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result in weeks of sporadic dreams in which I forgot my newborn child and left it somewhere like the baking interior of a car, or it rolled off a table onto a concrete floor while I wasn’t looking. Once one tumbled out of my sweaty hands on a mountaintop and I watched it fall all the way to the worm-sized road below. It was worst when I was actively dating someone, when it wasn’t a one-night stand but an act of love, or at least affection. The nightmares grew less frequent as I entered my mid-twenties and stopped altogether within a year of meeting my husband, the first person with whom I’ve ever thought I might someday be ready.

    They resumed the night after the cabin Challenge. Not every night, not that I remember, but most. Sometimes when I’m awake too. I don’t even have to close my eyes, just lose my focus, and I see him. Always him. Always a boy.
    After I’ve filled my Nalgenes, I kick apart my shelter and quench the fire. Then I return to the same weather-cracked backcountry thoroughfare I’ve been following roughly east for days. I hang my compass from my neck and check my direction from time to time.
    I’ve been walking an hour or more when a pain in my shoulder reminds me that I didn’t stretch. A few hours of maybe-sleep is all it took for me to forget my promise. Sorry, I mouth, looking up. I pull my shoulders down and back, straighten my posture as I walk. Tonight, I think. Tonight I will stretch my every aching muscle.
    I round a curve in the road and see a silver sedan ahead, parked askew with all its tires save the left rear beyond the shoulder, resting in dirt. I follow its skid marks uneasily, water bottle thumping against my hip. It’s clear that the car has been placed here. There must be supplies inside, or a Clue.
    My stomach tightens. I’m trying to keep my face empty of nerves—I can’t see the cameras, but I know they’re tucked into the branches overhead, and probably in the vehicle itself. They probably have one of those surveillance drones up high, hovering.
    You are strong, I tell myself. You are brave. You are not afraid of what might be inside this car.
    I look through the driver’s-side window. The driver’s seat is empty, and the front passenger seat cradles only fast-food detritus: wrappers stained with grease, a bucket-sized foam cup sprouting a gnawed-on straw from a brown-stained lid.
    There is a rumpled blanket spread over the backseat, and a small red cooler wedged behind the passenger seat. I try the back door, and the sound of it opening is something I haven’t heard in weeks: the click of the handle, the release of the seal, so distinctive and yet so ordinary. I’ve heard this sound thousands of times, tens of thousands. It’s a sound I’ve come to associate with departure—an association that was unconscious until now, for the moment I open that door, hear that release, I feel my fear fade into relief.

    You’re leaving. You’re getting out of here. You’re going home. Not thoughts, but wordless assurances from myself to me. You’re done, my body tells me. It’s time to go home.
    Then the smell hits, and a heartbeat later: realization.
    I recoil, stumbling away from their decaying prop. I can see it now, the vaguely human shape beneath the blanket. It’s small. Tiny. That’s why I didn’t see it from the window. The orb of its head was resting directly against the door, and now hangs slightly over the edge of the seat, a slick of dark brown hair slipping from beneath the covering. The nubs meant to approximate feet bulge only halfway across the seat.
    This is not the first time they’ve pretended a child, but this is the first time they’ve pretended an abandoned child.
    “All right,” I whisper. “This shit is getting old.”
    But it’s not; each prop is as horrible and startling as the last. That’s four now—five, if I count the doll—and I don’t know why, how they fit, what they mean. I slam the door shut, and this, the sound I