Summary

On “Day Eight,” Ashley makes a plan to walk until she finds something left behind by humans. When she stops to eat, she notices a carving on a tree that says: “DAVEY BEET WAS HERE” (146). She remembers how she ran into him at a gas station about three months before he disappeared—when she was 15. She had just gotten her permit, and she was thrilled to see him. She thought she sensed that he found her attractive, and she hoped that he might ask her on a date, or for her number, but he told her that she had done a good job growing up and then left. Ashley remembers getting in fights with her dad about the impoverished state of their trailer, and how she started to go to church for a while until she got embarrassed because she did not...