campsite. I stop to throw up again on Big Poppa. This time I look. Leeches. I fall backwards and scramble away, coughing the last few up in long, stretchy pieces. “You’re just hallucinating, Regan,” she says, trying to still my panic. She looks beautiful in the moonlight. I can’t be hallucinating. There’s blood all over my mouth. She hands me my vodka and I gargle with it. I rinse my face and chin. I gulp it down greedily hoping it will kill anything that’s still inside. After a long while my stomach finally settles. I want to go inside the tent and crawl into my sleeping bag but I can’t move. I’m too exhausted. My ghost is knitting. I lay in the grass and she perches on a rock above me. Stars spin as her knitting needles flash and gleam and click. Something settles over me like a blanket. Soft strands. Silken threads. They wave across my cheek like ripples of water. Then they become stronger. Weedier. Full of all kinds of things. Dappled sunlight, green
vines, fireflies, dead butterflies, and bluebird feathers. It’s hard to breathe. I feel around for my snorkel. I am underwater. I lay flat on my belly at the bottom of the lake. Cool mud. Feathery water ferns. I see the top part of a Russian nesting doll half-buried in the glittering silt. I have always loved the way the surface looks from underneath. It fractures the moonlight and turns fireflies into glowing embers. I try to push the weeds away to see them better. From down here they look like the remains of leftover campfires.