We walked back to the veranda, and I couldn’t look at you, only at the ground, not sure what had just happened. I was hot. I was burning. I was entirely aflame. Then it was the next round and my turn to be blindfolded. I laughed and laughed as they spun me, despite myself, and I counted to thirty, cold and dizzy when I opened my eyes and they were gone. I walked into the forest, and there were Maksio and Agata, kissing in a clearing. I tapped them on the shoulder. They looked up, smiled, and continued their embrace. “I’ll find the other two!” I cried, running farther into the forest, over fallen trunks and little valleys. I ran until I was lost, until I was sure I’d lost you. I tried to find my way back. The forest had started to close in on me, to turn from enchanting to threatening. It felt like a nightmare, and I knew my mind wasn’t working clearly. I stopped, tried to calm myself. Then an owl hooted somewhere behind me and I turned. Whiteness glowed behind a tree, like a luminescent stone in the sea. I walked toward it, fast, my heart beating with imminent success. And then I saw the different shades of white—darker white on lighter white, matted marble on chalk. Two bodies on the forest floor, legs entwined. I stood, watching your feet move over each other, soles black with earth and leaves, writhing, struggling. There was cruelty in those round forms on top of each other—you over her, your chest over hers, her closed eyes lit by the moonlight. I turned back and ran. I ran and started to shiver all over, like a child who’s broken through ice and fallen into a lake and only just managed to crawl out. I ran and ran, becoming completely and utterly numb, not feeling a thing. Not feeling the cold, not feeling my lungs, only terror propelling me forward. It felt like, if only I ran fast enough, all this would not be true—that the farther I ran, the farther I would be from what I’d seen.

When I got to the house, Maksio and Agata were there, looking at me as if I were a ghost, asking me questions I couldn’t hear. I only saw their mouths moving. I thought I would suffocate or faint. It was as if I hadn’t breathed at all during my run, as if I hadn’t breathed in years. There I stood and felt my head deflating, my whole being draining of air, and I began to pant like a horse after a race. I bent over, hands on my knees, trying not to drown in the emptiness, the vacuum of myself. But something inside was broken, no doubt about it.

“Are you OK?” asked Maksio.