When?

  And why in God’s name was she having these memories now?

  The memory felt so real, with the confusion and fear. And then there was what had happened after. There was one thing that scared her right down to the center of her gut and it was a man who was governed only by his own sense of right and wrong.

  7

  Then

  “What is Kids’ Camp? Why can’t I go to it and still sleep here with you?”

  “That’s just not the way they do things.” They, meaning Tauredians, as Summer had dubbed them after the first week. If Taured wasn’t going to name them, Summer felt entitled to. Her mother had scolded her for using the name, so now Summer used it solely in her head.

  “But it’s the way we do things,” Summer argued. “You said I would never have to sleep away from you—you promised me after Dad died.” The Kids’ Camp argument had been gaining speed for a week, becoming a bristling point between them. At the last group meeting, held in what had been the old prison chapel, Taured had informed everyone that the children would no longer live in the main building with their parents during the week, but would be assigned to sleep and be educated in the children’s building. Before anyone could ask, he cited the reasons: “Your children are too dependent on you, and they need to be taught to be dependent on God. They can’t hear His voice if they’re hearing yours.”

  There were murmurs of agreement, but there were also whispers of concern. The loudest being Summer, who immediately turned to her mother and said, “What?”

  “Now, I know what you’re thinking,” Taured had said. “We will still share all of our mealtimes and free times together,” he explained to the confused faces. “Kids’ Camp is an exciting time for your children’s education and your growth as individuals. Each parent and child team will have time together and time apart.” He looked directly at Lorraine when he said this.

  He’d taken a long time to drag his eyes away from her before saying, “As some of you have expressed, now that our numbers are growing, we need a more scheduled way of life. We’re going to try this and see if it works. If not, we’ll adapt to what’s best for the group.” That had seemed to soothe the room.

  They’d been here through the summer, their life merging with this place: its people, its chores and its quirks. For the most part, it had felt like a vacation to thirteen-year-old Summer, who delighted in her farm chores and enjoyed the overall community bustle of mealtimes and evenings. But as she’d listened to Taured’s words, she’d known things were about to change, and she had a sick feeling. Her mother had the uncanny ability to look her in the eyes and calm her down, and she was doing it now, slow and steady, from her own bed, where she sat propped against the wall, her legs hanging over the side of the bed.

  “I’ll be mere yards away. I hardly think that constitutes sleeping away from me.”

  “It’s a different building.”

  Mama’s words made sense, but Summer didn’t care. Adults lied all the time: they told you things were fine when they weren’t, and they acted like they themselves were fine when they weren’t.

  “Look, this is the way they do school here. We said we’d stay and try this out. You and I both agreed, remember?” Mama’s eyes were large as she spoke, and Summer knew what she was thinking because she’d said it a hundred times: if this didn’t work out, they’d have to go live with her parents. Summer’s grandparents sounded pretty awful. They’d made her mother earn her dinner when she was little by how many prayers she said in a day. And she had to go to church five days a week, no matter what. They didn’t believe in music, or television, or card games, or even holidays, because those things were evil distractions.

  “Grandpa and Grandma would let us sleep in the same room.” She said this with finality, and she knew it would hurt her mother. Suggesting she’d rather be at the place her mother hated the most was her lowest blow yet.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I do,” she said back. “You said your parents made you do things you didn’t want to do and that made you hate them. And now you’re making me do things I don’t want to do.”

  Her mother stood up, like she’d had enough, but instead of shrinking back, Summer stepped forward, her anger reaching a new peak. “You’re a liar like Daddy!” she shouted.

  Whatever her mother planned to do was drained out of her in that second. Her face went slack and soft and then she began to cry. Summer felt low. That’s how her dad described his worst moments. But instead of saying sorry like she wanted to, she turned her back on her mother and went to her own bed, where she lay facing the wall. Shame was her blanket as she lay perfectly still, hardly breathing, listening to her mother cry. Sometime after that, her mother left the room. It felt like something had changed between them in those few seconds. Summer couldn’t stand it. After an hour of sulking, she swung her feet off the bed and went to find her.

