“Aren’t they in a cult, too?”

  Her mother cracked a smile, her dimple flashing. “You’ll have a hard time convincing them of that.”

  They drove in silence the rest of the way. Up front, the cabbie listened to R & B, turning it up when Biggie came on. He didn’t speak except to ask what airline they were flying. When he dropped them at the curb, her mother paid him in twenties, thanking him profusely. Where had she gotten this cash? Summer felt like she didn’t know anything anymore.

  “Come on.” Lorraine grabbed her by the wrist and walked her through the doors. Summer trotted alongside her mother until they reached a trash can at the far end of the passenger drop-off area.

  “What are you doing, Mama?” She stumbled over her own feet as it dawned on her exactly what she was doing.

  Her mother was looking down into her bag when she said: “Sometimes, the key to not being seen is being seen.”

  Then, with a flick of her wrist, her mother tossed the gun inside and dusted off her hands. Summer looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Her mother had done it fast enough—hadn’t she?

  All around them, the airport was being the airport, an endless hustle of bodies and luggage.

  “Let’s go.” Lorraine grabbed her hand this time and led her through the doors, the air-conditioning as violent against her skin as the heat had been moments ago. They fell into step, walking toward the counter, Summer’s heart pattering like a frightened animal. She was as tall as her mother now, her legs longer; she wished they could run instead of walk.

  Would he come here? Follow them? The way her mother looked over her shoulder, scanning the faces of the people behind her, told her yes. The man at the ticket counter took his time, his fingers hitting the keys like fat sausages, and then, suddenly, Lorraine had two tickets in her hands. They didn’t speak as they made their way forward, still arm in arm. Her mother’s braid had come loose, and her hair cascaded around her shoulders. When her mother caught her looking toward the bathrooms, she said, “Go. I’ll wait here.”

  Summer stood in line for the bathroom, biting her thumbnail. Her mother stood a few feet away, watching the board with the arrivals and departures. The line wasn’t moving very quickly; in front of her, an old lady with glasses was complaining about the terrible facilities to her friend. A toilet flushed; the line moved forward. Summer stood just inside the bathroom doors now. A mother was in line behind her, trying to wrangle her toddler, who was bouncing from foot to foot, saying he was going to pee his pants. When a stall opened, she let the mother go ahead of her.

  Summer washed her hands, thinking about her grandparents’ house. Her mother said they had a porch swing facing the sunset. They hadn’t spoken about any of the details yet, but she imagined she’d be allowed to go to a real school. Her mother would get a job, and Summer would see her every day. She felt the start of something sparking in her belly. Excitement? No...maybe hope. Things were about to get better.

  Summer dried off her hands and left the bathroom, noticing that the line had doubled since she’d been in it. Her backpack was heavy, and she wanted to sit down and not think about anything. She wanted to sleep. When she walked over to the board where she’d left her mother, a new line of people stood staring up at the screen. She spun on her heels, checking the line of chairs against the wall, and then the bathroom line. Deciding her mother had probably gotten into line behind her and was now in a bathroom stall, Summer took a seat.

  The bathroom emptied out three times over. She walked the area twice, scanning every face she passed. She checked the two coffee stands and the ticket counter, where the man with the sausage fingers had helped them. There was no sign of Lorraine. Summer tried to remember the gate number from the tickets. Maybe her mother had gone there. But even as she thought it, she knew it wasn’t true; her mother would never leave her, especially not during a time like this. Going back to the board, she searched for the departures to Albuquerque and found that their flight had left ten minutes ago. Summer tried not to cry, but it was all too much. She did another lap of the airport, past the flashing, pinging slot machines, and past tourists in brightly colored shirts, wearing their vacation faces. She could smell coffee and the sweet aroma of baked goods mixed with a man’s cologne.

