The aluminum chairs were arranged in a circle tonight. Last time I’d been in this room was for orientation, and they’d been in front of the podium. You couldn’t attend any of the classes, lectures, or retreats until you’d completed their orientation. You weren’t even allowed in the building unless you were registered to do it, and everyone wore name tags on lanyards around their necks once they were inside, so there was no mistaking who you were. There wasn’t any official security, but you couldn’t miss the large, bouncer-looking dudes roaming the hallways and peeking into their classrooms. They’d had to tighten up their open-door policy after they’d started receiving death threats from someone in the community.

“I’m not sure I want you going back there,” Scott had said after he’d heard about it on the news.

I had dismissed him, not even entertaining the idea of not going back to their campus. None of the threats were serious. It was only talk. “It’s just the small-town mentality of people not liking change and being resistant to anything that doesn’t fall within their traditional ideologies.”

He had grabbed my waist and pulled me close, kissing me. “I love it when you get all smarty-pants on me.”

I hadn’t had the heart to tell him that sometimes I felt like I was describing him. Even though we’d both grown up in the same small town in Illinois—Castlerock, population all of three thousand people—I’d spent my childhood feeling like I never fit in and plotting ways to get out. Scott pretended to hate it as much as I had, but he would’ve gone back there after we finished college if I hadn’t insisted on moving to Chicago.

I took my tablet out of my purse just as a van pulled up out front and a group of teenagers spilled out. They looked like the crew that went around town collecting donations from people’s homes and thrift-store castaways. There were different crews responsible for doing things throughout the community, and everyone got to choose their crew based on how and who they wanted to serve. Everyone did their part. That’s how things worked.

“So who cleans the toilets?” I’d asked Ray in one of our meetings. We’d met four times, and our talks were growing on me. His personality could be intoxicating, and I always came out of them feeling like I’d had two glasses of wine.

“You’d be surprised, but someone always selects bathroom duty. That’s not even the worst job, though. Somebody has to clean out the grease pan underneath the industrial stove in our kitchen. Imagine how disgusting that must be, but people do it, and many do it with a smile on their face,” he’d said in response.

The kids streamed through the rooms, sunburned, dirty, and tired, but with smiles on their faces. Some of them looked really young. We needed to get Abbi involved in service. She was old enough to do something. I made a mental note to talk to Scott about it when I got home.