“Well,” said Mara. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Of course,” he said. Not breaking her gaze. “I think you’re special, Mara.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do. I can see it. Look, I have to go. Don’t tell anyone we talked, okay?” He flicked her mic back on, tapped his heart twice, and slipped away.

IF MARA HAD KNOWN THE SHOW’S LOCATION IN ADVANCE, SHE WOULD HAVE STUDIED the plants. In a week’s time she could have memorized the staples. But as she searched the woods, she grew frustrated. Many of the leaves she saw were unfamiliar, or too young to identify with confidence. She found several clumps of fiddleheads, but they were fuzzy, a species of fern she didn’t know. She could have touched them to her wrist, to her tongue, to check for a reaction. But she didn’t feel like waiting or getting sick, and so with reluctance she let them be.

If they had arrived a few weeks earlier, when the nights sank below freezing, she could have tapped maple trees, and she fell into a brief daydream about how she might have done it without a drill or metal spiles. She had never tapped maple back home, but she knew the concept and thought there must be a simple way with wooden tools. She’d heard that you could tap birch trees, too, but they gave less sap, and anyway it was a moot point this late in the season.

Finally she found a patch of sumac shoots, which she recognized from the taller bushes around them, their long leaves. The shoots were crisp and broke easily, the center stalks thick as her pinkie. She ate several and then gathered the rest in her tunic to bring to camp.

On the walk back she felt a presence, and froze once more, but it was only a deer. They stared at each other unblinking. Then the deer turned, white tail flashing as it bounded through the woods, and Mara saw that it had been browsing a stand of wood nettles, barely a foot tall and tufting at the tops with still-curled leaves. She felt grateful for the deer, because she might not have noticed the young plants without it, and as she walked back, thinking of nettle tea and nettle soup, she almost forgot she was in a show.

The reprieve didn’t last long. Back at camp, Lenny was arranging promotional photographs, portraits of each survivor. He tapped Bullfrog for a photo first, which was a bold move, because Mara got the sense he wouldn’t be big on publicity. But what did she know? Bullfrog had come here, after all. He must have cooperated well enough, because Mara glimpsed him through the trees, posing square-legged with his arms crossed, white beard shining in the sun.

“How about this?” Kyle practiced poses while Ashley humored him.

“Try bending your knee more,” she said. “Lift your chin.” She steered him into a crouched position that actually looked good. Reserved but agile, coiled, as if he might spring up at any time. More scrappy than skinny.