Zadie slung a towel over her shoulder, slipped on her flip-flops, and started down the dirt path toward the women’s locker room. Inside, there were two shower stalls with hospital room–style curtains pulled across them. One had a sign taped to it that read: OUT OF ORDER. Zadie pulled back the curtain of the presumably in-order shower to find a bagel-sized spider splayed out on the tile. After flinging several choice expletives at the intruder, Zadie removed one of her flip-flops and hurled that, too. By some stroke of luck, the shoe hit the spider dead-on and it crumpled to the floor. This is why I hate camping, she thought miserably as she picked up her sandal and slipped it back on her foot.

With some effort, Zadie turned the spigot and walked face-first into the hot water. Rust-colored dirt trickled down her ankles, forming a gruesome sanguine puddle at her feet. Between that and the spider, I could be in an Alfred Hitchcock movie, she thought, then yawned. The gentle patter of the hot water on her skull was making her tired. It had been almost thirty-six hours since she’d last slept. Her body swayed with exhaustion, and she leaned on the wall to steady herself. All she wanted to do was collapse onto a warm bed with a down comforter. The thought of sleeping on the hard ground that night made her wince.

Once again, Zadie was nearly winded by the reality of what she had agreed to. Two weeks—maybe more—of sleeping on the ground. Her body ached in anticipation. She wondered briefly if the Ladybug would be okay with the sleeping arrangement, then reminded herself that the Ladybug had a comfy uterus to sleep in. It didn’t need a down comforter.

After she’d wrung her hair out and toweled off, Zadie pulled on a fresh pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt for the walk back. The sun had set by the time she left the locker room, and the red rocks were nothing but imposing shadows against a navy sky. As she was about to turn right onto the path that led back to the campsite, she stopped. Music fluttered into her left ear and she turned toward the sound. The notes were delicate and bright like filaments in a lightbulb, but they were not particularly melodic. The song—if you could even call it that—had a stream-of-consciousness quality to it. It would stop and start. There was no obvious meter, no refrain, just arbitrary notes bunched together like wildflowers a child had picked.