The campsite is dirty, littered with gum wrappers and burnt scraps of foil. There’s a half-melted plastic produce container in the rusty fire ring. I walk to the end of the campsite to look down the path and there’s the lake: about as blue as blue gets, banks lined with willow trees. Out a ways from shore, a layer of mist hangs above the water, thick enough to disappear in.

It’s disorienting to see a lake where you didn’t know there was one. I feel that strange false aftershock, like when a car accident almost happens, as if I could have walked into the water in the dark without noticing the cold lapping at my legs.

I cross the dirt road to the bathroom. My toes ache from being jammed in my boots all night. I was convinced something might give me reason to get out of the car and run. It’s weird, the places your brain can go when you can't see what's around you. In the light, there’s nothing scary about this campground. It’s dirty and run down, but everything looks harmless.

The bathroom building smells like a swamp. There’s no heat and it’s not even closed off from outside. A screen just below the ceiling spans the length of each wall. My breath is thick in the air, like the cloud it forms could start to snow. I drop two quarters in the coin box for the shower and undress, hoping that by the time I’m ready to hop in, the water will be warm. Pipes whine and thump. The water is the color of rust and shoots from the showerhead in hard, progressively longer spurts. I stick my hand in to test for heat and it’s like being pierced by a billion frozen pins. It takes a buck fifty in quarters to get the water to lukewarm. I jump in and lather up as fast as possible. My body is covered in goose bumps that don’t go away even when the water turns all the way to burning hot. As soon as I get some good suds going in my hair, the water shuts off completely. Soap in my eyes and I can’t find any more quarters in the change pile on the wooden bench. I throw in two dimes and a nickel, praying it will work, but I lose them to the shower gods. My teeth chatter. I sob. I worry the water will freeze in icicles on my body, so I wrap myself in the sheet and rinse my hair in the bathroom sink while I wait to run out of tears.