“They can bust you back down, too,” she tells Dawn. “Like, I lost a bag of rice a while back and we had to cut the hike short, so they demoted me to Black Bear again, not like I gave a shit. What I got waiting for me back home? A little walk in the woods is easy.”

Kyla’s here because she stabbed her mom’s boyfriend in the neck with a pen when he tried to put his hands on her, and the judge gave her a choice, jail or this.

“White people are so fucked up,” she says. “Like, this is your idea of punishment, you know? Walking. In nature. Rocks and trees and shit. Shit, I should get y’all’s parents to pay me to take you through my city, try to survive a week where I’m from. You can even wear your pretty yellow shirt.”

Regardless, Kyla has a tent and nice new hiking backpack. She has better hiking boots than Dawn does, and a thicker rain jacket, too.

Polar Bears earn.

So far it hasn’t rained, but it’s Washington State in September. From what Dawn’s heard people saying, it’ll start to rain soon, and it won’t stop until May. Awesome.

There’s one other Polar Bear in the Pack, a tall, brooding guy named Warden. There are two Brown Bears and one other Black Bear.

The other Black Bear’s name is Brielle, and she doesn’t talk much or make eye contact with anyone, but she’s a good hiker. She’s always up near the front of the Pack.

Dawn’s always near the back, always out of breath, always sweating through her yellow shirt and praying for another water break.

The Brown Bears are two guys named Evan and Brandon. They hike together and set their tents up beside each other, and whenever the counselors aren’t paying attention, they crack jokes and play fight and generally cause mayhem. They’re both medium tall and kind of plain-featured and entirely unremarkable, and Dawn has already confused their names at least once a day since she arrived. They don’t say much to her, but sometimes she’ll go for water or to find firewood or something and look back and catch their eyes and know they’re talking about her and it’s kind of creepy. She sets her tarp up far away and generally tries to avoid them.