  The cafeteria was empty at this time of day, a gray room with gray tables and gray chairs. The air always smelled like canned corn and wet cement. But the lady who ran the kitchens, Alfreda, left the coffee out, and sometimes her mother would stop there to fill her mug.

  She found Taured instead.

  The strong smell of oregano lingered in the air from a previous meal—lasagna. He wasn’t sitting at his usual spot, and at first, Summer didn’t recognize him. He was wearing a T-shirt and jean shorts and he had a baseball cap turned backward over his dark hair. Summer felt strange seeing him like this. He looked like a normal person, someone you’d see walking down the street in California. She stood frozen in the doorway, wondering what she should do, when Taured looked up. He smiled when he saw her, and the ruptured feeling in her gut mellowed out.

  Summer widened her lips in a smile to match his, and he gestured her forward.

  “You looking for your mom?”

  “Yes,” she said, taking a hesitant step forward. “Have you—?”

  “Yeah, she was just in here. Come and sit down, Summertime.”

  She looked around to see if anyone else was around; Taured was hardly ever alone, and Summer thought about saying no, but it was hard to say no to an adult she barely knew. She was supposed to be polite, so she walked slowly to the table closest to the kitchen door and sat opposite him. A bowl of apricots sat next to his elbow, and as he watched her, he split one open and flicked out the pit, eating that half first. He pushed the bowl toward her and Summer chose the brightest, orangest one. Imitating his movement, she split it open and stared at the brown pit inside. It was the shape of an eye, and when she popped it out, it was rough to the touch. Summer ate the apricot, pushing the pit into the pocket of her shorts. The fruit was soft and sweet, like a marshmallow. It was cool that they grew them here; she’d seen kids her age hanging out in the orchard from a distance.

  “Did you have an argument?” he asked. He split another apricot and again pushed the bowl toward Summer.

  “Yes,” she said. She swung her legs beneath the table, feeling guilty all over again. What if he asked them to leave and they’d have to go live with her grandparents?

  “I had a little brother, he was barely younger than me—eighteen months—so we were like twins,” Taured said. “One of my first memories is of us—me and Chris—fighting like our lives depended on it: biting, hair pulling, kicking. That’s all we did, fight. It drove my mother crazy.” He stopped to laugh at something Summer couldn’t grasp, his entire face glowing with the memory. She wished she had memories that made her face glow like that.

  “Until it was time for me to go to preschool.” Taured paused to stare at the ceiling, one corner of his mouth lifting, and Summer got the feeling he was somewhere else. “I remember being at preschool and missing him so badly all I wanted was to go home, and then when I did get home, we were happy to be together.”

  “No more fighting?” Summer asked.

  “We were best friends after that. As it turned out, we needed space to be our own individual people.”

  “But you were just little kids.” Summer rolled one of the apricot pits between her palms under the table.

  “Little kids are people, too!” he insisted with mock outrage.

  Summer laughed at his expression and shrugged. She hated this part, when you were supposed to say something back that made the adults feel good about what they said.

  “Cool.”

  Taured stretched, lifting his arms high above his head and closing his eyes. When he was looking at her again, he said: “I tell you what, Summertime, you and your mama need some time apart.” He stood suddenly and Summer looked up at him with a frown. Did he know about the fight? She sniffed the air, seeing if she could smell Lorraine’s perfume, but the air still smelled like leftovers.

  “Come on, I want to show you something.” He walked for the door, clearly expecting Summer to follow him, so she did. Summer’s face went red at the thought of Taured knowing what she’d said to her mother. If he knew she was capable of saying such awful things, maybe he would ask them to leave.

