They sat for a little while afterward, oddly satisfied by the small amount of food and the relief of resting their tired legs. Kate opened her mouth as if to speak but then stopped and cocked her head to one side, and Tom looked off into the trees too.

Had they been hearing something? They’d become used to the background noise of the jungle, but faintly, above it, there had been something that sounded like voices, or certainly one voice.

It came to them both at once and Kate said, “Joel.”

Tom nodded. “I never thought I’d be so happy to hear that voice. How far away would you say they are?”

“They sound close, don’t they?” She looked along the trail as if trying to calculate, but then shrugged in defeat. “At least we know they’re going in the right direction.”

He smiled at her implicit confidence—there was no question in Kate’s mind that she and Tom were headed the right way.

They set off a short while later, and over the next few hours they heard tantalizing snatches of what sounded like chatter somewhere ahead, and on one more occasion, Joel’s voice rising up. But they didn’t seem to get much closer and sometimes the voices even sounded more distant.

Kate said, “They’re still ahead of us. I know they sound farther away all of a sudden, but that’s probably just a trick of the geography.”

“It has to be,” he said, and saw that she appeared briefly unsure of herself. “Kate, we’re moving pretty quickly, and they were slow even when we left them.”

“You’re right. I want to catch up with them before dark, that’s all.”

He checked his watch. “We have an hour or two. We’ll do it.” He didn’t know what he’d said, but she smiled at him, smiled for so long that he said, “What?”

“Nothing. Just… can we be friends when we get back?”

He laughed, a little embarrassed. “Aren’t we friends now?”

“Well, yeah, but…” She shook her head, visibly trying to think of a way of summing up how new this was to her, that she might actually be friends with him. “Oh, who cares? Emma and me, we’ve always had a platonic crush on you, just because of the way you are in English, so aloof and hostile and noble all at once, kind of like that guy in Brave New World.”

“The one who hangs himself?” She grinned and nodded, but then he said, “I never meant to be hostile.”

“I know that. I know.” She smiled again, a little sadly, and they walked on.