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How much does he know? He's not treating me like a girl who did the things I did, and my father has a lot of power in the church, so it's possible he’s managed to salvage this.

I'm not sure that I really care if it's salvaged. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be in New Hope. I don't want to be in Penhallow. I'm not sure where that leaves me.

I guess I've got two years to figure it out.

The road goes from gravel to dirt, and aside from the occasional hut I see nothing but trees and scrub until we arrive at the Bright Covenant compound, which is basically a windowless building with an aluminum roof, plus two smaller buildings that I assume are dormitories. It reminds me of those factories where they raise thousands of animals in captivity.

Which is what we are, I guess. The entire area is fenced in, like a prison.

“This is it,” Tommy says gently, as if he knows exactly how shocked I am.

“They always made it sound...”

“Beautiful?” he asks.

I nod.

“I know. But you get used to it. And you aren’t stuck here the whole time. We drive into town to work.”

He shows me to the women’s dormitory. There are three large, concrete-block rooms, twenty beds in each, with a bathroom at its end. I complained about sharing a bathroom with two girls. Now I'll be sharing with nineteen.

We have no dressers—just a box beneath our beds and a nightstand beside them. For two years, I'll be living out of a box. For two years, I won't have a moment of privacy.

No wonder people marry so soon after they arrive. It's the only way out.

“You won't be out here by yourself,” he says. “Louise is another of the counselors for next year. She's in the room next door. And the upper-level kids come back in two weeks. They're visiting a covenant community outside Cochabamba.”

I nod numbly and deposit my bag on the nearest bed before Tommy leads me through the rest of the facilities. There's a kitchen, its pantry full of industrial-sized cans of tomato paste and oversized bags of flour. There's a dining hall—a decrepit version of Penhallow's cafeteria with long tables and benches atop stained tile floors. Other than that, there's the “meeting room”—it reminds me of one of those places in nursing homes, where families gather. There are lots of small tables with chairs around them, and a shelf with a few games and a bunch of books I wouldn't want to read.

“And this is the office,” he says finally, leading me into a smallish room with two tables covered in notebooks and paper and binders, a large file cabinet behind them.

He crosses the room and opens a safe I hadn't noticed on the wall, then shoves my passport inside it. Is it for my safety, or is it to make sure I can't leave?

I glance at the phone. “Am I allowed to make a call?”

He stiffens, the first sign I've seen from him that he knows I'm in trouble. “You get one call a week, to your family, on your assigned day.”

I don't want to speak to my family. I'd like to talk to Hope and Faith, I guess, if only to tell them goodbye, but the person I want to speak to is Kappy. But I'd need to get on the computer to look up her number, since I had it in speed dial.

“I need to tell my friend Kappy that I'm okay,” I explain.

“All of your friends are here now, Grace,” he says firmly. “You'll need to get used to that.”

For the next two years, my only calls back to the US will be to people I now hate.

We've missed dinner, apparently. He says he can heat up a ready-to-eat meal for me, but I tell him I just want to sleep and he allows me to go. I stumble on heavy legs back to the women's dorm, which has no lock on the door.

I brush my teeth and climb into a cot, missing everything. Kappy’s laughter and Faith's demands, the wind in my hair as I bike home, and—most of all —Ford. The feel of his chest beneath my head, the sight of his name on a text, his smile from across the room, the quiet reassurance of his low voice.

I guess I wouldn’t be getting those last few things no matter what though, would I?

What was he going to say last night before I left? Probably nothing worth hearing or he'd have said it right away.

But I wish I’d heard it anyhow.

I'm awoken by the crow of roosters at dawn. That'll get annoying fast.

I shower, drying off with the one thin towel I could find, then dress and shuffle to the kitchen, where Tommy is eating with two other people—Joshua and Louise, who’ve both just finished their first year of missionary work here. Tommy, apparently, is in charge. Joshua manages the men, and Louise manages the women.