  She followed him out of the cafeteria, where he took a left and walked toward the doors that led outside. When they stepped into the white-bright of outside, she shielded her eyes with her forearm, curling it around her face. Taured handed her his sunglasses and she tried to play it cool as she slipped them on. Summer knew he was heading in the direction of the school, and despite her reservations, she was curious about it. She trotted on his heels, feeling important. When they arrived at the entrance to the children’s building—as her mother called it—he turned back to look at her, winking. Her stomach clenched. A twist of his wrist opened the door, and then a blast of smells—paint and crayons—reached her nose. They were comforting smells. Summer reached for his hand and they stepped inside together. She propped the sunglasses on her head like her mom did.

  He showed her the dorms, with white bunk beds lining the blue, green and yellow walls, each one with a shared desk and wardrobe. There were colorful shag rugs, and in the center of the room was a swing, hanging from the ceiling.

  “Sara’s dad put that in,” he said when he saw her looking. Summer tried to play it off, but she was impressed. They moved on to what he called the canteen, where a rec area was set up with tables and chairs. In the far corner, and made to look like a tiki hut, was the Snack Shack, where they could trade good behavior tokens for cans of pop, chips and chocolate bars. Taured pointed to the projector, mounted on one of the walls.

  “Movie nights,” he said.

  “Awesome.” Summer couldn’t help herself; she was into it.

  From the rec room, they passed through another set of double doors until they were standing in a room larger than the last. Instead of sitting in the center of the room, the desks were pushed against three of the walls. In front of each chair and stuck to the wall was each student’s name and daily schedule.

  “Everyone works at their own pace here. There isn’t a teacher for every subject like in public school—we let the books teach you and you decide how much you want to learn. We had someone graduate high school at sixteen last year.”

  Summer’s head darted up from the desk she’d been eyeing. It belonged to a boy named Jonah. She’d seen him around. He stared at her a lot with unblinking blue eyes, but he never spoke to her or pulled her into games like the other kids did.

  Jonah had a jar full of colorful pens and pencils sitting on his desk, and a drawing he’d made himself of a hummingbird flying above a lion’s head. Summer liked it. She liked the sunny schoolroom, and the tropical Snack Shack, and the three colored walls in the dormitory. She liked the swing the most. She wondered how they took turns on it.

  “This building was just used for storage before. It’s amazing what a little paint can do.”

  “It’s a lot nicer over here than it is there.” Summer jerked her head toward the main building.

  “Kids are the future, and we believe in investing in our future.” Summer couldn’t think to do anything but nod. No one had ever said anything like that to her before.

  “So, Summertime, what do you think? You want to try out Kids’ Camp or what?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said.

  * * *

  It didn’t feel quite right, but she did it, anyway, the promise of a ceiling swing and snacks bought from a tiki hut fresh in her mind. Also, there was the promise of friends, and she wanted those more than anything. She’d seen everyone as they left Kids’ Camp and walked back to the main building. They were outside for some sort of field day, leaping and climbing through an obstacle course. They were on teams, judging by their red and blue shirts, and for a moment, Summer stopped to watch them, letting Taured get ahead.

  They were having a pizza party that very night in Kids’ Camp, he’d told her, and after ice-cream sandwiches, they were going to watch a movie about Moses. It felt rushed, the way she was instructed to pack up her things and join them that night, but when she’d protested, Taured told her that they had planned to surprise her with a cake to welcome her and to not show up would be rude. Because she wanted to please her mother and to make friends, Summer agreed. As Taured watched from the door, she said goodbye to her mother. It felt silly, sure, because she was only going to be sleeping a few hundred feet away, but at the same time, it hurt so much she could barely breathe.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Lorraine said, wrapping Summer up in her arms. Burying her face for a moment in her mother’s neck, she allowed her hair to be stroked and she breathed in that mama smell of comfort and soaped skin. Her mother was breathing hard as she touched Summer’s hair, like she was sighing with each breath.

  “Lorraine.” Her mother’s hand froze at the sound of his voice, but then the stroking started again.