  Where was her mother? This felt like a nightmare within a nightmare, Summer thought, like a Stephen King book she had snuck back from Red’s one time. This felt like when her dad had died and she didn’t know what to do with her hands or face, because nothing made sense. She had no money, no way to make a phone call—and who would she call, anyway? She didn’t even know her grandparents’ phone number. She wandered outside, back to the trash can where her mother had deposited the gun. She stood there for a good few seconds before she noticed the man standing against his car, looking at her. He was casual, arms crossed over his chest, his glasses reflecting the activity of the drop-off. It was Taured.

  * * *

  She sat in the back seat of his car, the BMW she’d stolen the photos from. Her mother sat beside her, pale, her hair tangled and her lip swollen. When Taured pushed Summer into the back seat of the car, Lorraine had looked at her daughter with scared, wet eyes, but didn’t say anything. Summer quietly folded herself into the seat, eyeing the police officer who was watching traffic a few yards away. Could she jump out and run to him? Would Taured drive away with her mother if she did? Would he be arrested? She looked at her mother, who was breathing nosily from the seat beside her. She was hurt. Then the car was moving, and it was too late to do anything. Summer reached across the leather seat to hold her mother’s hand.

  * * *

  They grabbed her by the arms, fingers digging into her thin flesh as they pulled her from the back seat of the car. She didn’t cry out in shock or pain but kept her posture rigid as she watched them do the same to her mother. They dragged her through the prison kitchens and toward the courtyard outside. The courtyard was an eight-by-ten concrete block, fenced in on three sides. It had a drain in the center and a waterspout low on the wall. It stood to the side of the prison and ran along a steep gully. Someone had told her that they slaughtered the livestock there.

  She didn’t resist when the sisters stripped her, leaving her naked aside from her panties. It was too hot to shiver, too bright to hide. The elders started to arrive, Taured’s most faithful, most likely not to question him. She saw them through the diamonds in the fence: bodies surrounding the cage to witness her shaming. She couldn’t look at their faces; if they wanted her to feel shame, she did. It was so great she touched her chin to the hard bone of her clavicle and let her hair hide what it could. Standing above the drain, Summer knew Taured would appear at any moment. She knew what was about to happen. She’d heard about this punishment, heard about the humiliation that some of the adults had to endure in their path to righteousness. She’d always felt separate, better than those people.

  Now, she was displayed like a thing, not a person—Taured’s thing. She couldn’t see Kids’ Camp, but she could hear the younger kids playing on the equipment, their squalling and their laughter making happy noises. She couldn’t see her mother. She imagined they were keeping her in one of the solitary rooms. Until it’s her turn, Summer thought, buckling under the nausea of this thought. She dropped to her knees, her bare skin digging into the grate as she heaved above it. She would rather do this a hundred times over than know her mother had to stand in front of these pigs. But nothing came: no vomit, only contempt. She stood up, hid behind her hair.

  Her mother wasn’t here to protect her and neither was her father, who had died and allowed this to happen. But she wasn’t afraid, no. Taured had already pushed the fear out of her, and now there was nothing. She was a void; you couldn’t frighten something that didn’t exist.

  Marshall Carruthers, one of Taured’s goons, was attaching the hose to a spout, making sure to keep his eyes on her body. Taured stood in the doorway, filling it up. Marshall handed him the hose and stepped back.

  The water stung her skin, especially her breasts, where it hit her hard as rocks. She struggled to stay upright, her body bending under the pressure. But she’d heard that was the important part: if you could stay upright during a cleansing, the punishment was less severe. The water sprayed in her eyes, her nose, her mouth—it felt like it was being driven up into her brain. She coughed, bending at the waist, and almost toppled when the spray hit her face. There was no more hair to hide beneath; it was plastered like fat leeches to her back and arms. She heard the school bell and thought about screaming.

  Why didn’t anyone think this was wrong?

  And then it was over. She’d stayed on her feet, but as soon as the water stopped, her knees gave out. Marshall threw a blanket over her shoulders and Dawn pulled her to her feet as she trembled. Taured was gone. But if he was punishing her, he wasn’t punishing her mother.

