Mara didn’t like how he talked to her, like they had some long past, when they’d basically hiked together for a day. But Ashley nodded solemnly. She knew her line. Her line was to touch his cheek.

“Maybe you can mail it back to me when you’re done,” he said. “Obviously use it until then, but if I could get it back afterward . . . It’s a nice machete.” He asked if Lenny could give Ashley his address, which Lenny promised to do, and just when the whole goodbye seemed like it might drag on forever, Lenny said it was time for him to leave. James hesitated.

“On second thought,” he said, “maybe it’s better if I take the machete. It would just be easier.”

Ashley’s eyes flared slightly, but she handed the knife back.

“Good luck,” said James. “Stay in touch.”

And then he was gone.

Afterward, the survivors had to talk to Lenny about James leaving. They were brought across the meadow one at a time, so they couldn’t hear each other.

“What do you think it means that James left?” Lenny asked Mara. “Is this a setback for your team?”

“He wanted to go home,” she said.

“Full sentences,” said a camera guy. “Present tense.”

“I think James just wants to go home,” said Mara, and a thumbs-up appeared to let her know she’d done it right.

“Would you say he’s weaker than you?”

“He wasn’t . . .” Mara said, and then she corrected herself. “I don’t think James is weaker than the rest of us.” Even as she said them, she became aware of the words James is weaker contained in the statement, how an unscrupulous editor could clip out the rest of the sentence, and she wished she could pull the words back in. Not that it mattered, really. Mara was unimpressed with James—not because he went home in under three days, but because of all the agonizing about it. Still, she saw now how it could go if she left, if she had to leave. How they’d ask the others about her, baiting them. Build a story, using her, that wasn’t about her at all.

Maybe James’s mistrust had rubbed off on her. Or if not his mistrust, his trust. The fact that at first, at least, he had thought things would be transparent and fair.

“I didn’t take the bait,” she said later, in the shelter. She was glad to say it out loud. It was warm, and they sat at the edge of the shade, four figures in a line on the flattened grass. Bullfrog stretched his hairy toes in the sun.

It felt like someone was missing, which surprised Mara, because it wasn’t like she had known James well. And he wasn’t missing. He had chosen to leave. People weren’t missing when they were where they wanted to be.

“Did Lenny try to get you to say he’s weak?” she asked.

“Yeah,” said Ashley. “I didn’t say it. I could be next, you know?”