“It’s your birthday?” I ask.

Briggs stares, baffled for a moment, before remembering the card. His lips harden as he replies, “Something like that. Grab your diary.”

Never mind the chitchat then. I tap the unbroken spine of my Expulsion Diary until, finally, Briggs closes his folder and retrieves a small tape recorder. He clicks a red button and two spindles begin to turn. “This is Ben Briggs,” he dictates. “Day one of the Expulsion of Connor Major.”

“Expulsion? Sounds like an exorcism,” I say, doing a superb job of sounding casual, even though my heart is rattling against Ario’s recorder. Briggs places the running tape recorder under his chair and grins disarmingly, the way he fooled me into trusting that he wasn’t really kidnapping me. No, no, no, not kidnapping. We’re taking a relaxing, tropical holiday.

This is a man who knows the power of his own smile.

“Mr. Major,” Briggs says, “I want you to know that even though you’re family friends with Reverend Packard, you’re receiving the exact same care as everyone else.”

“Even the kids?” I ask. “Those ten-year-olds?”

“They’re around thirteen, actually.”

“How come you call them ‘Beginners’?”

“Beginners are campers, ages twelve to fourteen. Middle school, basically. You are an Under: our high schoolers fifteen to eighteen. Then there are the Overs: post-grads. Any age, really, but the director gets nervous about…older men, so we cap the age limit at twenty-two.”

“Twelve to twenty-two?” Off Briggs’s nod, I continue: “So, is Drew an Over or an Under?”

If he’s an Under, you’re in deep shit, Mr. Briggs.

Briggs’s smile falters and his gnarled fist moves to slap off the recording. But instead of stopping it, his fingers hover an inch above the spinning tape. He controlled himself—the point is control—and once more, he calls upon his smile. “An oddly specific question,” he says. “Mr. Schreiber is twenty. He’s an Over.”

“That’s good news,” I say, not blinking. A thunderclap of scarlet rage passes through Briggs’s eyes. So, it’s true about him and Drew. Briggs knows I know, and now he has a small taste of the panic I’ve been living with since my mom ordered him to abduct me.

I’ll stop poking now. It’s been fun, but I need to be a good camper to pass my review.

“So, how are you getting on here?” Briggs says, returning to business.

“How are you getting on?” When Dad bothered himself to call the house, that’s how he’d ask about school: “How are you getting on?” Not well, bitch. Anxiety spills slowly out of my heart like air from a pricked balloon. Somehow, I manage a shrug. “It’s the first day. I ran drills with you…whatever…”

“You think this is horseshit, don’t you?”

“No!…But is my mom really paying you guys—?”

“Your mum will pay anything if the Reverend can return a straight son to her.”

Scalding heat spreads down my back. Breathe, Major. I want to scream that she’ll never have a straight son and she’s taken money we can’t afford and flushed it down the toilet.