All in black, the Reverend puffs his chest like a massive, ominous raven. The man thundering scripture before me is the same red-throated preacher I’ve known since seventh grade, but the familiarity is oddly comforting. The pews are the same pews back home—my mom could be sitting right behind me. Church wasn’t always a storm cloud in my life. When I was twelve and we’d recently moved to town, Mom and I helped out at every church function. The others in Ambrose clocked us for southern trailer trash cluttering up their “you betcha” little farming village, but we managed to carve a little place for ourselves in the Reverend’s congregation where we were something close to wanted. Perhaps more like needed. Mom thrives when she feels needed, and at church, she’s indispensable. Back then, Christmas was my favorite time to help; Mom would bake her gingerbread cupcakes, the air smelled strongly of the Reverend’s sugar plum tea, and the chapel would be warmly lit—making the snow-covered fields outside shimmer violet in the dusk. Last but not least, I got to perform in and run the Nativity play. At twelve years old, finally, my chance to direct! Mom cheered my curtain call and took me to get any video game I wanted. She didn’t just love me back then, she liked me. So did the Reverend. Ambrose looked at me and saw a mouthy, scuffed-up rat, but to Mom and the Reverend, I was their darling boy, a gleeful little chatterbox, ecstatic to find myself the center of attention.

I don’t know when it happened, but one day, I woke up and wasn’t their BFF anymore.

Now I’m the enemy.

“Ten lepers with nowhere to go,” the Reverend chants behind his pulpit at Nightlight. “Ten lepers cleansed as pure as snow. One came back to give thanks to God, but nine never returned.”

“We talk a lot about healing at Nightlight.” The Reverend raises his hands to a literally captive audience and continues: “In Luke, Jesus met ten men with leprosy. They yelled out, ‘Jesus, hello, Jesus, take pity on us!’ Jesus told them to drag themselves over to the priests, and as they went, they were healed.” The Reverend makes ten plucking gestures in the air, as if he’s removing each invisible leper’s affliction. “One came back to Jesus, one of the healed lepers, and praised God for returning him to good health. Jesus, in one of his moods,”—a jittery chuckle rises from the pews—“Jesus said, ‘Wait, but there’s only one of you. Didn’t we heal all ten lepers? Where are the other nine?’

“Where are the others?” The Reverend descends his stage, meeting Lacrishia’s eyes and then Drew’s; their heads drop in unison, lowered by the weight of his attention. The Reverend stalks his pews like a blackbird surveying its choice of roadkill. “Nightlight has healed many people. But where are they?” He glances at Briggs, who huddles in the open doorframe next to Archie, the tattling guard. “You came back. Where are your fellow campers?” Briggs’s eyes drop and glisten as if his heart was suddenly stung. “When you current campers are healed, which of you will come back to thank God?” One by one, the campers turn away as the Reverend approaches as a deathly shadow. The Beginner boys crumple in their seats, a trio of shoulders wilting like flowers in a cold snap. The Reverend’s presence is thrumming with wicked electricity.