WHEN SHE DIDN’T WAKE UP, I walked away.
I walked toward her cabin because my feet took me in that direction and it seemed as good a place to go as any.
I knocked on the cabin door even though I knew there was no one inside, and then I knocked again. There was no one: no Matty waiting in the cabin, no straggler campers hiding in the shadows. No one was going to answer the door—especially not Lump—so I opened it myself.
There were no games planned, no itinerary that involved running through the fields and learning about ecosystems or making hand-dipped candles or learning archery. The students, all but one, would eat and go home. I didn’t go all the way in. I didn’t need to. Instead, I edged in just far enough to feel the warmth of the cabin.
“Thank you, Lump,” I said.34
Because I was thankful. In a stupid, sad way I was so thankful to her because somehow she’d reset my scales. Because somehow, even though she was just a little kid who hadn’t been afraid of the things she should have been afraid of, she helped me remember that my heart is a muscle and not a machine since machines don’t hurt the way mine did.
Machines are numb, and this was the furthest thing from numb.
I nodded to her ghost that I knew would follow me until I died and went to close the door but stopped because her shoes were still by the door. They were the shoes she had worn during the inside activities, not the boots she’d worn when she’d run off into the woods to save Harriet Tubman. They were in a small, straight line with the right shoe resting atop the left.
And I was thankful. But when I saw her shoes resting like they were waiting for her feet, resting like lonely frozen waves, my knees folded and I squatted and cried into my hands.