“Well, that’s ’cuz there might be snitches in our cabin.”

“So, are we supposed to just stay here forever?” I ask, forcing myself to speak above a whisper. In my paranoia, I imagine Briggs, Ramona, and the Reverend all hovering behind my shoulder, ready to bop me with a rolled-up newspaper.

“Connor!” Darcy giggles, shoving me like I’ve said something hilarious. Gray-shirted staff members sneer in our direction as they dump their trays with the lunch ladies and exit the Gulch. Darcy has put me so on edge, I want to crawl up the ceiling like Spider-Man and hide in the rafters. “You arrived ready to stir the pot, didn’t you? I couldn’t believe my ears last night when you started mouthing back to the Reverend about Ricky Hannigan, of all people.”

Noise and oxygen leave the Gulch, and my attention narrows to a pinhole—it’s only Darcy and me left in the whole universe. “What do you know about Ricky?”

“You could probably tell me a lot more than I could tell you.” Darcy pulls a folded wad of paper from her pocket. “Nightlight is just like school, only you’re watched more closely. Question is: In school, you ever get into trouble? Like, if you were passed a note,”—she slides the folded paper across the table, her fingers pressed on top—“would you unfold it out in the open for people to see, or would you find a way to read it later, nice and private?”

My heart whams against my ribcage. I knew the answer to her question halfway through the asking. Vicky and I are masters of texting during class. I could text under my desk without once looking away from the teacher—never made a single autocorrect error and my phone was never confiscated. The only person to ever successfully separate me from my phone was Mom, and that was only because I decided to stop keeping secrets about myself. A mistake I won’t repeat. With unblemished confidence, I say, “I don’t get caught.”

Darcy lifts her fingers from the folded note. Immediately, I drop Ricky’s Playbill on top of it and slide both items back to the safety of my lap. She scoops our piled-high plates into her arms, and we nod to each other. Molly doesn’t know what to make of either of us.

“Any of this gets back to me, I’ll deny it,” Darcy says. Archie and another gray-shirt stalk past us on their way out, but Darcy gives them a Gulch-friendly smile. “Church is up next,” she says once the men are gone. “Then a class called Home Life Behavior. We’ll talk again, but not until class. Do not approach me before I approach you.”

Darcy vanishes our plates through the saloon doors into the kitchen, and pleasurable anxiety whirls through my skull. She knows something about Ricky.

“Well, what’s it say?” Molly asks, back to whispering. Underneath the table, I unfurl Darcy’s note and hide it in the middle of the Playbill’s pages like I’m shuffling a deck of cards. If anyone catches me with the Playbill, who gives a shit? It was in my backpack, so they’ve already seen it and determined it’s nothing. Briggs walks past, and my arm trembles with the memory of his taser shock. When my kidnapper finally departs, I open the Playbill—deep-breathing until my hands stop shaking—and find Darcy’s secret message: