For now, I have to let go of Ricky.

My heart plummets like an elevator at the idea of living here another three months if I fail their review. When I make it back home, I’ll find Ario’s social media flooded with pictures of him and some new college boyfriend—someone with a dynamic, alliterative name like Ash (Ario and Ash! Ariash!), and their Instas packed with hashtags and sponsored by Crest Whitestrips.

Nightlight will have to be the performance of my closeted career.

Inside the chapel, two standing candelabras remain lit because even the harsh sun can’t crack through these filthy inches-thick windows. Each pane of glass is stained with an amber sheen, dousing the chapel in a warm, yet ugly hue—as if gold could rot. Two battery-powered air conditioners the size of lunchboxes blow a merciful breeze onto the congregation, while a third aims directly at the Reverend.

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.”