I felt for the pouch of seeds around my neck. I remembered the gas station where Dance had said the cashier in a bulletproof vest, shotgun propped behind him, had locked the door as soon as the power went off. The world was colder, in all ways.

“Why do you talk like that?” I asked Dance. “Strangers? We brought strangers in?”

“I’m just telling you what they’re going to say.”

“But they talk like that, the kids in the camp. Self-important. Playing at being a little army in the woods. It’s not a game. Jake has guns.”

I felt the heaviness in my pocket.

We had a gun.

Jamey appeared around the side of the house, buttoning up her coat. “Starla’s asleep,” she said. “I put her down on your couch, okay?” She leaned against the truck hood next to Grayson.

The past day had aged her—or maybe it was the woods that made the shadows stretch beneath her eyes, creased with little Xs. Her skin was so dry it looked like paper. Grayson was thinner than I remembered, his coat bunching up at the shoulders. Did I look like that? All of us were covered in a thin brown scrim: dust from the road, from sleeping on the ground, and from the deer stands, dust the color of a dirty river. Snow clouds swarmed the branches of the trees, as if the woods were filling up with smoke.

“Jake’s gonna come back,” Jamey said—and I couldn’t tell if it was resignation or stubborn respect in her voice, the admiration you’d have for a rodent stealing your tomatoes, a stray dog that wouldn’t leave your porch. “He won’t give up. He’s bad like that. Once he gets an idea—”

“What is his idea? What’s his deal?” Grayson said. “Why is he so possessive?”

“But Jake wasn’t here,” I said. Two different men had come into the clearing. “Maybe you hurt him, Jamey. Maybe you took him out.”

Jamey didn’t seem concerned—or optimistic. Her face turned into that blank slate it got, as expressionless as I remembered first seeing her, outside the shed when we pulled into Skate State. She shut down, wiped the feeling from her face, a window slamming closed. She looked toward the direction Blue Mohawk had disappeared, down a path so slight it was like the trees had closed up after him. “Does anyone have a cigarette?”

No one did.

Mica was the one who came back, not Blue Mohawk. She walked briskly with her head down, trying to book it back to camp as soon as possible, I thought; she didn’t want to waste too much time with us. I thought again of how the woods were like a trap, a closing hand. The trees knitted themselves into shadows all around her. She was carrying a loaf of bread.

“It’s a no, right?” Dance said.