Her toes in the cold water, she thought about washing parties with her mother, when they’d wash the special rags they used to have in the river. They were just old strips of cotton T-shirts, repurposed by Debra. But they had been one of the last remnants of the City that they relied on daily. She’d been much smaller, her mother sometimes seemed nervous to have her go too deep into the water. But now Agnes was a swimmer. She flopped toward a deeper pool in the lazy river, dunking her whole self under and scrubbing the loose hairs from her scalp, shoulders, chest.

She rolled over, flippered her hands to stay submerged, and opened her eyes to see the blue of the sky through the water, see the sun’s effects, diluted by her depth. In other parts of this river, it picked up speed and became dangerous. If she tried to stay still, she could feel that pull beginning even here. Small and gentle, but an unmistakable tug. She wouldn’t notice it if she were standing or washing, or even treading upright. But once she relaxed, she could move quite swiftly downriver. But where she was, the river slithered back and forth, like a cold snake. And there was no danger, as far as she could tell.

She thought back to Ranger Bob. The way he had looked at her after he gave her the lollipops. The skin between his eyes sagging down in a deep V of worry. She remembered that look from their very first day. Their trip had been exhausting. Her mother was exhausted. Her face blotchy and laced with red veins like cobwebs from crying. Agnes remembered that on their last day at home, her mother and Nana had fought.

“You can’t go,” Nana had said.

Her mother was flustered and upset. But more, confused. “I have to go. Why are you making this harder?”

“Because it’s so stupid.” Nana had scrunched her fists and face, like in the cartoons that Agnes watched when smoke would come out of someone’s ears if they were mad. Nana was very mad.

“This is not stupid, Mom. It’s important. Don’t you care about Agnes?”

Nana’s eyes got big, and she blinked them at Agnes as though seeing her for the first time. Her anger softened and she smiled. She reached out to hug Agnes, and Agnes stepped toward her, but her mother’s heavy arm pushed her back behind her. Then her nana howled.

Seeing her nana with tears falling made Agnes’s chest constrict. She felt her throat tighten and the water rise to her eyes and she heard her mother become angry. All was cut short, though, when her mother threw a glass against the wall.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” her mother screamed. Nana screamed, “But I’m so scared.” Agnes slunk away from her mother’s arm and moved herself toward her room slowly so as not to be detected.

She needn’t have worried. Neither woman noticed her leave. Even though they claimed to be fighting about her, they had forgotten she was there. They were wailing at each other now, accented by hysterical words. She’d never seen anything like it before. Now, of course, she knew the Twins, and they acted in a very similar fashion. Now she could marvel at it. But at the time, she remembered being scared.

Agnes had shut the door to her room that night, slowly releasing the knob so the click was hushed. The pain in their voices dulled by the barrier of the door. Agnes walked around the room and touched the things that belonged to her, trying to hear if they had something to tell her. She tapped her fingers on the window and waited for a response. She put her head into her pillowcase and stretched it across her face and breathed through the cotton weave. She lay down like that on her bed, her head on her pillow inside the case. That’s how she fell asleep. She woke up to her mother pulling things from her drawers.

“What are you doing?” she muffled from inside the pillowcase.

“Oh, good, you’re alive,” her mother said, distracted by filling a backpack with Agnes’s warm clothes. Her voice was ground down, powdery. Her eyes were bloodshot. She had not slept. She wore a giant T-shirt Agnes had never seen before, and puffy socks pulled up to her knees. Her hair was in a fallen side ponytail. She looked like an unhappy adult dressed as a once-happy child. “Sweetheart, can you pick two things that are the most special things to you? That you wouldn’t mind carrying around with you for a long time?”

“Why?”

“Because we’re going away. And you might not see your other things for a while.”

Agnes nodded solemnly. “Is Nana gone?”

“Nana is gone. Bring two things to me in my room, okay?” Her mother hurriedly kissed the top of her head.

Agnes chose her stuffed unicorn and her butterfly necklace. She lost the necklace within the first couple of months in the Wilderness.

“Oh, we were looking for it everywhere. How did you find it?” her mother had cried when a Ranger reported the discovery.

