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field of vision.
    And still there were no animals, no wind,
just the trees and us in this…crypt.
    I wasn’t the only one getting spooked by the
forest. We were all acting like animals sniffing out a trap,
sneaking glances at the canopy or the suffocating trees, as if
searching for some lurking threat.
    A crackling of vegetation sounded off to the
right. Ben and Nina, who were both ahead of me, jumped a foot off
the ground. Tomo dropped into a squat, his hands framing his face
like the guy in The Scream . Mel grabbed my forearm so hard
it hurt. Then, from behind us, John Scott howled with laughter. I
knew what he’d done before he tossed another rock into the
trees.
    “Gosh, John!” Mel cried. “That wasn’t
funny!”
    He continued to laugh. Neil, who was beside
him, and who I could imagine John Scott elbowing conspiratorially
when he’d picked up the rock, appeared guiltily amused.
    “You fuck-ass!” Tomo said, though he was
smiling witlessly. “I almost shit my brains.”
    This caused John Scott to crack up harder.
Ben and Nina joined in, then everyone was having a good chuckle. We
needed it. A release from the pressure that had evidently been
building inside all of us.
    It was a brief reprieve, however, and after
the laughter died down, and we were on the move once again, the
silence inevitably returned, just as disquieting as before.
    I glanced beside me at Mel. She was chewing
her bottom lip, her eyes downcast, watching where she stepped. I
could almost feel the tightness in her body. She looked over,
smiled. It was a hesitant smile, a hospital smile, how the nurses
smiled at me while I was with Gary in his final hours. A reassuring
smile.
    I felt suddenly bad for springing this
camping trip on her. She wasn’t cut out for stuff like this. She
often refused to watch horror movies because they were too scary,
and she rarely, if ever, did anything that was dangerous or
illegal.
    I took her hand in mine and said, “Still
feeling like this is an enchanted forest?”
    “A little,” she said. “But I feel like we’ve
just walked into the wicked witch’s domain.”
    “I know what you mean.”
    “What were you thinking about? You haven’t
said anything for the last five minutes.”
    “Our Spain trip,” I said, which was true.
I’d been compiling a mental list of some of the dumbest things I’ve
done or attempted to do in my life. Making the top three was my
decision last summer to cross Spain’s Camino del Ray, a
three-foot-wide decrepit walkway pinned against a sheer cliff face
three hundred thirty feet above a river. I’m afraid of heights, and
I’d believed conquering the walkway might help me overcome the
fear. But when I got to a section where the concrete had collapsed,
leaving a large open gap bridged only by narrow steel beams, I
returned the way I’d come, meeting up again with Mel, who’d had the
sense to wait behind.
    “Blue skies, warm weather,” Mel said. “That
was such a nice vacation. I wish you didn’t mention it.”
    “You’d rather be there?”
    “You mean rather there than Japan? Or rather
there than a haunted forest?”
    I’d meant a haunted forest. But now that
she’d brought it up I said, “Than Japan. We don’t have to go back
to the States. We could teach in Spain. They need English
teachers.”
    “It’s not that easy. They’d rather hire
someone from the UK who already has a EU passport.”
    “What about Thailand, or the Czech Republic?
We could even go to Turkey. They’re always hiring. That’s the best
perk with teaching. We can go anywhere, travel anywhere.”
    “And what about the future, Ethan? We can’t
keep hopping around the world until we’re sixty. We need to—”
    “Grow up,” I finished for her.
    “It’s true.”
    “We’re only twenty-six.”
    “That’s closer to thirty than twenty.”
    “It’s closer to twenty-five than
thirty.”
    “Whatever.”
    “It’s still young.”
    “We’re getting older. And what do we have to
show for