This feeling of the familiar and the remarkable cracked the hard crust I’d grown over my senses. It pulled at instincts and habits so that they could no longer lie flat and folded in the drawer where I’d stuffed them since those first sanity-bending days in the school. I was opening up, and all I wanted to do was run.

“You okay?” Mitch was beside me; I didn’t realize it until he spoke. “Your face…”

I blinked a few times and felt the sting. My eyes were too wet. If I didn’t get myself under control, they’d spill over, and I’d have to explain.

“Yeah, yeah.” I cleared my throat. “It’s just a lot out here. You know?”

“Yeah,” he answered, quieter than usual. “It’s…terrible, right?”

But there was a tone to his voice that sounded like maybe he didn’t think it was so terrible. I wondered if he was cracking open, too, even just a little. That was all I needed get through to him, just a little crack, somewhere to dig in. I was determined to use this time to reach him.

“Yup, terrible.” I took a deep breath and ducked under a heavy bough bursting with green, sticky with pine gum.

In the institute, I’d heard staff talk about “the wild” like it was empty, like it was an overwhelming amount of nothing, about getting lost in it all. But the truth was, it was easier to get lost in a crowd, to slip into so much that it buried you, slid over your head and made you anonymous. The wild was full—stuffed to bursting.

Out here, I lost my sense of edges, of where I began and ended. Inside the school, I noticed that I smelled; my hair, my skin, my breath—everything carried a scent like meat. It was maddening, inescapable. I could smell my thick sweat on my sheets, tooth decay on my pillow, acidic fear on my clothes. Sometimes I thought I could smell the waste collecting in my bowels.

But now that I was home, my scent was diluted, buried and welcomed. Humanity behind walls is highlighted. Humanity in the woods is insignificant. And because of it, I could take deep breaths and think of things other than myself. It was like the relief you get when you remember your thoughts are not facts, not yet, that they’re only just thoughts rolling around in your head. Everything was still possible.

It didn’t take long to find the targets’ camp. We’d been dropped off close, and sure enough, they were dangerously nearby to both the road and the school. And even worse, they were too close to the danger that was us. I was suddenly angry. Why were they being so careless?

“How do we do this?” Mitch was wringing his hands, nervous now that we were so close to “real Indians” in their “natural habitat.”

I fastened the image of my own family behind my eyes and walked into their camp with both hands held up to show they were empty, to indicate that I meant no harm. I was a liar before I even opened my mouth.