“Don’t leave me here,” I said.

He looked at me and smiled. He said, “Dice always talks about breaking down the door. Break down the door. What’s behind it?” He set off down the trail. The woods became bleaker and my jacket felt warmer.

* * *

The autumn sun was unexpectedly low, and I didn’t know how to use it to track my path. The sun was pale gold. The remainders of snow had mottled the ground, destroying my depth perception—the forested hills rose like a wall of gneiss. I felt myself panting loudly; I developed a stitch in my side. My hand was melon-heavy. I tried to remember what I’d heard about splinters finding their way to the heart. The woods were young, the ground a knit of jug plants with heart-shaped leaves. The narrow trees trembled in the wind, without enough substance for the wind to bend them.

In these woods every tree seemed exactly the same, and the wind ensured that I couldn’t hear myself or smell myself, and it would have been easy to lose faith in myself entirely, except that every pump of blood jostled the metal wedge in my palm. I kept moving forward.

The sun had gone behind a cloud. I trailed spiderwebs like finish-line ribbons as I walked between saplings. I passed a stream overhung with boulders, and twenty minutes later, I passed it again.

I tried to reacquaint myself with my body. But I didn’t feel anything, except for the pounding in my hand. I sat this time, and lifted my hand to my face and examined it, testing the skin, which seemed hot and fragile as the skin of a fermented fruit.

I found a row of trees marked with orange spray paint and followed their jagged path till I came out suddenly on the shoulder of a vast deserted highway. Along the sides, busted tires curled like snakeskins. The woods were so shallow after all. One car drove past but I didn’t rise to flag it.

I tried to remember what Bay had said: You who imagine that all fruits ripen at the same time as strawberries know nothing about grapes. I knew I would never see Bay again, and I was sorry. He was a dream person.

I grounded myself by breathing into my scarf. Memories darted around the brown trees, thousands of them edging up on me. The past for me was 100 percent sad, the way that sometimes weather sites say it’s 100 percent humidity outside, but it’s still not raining.

* * *

I heard a far-off echoing pop, a truck backfiring or a gun, and tried to find my way back to the road again, and failed. The setting sun revealed itself, ducking under the cloud cover, and I walked straight toward it, over streams and logs. Then far away I saw the low blue dome of our tent. I struggled forward, suddenly exhausted.