When Mara reached the creek, she set the camera on a smooth rock and sat down before it. Pressed record. A green light shone back at her. “Good morning,” she said to the lens. To the world. Practicing. She pictured a million faces staring, and her voice caught.

She cleared her throat, tried to clear her mind. Flipped the screen around. Made sure she was in frame, centered, and that no one could see up her shorts. She hadn’t examined her face in daylight in ages. It stared back at her, gaunt and dirty. Her eyebrows had gone dark. She rubbed them with a finger and dirt fell out. Then she wiped a gob of crust from her eye, wondering how long it had been there. Days maybe.

She couldn’t let herself get distracted.

Mara thought of other people on television, how they talked to cameras. They had an urgency, an intimacy, and maybe she could approximate it. She tried to sound conspiratorial.

“Good morning,” she said again. Raised her eyebrows. Should she wink? No. That was too much. It was all too much.

“Okay,” she said. “For the past four days, Ashley and I have been building a fish trap. We have wood, but we need string to hold it all together.”

That was no good. Too stiff. She could redo the intro forever. The sun was rising fast, and soon the crew would arrive.

“My partners and I need a steady supply of protein,” she said. “A staple food. We’re all getting weak. If we have a good fish trap, it could make the difference between starving and thriving. But we need string to hold the trap together. And sometimes, for survival, you have to take a bold step.”

That was better. Lenny would like it. He might even forgive her for what came next.

Mara pulled off her tunic and spread it on her lap, feeling goose bumps rise on her arms, her stomach. Aware of how thin her sports bra was. She could smell her own anxious sweat.

The tunic was stained, dark at the hem and speckled with what looked like blood, though she could not remember bleeding. She pressed the knife to the fabric.

By starting at the hem and coiling upward, Mara was able to slice a single ribbon about a half inch wide. As she cut, she glanced often to make sure the camera could still see her. She watched it more than she meant to. Her own body, thin and dirty, on a two-inch screen. Contained. She lifted her chin and pushed the knife harder.

The task took longer than she’d imagined. She needed to keep the knife steady, even as the fabric slid. Cut the strip too wide and it would waste precious fabric; too narrow and it might tear. By the time she reached the armpits, the rising sun warmed her bare back. She cut down one sleeve and then the other.

When she finished, she had a pile of fraying ribbon on her lap. All that remained of the tunic was the reinforced collar. She thought about putting that back on, like a necklace, but it would seem sarcastic, and she supposed it would have been. She plucked a few loose threads from her legs and dropped them on the ground. Hid her mic in the back of her sports bra, tucking in the extra wire.