“Like, pay more attention?”

Mara had never tried to describe this before, or even thought about it much, and she struggled for words.

“It’s almost like you have to pay less attention. At least to any one thing. Relaxed, but you’re just—you’re alert, too. You know that feeling when you’re driving, and even if you’re not looking in the rearview mirror, you know there’s a car behind you? Because you’re just keeping track of it? It’s like that, but for everything around you. You need to know what’s happening even when you’re not looking. Like your mind is shallower. You can’t think too much. You just feel.”

That was part of what Mara had always liked about wilderness. The chance to disappear. The feeling of getting a break from her own mind, and living in senses alone.

“I’ll work on it,” said Ashley. And then she smiled. When she smiled, her eyes softened, like all she saw was Mara.

There was something odd about Ashley, though, that Mara noticed early. Sometimes she was charming, easy, made of light. But she could go dark quickly.

Mara saw it a few times. Once, she came back to camp and found that the pot had boiled over, quenching half the fire. When she went to refill it, she saw Ashley swimming in the lake. A speck in the distance. The cameras waited on shore. She swam for a long time.

When Ashley finally climbed from the water, Kyle looked up from his whittling. “Seems a waste of energy,” he remarked.

“Focus on your own fucking energy,” said Ashley, and then she froze. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where that came from.” She glanced at the cameras.

Another time, she snapped at Bullfrog when he touched her shoulder. But most of the time she was bright.

Sometimes now, when Mara came back from foraging, she didn’t go to the fire directly. Instead she went to the piles of wood, poured her armloads upon them, and stood there arranging for a bit. Waited, because she knew what was coming. Ashley’s voice sounding from the fireside, though Mara stayed focused on her task, pretending for seconds not to hear.

“Mara,” Ashley would say. “Come drink. Mara, you gotta hydrate!” Leaning around the shelter with her dark hair swinging.

So Mara went to her and drank. And showed off what she’d gathered—nettles and ramps, wood ear mushrooms, pretty flowers—until together they’d emptied the pot. And after her next walk she went to the woodpiles again, and sorted sticks by their sizes, stomach turning, waiting for Ashley to call her name.

9

When Mara was ten years old, her parents had decided to move from their suburban life in Salem, Oregon, to the country, the broad eastern half of the state. “You’ll see,” her mom told her. “You’re going to have a real childhood. Most kids don’t even get to be kids anymore.” Her mom had grown up on a farm herself—dairy, in Idaho—and missed the freedom that came with space. She spoke of the country like Mara should miss it too, although Mara had never known it, and so the country had always struck her as a wondrous, inaccessible place.