  “I’m really proud of how brave you’re being,” she said into Summer’s hair. “Daddy would be proud, too.” She said that part softly, so Taured wouldn’t hear. Taured made it clear that anything her dad had said was influenced by the poison he had been taking; both Lorraine and Summer had taken to only talking about him privately, which was fine with Summer. She liked Taured, but the truth was, he hadn’t known her dad.

  He was watching from the door and she was too embarrassed to let him see her cry, so Summer bit the inside of her cheeks and tried to think of something else as she let go of her lifeline and stepped away.

  “I’ll see you at breakfast,” she said, lining her voice with a cheerfulness she didn’t feel. Lorraine nodded, tears edging her eyes.

  “Take care of her?” Her eyebrows were drawn when she looked at Taured, who bopped his head at her request.

  “You’ll see her in the morning, and you can confirm she was well fed and well taken care of, mama bear.”

  The smile didn’t reach her mother’s eyes when she nodded, and then she turned away, facing her bed.

  Taured led Summer to Kids’ Camp the same way he had earlier, but instead of coming inside with her, he stopped at the door. He knocked twice, and a woman Summer recognized as Marcy opened the door. Her smile was wide and her eyes were excited.

  “Summer!” she said. “Everyone is waiting for you!” That sentence shot twin firecrackers of excitement and fear into her belly. She glanced back at Taured, who nodded at her. He was happy with her. Marcy reached for her hand and Summer allowed herself to be led inside.

  Marcy took her to the dorms. At the back of the room was an empty bunk pushed against the wall. It was closest to the bathrooms, which would mean foot traffic and flushing toilets; she understood why it was the last one chosen. Marcy told her she could choose either top or bottom, since no one else had claimed it. A couple kids had trickled into the dorms after the movie and were pushing each other around and laughing. Summer stared at the bed, uncertain. She usually conferred with her mother about these things, but Taured had been insistent that she do this on her own. Lifting her chin, she said, too loudly, “I’ll take the bottom.”

  As soon as she’d said it, a very tall girl climbed the ladder to the top bunk closest to Summer’s and settled back against her pillows.

  “Wrong choice,” she said as she picked up a book and began to read.

  It was Sara. Her dad had built the swing in the rec room.

  “I’ll take the top, then,” Summer said to Marcy, who winked at her. Later that night, after everyone had taken their showers and gotten into bed, Summer whispered across to Sara, “Why was it the wrong choice?”

  Someone shushed her from across the room. “Lights out,” apparently, was taken seriously.

  “Cockroaches, mice and spiders,” Sara said. And that was enough. Summer felt a wave of affection for the girl who had saved her from every grossness on the planet. Not four hours later, a girl named Lydia woke everyone up in the middle of the night, screaming, when she felt tickling on her cheek and reached up to find a cockroach. She was shushed by one of the adults who slept in the dorms with them at night and told not to be so weak-minded. Summer didn’t think Lydia weak-minded at all; she would have screamed louder and probably not stopped, even when told to. She made sure to smile at Lydia the next day as they made their way to the cafeteria for breakfast. The girl looked embarrassed to be noticed at all, but she raised a small hand in greeting before scurrying away to find her parents. Summer caught up to Sara near the buffet of scrambled eggs, fried ham and tomato. With her plate under her arm, she stood in line behind the girl, keeping an eye out for her mom, who should have been here by now. After a moment of contemplation, she elbowed Sara gently in the ribs to get her attention.

  “Hey, thanks for warning me about the bugs.”

  Sara shrugged like it was no problem and reached for the tongs in the tomato tray. The room was really starting to buzz now as people arrived for breakfast from the main building. Still no Mama, Summer thought. She redirected her gaze to her potential new friend. Sara had the palest skin. Summer could see her veins threading through her arms as she moved down the food line and dropped a scoop of eggs onto her plate. She offered the spoon to Summer. It was a small gesture, but a nice one. Summer took the spoon, smiling, and Sara smiled back.