Later that same day, I watch them playing house. I sit here, eating a fistful of beetles. Rolling their mushy carapaces across my molars, grown soft in the acidic earth.

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Miriam folds a large tarp like fresh laundry while Sydney draws widening spirals over the sidewalk.

 

Morrow is snoring inside a hollowed-out plastic rocket while Peter adds the finishing touches to their domicile for the night—a standard tinfoil teepee.

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For the better part of three hours Peter has been closely monitoring them for signs of poisoning. (“How’s your stomach?” “Tell me if it hurts.” “Vomit if you feel even the least bit funny!” “I swear if you all die I’m going to kill you for leaving me alone.”)

 

Even this, he wouldn’t dare enact. I can feel his fear of aloneness vibrating all the way from here.

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Then, an hour later, as Sydney sits shaking a tourniquet of bees and Miriam crafts lavender giraffes from resort soap, I can still feel Peter’s fatal flaw prickling as he wanders past me, seeking out something elsewhere in the park.

 

I’m just about to hop down from the stump where I’ve squatted unseen when a tiny, melancholic voice sneaks up behind me.

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“Hello,” says Morrow, addressing me somewhat spookily. It is the first time anyone has ever snuck up on me. Thankfully, my mask is secure; armor snapped on implacably tight.

 

You would think it would be enough to scare her off.

 

You would be wrong.

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