As the lines to her office grew shorter, Marianne waited for the inevitable seriousness and buckling down to take over, for the teachers’ strong personalities—at least Tom’s and Lorraine’s—to win out, for people to reevaluate why they had come and what they hoped to accomplish here. But that wasn’t how things went down—or, at least, it didn’t happen the way she expected. By the end of the first week, the Ranch had clubs, activities, initiatives, all student-organized—more than Marianne could remember from two years at NYU. There was a running and exercise club founded by Davonte, a knitting and prayer circle that met after supper in the dining room, a sunrise prayer and a sunset prayer. Someone drove into Bradenton to buy lawn games—croquet, badminton, bocce—from the Walmart, and there were after-dinner games nightly. There was a discussion group that was taking on the question of smoking in common areas (some thought it should be banned entirely, while other people thought that was infringing on their God-given liberty). There was a group that convened to discuss biblical allusions in contemporary literature, and another group devoted to the answer (not the question, Marianne noticed) of self-publishing. There was a small group that had met to discuss outreach possibilities—maybe conducting literacy workshops at the prison in Tampa. They had another reading on Saturday night, a boisterous event punctuated by yeses and amens and foot-stomping, which Marianne watched from the back of the room.

“I can’t wait for tomorrow,” Janine told her after the reading. She was the founding member of the Tidy Up club and could be counted on to organize the leftovers, wash the dishes, and put away the chairs efficiently and uncomplainingly. Marianne thought it was too bad that Janine hadn’t read any of her own work—Manfred had taken forever to read his three poems, and Davonte read a similarly long, if strangely intelligible, PG-13 section of his novel—but Janine didn’t look disappointed to be on cleanup duty as the readers congratulated one another near the podium.

“What’s tomorrow?” asked Marianne, dumping uneaten pretzels into the trash.

Janine frowned. “We’re not having a service? I mean, I understood that we were all settling in on the first Sunday, but …”

“Oh, church,” said Marianne. “Church, of course.”

“I know there are different denominations,” said Janine. “But I think it would be better to have everyone together. We could have a folk service, with music. We have the fellowship group, they could lead us in prayer. And Donald is a very talented singer.”

“Right,” said Marianne, shaking out the tablecloth. How had she failed to consider that these people would want to have church? “Good idea.”

“I’ll start telling people,” said Janine. “I think a nine o’clock service is a good time, don’t you?”