The next step was to thank God, the creator of the doors, the creator of love throughout the world, and to feel the flow of it. When there was love, there was God. Where there was kindness, there was God. When there was natural beauty, there was proof of the being’s great benevolent generosity. This was the part that always made Ayanna hesitate. To her, it felt ugly to think all these things were because of God. When she was in faith sessions, she had repeated these ideas back verbatim to please the church elders and her grandmother. But alone here, lying in the field, Ayanna thanked God not for being these things, but for having the generosity to give humans the capacity for these things. To be willing to love and to be loved in return, even when things between people could be so painful and confusing, felt to her like the purpose of existence. And to make yourself unavailable to these connections was a living death. They should be the most valuable things in a person’s life, Ayanna felt. Already, there were people, especially boys at school, who said things like the measures of a person’s life were the shoes they had, the house they kept, the car they drove. Maybe it was true their families had big houses, their lives were easier because they didn’t have to worry whenever they bought things, but it still—although Ayanna knew she would never, ever want to say this to their faces—seemed a really empty way to look at life. Imagine having to think about the world in that way for ten years, let alone eighty or ninety. Would you even be recognizably a person after a life spent like that?

It was so embarrassing to think earnest thoughts like these. Ayanna covered her face with her dirty hands. Another unbearable thought surfaced: Why can’t I be cool?

*  *  *

Most of the expedition was still sleeping. The only two awake were the DoorSherpas who were going through the expedition plans for the day. If the door opened to the meadow, they weren’t going through because there would be none of the ferns they were planning on gathering. According to their contacts, there had been a National Guard member who had gone through the door three days ago and had popped, so the risk level of going through was very low. The pattern this summer seemed to still be seven safe, one death.