The electric hum from the message service earlier slipped back into the room, percolating into the campers. Everyone shifted in anticipation as the counselors added their amens. The hum built with every word falling from Ruth’s lips as she continued to shower the campers with praise for their specialness, their faith, their unprecedented holiness. The noise level increased as the mentors joined their mentee groups, encouraging the teams to stand and hold hands.
“We are going to perform one of the most sacred acts in the fellowship here tonight,” Ruth said. “We are going to pray for each other. Pray that every young fellow in this sacred hall feels God steering them onto their path, and toward their sacred destiny.” Gabi found Ruth’s words dramatic and a little ridiculous, but some small part of her was carried along by them as she joined in her circle’s hypnotic sway.
Luke stood beside Gabi, his warm hand enveloping hers, the raw silk of his bare arm pressed into her side. They were almost slow-dancing. “It is only together that we can rise above the perils of earthly life and be saved,” Ruth preached from the center of the room, her face lifted to the rafters. “Each of us faces not only death but damnation as mere individuals, condemning all those we might have gone on to save as well. But together? Together we rise!”
Zach began to sing, backed by the other counselors. There were no words at first, just the harmony of layered voices, a mosaic of music over the electric buzz.
Following the mentors’ cues, each team member was drawn into the center of their small circle in turn. The team members laid their hands on the center person and bowed their heads. Jordan was first, and Gabi’s hands brushed the edge of a crusty roll under his sweatshirt when she touched him. He winced as his teammates made contact with his body, but his mentor, Ginny, laid her soft white hands against his cheeks and smiled at him in reassurance.
“Let it flow through you,” Ruth urged. “Let God enter you and flow right out of your hands into your brothers and sisters, that they may be filled. Help them prepare their vessel for the call!”
Jordan was sweating. They all were. Though their bodies were moving only slightly, the temperature inched higher, and the whole room throbbed with heat.
Gabi was the last of their team to move into the center of the circle. Hands pressed into her, stamping her with their warmth. The pressure was light, but it felt as though their touch was the only thing holding her up. The hum was shaking the earth beneath her. Marnie was in front of her, so close Gabi could see how the black eyeliner creased in the folds of her eyelids as her brows drew together in concentration. Her fingertips rested on Gabi’s collarbones, one of them heavier than the other because Beth’s hand was on top if it. Luke was behind Gabi, his hands on her shoulders in a firm, kneading grip, his breath stirring the curls by her ear. Gabi had never been touched by so many people, and never like this, but she felt safe in their midst.
The hum moved through the team and into her as they swayed together, and she imagined that this was what being in the ocean felt like. Her skin was too tight, and there wasn’t quite enough oxygen, but the discomfort paled beside the glorious sensation of being held. She’d been hugged by her family in recent years, but not held for a long time, even by Gram, who used to rock her to sleep at night until Gabi got too big to sit in her lap.
“God has blessed this gathering,” Ruth called out. “He is working through all of you to bring healing and light back to this troubled world. Do you feel his presence? If you feel it, give me an amen.” The counselors sang their amens, and all around the room, the campers joined in. After a few seductive refrains, Gabi added her high, tremulous voice to theirs.
SLEEPING IN a large room with so many other people was impossible, though Gabi was exhausted from hours of praise-singing, and they would be woken before dawn to begin a long day of preparation and ritual. Not only did the mélange of smells and sounds issuing from the bunks ricochet around the dorm, but she felt as if she could actually feel the other girls’ dreams. Gabi had a vague memory of sharing a room with Mathew when they were young, his dreams ebbing and flowing around her bed, tugging at her emotions. Fortunately for her, Mathew was not prone to nightmares. She mostly felt his curiosity, wonder, excitement, and on rare occasions when he would cry out in the night, his longing for Therese.
On nights when Gabi had nightmares of her own, in which she was suffocating or disintegrating to dust like an unraveled mummy, Gram would pad into their room, scoop the whimpering Gabi up into her arms, and carry her back to the comfy double bed with the trough in the middle. With her narrow back pressed into the cushion of Gram’s torso, Gabi would fall asleep in a few minutes. Gram’s dreams never tugged at her. The energy that came off her sleeping grandmother was like warm indigo velvet.
Scorching pulses of anger and grief radiated from the sleeping Marnie like a fetid fog. She tossed and thrashed so forcefully that it was a wonder she didn’t wake herself. The rest of the room was a potpourri of excitement, anticipation, and anxiety as dreams discharged the emotions of the day. Natalie, the leader of a snarky clique that had managed to maintain its rigid exclusivity even though the girls had all been assigned to different
