Luke looked around the van of depressed, silent faces, the faces of boys who hadn't known happiness for a long time. They stared out ahead as though looking anywhere else was a fool's errand, as though anything else existing on either side of the road wasn't real. Luke watched as a boy with a pierced ear dabbed the corner of his eye with his shirtsleeve. A boy with hot pink highlights gritted his teeth and clenched his fist just two rows up from Luke. Even the driver was silent.

Luke closed his eyes tightly and drew in a breath, gathering courage for himself. He turned to the boy sitting next to him and whispered, "How long until we get there?"

The boy with red hair and brown eyes looked him up and down. "Why?" he asked. "Are you as anxious as the rest of us to be deprogrammed?"

"Might as well enjoy the scenery," another boy in the next row said, not turning around. "We won't have this kind of freedom when we get to the camp."

"No talking!" The older gentleman in the passenger seat snapped. He turned in his seat and surveyed the van of ten or so young men as if warning the rest of them to be quiet. A smile suddenly broke the stern landscape of his mouth. "Now," he said. "Does anyone know any good gospels to get us through the rest of the trip?"

The trip to hell, Luke thought bitterly to himself. He looked around at the sad faces of his peers, but no one seemed eager to start. Half of them didn't even look like the straight-laced Christian type, based on their hair and clothes. Before the man in the passenger seat could open his mouth to belt out a gospel of his own, a tall, soft-faced African America boy held his head up and began to sing:

"Know the one thing we did wrong,
stayed in the wilderness far too long.
Know the first thing we did right,
was the day we started to fight.
Keep your eye on the prize hold on, hold on."

Luke recognized it as a spiritual song sung during the civil rights movement, could remember hearing it on all those documentaries he was made to watch in school where black teenagers, about as old as him, fought for their right to live equally. The atmosphere in the van seemed to change, and the sullen faces all began to perk and turn around to the boy signing, whose voice was strong and clear and made for a church pulpit. Luke found himself smiling ever-so-slightly, the first smile he had since his family made the final decision to bring him to the Kreger Foundation in the middle of nowhere to be . . . well, to be made "better."

"Okay, that's enough!" The man in the passenger seat called back. He wasn't amused and hardly uplifted by the boy's fitting choice of song. He turned back around and the van was silent again, chugging down the long stretch of road that cut through a thick patch of pines.

Luke rested his head on the window and closed his eyes tightly, trying to keep the words of the song from escaping his mind, the meaning of them and those who had sung it before in similar times of oppression.

"Keep your eyes on the prize," he mumbled to himself, "hold on."

0000000

Noah sighed as he flipped the page of his bedside Bible. He peered over the cover at the ten other bunkmates of his cabin, all of them reading different passages of the same book on their beds, all of them wearing the same khaki pants and blue polo shirt with the small, gold cross stitched into the breast. A steady steam of sunlight filtered in through the cabin window and splayed out between the rows of beds. Noah closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, pretending he was at summer camp and enjoying an afternoon of quiet leisure, instead of doing an hour of mandatory Bible study at some far-right Christian camp he didn't belong in.

With his eyes still closed, Noah hovered a finger over the page he had turned to and pressed down on a random passage. He opened his eyes and read where his finger had fallen.

"Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." -James 4:7

Noah snapped the book shut and set it on his lap. He looked around at the other young men who were casually reading, their eyes glazed over and their minds wandering.

"Psst!"

Noah looked over at his neighbor on his left who hissed at him. The boy, Charles, flipped to another page in his copy of the book and kept his eyes on the words as he spoke. "You better keep reading, sweetie," he mumbled. "If the cabin leader comes in and sees you daydreaming, you'll be cleaning this bunk until your fingernails fall off."

"Only if I get caught," Noah said, giving him a sideways smile he knew his friend could see.

"You're a rebel at heart, Noah," Charles whispered, smiling slightly as he continued to read.

"Shh!" A few of Noah's bunkmates shushed them.

Noah rolled his eyes and opened the Bible again to a different page. He propped in up on his lap, closed his eyes, and ran his finger down the page. When he was confident that he had found a good passage, he stopped his finger and opened his eyes to read the words, "Where no counsel is, the people fall: but in the multitude of counsellers there is safety."-Proverbs 11:14

Noah looked up as he heard voices from outside of the cabin. His bunkmates slowly abandoned their studying and were kneeling on their beds, looking out the window at the commotion.

"What's going on?" Noah asked. He got up from his bed and placed the Bible on his pillow, walking over to the window and standing between a pair of beds to get a better look outside. Charles joined him.

The young men watched from across the path in their patch of woods as a van pulled up to the main lodge. The lodge was barely visible through the tall pines, and the semi-circle of the other cabins in the clearing blocked the view of the lake. Noah squinted as the doors of the van opened and a fresh batch of new camp members arrived. For a split second, he envied their everyday clothes and sloppy hair. He envied that they had no idea what their parents had gotten them into. He envied their ignorance.

"Well wadda ya know?" Charles asked, peering out the window. "Fresh meat."

0000000

The first thing Luke thought when he stepped out of the van was how much of a summer camp this place looked like. The lodge was a modern-looking building, made to seem like a log cabin when in reality it probably had a TV and a working kitchen. Luke slung his duffle bag over his shoulder and watched as a man in khaki pants and a blue polo shirt came towards them from the lodge. He had a large smile on his young, red face, and his bleach-blond hair stood spiked on his head.

"Welcome!" he said, spreading his arms out. "Glad to see so many new faces!"

