is taller, but not by much. His freckled wrist hangs limply, absentmindedly, in midair until Marcos taps the telltale wrist with a rubber-tipped pointer.

“Oh my gosh,” Alan gasps, straightening his wrist, curling it over and over to make sure he shook all the gay out of it.

“It’s okay, you got it,” Marcos says, genuinely supportive. He brushes back his own sleep-mussed hair and pops a retainer out of his mouth and into a green, plastic snap case. Adorable. Marcos Carrillo may be the cabin snitch, but there’s just something about a big, tall cutie with correctional dentistry. I glance away, and only just in time—he turns, alert as a cat, as if he could feel the weight of my attention.

Ario never mentioned being gay would literally be as exhausting as Olympic swimming.

The last boy, Vance Olmos, is small, round, and copper skinned. He whistles along with the speaker’s jaunty classical music as he straightens his sheets, but Marcos crinkles his brow as if smelling something diseased. “Vance, you’re whistling,” he says.

Whistling over. Vance nods, grateful to be corrected.

Behind me, the cabin door unlatches and, once again, I jump. The screen swings open onto Ben Briggs, looking well rested in his black tank top with a plunging neckline that accentuates his impressive chest. “Everyone up and out,” Briggs orders. “Mr. Carrillo?”