Samantha’s POV
The jungle seemed almost too calm. The kind of silence that makes you feel as though you are under surveillance even with the knowing that nobody else is close by. Again, though, we were blind to this reality. Drawing on what we had just done, I wondered whether anyone else could be here to watch us. Alternatively if we were escaping shadows that never fade.
Alex was a closed book, even though I kept glancing at him across the trees trying to sense his mood. Has always been. That used to bother me endlessly: his silence all the time, his incapacity to open. But given what we have experienced, I now think I know why. It was not that he lacked feeling. He felt too much, and it pulled him down like an anchor, dragging him into a prison of his own making. His forward bending
