He smiled and shrugged. “You know, more people are recognizing me, too. Since I lost the weight. But you know what? It doesn’t bother me, because I know who I am. I’m secure.” He thumped his chest, above the heart. “Hey,” he said, sitting up and turning back to face the street. “What’s all that noise?”

“Protesters,” she said.

“Shit,” Davonte said, swinging his legs over the side of his chaise like he was about to run away. “How—”

“They’re not here for you,” Marianne said. She was tired. “Not everything is about you.”

“Oh,” he said. “Good.”

He didn’t ask any more questions, and Marianne didn’t offer any explanations. A Channel 13 News truck had just pulled in to the Kangaroo parking lot, and the chants were growing louder.

14

Janine was in a state. For days she had been unable to concentrate on the revision of a single poem, even though it was almost time to return to the Ranch, and her inability to revise, as Lorraine had assigned, meant that it was impossible to start any new work. This had never been a problem before—poems just materialized, usually at the rate of one or two a day. But it was all dried up in the August heat. She could not remember the last word she’d written or the last cooling drop of rain. Writing in the sunroom was unbearable: even with the air-conditioning at full blast, she baked like a turtle, so she’d moved her notebooks to the kitchen, which had other distractions, like the question of what to make for dinner and the blaring television, tuned to the Weather Channel for days.

Janine was also distracted by the request she’d received that morning for a poem to post to the school website.

Our school is under attack, Regina Somers wrote in an email. Perhaps you saw the article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune? It was a hack job, Janine, journalistically irresponsible, that suggested that the work that you do in class is not serious or somehow is inferior to work by non-Christian writers. That’s why I’m reaching out to a select few students whose writing will showcase the best of the real work that happens at Genesis Inspirational Writing Ranch. I understand from your teachers that you are enormously talented, and I remember from our conversation that you write about the sanctity of life, so I was wondering if you would be willing to share your writing with us, so that we might share it with the world?