“Was,” he said. I looked up at him, puzzled. “I was a high jumper,” he said softly. “Queen will show you how to move around in the tree canopy with a throw rope.” He smiled and whistled, calling something. “After you’ve been here a little while you’ll never want to think about the fake world again. Trust me on that.” His tone was complicated. He seemed to be making fun of his own seriousness. Of course this was a test: he was widening and widening his circle till I entered it. But I didn’t know it then.

Three dogs cantered through the woods. They were enormous and white, as though all their color had been filtered away.

“They kill hunting dogs,” Dice said. “That’s why we have all those signs up.”

I drew my hand back from the dog’s ear. “They’re all right with you,” said Dice, “just don’t approach them while they’re eating.” The dogs, I would learn, ate deer and wolves, and sheep who sometimes suddenly died. They would leave rib cages, bloody legs, pelvises strewn across the farm. By the forest border, we were tripping on bones and stained fur. Dice said, “Did you know that over the past hundred thousand years, humans have been getting tamer? We’re breeding for lighter limbs, smaller teeth. We’re taming ourselves. And when we’re as old as bacteria—that’s about four billion years old—we will be as radically interdependent as they are.”

“You think we’ll get to four billion?” I said.

Dice nodded. “I’ve spent a lot of time with fossils. I know how things linger. Did Bay tell you I used to work in a coal plant?” He paused. “Tell me about your family,” he said.

I told him it was just my mother and me.

“I bet she puts a lot of pressure on you,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. I could see her now, her tall stomping walk and the pleasure with which she oriented her solar-powered queen of England figurine on the kitchen windowsill. The queen wore a blue skirt suit and the sun made her little hand wave daintily. My mother adored that thing, which came from one of the gift shops where she worked. “But I think she tries her best,” I said. I almost cried as I told him.

“You have to tell yourself a new story,” he said softly. “That’s all you’re crying over—a story you’ve made up.”

I wondered if this was true. My mother and I had both wanted the same thing for me—a better life than hers—but we disagreed about what better meant.

He was silent, maybe waiting for me to speak, and I surprised myself by pouring out all the details of my lies—the planned trip to Richmond, the bus to Asheville instead. He asked why I didn’t simply refuse to go to college.