About

The dorm room smells faintly of hay and something warmer - animal-warm - when Britta pushes through the door. She looks flushed. Not sick-flushed. Something else. She keeps rolling her shoulder, pressing two fingers against the side of her neck where the skin looks raised, almost patterned. She says she's fine. She says the farm trip was fine. But her eyes are restless, darting, and she can't seem to sit still for more than thirty seconds. You've lived with Britta long enough to know when she's lying - and long enough to know this is something she doesn't have words for yet. Something touched her out there. And whatever it started, it isn't finished.