Across rows of empty tables, Marcos giggles with Darcy and Lacrishia. They sang the breakfast blessing loudest, prompting a telling-off from Karaoke Bill: “A little less gospel, thank you!”

Three Beginner boys eat with three just-as-shockingly young Beginners from the girls’ cabin: two of them white and husky, the third taller and dark skinned. Bill dines with Briggs, Archie, and five other men—all in gray staff T-shirts. Ramona, still in her hideous, lemon-print dress from last night, eats politely by herself and dabs her lips with a napkin after each bite. After the Reverend, I hate Ramona the most. Her smug smile when she forced me to delete Ario is tattooed onto my brain.

The remaining table is for Drew Schreiber—all alone, as requested. He digs into a parfait with strawberries and blueberries, the rest of us with our oily eggs and sausage. I didn’t notice any parfait on the breakfast menu. What makes him so special?

“Molly,” I whisper, “look who’s staring at Calvin Klein.” My zombified friend stabs eggs around on her plate until she finally looks up, her head tilted like a confused puppy. “Follow my thumb.” I make an air gun. My index finger points at nothing, but my thumb points at Drew—a trick my dad taught me when you want to point at someone without them noticing. The supermodel sends a smoldering look toward the staff table, and Briggs returns a panther-like stare. It’s impossible, but Molly and I are the only ones who notice or care that these two are eye-banging each other in front of the entire Gulch. Does the Reverend really allow one of his ex-gay employees to openly flirt with boys half his age?

But the Reverend isn’t at breakfast. When the cat’s away, Briggs will play.

Briggs and Drew aren’t the only ones caught in a mating ritual. Marcos can’t peel his wounded animal eyes off me. Across the room, he spies me through the gap between Lacrishia and Darcy. Marcos slowly munches his sausage link and stares, entranced, not realizing what he’s doing. Marcos’s attention feels like a sweater on a hot day, a warm, comforting sensation that grows stifling and more cumbersome the longer I sit with it.

He’s really sweet and a professional dimple operator, but the last thing I’m here to do is flirt.

So far I’ve only been stealing glances at Marcos, but once I turn my full attention on him, he leaps backward in his bench as if I’d lit his eyeballs on fire. His sausage drops to his plate as a coughing fit overtakes him. Darcy and Lacrishia lunge forward to help, but he waves them off, gulping down an entire glass of water. As if psychically linked, his humiliation fills my thoughts—people caught me staring at another boy. They know. Everyone saw.

Marcos slaps his broad chest to clear it and doesn’t glance up from his plate again. I don’t want him to be embarrassed; he probably hates himself enough already.

“Hey,” Molly says, interrupting my guilt spiral, “I need to say sorry.”