Our raft lurches off the shore, and I can’t tell if the swooping in my stomach is from the rocking motion of the waters as we drift downstream, or from the way his words settle inside me.

Bamboos lean their bodies out from either side of us, their leaves skimming the surface, and the river is so clear it resembles liquid glass, reflecting all the other rafts up ahead, their shapes merging together at the edges. I can see Oliver and Daisy laughing over something; two of the girls risking everything to snap pictures, shrieking when their fingers slip and their phones almost tumble into the water; Sean leaning against his teammate’s shoulder, both of them staring out at the scenery as if mesmerized.

When joy arrives, it catches me off guard.

It sneaks up slowly through my rib cage like poppies pushing through soil after the rain, and then it’s there, everywhere, warmth beating in my chest, spreading down to my fingertips as I sink back in the sunlight. It’s like I’m thawing. I’ve always been used to happiness in snatches—happiness that felt stolen, happiness that was hard-won, happiness because. I was only happy when someone said I was pretty, when I booked a new job, when a stranger approved of me, and then I would go home and feel the happiness seep out again, leaving behind a hollow pit in my chest.

This happiness though—it’s new. It stays without asking for permission. It simply exists, like the water and the sky.

“What are you smiling at?” Cyrus asks me.

Nothing, I want to say. Everything.

I just shake my head, the breeze flowing past me with the river. In my peripheral vision, I can see the sun lighting up wild strands of my hair, turning it a brilliant fire-gold.

When I agreed to the trip, all I’d wanted was to run away: from the threat of the future, from everyone who expected something more from me, from the grave in my backyard where my potential had been buried, from the sadness that had leaked through my bedroom walls.

But this doesn’t feel like I’m escaping—it feels like I’m returning. Like I’m reaching back in time for the person I used to be, before the tears stained my pillow and the blisters split my feet. The little girl who didn’t wince at the sound of her own laughter, who plucked wild daisies and braided them in her hair, who saw a secluded garden and imagined hidden realms, who wore sparkly tiaras and waved around heart-shaped wands, picked out dresses because she loved the color pink and not just because she liked how the material clung to her body. The girl I was, the girl I had forgotten. Not an ignorant foreigner, but someone wandering through new, familiar cities.