“I’m hungry,” Mitch said. I had heard this four times in the last hour alone. “And tired.”

Finally, I stopped. “Okay, this is as good a place as any.” I dropped my pack and stretched my arms over my head. “We have enough time to make a small fire and maybe even a lean-to.”

“Here?” He looked around at the endless trees, fallen and standing. “There’s nothing here.”

“There’s everything we need here.” I pointed around my feet. “Dry wood, level ground, heavy ferns for concealment…everything.”

“What are we going to eat?” Okay, now he was starting to piss me off. I tried to remember that he hadn’t even made it out of the suburbs when we first ran. This was all very new for him.

“All right, listen. You know as well as I do that we have to do this right. And showing up with full bellies after running away from the school is not exactly realistic.”

“How would they even know?” He kicked at his bag like a kid.

“Trust me, we…they notice things like that. Just…” I sighed. “I’ll make you some cedar tea. It’ll fill you up a bit. ’S got lots of vitamins, too.”

“Whatever.” He folded his arms across his chest.

I walked the perimeter, wishing we had some bells to hang so we weren’t so vulnerable. It hadn’t registered yet that we were the ones people should be setting alarms for. I avoided Mitch with work. I found a balsam poplar with not too much debris underneath and a lower branch study enough to hold the crossbeam I’d foraged from the wreck of a jack pine lying nearby. Then I collected enough branches to latch together and crisscrossed them on either side. Mitch sat nearby while I worked. I was frustrated, but then I saw him making the small motions one does when they feel overwhelmed in the bush, the ways you start to orient. He picked up a snail and let it crawl over his finger; he peeled a patch of moss off a tree and sniffed it; he took a deep breath and held it for ten counts. I left him alone to this important work. By the time I set out to collect the ferns that would finish the walls and provide cover, he was back at my side.

“I don’t mean to be this way, you know.”

“And how’s that?” I kept working

“Useless.” He plucked a small plant and held it up. “Is this right?”

I looked up from my stoop. “Sure.” His face was painful with the need for approval and laid bare with embarrassment at the same time. I stood up.

“You’ll want to gather fuller ferns, like these.” I pointed my lips to the pile at my feet. “And avoid the ones with red leaves at all cost.”

“Poison ivy, right?”

“Right. You don’t want to be grabbing those with your hands. And we sure as hell don’t need to be sleeping under a roof of them, either.”