Agnes felt a blush come on, which she quickly turned into anger. “Well, I think your hair is stupid and I always have.”

“Why?” he said, his voice high-pitched and sad.

“Your bangs. You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“Because of my bangs?”

“They cover your eyes. You’re going to trip over a rock. A cougar is going to attack from above. You’ll flip your hair too hard and break your own neck.” She stopped, a little breathless.

“It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about my hair.”

“About how it’s going to kill you, yes. I have.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment. Because it means you’re thinking of me.”

Again, Agnes felt heat rush to her neck, her cheeks. “Just because you’re new. Your hair is dumb and it’s going to kill you one of these days and someone needs to tell you.”

“Do others think this?”

“Well, it’s not like I talk about your hair all the time,” Agnes snapped. “But I’m sure everyone knows except you.”

Jake nodded. “Will you cut it for me?”

She thought of her fingers in those stupid soft bangs, trying to cut a straight line that would allow Jake to still look like Jake. Agnes realized she was holding her breath. She exhaled slowly.

Jake watched her thoughts race across her face. But his smile faded as she remained silent. “Or, you don’t have to,” he stammered.

“No, I want to.”

“Okay.” He seemed unsure.

“I really want to. I really, really want to.”

“Okay.” He seemed happier.

Agnes started running, yelling “Stay there” at Jake. He stayed.

She ran and smiled the whole way to get the scissors from Val. She returned to Jake with a pounding heart.

She breathed deeply a few times. “How do you want your hair?”

“Like yours?”

“But I thought we were just doing your bangs?”

“Do whatever you want. I trust you.”

Agnes looked at him nervously. She thought of touching his whole head so close to his scalp. Of having to fold his ears forward the way Val had folded hers, so they wouldn’t get nicked. Of peering close at the back of his neck to get a clean cut, of breathing on his neck and having him feel that and know something new about her.

“Just your bangs for now,” she said.

She cupped water from the river in her hands and wet his hair down. She straightened the bangs down his face and the ends curled under his chin. With him sitting and her standing, she was hunched down to reach his face. She tilted his chin up, but then the bangs parted and slipped to either side of his ear. She could hear the Twins splashing upriver. Jake watched everything she did.

She settled in front of him, cross-legged, and tried to get leverage that way. But she was too far. So she knelt, her knees touching his knees, and leaned toward him and realized her face would have to be so close to his face for her to do this. She tried to pull back and wobbled, as though she might fall to the side, and he put a hand on her hip to steady her, and then kept it there long after she was steadied. His hand sat light and tentative, but still it was there warming her through her smock.

Agnes held her breath, and when she absolutely had to, she exhaled slowly out of the corner of her mouth, careful not to hit him in the face with the old air from her lungs.

She didn’t really know how to cut hair like his. What were bangs, anyway?

She pulled his bangs taut, made small snips. Jake cast his eyes to the side, his mouth small and shaped somewhere between a smile and a frown, as though concentrating on something. As chunks of hair fell away, she wanted to tuck them into her pocket. She wanted to feather them across her face when they were dry.

Agnes didn’t want the haircut to end. And when it did she said, “Oh no,” because now he would have to take his hand away and this moment would never happen again.

“What?”

Agnes tried to cover up her disappointment. “I did a bad job. You look weird.”

“How weird?”

“I didn’t realize your hair would stand up like that if I cut it so short.” It looked like a tuft of moss atop his head.

He touched the stand of upright hairs, and Agnes felt cold air rush to the spot where he’d had his hand. She shivered.

“I think it’ll be okay,” he said. He smiled. “Thank you.” He stood up and helped her to her feet. Some strands of hair lifted from his chest and floated away.

“Make a wish,” Agnes said.

“That’s kids’ stuff,” he said. “You can have it.”

Jake began to walk away.

Agnes blurted, “Don’t you need to swim to get the hair off?”

“Nah, I’m good,” he said.

“Okay.”

“Thanks again,” he said and turned to leave. He flipped his hair, the hair that wasn’t there anymore, and broke into a run.

“Stop doing that,” Agnes whispered to his retreating body.

Agnes took the long route to the cave rather than swing by camp. She didn’t want to be seen and pulled into work. She didn’t want to work today. She tried to think if she’d ever felt that way before. What was it about today that made her want to be apart from everyone? She’d felt an unfamiliar heaviness in her chest and when she reached the cave she dropped to the ground.

She wondered why Jake had run away after a moment that, to her, had felt big, heavy, as though dozens of elk pelts were being piled on top of her. Her arms had been hard to move under the weight of whatever it was she had been feeling. Hadn’t he felt it too? Was it possible he hadn’t? More than possible, she thought. What if it was very likely he hadn’t? She tried to remember his delighted gasp when she’d grabbed his hand by the fire, or the warm tingling where his hand had lain on her hip, but now she saw them differently and wondered if she had it all wrong. Perhaps it was friendly, brotherly. The heat she had felt was her own embarrassment and not something between them. His gasp had been alarm. Discomfort. Far from feeling brotherly, perhaps he hated her. Perhaps she filled him with disgust.

She startled to feel something brush her leg and looked down to see a cheeky squirrel picking at some crust on her smock. She hadn’t even noticed it approach. She’d been too preoccupied wondering what Jake had been thinking.

“No more,” she said to herself. Thinking of him had become dangerous. Her feelings could get her maimed or killed.

“What if you had been a cougar?” she said to the squirrel. “I’d be dead.”

The squirrel squeaked at her, agreeing she had made a mistake. Yes, it chittered, it’s best to not think about the boy.

“Thank you,” Agnes said. “I’ll stop thinking about him.” She brushed her hands off in front of her. “Done,” she said, and sighed.

Agnes stood up from where she’d squatted, brushed off her legs, and went into the cave, to the back where her mother had hidden the pillow and magazine, but they were gone.

The heaviness in her chest inched up to her throat. She guessed it had to do with being somewhere so familiar when such familiarity wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. Not for them. Not in this life. Wasn’t that part of the point? To kill off their sense of home? To have them feel at home anywhere? Or nowhere? Were they the same thing?

When she returned to where she’d been sitting, she noticed a rusty red spot on the ground. She looked around, squatted to touch it, and felt something loosen inside her. She stepped away and saw a new drop on the ground. She touched the inside of her leg; her hand came away with a small smear of the same rust red. She touched the smear to her tongue. Iron, metal, winter. Blood. She squatted and pulled her smock up so she could see the ground between her feet. She watched small drops of red fall slowly. Drip. Drip. Like time passing. She watched the drop’s edge become ragged in the dirt. She felt the drops release from her with a light, wet tickle. One drop. Two drops. Three drops. To ten. And then it stopped.

She knew what it was. She was excited to tell Val. A little embarrassed to tell Glen. She wondered if there was some special ritual they’d dreamed up for this kind of thing. Obviously, women in the Community got their periods, but she was the first to get her first period here. She felt wild. Useful. Right. She grinned and felt a bubble in her chest that she thought was excitement. But when it rose and burst in her throat, loneliness was what was left.

Looking down at her smock, she noticed a few hairs. Long dark ones. They had to be snippets of Jake’s bangs. She carefully picked them off, collected them together like the tip of a very fine paintbrush, and stroked them across her cheek. She lightly dragged them to her neck, a touch so soft she had to concentrate hard to even feel it, but in that concentration her pulse quickened. She gazed down at the camp, watched the blurry shape of Jake stoking the fire. She moved the hairs over her lips and smiled. She smelled them. They smelled like nothing. She curled her tongue around them. They tasted like nothing. She put them in her mouth. Ground them down with her teeth. Then she filled her mouth with spit and swallowed them.