Nobody talks very much in the group because there isn’t much time and nobody has any energy. They’ve been hiking since Dawn got here and maybe since forever, through a never-ending rain forest and over literal mountains. It’s too cold most of the time and too hot the rest, and there are weird bugs and spiders and probably cougars and bears, and Dawn’s back hurts from the way the rope around her tarp digs into her back when she’s trying to carry all of her shit, and she’s hungry because all she’s eaten is rice and raisins and lentils—

(some of the other kids have, like, energy bars and dehydrated meals and even chocolate, but Dawn has surmised you have to earn that stuff, too)

—and her leg muscles are screaming from having to hike so much, and she twisted her ankle on a tree root somewhere, and she’s dirty and smelly and sick of peeing in the woods and having to wear the same underwear every day, but according to one of the guys in the group, Lucas, this is about as good as Out of the Wild gets.

“It’s wilderness therapy,” Lucas tells her. “Like, you’ve heard of boot camp and stuff, right? Send all the bad kids to army school and get some drill sergeant to scare the bad right out of them? This is the same shit, but we’re mobile.” He gestures in the vague direction of the counselors. “And those two dumbasses would make terrible drill sergeants.”

The scheme, Lucas explains, is you hike around in the woods more or less nonstop, graduating through the ranks from Bear Cub all the way up to Grizzly, at which point they let you go home.

“It usually takes two or three months, sometimes longer,” he says. “I never heard of anyone getting out quicker.”

Lucas is wearing a red shirt. That apparently makes him a Black Bear, though why the Black Bears wear red is beyond Dawn’s comprehension, until she looks around and notices how every kid in the Pack wears a bright color, no matter what level they are. The Brown Bears wear orange.

“It’s because of the forest,” Lucas says. “Bright colors make it easier to find you if you escape.”

“Or find your body if you die,” a girl named Kyla says, rolling her eyes.

Kyla’s a Polar Bear. Polar Bears wear blue.

Black Bears are apparently two levels up from Bear Cubs. Brown Bears are between Bear Cubs and Black Bears, and Polar Bears are one level higher than Black Bears. Then it’s Grizzly Bears, who wear whatever they want, because that’s when you graduate. Lucas has been here for almost a month, so he’s doing okay.

Kyla has been here for three months. She’s not doing as great.