The fire crackles and I close my eyes, pulling the blanket up over my head to keep out the cold. I try to sleep. To let the day melt away around me. And for a while I do sleep, but my dreams are black and bleak and I’m running through trees, eyes flashing upward, searching for the starry night sky but I’m lost and I sink into the snow and the cold until she touches my hand and I snap awake.

My eyes flutter open and I’m still in my bunk, peering up at the ceiling.

But I’m not alone.

Voices carry through the cabin. The shuffling of boots across the floor.

The others have returned.

I stay still, listening to their lumbering movements, the door shutting behind them. The cabin is dark, the sun long set, and they don’t know I’m here, hidden in the top bunk. They don’t know I’m back.

“Told you the fire wouldn’t go out,” one of them says. I recognize the voice—the voices of the boys who I shared a cabin with before my mind went blank. Before I went missing. It sounds like Jasper, his words more pitched than the others.

I hear someone add more wood to the stove, the kicking off of boots, the opening and closing of dresser drawers. The bunk below me creaks as Lin flops onto his mattress and starts tapping a foot against the wood frame.

Jasper, whose bunk is directly across from mine, says, “I don’t know why I need to learn this shit. When will I need to use a compass? After I leave here, I’m never going into the woods again.”

“You’ll probably get a job as one of the counselors,” Lin suggests below me, and laughs in a quick burst.

“Hell no,” Jasper answers.

A long pause settles between them, and the wind grows louder outside, making the fire in the stove pop and crack. Drops of rain begin to drum against the roof.

I think they’ve fallen asleep, but then Jasper says, “It’s been two weeks.”

Below him, in the bottom bunk, Rhett snaps, “Shut up, man.”

“I just wonder where he is,” Jasper adds quickly.

“He’ll turn up,” Rhett answers, his voice biting. Sharp as tacks. Maybe I should say something, tell them I’m here—but I stay quiet, a knot twisted in my stomach.

“Can you blame him for not wanting to come back?” Lin asks below me. The room falls quiet. “I’d hide too.”

Jasper makes a sound. “No shit.”

Someone grumbles, someone else coughs, but no one speaks. And soon the cabin is filled with the sounds of sleep. Of mutters and snores, feet kicking at their footboards, blankets tugged up beneath chins to keep out the cold.

Wind squeals through cracks between the thick log walls. A never-ending scream. Long and hollow. A desperate sound.