“We find everything,” the Ranger said. His stony face ground down her mother’s smile. He wouldn’t give her the necklace back. He said it would be kept in the evidence room.

“Evidence of what?” her mother had asked.

“Of your failure to follow rules.”

That was the earliest interaction Agnes remembered with a Ranger other than Ranger Bob, who had led them on their intake day.

She thought about her mother living in the City, there for Nana even though Nana was dead. She didn’t understand it. Agnes loved Nana too. But I’m alive.

From under the current Agnes felt a disturbance from the bank and popped her head up, alarmed.

Patty and Celeste, naked and knock-kneed, were wading into the river.

“You are a cheater,” Celeste sang. “Skipping work like that.”

Agnes’s heart burned with shame. “I’ve never skipped work before,” she said, sinking underwater up to her nose and looking woefully back toward camp.

“Oh.” Celeste frowned. “I figured you were a badass. You should do it more,” she said.

“Ugh, I had to whittle,” Patty said. “And now I have splinters.” She waggled her swollen red fingers. She had bad splinters and would probably need to see Dr. Harold.

“At least you didn’t have to touch the dead things like I did.” Celeste scrunched her face in disgust.

“But you love dead things,” Agnes said, and Celeste rolled her eyes.

The girls floated on their backs and watched a few bullet-shaped clouds speed across the sky. That wind was high, though, and around them nothing moved.

“This is a pretty okay place,” Celeste said, her voice slightly wistful.

“It’s the first place I remember,” Agnes said.

“Was it the first place you went?”

“One of them. Yes. It’s near the Post where we entered.”

“We haven’t been to Post yet,” Patty whined.

“It’s not special.”

“But there are snacks!”

“Only in some. Most of the snacks are gone from the machines. There’s water. That’s about the best thing.”

“And handsome Rangers?” Patty asked.

“The Rangers are old,” Agnes said. She and Celeste laughed at Patty.

“They don’t seem so old,” Patty said quietly.

“Rangers aren’t worth your time,” Celeste said.

“Why do you say that?” Agnes asked.

“Oh, you can just tell, right, Agnes?”

Agnes was surprised Celeste had come to that conclusion so quickly. “Yeah, I guess.”

“I guess,” Patty mocked for no reason.

They continued to float. Agnes listened for sounds of bird wings and the occasional splash of their hands in the water.

Agnes felt like she was dozing, but she didn’t know if it was possible to fall asleep in the water. When she heard the Twins scream, she was slow to move, as though she were floating in sap. She flailed to stand and looked around. She saw no threat. The Twins were cowering up to their necks in the water. Then she noticed they screamed with smiling mouths. She rubbed her eyes again and looked.

Jake stood on the bank, his arms hanging confused, his mouth agape, trying to say something but not being able to over their screams of, Agnes now realized, pleasure.

“Jake! We’re naked!” Celeste squealed.

The girls turned their attention to Agnes.

“Get down, Agnes,” Patty screamed, her eyes squeezed shut.

“Why?” Agnes asked.

Patty screamed, “Because you’re naked!”

“So?”

The Twins laughed hysterically, water rushing into their mouths. They looked like they were drowning.

Turning to Jake, her hands on her bony hips, Agnes said, “Does it bother you?”

“No,” Jake said, his eyes trained on the ground.

“See?” Agnes said to the Twins, submerged to their shoulders. Patty and Celeste cackled maniacally like Debra did. Like Val still did sometimes. Their faces guffawing all over the place.

“You are so weird,” the Twins screamed in unison. And Agnes felt a sting of jealousy. She’d never said the same thing as another person at the same time. It seemed impossible. How did you do that? she wanted to ask, but now they were staring at her body and she felt unwelcome.

“I’m leaving,” she said. She walked toward where Jake stood, and he stepped back from the shore as though afraid, turned around and started to walk in small circles, his head down.

Agnes put her smock back on. “Come on,” she said to Jake.

He followed her downriver from the Twins. “I see you cut your hair,” Jake said to the ground.

“Yes,” Agnes said.

“How come?”

“Because it looked immature, like a baby lion.”

“What do baby lions look like?”

“Like furry babies.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

“Well, I liked your hair. I thought it was cool. Shaggy.” He smiled. “I mean, it’s cool now too.”