Yeah. He got you a cooking gig at the camp. He pulled some strings. It’s good money too. Ten bucks an hour! We’re leaving on Friday, he went on. June the fifth. Tell me now if you’re coming ’cause otherwise I’m gonna give your space in my truck to Petey Pearce.

I didn’t answer. Bruce rolled a new joint and passed it to me first. For a while, we sat there getting high and reminiscing about old times. Remember the time Bryce passed out at his grandmother’s and Dean wrote 666 in shaving cream all across Bryce’s chest? Remember this, remember that. It was like falling down into a drowning lake. They’d been my only friends, and where else was I supposed to go? If I went back downtown, I’d have to worry about Dirk Wallace wrecking my face with brass knuckles. I’d probably watch Justine run by me again, as if I was white air. Maybe I’d meet another girl who would enlist me in a crime and then take off to be with her family. I didn’t know what to do. It probably doesn’t seem like much of a problem to you but I really felt like I had nowhere to go. I’d been more or less kicked out of Mount Drug, so I didn’t have anywhere to sit during the day. And I couldn’t go home because Sylvia was probably waiting there with a birth control brochure and a cup of hot peppermint tea. I could go to that place Kool-Aid. It was some emergency shelter, probably run by Born Again Christians who would probably make me pray and give up my knife. Kool-Aid—I bet the guy who invented that name thought he was so clever and had no idea his name was incredibly corny. I knew if I walked in there and some Christian said Welcome to Kool-Aid, I’d start laughing and get kicked out before I’d even signed in. So forget that place. I wasn’t going there.

Maybe I belonged in the forests.

I’d been raised in the cool shade of constant evergreens.

I’d swim, I’d suntan. I’d cook for loggers; I’d be their tanned gourmet. On my day off, one of the loggers could drive me to visit my father. He’d be overjoyed, seeing me in overalls. I’d help him break ground, just the way I used to when I was his little girl, his best friend.

You gonna come or not? Bryce asked.

Yeah, yeah, I said. I’ll come. June the fifth.

June the fifth was two weeks away. I had plenty of time to find Justine.

Where’s Heather? I said suddenly.

You didn’t hear? Bruce said, and he started to laugh. He choked on smoke, and when he was finally able to breathe, he told me the news.