I went and got our stuff from the car and set it all on the table. We didn’t have much. I’d brought a backpack with my toothbrush and a change of clothes. October had a small duffle bag, her sketchbook and pencil case. And we had the food and water from the market.

The cottage had a damp, musty odor, and the first thing October did was light an incense stick that instantly transformed the smell of the room from “dingy motor inn” to “woodsy bohemian den.”

We hadn’t eaten since breakfast and contemplated snacking before we ate the mushrooms, but from what I recalled they were more potent on empty stomachs.

October sat on the bed in the living room, smiled apprehensively and said, “OK. Let’s do this.”

I got the chocolates from my backpack and sat down across from her. I handed her the milk chocolate square and kept the dark one for myself. It was hard to get the foil off because some of the chocolate had gotten a little gooey in the afternoon heat of the car, but we managed to scrape it all out.

I snapped my piece in two, put both halves in my mouth and ate them at the same time. October held hers in her hand and made a face.

“Oh, no. You can’t paper-belly the mushrooms.”

She laughed and said, “I’m scared.”

I loved October’s vulnerable side. It made me feel useful. “Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Her expression softened as soon as I said that. She took one bite, chewed and swallowed, and then wriggled her nose and ate the rest.

“Ticket bought,” she said.

“Now, we wait for the ride.”

“Let’s wait in the forest.”

We made our way to the trail behind the resort. The hike down into the grove only took a few minutes and wasn’t as picturesque as we’d hoped. There were old tires and the blackened chassis of a car from the 1930s at the bottom of the hill, and huge stumps of old-growth trees that had been cut down among the new ones.

“These are babies,” I said, touching random redwoods. “Less than a hundred years old, I bet.”

It had been only about twenty minutes since we’d eaten the mushrooms, and I didn’t feel anything yet, but October’s were starting to kick in; I could tell because her pupils were beginning to take over her irises. Black and shiny, they looked like little vinyl records spinning in her eyeballs. And there were sharp, weather-bleached branches all over the ground that she thought were animal bones.