  They took her to isolation.

  * * *

  When Taured spoke about the isolation rooms to Kids’ Camp, he framed it as a wonderful, sacred time. She’d once asked what the rooms had been used for when it was a prison, and they’d told her they were the cells used for pregnant, incarcerated mothers. Inside, they’d been painted cream, the floors concrete. The only light came from a single bulb that was operated by a switch outside the cell. Once you were inside, you had no control over the light, and were only allowed brief periods of illumination through the day. This, he claimed, was a test of trust and a time to reflect on your bad and grow into your good.

  “Will one of us ever have to go in there?” a kid named Ginger had asked. He was a couple years younger than Summer, and he’d moved to the compound from New England with his family the year before. He’d brought some weird habits with him, like some strange taste in junk food. He was always complaining about the contents of the Snack Shack. She’d noticed the older boys enjoyed picking on him, while most everyone else ignored him. The kid seemed to latch on to strange ideas and not stop talking about them.

  “Are you scared, Ginger?” yelled someone from the back of the room. Summer knew the voice belonged to Skye.

  “Of course he is—he’s scared of everything,” another voice called out.

  Ginger, who had light strawberry blond hair (Sara said his mother had been ambitious with his name), turned around to give the speaker a dirty look. “What do you know, you big meatball?”

  Summer liked his spunk, but he was probably going to pay for that later; Skye was a bully.

  “I’m not afraid,” Ginger said, turning back to address Taured. “I would go in there voluntarily. I would.”

  Summer and Sara had turned to each other at that point and rolled their eyes. They usually sat somewhere in the middle of the room.

  Taured spoke directly to the boy. “If you focus on fear, you’ll live a life of fear. Do you understand that?”

  Ginger nodded enthusiastically. He was sitting in the front row of the chapel, in the seat directly in front of Taured. When they worked the orchard, he tried to outpick everyone by double and he was always trying to get Taured to notice him. The other boys would chant, Ginger has a finger up Taured’s ass!

  “He thinks Taured is his daddy,” Sara would say, shaking her head. Summer had to agree, but wasn’t that what Taured wanted them to think? Most of the kids here were missing one parent or the other, and the ones who had both were a little cocky about it—Sara included.

  “So rather than worrying about being in the isolation rooms, worry about doing the right thing so you don’t get there.” Taured ruffled his hair and Ginger looked pleased.

  “Think about it,” he’d told them. “I’m an adult and I can tell you that I don’t know how to trust. But you guys aren’t jaded by the world. You know how to trust. And by giving me your trust, by allowing me to make healthy decisions for you—well, you guys are ahead of the game. Your parents don’t even know how to do that. Will you guys trust me when the time comes?”

  She didn’t know how everyone else reacted, hadn’t looked around to see, but when he asked them to trust him, she had. At least back then.

  14

  Now

  Rainy forgot her earlier desire to go to bed. When she danced, it felt good. When Braithe chose her over Tara, it felt good. Maybe it was the alcohol working her limbs into a frenzy of dancing. She was almost acting like a normal person, and in that moment, as she lifted onto the balls of her feet to hit one of the clear orbs that was bouncing around, she couldn’t remember who she’d been before now, or who she’d be tomorrow. Only now.

  As they were leaving the bar, Braithe stopped midstep; it was sudden, and they all stopped with her.

  “We should find somewhere to have our cards read.” Her voice was breathy and excited.

  The adrenaline that had pushed Rainy through most of the night drained at Braithe’s words, and suddenly she felt gross, and sweaty and tired. But more than that, she felt empty, and all she wanted to do was curl up in bed and talk to Grant.

  “I’m in,” Ursa said. “This one time, a psychic told me I’d meet a guy named Oscar while fishing and I did. I was in Miami and he was just right there.”

  “But you don’t want to meet anyone now, right? Since you have Alex.” Mac looked nervous.

