When I emerge from the mobile home’s shaded hollow into the open courtyard, cloud cover has already masked the sun. My heart shakes as thunder smashes through a darkening sky. The courtyard is empty. The gray-shirts are still in whatever ramshackle cabins they haunt while the rest of us play house, and none of the other campers follow me—the first useful thing any of them have done. At the end of the courtyard, the plunk-plunk-plunk of a ukulele drifts from the bird’s nest watchtower. Karaoke Bill rests his mud-caked boots on the tower ledge, a bent-brim cowboy hat pushed low over his eyes as he reclines and strums. He won’t be able to spot me through his siesta.

Christ, I wish I had my phone and some earbuds right now. Bill’s ukulele reminds me of how brutally quiet this camp has been. In the real world, I wouldn’t step outside without some kind of soundtrack for the day—music sets the pace for my heartbeat like a metronome, and without it, I’m adrift. Unfocused. Every peep of nature digs under my fingernails.

Beneath the village sign for Pura Vida, an arrow points further down the road toward Ambrose Chapel and Clinic. I depart as noiselessly as possible, sidestepping the crunchy gravel by stomping through mounds of underbrush surrounding Bill’s tower. I already walked this path to church this morning; it should be less than ten minutes to the chapel and another five to the clinic. Molly and Miss Manners can’t have much of a head start, but they don’t have to sneak around.

Molly, don’t do anything nuts.

The brambly underbrush makes a full sprint impossible. Wild roots curl along the dirt road as wide as river snakes. As carefully as I tread, my doofus foot still catches the edge of a raised root, so I sling my arm around a palm tree to avoid eating total shit. My grip on the bark falters under my sweat-slicked palms, but I manage to stay upright. Blood surges to my head, giving me the push I need to launch onward. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. On my next breath, a pleasing whiff of hibiscus floats from the pink blooms dotting the jungle’s edge. Don’t these flowers know better than to be so flamingly colorful in a place with such a gray mission statement? On that topic, the sky is more cooperative—it’s lost almost all of its blue. Bill’s ukulele fades into the distance on another rumble of thunder.

I reach the chapel, and my heartbeat slows—two Beginners, one with dark, ponytailed hair and the other silvery-blond, press their faces to the support stilts raising the structure. “Take the wall,” the Reverend ordered Marcos, and Marcos obliged. Sick. The punished Beginners have been left alone, but they remain dutifully motionless. They might as well be scarecrows.

I pass unnoticed.