A nervous twitch interrupts Marcos’s smile like static. “I have to,” he says.

Vance’s shoulders collapse, and he mopes away to his devastated breakfast. Write about him crying? Marcos comes off as this sweet, gooey-pie kind of guy, but he’s ready to report this (admittedly annoying) kid for…what? Crying? Everyone at Nightlight is competing to gross me out the most, and so far, everyone is winning.

“Enjoy your breakfast, campers,” Bill’s voice reverberates from the watchtower’s speakers. Marcos and I turn to the old man and shield our eyes against the sun rising over the jungle canopy beyond. “I’m Karaoke Bill,” he coos into a microphone, “and this has been your morning Karaoke Bill’s Opening Number.”

“Let’s go, I’m starving,” Marcos says, tapping my shoulder.

“Not supposed to touch me with your hands,” I whisper.

“You’re right! I’m so sorry.” His hand curls away, fingers snapping in an anxious loop.

“No, I was just messing with you—” But Marcos is already scuttling across the courtyard, his long runner’s legs making incredible strides away from me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone look like such a frightened puppy as Marcos Carrillo.

I make it three steps across the courtyard before Karaoke Bill’s voice stops me: “Today’s Opening Number was ‘I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair’ from South Pacific.”

South Pacific.

Sailors dance around a tropical island…

Karaoke Bill played a selection from the musical on Ricky’s Playbill. Memories flash, as quick and vicious as bacon grease spitting from a pan: Ricky’s watery eyes try to warn me, but his mouth won’t let him. A hospital bed lies empty. Playbills hang off fishing wire. The room stinks of too many flowers…death bouquets.

“Whatever the Reverend tells you…it wasn’t an accident.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE SOUTH PACIFIC GULCH

The cafeteria is a hive of activity. Swinging saloon doors separate the main dining hall from the kitchen, where a trio of darkly sunburnt lunch ladies scurry around each other. One scrubs cast-iron pans while the others deliver fresh breakfast plates onto an “Order up!” windowsill. Next to the ordering window, a magnetic board displays the day’s menu and declares, Let’s have a good summer!—except one of the o’s in good fell down, so now it just reads, Let’s have a god summer!

Basically.

Above the double screen door entrance, a draping banner reads, THE SOUTH PACIFIC GULCH—South Pacific again. Ricky’s Playbill won’t stop telling my future.

The Gulch’s country-western theming is reinforced by upbeat string band music from Karaoke Bill’s watchtower outside. Strangely, it reminds me of home—a shithole, but a familiar shithole. Familiarity is what I crave most. These other campers aren’t fellow queers, they’re aliens—cold, remote life-forms of a hostile planet where I’ve found myself marooned. Molly and I spot each other at the breakfast line. She’s also an alien, but a more familiar alien than the rest. We were shackled together in a boat, we escaped into the ocean, and we watched as we were forced to delete the most special people in the world from our phones. A witness to the worst moment in your life can’t help but generate some level of intimacy. With no better options, Molly and I wordlessly, instinctively, gravitate to the same table.