I’ve heard it before, the desperation, the plotting to escape—it’s common at Fir Haven High, especially from the seniors as the months tick down to graduation. They talk of moving out east, or down to California where it never snows, or overseas, as far away as they can get. Yet, the truth is, most will stay. They get jobs working at the lumberyard or one of the nearby Christmas tree farms that dot the valley. They get stuck. They forget about the dreams they had to travel far, far away from here.

I should tell her that I believe her, but I’m not sure that I do.

Instead, I place a pot of water on the woodstove and wait for it to boil. I add more logs to the fire.

“Will you leave after high school?” Suzy asks, and the question actually startles me—as if she cares about me, even just a little—and I swallow stiffly, unsure how to feel. No one’s ever asked me this. Not even my mother, or grandmother. Because Walkers never leave Jackjaw Lake. At least not for long. We find it hard to breathe beyond this forest. The farther we go, the more it throbs inside us, our lungs gasping for air. My mother left for a whole year when she was nineteen. Traveled around Alaska, met my nameless father, got pregnant, then returned home with regret in her eyes—at least that’s how my grandmother told it. Mom thought she could escape who she was by leaving these woods. But Walkers always come back. I think that’s why she travels to the ocean to sell her jars of wild honey; it’s a way for her to escape, to stand facing the open sea and to feel momentarily free—before returning to Jackjaw Lake.

Returning to me: the daughter who has kept her trapped here. Her burden. And a knife digs deeper into my heart every time she leaves, every time she promises to be back but I’m not entirely sure that she will. If this time she’ll leave for good and never return. And I feel guilty for wanting it sometimes, for wishing she would stay away.

Perhaps it’s easier: being alone. Building walls. A solitary life with no one to lose. No one to break your heart.

“No,” I tell Suzy finally. “I won’t leave.” I don’t need to escape—I’m not like her, my mom. I don’t need to run away from here, I don’t need to see palm trees or vast parched deserts or glittering cities at night to know this is where I belong. To know I wouldn’t survive out there. I am a forest creature. I can’t dwell anywhere else.