Luke looked around at the sullen eyes of his peers and wondered how the man in blue could be so cheerful with such a dead-looking crowd.

"My name is Randy Lorenz, I'm one of the cabin leaders here at Echo Lake." He motioned towards the lodge. "If you'll all follow me inside, we have a quick orientation speech to give you and we'll assign you cabins."

As the group of new camp members shuffled into the building like cattle, Luke turned to the man walking next to him, the African American boy who had been singing on the bus earlier, and said, "This is so Shindler's List." Luke watched for the young man to crack a smile at his quip, but the boy was silent, pensive, staring at his shoes as he continued shuffling to through the building.

They passed through the large entry, which looked more like a hotel lobby than an ordinary lodge in the woods, and entered a set of double doors to a room set up not unlike a church. It was a room with white, blinding walls and various pictures and quotes from the Bible plastered on them. At the head of the room where the pulpit was on stage, a large, gold crucifix hung on the wall behind the microphone. The group sat near the front, only filing up less than a quarter of the seats, and remained silent until the speaker came to the stage.

A man in a gray suit with black, slicked back hair looked over the crowd, and Luke instantly recognized him as Krieger, the man who convinced his parents to send him here, the man who owned the camp in the first place.

Krieger cleared his throat loudly over the microphone. "Welcome, everyone," he began.

Luke crossed his arms and frowned at the man's phony smile.

"It's so nice seeing so many new faces at our wonderful facility."

He went on to talk about the importance of the camp, how it would build character for the boys over the summer and make them into better men. He talked about a willingness to learn and the importance of keeping an open mind. Luke snorted at this comment and Krieger stopped talking. The other boys look at Luke.

"Well hello, there, Luke," Krieger said, looking directly at him with that icy smile of his. "I'm so happy you decided to come here."

Luke scoffed and shook his head, slumping down in his seat slightly. "I didn't decide anything," he said.

Krieger paused, that grin plastered to his face as he sized Luke up and down. "Be that as it may, I hope our program can be of some use for you." He nodded his head at Luke and looked out over the small crowd. "Each of you will be assigned a guide, someone to help show you around and teach you the rules of the establishment. Mr. Lorenz is passing around a brochure with the camp's rules, and your guide will assist you in gathering your required uniforms."

The boy with hot-pink highlights raised his hand slightly. "What about the stuff we brought with us?"

"Oh, you'll have no use for that," Mr. Krieger said, his smile unwavering. "In fact, all of your belongings are now considered contraband, and will be placed in lockers in the basement on the main lodge here."

Luke took a brochure as the stack was being passed down his row. Before he had time to read it, Krieger said his farewells and soon the boys were ushered out of the room again.

Luke didn't say a word when the camp counselors took his things as the young men were being shuffled from room to room. He didn't protest when his new uniform was shoved in his hands as though he had just joined the army instead of a summer program. Luke watched, but didn't say a thing when he saw the boy with pink highlights get sent to a room where another counselor was waiting with a pair of scissors.

0000000

"This is the mess hall where we have our meals."

Luke looked at the building behind the lodge where his guide was pointing, a building that overlooked the pristine lake nestled in thick pines. Luke was surprised that his guide was one of the camp members, a boy about as enthusiastic about his job as a mortician putting makeup on a man who had his face blown off.

His guide, who's name was Andy, walked with him further down the dirt path, and pointed at a cluster of smaller buildings in the likeness of a log cabin.

"Those are the offices," Andy said. "The nurse's station, the pastor's office, the detention room—"

"Detention room?" Luke asked, still clutching his mandated clothes to his chest.

Andy gave him a look as though he were sick of explaining things a million times and nodded. "The detention room."

Luke didn't press the matter. He followed his taller, clean-shaven guide up the hill away from the lake. "So . . . what are you in for?" Luke asked.

"Jay-walking," Andy said. He looked at Luke. "What do you think I'm in here for?"

Luke paused as he struggled to keep up. "How long?" he asked.

"Every summer since I was fifteen. I'll be eighteen at the end of September, so you better believe this is my last summer."

"You come here by choice?" Luke asked.

"Nobody comes here by choice," Andy said. "My parents threatened to kick me out if I didn't come here, so I got no other options."

"You like it here?"

Luke question made Andy stop just as they reached the top of the hill. He looked at Luke, his eyes searching the newbie's face for a hint of sarcasm. When he realized Luke's question was serious, he frowned.

"Where the hell do you think you are, man?"

Luke blinked at Andy's sharp tone. He fell a step behind as his guide turned and continued walking on.

"These are the west cabins," Andy said, pointing to the small log cabins sitting in a semi-circle in the clearing. "You're in cabin three, right there." He pointed to Luke's cabin on the far right. "You're lucky 'cause it's right next to the bathhouse."

Luke looked next to his cabin at a longer cabin hidden in the brush that served at the bathhouse. He swallowed hard as he followed Andy up the stairs to his cabin, the reality of his stay now sinking in. Andy rapped on the door and entered without waiting for an ok from one of the residents.

"Look alive, boys!" he called, standing aside to let Luke in. "We got a fresh one here."

Luke watched as the ten or so bunkmates abandoned their collective reading and stood from their beds. Their gaze instantly fell on Luke—his clothes, his hair, his wide-eyed obliviousness. They were sizing him up, judging him. Luke wondered if this was what the first day of prison was like. He clutched his clothes tighter to his chest, and longed for home more than anything else in the world.

To be continued