  “They don’t just tell you things about love,” Ursa shot back. She started listing the other topics on her fingers: “Careers, dead relatives, unfinished business—and this one time, my aunt went to a psychic to tell her why her cat, Sequins, always bolted from the downstairs bathroom like its tail was on fire.”

  “And?” Rainy couldn’t help herself; she wasn’t a believer, but she wanted to know about the cat.

  “She said that my dead grandfather was haunting Sequins. And honestly, my grandfather hated cats, so it came as no surprise to any of us.” Ursa shrugged. “My family is weird. We got rid of the cat, but not the ghost.”

  They laughed so hard they held their bellies, holding on to each other for balance as they maneuvered the sidewalk in their high heels. A slow rumble of thunder came from the sky and Braithe yelped, grabbing Tara’s arm and staring at the sky suspiciously. It was all humorous and fun beneath the veil of alcohol.

  Maybe this isn’t so bad, Rainy thought. She walked alongside Ursa, who was recounting her time with Miami Oscar. Tara and Braithe were up ahead, leading the way, and Mac was somewhere in the middle, calling out directions as she read them off her phone.

  They found a place online: readings for forty dollars apiece, group discounts available. There was no such thing as psychic ability, Rainy assured herself. This was like a show: they were going somewhere to be entertained, like any other place in Vegas. They had to navigate their way across puddles, making a game of leaping dramatically, arms flying. Rainy felt silly. She hadn’t even done these things when she was a kid. As they walked, Braithe told them she’d tried to get an appointment with a famous psychic her mother had seen here in Vegas, but there were no openings.

  “Stephen always makes fun of me for wanting to go, but I swear to God that guy knows what he’s talking about.”

  “She’s obsessed,” Tara announced to the rest of them. She was tiptoeing on a narrow strip of pavement to avoid a puddle. Braithe didn’t seem bothered by Tara’s comment; she looked happy, almost beaming.

  “Ohhh,” Ursa said. “Does he have dark hair and a scar on his cheek? I’ve seen him on TV.”

  Braithe nodded. “Yeah, that’s him. My mom went to see him before she married my dad. There was this other guy before my dad and I guess she was unsure about which man to go with. So she went to see the psychic and he said stuff about her that no one knew. Freaked her out, but it gave her such clarity. She said he changed her life. I just think it’s cool.” She dipped her head, laughing, and Rainy marveled at how beautiful she was.

  Rainy sidestepped a wad of gum. She was starting to feel the exhaustion; it was tag-teaming the alcohol, making mush of her thoughts. And then they were there, the shop a blur of neon and incense and pastel crystals that looked like candy. She ran her hands over the lip of the shelves, listening to the others talk to a man who introduced himself as Luc.

  “Is that your real name?” she heard Mac ask. She didn’t wait for Luc’s answer; she ducked behind a display of shirts and pretended to look for a size. Places like this freaked her out: people claiming to hear from other beings, relaying messages. She was chilly, the night had dried uncomfortably on her skin and her buzz was a faint hum now. Had she really been dancing beneath a ceiling of bubbles only an hour ago? She eyed the door, wondering if she could slip out and send them a text saying she wasn’t feeling well. Peeping around the display, she saw that Tara had taken a seat at Luc’s little table and he was laying cards in front of her. The words came back to her.

  Do not be deceived by liars and manipulators. Astronomy, psychics and mediums are signs of a nation perverted by the idea that they can control their futures. They are evil manipulators of truth.

  She tugged her phone from her pocket, hoping to see a text from Grant. Nothing, but there was a text from Viola.

  I’ve got heartburn. You up?

  The Tigers are getting their cards read and I’m here, too, she wrote back.

  Viola’s text came back at record speed.

  Say what? And don’t try to act like you’re not a Tiger, okay? I saw you in Tara’s story and you looked like you were having the time of your life.

  Rainy rolled her eyes, trying to squeeze the smile off her face.

  That part was fun but now they’re acting weird and I want to leave!!!

  Whoa, whoa, you never use excited punctuation. How bad is it?