“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.”

“For what?” I ask.

“Uh, you know…choking you with a stick on the beach.”

“Oh my God, don’t worry about it,” I laugh with a mouthful of home fries. Our dramatic arrival on the shores of Nightlight Island feels like ten lifetimes ago.

Over Molly’s shoulder, Karaoke Bill shambles between our tables, each step of his mud-stained combat boots leaving a filthy trail. Through tangles of white-gray hair, he has foam-padded headphones shoved over his ears and hums along to a selection of his own private music. I can’t make out the song, but I miss my earbuds like I’m missing a limb.