“Well…shouldn’t being a guy, whatever, be a good thing here? Isn’t that the point?”

“The point”—Marcos finishes and stands—“is control.”

Control. Interesting word choice.

While Marcos retrieves his knapsack, I unzip my JanSport and right away find Ricky’s Playbill for South Pacific. NIGHTLIGHT, it says. Well, here I am at Nightlight, Ricky—Home, Sweet, Home. I fold the thing in half and pocket it for later; maybe there’s something else written inside, some other nasty surprise he needed to warn me about. I scan the Winner’s Wall one last time before departing with Marcos. In the daylight, the number of faces is overwhelming. An endless missing persons wall. How many of these kids were just as “missing” as Drew Schreiber, only not famous enough to warrant a GoFundMe? Through the chaos of names and photos, a pair of cold eyes stands out in a teenager with black, glue-spiked hair:

BEN BRIGGS. 2001 to 2002.

“It’s him!” I shout. “It’s Briggs. He was a camper.”

“I don’t think he ever wanted to leave,” Marcos says from the door. “Come on, we’re gonna miss our shower.”

A year. That angry dickhead spent a year of his life at Nightlight and then asked for more? “Put in the work and go home,” Briggs said. How much work did he put in? The boy in this picture is so pasty and nerdy, such a long way from the gymrat thug who hauled me down a flight of stairs, I can’t even do the mental geometry.

I hoist my knapsack and pay another nod of respect to Ricky at the doorway’s break in the wall. Near the very top, a scrap of corkboard hangs loose in the gap between the ceiling and Ricky’s picture. A strand of congealed yellow glue dangles off the cork like a live wire.

It’s a missing picture. Someone’s been removed from this wall.

CHAPTER TEN

TROPICAL TRIP

“Shower’s good today, boys,” Briggs announces to the row of campers queued behind Drew Schreiber. Around the rear of our cabin, an open-roofed, concrete beach shower surrounds a raised water tank. Just beyond it, Lake Monteverde lies as still as a mirror, as if there had never been a storm at all. As of last night, the wild beach grass lining the road had been drowned under inches of rain, but this morning, the land is as arid as a Texas backroad. “Damn equator sun,” Briggs grumbles as he mops his forehead with a hanky. “When it hits high noon, you’ll be fever-dreaming of winter.” My tongue is already the texture of crisp sandpaper—how much more merciless can it get?

“You each get one minute in the shower stall,” Briggs says, marching up the line. “And lather yourself up before you pull down the water. It saves you trouble.” As he passes, Briggs claps the model on his shoulder. “All right, Drew?” The boy blushes like he scored a gold star from Teacher, and the two of them exchange long stares before Briggs continues on toward the shower block.