“Sorry I’m late,” Mama said. She didn’t hug Summer like she normally would have, just stood with her arms at her sides.
“I was worried,” Summer shot back accusingly.
“I have a job,” her mother said simply. “I’m really tired. Come with me while I get some coffee.”
She followed after her, tripping once on her heels. When they found a spot at the end of an overcrowded table, her mother slouched over her mug and looked at Summer with droopy eyes.
“Did you have a nice time?” she asked. Summer launched into the stories without being pushed, ending it with eating breakfast with Sara’s family.
“Her dad is the doctor?” her mother asked.
Summer nodded.
“What was he like?”
“I don’t know. Sara’s mom talked more than he did. They just asked me stuff.”
“Like what stuff?”
Her mother was sitting up straighter now, more alert.
“I don’t remember,” she lied. “I have to go to class now.” She started to stand up, but her mother grabbed her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she looked it. “I’m just tired.” Seeming to force a smile, her mama squeezed her hand once more before letting go.
“Okay, kid. I’ll see you tonight for dinner.”
Summer raised a hand and ran after Sara, who was waiting near the door for her: the school bell had rung.
8
Then
It was February of 1999; Kids’ Camp was double the size it had been the previous year. Summer turned fourteen quietly that month. Her mother was away, and if anyone knew it was Summer’s birthday, they didn’t say. Most days consisted of a steady stream of chores, schoolwork, journaling and leadership training, and by the time she climbed into her bunk at night, she couldn’t say what day of the week it was. They woke early—four a.m. early—to run two miles before their day started. Fitness and discipline were important, Taured told them. To learn bodily discipline, they would watch what they ate, report on their exercise and calorie intake each day and sleep exactly six hours each night. If they didn’t meet their assigned weight goal each week, they lost an hour of sleep. And if they weren’t sleeping, they had to be working.
In March, Monica Lewinsky was interviewed by Barbara Walters about her affair with the president. Taured wheeled the big TV into the cafeteria so everyone could watch. Plates of cookies were passed around, the chocolate warm in their mouths as Miss Lewinsky explained why she hadn’t dry-cleaned her dress. It felt like they’d barely dusted the cookie crumbs off their laps when the TV appeared again in April, with bowls of rice pudding: this time, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had murdered twelve students and one teacher in the Columbine massacre. Summer couldn’t eat the pudding; sprinkled with cinnamon, it looked like freckled skin. She watched as hundreds of students ran for their lives across the grass, arms behind their heads lest they be mistaken for a shooter, and wondered what she’d do in that situation. The building Harris and Klebold had terrorized looked similar to the compound, filled with windowless hallways and limited exits.
In May, a tornado ripped through Moore, Oklahoma, and for forty-five minutes, its winds fluctuated around 301 mph, devastating everything in its thirty-eight-mile path; it killed thirty-six people and injured five hundred more. Taured ushered them into the cafeteria for this, too, and they ate a dinner of sweet potato, watching survivors being pulled from the rubble. Why were these things happening? Both in nature and to the nature of people? America, Taured told them, had become godless, and as a result, the country as a whole was under a spiritual attack. They’d had a hard year money-wise, eating their crops instead of selling them. Even so, Taured sent missionaries out that summer, her mother one of them, and they came back with a widower named Jon Wycliffe and his teenage daughter, Feena. After that, they ate okay again, and they got a couple new TVs for the main building.
The first time Summer saw Feena she was in the cafeteria, standing near the soda fountain, her hands clasped politely at the waistband of her jeans. She was elfin and pretty-faced, with spiral-curled red hair and creamy yogurt skin that the Nevada sky would eat up. Below her neck, she was all woman. None of the other girls had rounded breasts or hips that curved like an S, and because of that, every single one of them was looking at her. She was standing with her father and Taured, and despite that she was the news of the evening, her eyes were watching their exuberant leader, and only him.
Taured wasn’t like the other adults; Summer and Sara agreed on this. He spoke to them with the same respect he used with their parents. There was no difference between young and old, male or female; if anything, he was nicer to women than he was to men. She noticed that they all looked at him in the same hungry way—not just the older girls, but all of them: the men, the women and the children. But who was Taured looking at?